ONE:WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. (After the Portrait by G. Richmond.)On the 8th of October Murat landed near Pizzo, on the Calabrian coasta coast more than any other in Italy fraught with fierce recollections of the French. His army now consisted of only twenty-eight men; yet, in his utter madness, he advanced at the head of this miserable knot of men, crying, "I am your king, Joachim!" and waving the Neapolitan flag. But the people of Pizzo, headed by an old Bourbon partisan, pursued him, not to join, but to seize him. When they began firing on him, he fled back to his vessels; but the commander, a man who had received the greatest benefits from him, deaf to his cries,[117] pushed out to sea, and left him. His pursuers were instantly upon him, fired at him, and wounded him; then rushing on him, they knocked him down and treated him most cruelly. Women, more like furies than anything else, struck their nails into his face and tore off his hair, and he was only saved from being torn to pieces by the old Bourbon and his soldiers, who beat off these female savages and conveyed him to the prison at Pizzo. The news of his capture was a great delight to Ferdinand. He entertained none of the magnanimity of the Allies, but sent at once officers to try by court-martial and, of course, to condemn him. Some of these officers had been in Murat's service, and had received from him numerous favours, but not the less readily did they sentence him to death; and on the 13th of October, 1815, he was shot in the courtyard of the prison at Pizzowith characteristic bravery refusing to have his eyes bound, and with characteristic vanity bidding the soldiers "save his face, and aim at his heart!"
THREE:In committee the Opposition endeavoured to introduce some modifying clause. They proposed that the Dissenters should have schools for their own persuasion; and, had the object of the Bill been to prevent them from endangering the Church by educating the children of Churchmen, this would have served the purpose. But this was not the real object; the motive of the Bill was the old tyrannic spirit of the Church, and this most reasonable clause was rejected. They allowed, however, dames or schoolmistresses to teach the children to read; and they removed the conviction of offenders from the justices of peace to the courts of law, and granted a right of appeal to a higher court. Finally, they exempted tutors in noblemen's families, noblemen being supposed incapable of countenancing any other than teachers of Court principles. Stanhope seized on this to extend the privilege to the members of the House of Commons, arguing that, as many members of the Commons were connected with noble families, they must have an equal claim for the education of their children in sound principles. This was an exquisite bit of satire, but it was unavailing. The Hanoverian Tories, headed by Lord Anglesey, moved that the Act should extend to Ireland, where, as the native population was almost wholly Catholic, and therefore schismatic in the eye of the Established Church, the Bill would have almost entirely extinguished education. The Bill was carried on the 10th of June by a majority only of seventy-seven against seventy-two, and would not have been carried at all except for the late creation of Tory peers.
THREE:The Government at once sent Dr. Lindley and Dr. Playfair, two men of science, to Ireland, in the hope that they might be able to suggest remedies for staying the progress of the disease, or preserve that portion of the crop which was still untainted; and the consular agents in different parts of Europe and of America were directed to make inquiries and endeavour to obtain a supply of sound potatoes for seed; indeed, the seed question was even more important than that more immediately pressing one, of how the people were to be fed. In addition to this, early in October, they secretly gave orders for the purchase abroad of 100,000 worth of Indian corn, to be conveyed to Irish ports for distribution among the people. These measures, however, proved of little avail, and meanwhile it grew evident that in a great portion of the United Kingdom a famine was inevitable, which could not fail to influence the price of provisions of all kinds elsewhere. During this time it became known that the harvest, about which opinions had fluctuated so much, would be[518] everywhere deficient. The friends of Sir Robert Peel in the Cabinet who shared his Free Trade tendencies knew then how impossible it was that the already tottering system of the Corn Laws could be any longer maintained. The Ministers had scarcely reached the country seats in which they looked for repose after the labours of the Session, ere the cry of "Open the ports!" was raised throughout the kingdom; but except three, none of them took his view of the gravity of the crisis. All knew that the ports once open, public opinion would probably for ever prevent the reimposition of the duties, and the majority of the Cabinet for a time still adhered to their Protectionist principles.As the Government was determined to persevere, and to carry the Reform Bill by means of a large creation of peers, if necessary, some of the leading members of the Opposition in the Upper House began to think seriously of their position, a sort of appeal having been made to them in a letter from the king's private secretary, suggesting the prudence of compromise and concession in order to save his Majesty from the painful alternative of a creation of peers. Accordingly, Lords Wharncliffe and Harrowby put themselves in communication with Lord Grey, and this fact was announced by the former in a letter to the Duke of Wellington, stating that he entertained good hope of being able to arrange such a plan of compromise as would prevent the necessity of a second rejection of the Bill by the Lords, and so enable them to alter and amend it when it came into committee. The Duke, in reply to this, said that he was glad of a possibility of an arrangement by mutual concession on the Reform question; and that, for his part, all that he desired to see, under the new system, was a chance of a Government for this hitherto prosperous, happy, and great country, which should give security to life and property hereafter. "The political unions," he said, "had assumed an organisation which any man who could read would pronounce to be for military purposes, and nothing else." In the meantime Lord Wharncliffe had waited by appointment upon the Prime Minister at his house, in Sheen, where he discussed the Reform question with him for two hours, without ever adverting to the political unions, and he reported the issue in a long letter to the Duke of Wellington. The result was that Lord Grey made some trifling concession in matters of detail, and in return Lord Wharncliffe gave him the assurance that he would do what he could to bring the Opposition lords to take a more favourable view of the Ministerial scheme and its probable consequences. This was followed by cordial shaking of hands, and[346] permission was given on each side to communicate with intimate friends and colleagues. The Duke of Wellington, however, declined to take any part in these deliberations. He believed that the Government could be carried on, though with difficulty, under the existing system; but under the system which the Reform Bill would introduce he doubted if the Government could be carried on at all. Nothing came of Lord Wharncliffe's negotiation with the Government, which declined to make any material concession. It had the effect, however, of splitting the Conservative party in the Upper House, breaking the phalanx of the Opposition, and thus preparing the way for the triumph of the Government.
THREE:The system of exclusive dealing thus recommended was a system of social corruption and social persecution, while the attempt to serve Ireland by the exclusive use of articles of Irish produce only showed Mr. O'Connell's ignorance of political economy. The system, however, was soon abandoned.
