Part 5

I now caused a hogshead of good old strong beer to be rolled out upon the lawn, and, although our services were not accepted in defence of our country, yet that did not prevent us from drinking to her success, and prosperity to her people. My neighbours, when they had finished their old stingo, were about to depart in peace; but, as is frequently the case, when men have made free with the glass, reason and liberality forsake them, so it was here, for some of them wished to proceed immediately to the house of the miller, who, with his servant, in consequence of some pique against me, had declined to place their names in our list of volunteers. Elated with liquor, they proposed to inflict summary punishment upon these persons, by giving them a sound ducking in their own mill pond; but this course of proceeding I immediately put down, by justifying the men in their conduct, and contending that they had an equal right to withhold their services as we had to volunteer ours; and thus they escaped the threatened unjustifiable punishment. The men, however, one and all, renewed their offers to me, that they would be ready and willing at all times to come forward, to undertake any service that I might propose to them; and they added the assurance of their belief, that I would never propose any thing to them that I would not join them in accomplishing. Thus ended our meeting, and at all events we had the satisfaction of having done our duty to ourselves and our country.

Some time after this, I was informed of a very curious circumstance, relating to this affair. As soon as I sent in this offer to the Lord Lieutenant, he called a meeting of his Deputy Lieutenants, and laid it before them; pointing out the unlimited and extensive nature of the tender of our services, and expressing a doubt whether he should be justified in accepting it under the provision of the Defence Bill, without some reduction in the numbers, and modification as to the extension of the service tendered. This, I understood, caused a very long discussion; all of them disapproving of the example set by offering such extensive service; none of the other corps having volunteered to go farther than their military district, Wilts, Hants, and Dorset. One of these wiseacres exclaimed, in very boisterous language, against accepting the offer, and for this sapient reason--"because," as he said, "two hundred men out of one parish had volunteered to march to any part of the kingdom to hazard their lives in the defence of their country, provided they were commanded by an officer of their own choice; ergo, it was highly improper to trust arms in the hands of such a body of men." Though this was very properly laughed at by some of the more rational members of this divan, yet they came to an unanimous resolution to exempt the whole district of Enford from their quotas rather than run such a desperate risk. Well! I had all the credit of the offer, without any of the trouble and expence of putting it into execution. I have detailed these facts as another proof of my enthusiasm. I never acted from any cold calculating notions of self-interest. If I thought it right to perform an act of public or private duty, having once made up my mind, I never suffered any selfish considerations to interpose to prevent my carrying it into effect.

After all, the troops of Napoleon never landed, and consequently the mighty heroes of the volunteer corps escaped with whole skins. Buonaparte, nevertheless, persisted in playing off the bugbear of the French flotilla at Boulogne, by which John Gull was kept in a complete state of agitation and ferment. Addington's majorities fell off every day, in the House of Commons; and by Pitt's intrigues and management he was at length left in a minority; and, as it was considered much too disgraceful a thing even by Addington to hold his place after he had been left in the minority, he resigned, and William Pitt once more wielded the destinies of England, he being appointed prime minister on the twelfth of May, 1804. The British navy was unsuccessful in its attempts to destroy the French flotilla at Boulogne; and three trials to set fire to the shipping at Havre also proved abortive.

On the eighteenth of May, Buonaparte was declared Emperor of France, under the title of Napoleon the First. This act was in fact hastened, if not produced, by the discovery and detection of a real diabolical plot against the life and government of Buonaparte; in which Moreau, Pichegru, Georges, and others, were implicated, and were in consequence arrested. Moreau was tried, found guilty, pardoned, and exiled. The Duke D'Enghien, grandson of the Prince of Condé, was known to be on the frontier, connected with these men, and some English agents, who were concerned in the conspiracy. D'Enghien was urging them on, and zealously endeavoring to raise a rebellion in the French territories. This he did in a very conspicuous way, relying upon his own security, he being at the time in Baden, a neutral territory; but Buonaparte, setting the Duke of Baden at defiance, entered his territory, and caused the conspirator to be seized and tried, and being found guilty, he was shot. The despots of the north, Russia and Sweden, remonstrated against this violation of neutral territory; but all the other powers of Europe displayed a more tame and forbearing policy. As the trial and execution of this sprig of the Bourbons, who was detected in a conspiracy to assassinate Napoleon, and to produce the overthrow of his Government in France, caused a universal howling of all the hireling editors of all the newspapers in this country, against what they called the murder of this Duke D'Enghien, I shall shortly state the charges on which he was unanimously found guilty by the Military Court, which was appointed to try him; the President being Citizen Hulin, General of Brigade. The FIRST charge was "That of having carried arms against the French Republic."--SECOND, "Of having offered his services to the English Government, the enemy of the French people."--THIRD, "Of receiving and having, with accredited agents of that Government, procured means of obtaining intelligence in France, and conspiring against the internal and external security of the state."--FOURTH, "That he was at the head of a body of French emigrants, paid by England, formed on the frontiers of France, in the districts of Friburg and Baden."--FIFTH, "Of having attempted to foment intrigues at Strasburg, with a view of producing a rising in the adjacent departments, for the purpose of operating a diversion favourable to England."--SIXTH, "That be was one of those concerned in the conspiracy planned by England for the assassination of the First Consul, and intending, in case of the success of that plot, to return to France." The court, composed of military officers, after a patient hearing, unanimously found the prisoner guilty of all the six charges. The president of the court then pronounced the sentence as follows:--"The Special Military Commission condemns unanimously to death, Louis Antoine Henry de Bourbon, Duke D'Enghien, on the ground of his being guilty of acting as a spy, of corresponding with the enemies of the Republic, and conspiring against the external and internal security of the Republic." However this young man might be pitied, however much we may have lamented his end, yet he was tried and condemned by the known and written law of France, which was expressed in the following terms:--Article 2nd, 11th January, year 5--"Every individual, whatever be his state, quality, or profession, convicted of acting as a spy for the enemy, shall be sentenced to the punishment of death." Article 1st, every one engaged in a plot or conspiracy against the Republic, shall on conviction be punished with death. Article 3rd, 6th October, 1791.--Every one connected with a plot or conspiracy tending to disturb the tranquillity of the state, by civil war, by arming one class of citizens against the other, or against the exercise of legitimate authority, shall be punished with death. Signed and sealed the same day, month and year aforesaid. Guiton, Bazancourt, Revier, Barrois, Rabbe, D'Autancourt, Captain Reporter; Molin, Captain Register; and Hulin president.

After all the howling, and all that has been said, about this trial and execution, this Duke D'Enghien had as fair a trial, a much fairer jury, with an unanimous verdict of guilty upon all the charges, and a much more equitable, and ten times more just sentence, than I received from the immaculate Court of King's Bench. Hulin was much more justified, by the law of France, in passing this sentence upon D'Enghien, than Bailey was in passing a sentence upon me of Two Years and Six Months incarceration in this infamous jail. It is very true that Bailey was only the mouth-piece of the court, and I am ready to admit that, though he passed the sentence upon me, yet, he was so far from concurring in it, that he actually wrote down "not one hour," as the whole of his share of the punishment that he thought I ought to receive. There was, however, the pure and venerable judge----, as he was denominated by the amiable Castlereagh alias Londonderry, when my Petition was rejected by the Honourable House on the 15th instant, May, 1821, the day when Sir Francis Burdett brought forward his long-promised, long-delayed, frequently put-off motion, upon the Manchester massacre. Oh! the venerable Judge! I thank you kindly for that, my Lord--I will always follow so good and worthy an example as that of your Lordship; in future he shall always be designated by me as the venerable Judge! Jeffries was indeed also a venerable Judge, and Jeffries came to an end the most appropriate for such a venerable Judge. Talk of Hulin indeed! he was a paragon of justice, humanity and mercy, compared with my Lord Shift-names' venerable emblem of purity. I think it was Mr. Horne Tooke that used to say, that it was as difficult to know who and what our nobility were, as it was to know a pickpocket or a highwayman, the former changed their names as frequently as the latter; and really the remark is a perfectly correct one! The famous Mr. Drake, the notorious English plenipotentiary at the court of Munich, was at the head of this conspiracy, while holding the situation of English Ambassador to the Elector of Bavaria. Ten of his original letters were seized by the police of the Republic, and in the report of Regnier, the Chief Justice, the following extracts from Mr. Drake's letters were introduced. In addressing one of his correspondents, an active conspirator, as he thought, who had undertaken to assassinate the First Consul, but who was nothing more or less than an agent of the French Police, he writes with a brutal fury worthy of the part he plays. The letter is dated Munich, December 9, 1803. "It is," says he, "of very little consequence by whom the Beast is brought to the ground; it is sufficient that you are all ready to join in the chace." There was also another of these precious diplomatic agents of the British Government, a person of the name of Spencer Smith, Minister from England at Stutgard, acting as a conspirator against the person of the First Consul and the Republic of France, who was wise enough to employ a Frenchman, named Pericaud, as his confidential secretary. In one of his letters Drake uses the following language: "You should," says he, "offer the soldiers a small increase of pay beyond what they receive of the present Government." In the report of the Grand Judge, he speaks of Mr. Drake as follows:--"an English Minister such as Mr. Drake, cannot be punished by obloquy--this can only mortify men who feel the price of virtue, and know that of honour." He adds, "Men who preach up assassination and foment domestic troubles, the agents of corruption, the missionaries of revolt against all established governments, are the enemies of all states and all governments. The law of nations does not exist for them." In the second interview of Mr. Rosey with Mr. Drake, when he was devising the plan for destroying Buonaparte, Mr. Rosey says, he, Drake, spoke as follows, when speaking of the fall of Napoleon: "Profit, when the occasion shall offer, by the trouble in which the rest of his partizans will be plunged. Destroy them without pity; pity is not the virtue of a politician." In fact it appears very evident, that the plan was to assassinate the First Consul, and thereby to produce a fresh revolution in France.

Soon after this, Captain Wright, who landed Georges, Pichegru, and their accomplices, on the coast at Dieppe, was taken in a corvette by the French gun-boats, and was sent off to Paris in the diligence, accompanied by the Gendarmerie. This Captain Wright, after very urgent negociations through the Spanish Minister at Paris, was ordered to be given up to the English by Talleyrand; the French Government having refused to exchange him as a prisoner of war on any terms. Having been engaged in this plot to assassinate Buonaparte, he was treated as a spy, and might have been tried by the law of France and executed as such. The French Government, however, thought it a sufficient disgrace to him as a man of honour, to refuse to exchange him, but to give him up as a boon to the Spanish Ambassador. Wright, it is said by his keepers, cut his throat in the prison; but the English hireling newspaper editors made a great clamour against Buonaparte, to persuade John Gull that he had been murdered in prison; though it would be difficult to find any good reason for this, when he might have been tried and executed by the law of France, upon the same principle that D'Enghien was convicted.

Mr. Cobbett, who had now become celebrated for his political works, particularly his Weekly Political Register, had about this time began to write very freely in the cause of Liberty. Being a most powerful writer, he had attacked with great success the tyrannical measures of the Irish Government, and he was, therefore, prosecuted for a libel upon the Earl of Hardwicke, Lord Redesdale, Mr. Justice Osbourn, and Mr. Marsden. The trial came on before Lord Ellenborough and a Middlesex special jury, and he was found guilty, of course. He also had an action for damages brought against him by Mr. Plunkett, Solicitor-General of Ireland; and this action being also tried by a Middlesex special jury, he had, of course, a verdict against him, with £500 damages.

Mr. Pitt was now again in power, and he endeavoured to make the public believe that he had assented to the wishes of the nation, by an union with Mr. Fox, whom he professed to have recommended to his Majesty to appoint one of the cabinet. This was one of Mr. Pitt's artful and hypocritical shuffles; he contrived that the King should object to the admission of Mr. Fox; while at the same time he managed so as to make the nation think that he studied their wishes by recommending Mr. Fox to the King; and thus he fixed upon his Majesty the odium of disregarding the prayers of the people, and objecting to Mr. Fox from merely personal motives.

I was living at Clifton at this period, and during the summer I visited Cheltenham with my family. At the latter place I frequently met Mr. Fox, who was drinking the celebrated waters, for his health, which had become greatly impaired in consequence of his attending so incessantly to his parliamentary duties. He was accompanied by Mrs. Armstead, the lady whom he afterwards married, and to which lady the people of England have had the honour to pay twelve hundred pounds a-year, ever since the death of Mr. Fox. Mrs. Armstead appeared to be a very delightful woman, with whom this great statesman and senator evidently lived in a state of the most perfect domestic harmony. They were almost always together, seldom if ever were they seen separate--at the pump-room in the morning; at the library and reading-room at noon, when the papers came in; at the theatre, or at private parties, in the evening; Mr. Fox and Mrs. Armstead were always to be seen together. The Duke of Bedford was then recently married to his present Duchess. Mr. Fox and his lady were frequently of the Duke's party; in fact, they were as one family. Cheltenham was then very full of gay company; amongst whom a great deal of dissipation and intrigue were going on. It was frequently made a subject of remark, that Mr. Fox and Mr. Hunt appeared to enjoy more real happiness, more domestic felicity, than any of the married persons at Cheltenham, with the exception of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, who lived a retired domestic life at that time; and, from what I have heard, have continued to do so ever since.

I remember sitting in the library with Mr. Fox, on the morning when the news arrived by the post, that Sir Francis Burdett was elected the representative for the county of Middlesex, by a majority of ONE. Mr. Fox was greatly elated with this momentary success of the Baronet; but he expressed his doubts upon the final issue of an inquiry before a Committee of the House of Commons. This famous contest for Middlesex had caused considerable anxiety throughout the country, and a party of us, amongst whom was Mr. Fox, used to assemble daily on the arrival of the post at the library, to hear the state of the poll. This election had been carried on fifteen days with unabating enthusiasm. Sir Francis Burdett was backed by all the men and women of the county possessing liberal principles; he had besides an immensely long purse, the contents of which were lavished upon his partizans with an unsparing hand. Ninety-four thousand pounds was the price of the two elections, which came out of his own pocket; besides all the gratuitous assistance that he received from his friends and partizans. Mr. Mainwaring was the treasurer of the county; his father was the chairman of the County Quarter Sessions. The father had been rendered by a committee of the House incapable of sitting in that Parliament, he having been convicted of treating during the previous election. The son, therefore, a mere clerk to the magistrates, was set up against Sir Francis; this son being a man without the slightest pretensions to a seat in Parliament for a rotten borough, and much less for the county of Middlesex, either as a man of fortune, a man of rank, or a man of talent. In fact, it was a ministerial contest against Sir Francis Burdett; most of the partizans of Mr. Mainwaring declaring, at the time, that they voted against Sir Francis, and not for Mainwaring. I was one of those who thought that this was a great triumph in the cause of liberty, and I was therefore excessively rejoiced that Sir Francis Burdett should have been successful against all the magistracy, and all the ministerial aristocracy of the metropolitan county. But now, when I look back, and read the speeches of the Honourable Baronet, I only feel surprised that I could have been such a dupe as to expect that any real benefit would ever arise to the people from his exertions. All his promises, all his protestations, I now perceive to have been general; there was nothing in them specific and tangible. The great cry raised against Sir F. Burdett's principles at that time was, that he had been the associate of the traitors Despard and O'Connor. This was most infamous, and was resented by every upright and honest freeholder in the county. The Baronet was evidently the most popular candidate; but what gave the greatest eclat to his election was the lavish expenditure of his cash to bribe the electors. Henry Clifford was his counsel, and he himself was a host.

The newspapers of the next day, however, brought us an account which blasted all the sanguine hopes that we had entertained the day before. At the final end of the scrutiny the Sheriff declared the numbers on the poll to be the same as they were the day before, at three o'clock, and these were the numbers by which he ought to decide the election. They were as follow: for Mr. Mainwaring, 2828--for Sir Francis Burdett, 2823--and Mr. Mainwaring was of course declared duly elected by a majority of five votes. Thus ended this great political contest, in which so much money was spent, and of which drunkenness, riot, bribery, and perjury, were the most prominent characteristics. On the 29th of October, one of the most atrocious acts of tyranny, robbery, and lawless plunder, took place, which ever disgraced the character of any nation, namely, the British navy captured three Spanish frigates, with upwards of three millions of dollars on board. This unparalleled act of aggression was committed upon the property of Spain, a nation with whom England was at peace, and this plunder was what is called Droits of the Admiralty, which is claimed by the crown; so that, when the crown chooses to become a robber upon the high seas, and plunders a state to enrich itself, the people of England are called upon to spill their best blood in defending an act which, if committed in common life, would entitle the robber to a halter.

Soon after this, by way of retaliation, Buonaparte caused Sir George Rumbold, a British Minister, to be seized at Hamburgh, by a detachment of French soldiers, who carried him off to France. The law of nations was, in fact, set at naught by all the Belligerent Powers; in most cases the weakest went to the wall. The English Ministers violated every known and heretofore received principle of the law of nations. Buonaparte always took care to retaliate in the most prompt and decisive manner; and thus the subjects of both powers were at once rendered the sport and the victims of their tyrannical rulers. There was no safety in neutral territories, nor any safeguard in the hitherto acknowledged law of nations. The conspiracy formed by the English Ministers to assassinate Napoleon was detected, and all their agents, who were concerned in so hellish a plot, were exposed and denounced by every civilized state in Europe. Moreau was banished to America; Pichegru strangled himself in prison; Georges and D'Enghien were executed; Drake had a narrow escape with his life; Captain Wright cut his own throat in a French prison; and thus the whole conspiracy was as completely frustrated, and its agents as completely punished, as were the agents of the Cato-street conspiracy: both of them were got up by the same parties, and the only difference was, that the former was ten times more atrocious than the latter.

The King and the Prince of Wales, who had been long at variance, had a meeting on the 12th of November, 1804, when a reconciliation took place between them. Every body now expected to hear that the Prince's Debts were soon to be paid off. About this time there were great discussions relative to who had the legal care and education of the Princess Charlotte of Wales; and while in London the English Ministers and the Opposition were squabbling about this mighty concern, the coronation of Napoleon by the Pope, took place in Paris, where he was crowned Emperor of France.

I trust that my introducing these events, as they occurred, will not be deemed superfluous by the reader. I do it, because it is my intention, as it has been all along, to give a brief history of the political occurrences of my own time, and within my own recollection. It is, I think, not unadvisable to put upon record some of the transactions of the English Ministers for the last twenty years, and dispassionately place them in their true light. At the period when these things were done the public mind was in a state of heat and effervescence --it was in such a fever of political delusion and delirium, that what was written and published at the time, particularly by the diurnal press of the day, instead of enlightening, was calculated only to mislead and deceive the people. Far from recording fairly what was passing in the world of politics, the principal object of the great mass of public writers, and more especially of the conductors of public newspapers, was to disguise and conceal the truth; they were all in the pay, or under the influence, of the two great political factions, the Ins and the Outs, the Tories and the Whigs, both interested in keeping the people in the dark. They were both struggling for nothing but place and power; their great end and aim were the same. The watch-word which, notwithstanding their ostensible difference in principles, was common to them, was this--"keep the people in ignorance, or neither of our parties will be able to plunder them." Therefore, though to the superficial observer, they appeared inveterately hostile to each other, yet I repeat, that they had the same object in view, and this was proved beyond all the possibility of doubt when the Whigs came into power. For twenty long years had Mr. Fox and his party been inveighing against the measures of Mr. Pitt; yet, the moment Mr. Fox and his friends came into place, they not only adopted all the measures of Mr. Pitt, but they even followed up the most obnoxious of those measures towards the people with an unfeeling and arbitrary severity. This being the case, I shall take leave, as I go along, to represent public events in their true colours, in such as they must strike every rational, dispassionate, and unprejudiced mind.

At this period invasion was still the general topic; it was in every person's mouth, and nothing else was either thought of or talked of. It was the subject of every one's almost hourly inquiry, both in London and the country, even in the most remote parts. Mr. Cobbett well described it at the time, "a state malady; appearing by fits and starts; sometimes assuming one character, and sometimes another. At last, however, it seems to have settled into a sort of hemorrhage, the patients in Downing-street expectorating pale or red, according to the state of their disease. For some weeks past it has been remarkably vivid; whether proceeding from the heat of the dog-days, or from the quarrellings and fightings, and riotings amongst their volunteers, it would be hard to say, but certain it is, that the symptoms have been of a very alarming complexion for nearly a month."

Notwithstanding all the terror which was felt, the fact is, that Buonaparte never seriously intended to invade England; but he knew that the gun-boats at Boulogne kept this country in a continual state of tremor, and put it to an enormous expense; it was evidently the policy of France to let us alone, provided that she could keep us in a state of agitation and ferment. It is very curious to observe how well this answered the purpose of Pitt as well as of Napoleon. Mr. Pitt had, in the first instance, to raise the spirit of the country, or rather to delude John Gull, created a false and unfounded alarm of invasion by Buonaparte, long before the latter ever dreamed of it, and the trick succeeded to a miracle. Pitt knew that he could not get such immense sums from the pockets of the people, unless he could work upon their fears; and this gave rise to the bugbear of invasion. John, as was expected, took fright, and the whole country was in consequence thrown into a violent ferment. Volunteer corps and voluntary subscriptions were every where the order of the day; John opened his purse-strings widely, and patiently suffered the rapacious and cunning Minister to dip his griping fist into the treasure as deeply as he thought proper. Napoleon, who had some of the most intelligent men in the world about him, soon discovered the state malady of poor John Gull, and he and his councillors lost not a moment to set about prescribing a dose, which they were sure would increase the nervous fever that had taken possession of the whole country. Their prescription was a very simple one, it merely consisted in ordering gun-boats at Boulogne. Napoleon played Pitt's own game off to such a tune as he did not expect. Pitt created the alarm to raise taxes; Napoleon fell into the scheme, in order to continue the call for taxes upon the pockets of Gull, and to exhaust the resources, and waste the wealth of the country, which at that time appeared to some people to be absolutely inexhaustible. This Boulogne flotilla was therefore a mere playing upon the fears of the people of England, but it was a most ruinous war upon the national finances.

This was the time when the people of England were made drunk, and indeed mad, by the deleterious potions that were administered by Pitt and his colleagues, in the shape of Acts of Parliament, for raising volunteer corps, catamaran schemes, car projects for conveying troops, &c. &c. with every other species of folly and profligacy. The taxes raised this year were little short of SIXTY MILLIONS.--In February the quartern loaf was eight-pence; by December it had risen to one shilling and four pence halfpenny. Those were rare times for the farmers and the yeomanry; and they did not forget to make their poor neighbours feel their power. This rise in the price of corn was caused by the CORN BILL, which was carried through the House of Commons for the purpose; but its operation was arrested in the House of Lords, till the 15th of November. Mr. Cobbett was still one of the great advocates for war, and he wrote some very able but very mischievous papers, to prove that war did not operate to raise the price of bread, and that for the last fifty years bread had been cheaper in war than in peace. This he did for the purpose of discountenancing and reprobating the cry that had been raised of "Peace and a large loaf." Mr. Cobbett's Register at this time became a very popular work, and the great talent displayed by the author caused it to be universally read. I, for one, became one of his constant readers and zealous admirers, although I did not agree with many of his doctrines. Notwithstanding the great talent he displayed, and the knowledge in matters of political economy which it was very evident that he possessed, I could never be convinced that war in any way either promoted the freedom or happiness of the people, much less that it ever produced cheap bread, or contributed to the comfort of the poor. I must, however, do Mr. Cobbett the justice to say, that he condemned the Corn Bill, and, in glowing language, boldly and ably pointed out the folly as well as the injustice of Corn Bills, to raise the price of grain. I did not know Mr. Cobbett at that time, but I own that I longed to become acquainted with so celebrated a public writer, who had afforded me so much pleasure in the perusal of his literary works. It will be but doing common justice to him, as well as to myself, to observe here, that I have never failed to read it from that day up to the present hour; and that I have received more pleasure in reading his works, and have derived more information from him, ten times ten-fold, in subjects of political economy, than I ever derived from all the other authors I ever read besides. Mr. Cobbett, at that time, censured in strong terms the volunteer system, and ridiculed their pranks and squabbles with the most cutting irony; for he was at that time the mighty champion of a standing army. Mr. Cobbett had been a soldier, and a zealous, active, and intelligent soldier; therefore, as such, it was not only excusable in him to be an advocate for that system, with which he was so well acquainted, and whose power he so well knew, but his predilection was quite natural. He, however, then little thought what a monster he was nourishing, in the shape of a standing army. Sir Robert Wilson also was bred a soldier; and he also published a pamphlet, addressed to Mr. Pitt, under the title of "An Inquiry into the present State of the Military Force of the British Empire, with a view to its re-organization." This pamphlet was in favour of a regular army, in preference to the volunteers. In fact, the whole nation was mad; and as drunk with fear now, as they had been in the commencement of the war with France with folly and boasting. We long since began to feel the baneful effects of that war, and we are now tasting its bitter fruits, with all their appalling evils. We have now a standing army in good earnest; and now that army is kept up, in the sixth year of peace, to compel John Gull to pull out of his pocket the last shilling, to pay the interest of that debt, which, in his drunken, insane folly, he suffered his rulers, to borrow, in order, as they first told him, to humble the power of the French Jacobins; a debt which was greatly enhanced to humble Napoleon; and, lastly, it was brought to its climax to restore the Bourbons. The people of England were drunk, wickedly drunk, when they went to war to destroy the principles of liberty in France; for, be it remembered, to their shame, that the people sanctioned this war--they were duped and deceived, it is true, but it was certainly a popular war with the great mass of the people of England.

Being now arrived at the summit of power, Napoleon became more than usually anxious to secure that power. It was his interest, as it had long been his object, to be at peace with England; and in order to secure this desirable object, he wrote a letter to the king of England, with his own hand, offering the fairest terms, and expressing a sincere desire to put an end to the spilling of human blood, and to see the two nations at peace with each other. Common courtesy, and the rules of good breeding, entitled him to an answer. But, instead of this, the Secretary of State merely informed the French Minister, that the King, by treaty, was obliged to act in concert with his allies. As soon as this slight was offered to the Emperor of France, preparations were immediately renewed for invading England. Mr. Pitt finds that his difficulties have increased since his former administration; he therefore makes an effort to strengthen the Government by an union with the Addingtons, and the late Prime Minister is raised to the peerage, by the title of Viscount Sidmouth.

On the 24th of January, 1805, war was declared by England against Spain. In fact, it was absolutely necessary to declare war against Spain, or restore the three frigates and the three million dollars of which we had robbed them; and not choosing to be honest, and do an act of justice to that nation, war was inevitable. I have this moment found a copy of the letter addressed by Napoleon to the King of England, which I will insert, that the rising generation may be able to judge for themselves of the characters and dispositions of the two monarchs, George the Third and Napoleon the First. The letter is as follows:--

"SIR AND BROTHER, January 2, 1805.

"Called to the throne of France by Providence, and by the suffrages of the senate, the people, and the army, my first sentiment is a wish for peace. France and England abuse their prosperity. They may contend for ages; but do their Governments well fulfil the most sacred of their duties, and will not so much blood, shed uselessly, and without a view to any end, condemn them in their own consciences? I consider it as no disgrace to make the first step. I have, I hope, sufficiently proved to the world that I fear none of the chances of war; it besides presents nothing that I need to fear; peace is the wish of my heart, but war has never been inconsistent with my glory. I conjure your Majesty not to deny yourself the happiness of giving peace to the world, nor to leave that sweet satisfaction to your children: for certainly there never was a more favourable opportunity, nor a moment more favourable to silence all passions, and listen only to the sentiments of humanity and reason. This moment once lost what end can be assigned to a war which all my efforts will not be able to terminate. Your Majesty has gained more within ten years, both in territory and riches, than the whole extent of Europe. Your nation is at the highest point of prosperity; what can it hope from war? To form a coalition with some powers of the Continent? The Continent will remain tranquil; a coalition can only increase the preponderance and continental greatness of France. To renew intestine troubles? The times are no longer the same. To destroy our finances? Finances founded on a flourishing agriculture can never be destroyed. To take from France her colonies? The colonies are to France only a secondary object; and does not your Majesty already possess more than you know how to preserve? If your Majesty would but reflect, you must perceive that the war is without an object, without any presumable result to yourself. Alas! what a melancholy prospect to cause two nations to fight merely for the sake of fighting. The world is sufficiently large for our two nations to live in it, and reason is sufficiently powerful to discover means of reconciling every thing, when the wish for reconciliation exists on both sides. I have, however, fulfilled a sacred duty, and one which is precious to my heart. I trust your Majesty will believe in the sincerity of my sentiments, and my wish to give you every proof of it, &c.

"NAPOLEON."

Instead of his Majesty, George the Third, writing an answer to this pacific letter from the Emperor Napoleon, a letter was written by Lord Mulgrave, addressed to M. Talleyrand, the French Minister, couched in equivocal terms, and which concluded by saying that his Britannic Majesty had no power to act for himself, and that he could do nothing without consulting with his allies upon the Continent. After this conciliatory epistle from the Emperor of France, and the answer, or rather the failure of an answer, from his Britannic Majesty, no one that reads this letter of the Emperor Napoleon and the answer of Lord Mulgrave will ever believe or say that Napoleon was the cause of the continuance of the war. What oceans of blood might have been spared if the King of England, if George the Third, had accepted this liberal and candid offer of peace and reconciliation from Napoleon!

The reign of George the Third may, with the greatest propriety, be called the bloodiest reign in the annals of history. If his Majesty felt that he, having the power, neglected such an opportunity, that he threw away the delightful pleasure of sparing the lives of his fellow creatures, of stopping the effusion of human blood, if he felt this, I for one do not wonder at his Majesty's illness--the bare reflection was more than enough to drive any man out of his senses, to have distracted the strongest brain. Oh God! what a reflection! The pages of British history from that hour, that fatal hour, when the answer was written by Lord Mulgrave, dictated by the hand of a cold-blooded policy, from that hour, I say, the pages of history have been tarnished; blood having been shed, which, by a more humane policy, might have been prevented.

Let us now return to our domestic politics. At length a Committee of the House of Commons declared that George Bolton Mainwaring was not duly elected, and ought not to have been returned for the county of Middlesex; but that Sir Francis Burdett was duly elected, and ought to have been returned. This was a sad blow for the saints, who were the principal supporters of Mr. Mainwaring. Sir Francis Burdett now took his seat, out of which he had been unjustly kept at the beginning of the Sessions by the temporising and partial conduct of the sheriffs of the county of Middlesex.

At this time, in March, 1805, the tenth report of the commissioners of naval inquiry was laid before the House of Commons, which report implicated Lord Melville and Mr. Trotter in the crime of defrauding the public of the monies entrusted to them, intended to discharge those accounts as connected with the office of Treasurer of the Navy, an office held by my Lord Melville. Trotter, Lord Melville's deputy, who had a salary of no more than 800l. a year, was found to have increased his funded property since 1791, a period of fourteen years, to eleven thousand three hundred and eight pounds one shilling PER ANNUM!!--Lord Melville, on his examination before the commissioners, being asked, upon his oath, "whether Mr. Trotter had ever applied any of the naval money for his (Lord Melville's) benefit or advantage?"--he refused to answer, for fear of criminating himself. What came out upon this inquiry before the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry, now absorbed the whole of the public attention, and caused an universal sensation throughout the country. This said Lord Viscount Melville was that Henry Dundas, Esq. who was formerly a Lawyer in Edinburgh, became Lord Advocate of Scotland during the American war, and a strong supporter of Lord North's administration; was then made Treasurer of the Navy at the same epoch that Mr. Pitt first became Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Lord Shelburn's administration; again became Treasurer of the Navy in the administration of Mr. Pitt, in 1784; then became President of the Board of Controul for India affairs, and afterwards Secretary of State for the War Department, retaining all the three offices in his own person till the year 1800, when he gave up the Treasurership of the Navy, still keeping fast hold of the other two offices till he resigned, together with Mr. Pitt and the rest of that Ministry, in the month of March, 1801. This same Henry Dundas, who was again brought into place by Mr. Pitt, and put in greater power than ever, was, on the 8th of April, 1805, degraded by a censure of the House of Commons, inflicted by a solemn vote, on the motion of Mr. Whitbread, who brought the affair before them with great manliness, ability, and perseverance. The eleventh resolution moved by Mr. Whitbread, and carried by a majority of the House against all the influence and exertions of Mr. Pitt, was as follows--"That the Right Honourable Lord Viscount Melville, having been privy to, and connived at, the withdrawing from the Bank of England, for purposes of private interest or emolument, sums issued to him as Treasurer of the Navy, and placed to his account in the Bank, according to the provisions of the 25th of Geo. III. chap. 31, has been guilty of a gross violation of the law, and a high breach of duty."

Public meetings were on this occasion held all over the kingdom, calling for a rigid inquiry into the conduct of Lord Melville, and petitions were presented by the electors of Westminster, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of London, the electors of Southwark, from Salisbury, from the county of Surrey, city of York, the counties of Norfolk, Hants, Hereford, Bedford, Berks, Northumberland, Cornwall, Essex, &c. &c. against Lord Melville.

A county meeting was called for Wilts, at Devizes. I had myself written to the old Marquis of Lansdown, proposing to sign a requisition to the Sheriff, which his Lordship immediately complied with; but our High Sheriff, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, took that opportunity to take a trip into Wales, or some part of the West, without leaving any orders at home where his public or private letters were to be forwarded to him. In consequence of this circumstance, our county meeting was delayed three weeks or a month, and before it could be held, articles of impeachment were exhibited and agreed to by the House of Commons against Lord Melville. The meeting, however, having been at length advertised by the High Sheriff, to be held at the Town Hall at Devizes, a great number of freeholders assembled, and amongst that number were myself, Mr. Hussey and Lord Folkstone, the two members for Salisbury. In consequence of the decision of the House of Commons, to impeach Lord Melville, Mr. Hussey and Lord Folkstone recommended, that there should not be any petition sent up from the county of Wilts, because it would be prejudging the question before the House. Finding that no petition was to be submitted to the meeting, I sat down and drew up some resolutions, expressive of the indignation of the freeholders at the conduct of Lord Melville, and their approval of that of Mr. Whitbread. Amongst the number was a censure upon the High Sheriff, for his delay in calling the meeting, and his gross negligence in being absent from the county at such an important period. It was here that, for the first time, I addressed my brother freeholders at a county meeting. Mr. Collins, of Salisbury, seconded my resolutions, and they were carried by acclamation; but in consequence of the earnest entreaties of the venerable Mr. Hussey, who was the father of the House of Commons at that time, backed by those of his colleague, I, being young in politics, was prevailed upon to withdraw my vote of censure upon the conduct of the Sheriff, after having heard from him an explanation and an apology.