ONE:Then came the Lake school, so called because the poets lived more or less amongst the lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland; but which would have been more correctly called the natural school, in contradistinction to the artificial school which they superseded. The chief of these were Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey. Wordsworth and Coleridge had travelled in Germany, when few Englishmen travelled there, and all of them had more or less imbibed that spirit of intense love of natural beauty and of mental philosophy which prevails in Germany. In Southey this evaporated in ballads of the wild and wonderful, with a strong tinge of Teutonic diablerie. In Wordsworth and Coleridge these elements sank deeper, and brought forth more lasting fruits. But there was another cause which went greatly to the formation of Wordsworth's poetic system. He was thoroughly indoctrinated by his early friends, Charles Lloyd and Thomas Wilkinson, members of the Society of Friends, with their theory of worship and psychology. They taught him that the spirit of God breathes through all nature, and that we have only to listen and receive. This system was enunciated in some of his lyrical poems, but it is the entire foundation of his great work, the "Excursion." In his earliest poems William Wordsworth (b. 1770; d. 1850) wrote according to the manner of the time, and there is nothing remarkable in them; but in his "Lyrical Ballads," the first of which appeared in 1798, there was an entire change. They were of the utmost simplicity of language, and some of them on subjects so homely that they excited the most unmeasured ridicule of the critics. In particular, the Edinburgh Review distinguished itself by its excessive contempt of them. The same fate awaited his successive publications, including his great work, the "Excursion;" and the tide of scorn was only turned by a series of laudatory criticisms by Professor Wilson, in Blackwood's Magazine, after which the same critics became very eulogistic.Mr. Bankes again introduced his Billwhich was about to expirefor prohibiting the grant of offices in reversion; and he endeavoured again to make it permanent, but, as before, he was defeated on the second reading in the Commons. He then brought in a Bill confined to two years only, and this, as before, was allowed to pass both Houses. Great discussion arose on the grant of the office of paymaster of widows' pensions to Colonel MacMahon, the confidential servant of the Prince Regent. This was a mere sinecure, which had been held by General Fox, the brother of Charles James Fox; and it had been recommended that, on the general's death, it should be abolished; but Ministersmore ready to please the Regent than to reduce expenditurehad, immediately on the general's decease, granted it to Colonel MacMahon. Ministers met the just complaints of the Opposition by praising the virtues and ability of MacMahonas if it required any ability or any virtue to hold a good sinecure! But there was virtue enough in the Commons to refuse to grant the amount of the salary, Mr. Bankes carrying a resolution against it. But Ministers had their remedy. The prince immediately appointed MacMahon his private secretary, and a salary of two thousand pounds was moved for. But Mr. Wynne declared that any such office was unknown to the countrythat no regent or king, down to George III., and he only when he became blind, had a private secretary; that the Secretary of State was the royal secretary. Ministers replied that there was now a great increase of public business, and that a private secretary for the Regent was not unreasonable; but they thought it most prudent not to press the salary, but to leave it to be paid out of the Regent's privy purse.
TWO:To such a pitch of folly and despotism had the Grafton Ministry been driven by the events of the Session of 1769, by their conduct towards the Americans and Wilkes. The Rockinghams and Grenvilles were combined against the Grafton Cabinet, and thus acquiring popularity at its expense. Lord Camden, though still retaining his place, utterly disapproved of their proceedings. The people everywhere held meetings to express their total loss of confidence in both the Ministers and Parliament, and to pray the king to dissolve the latter. In the autumn, the action of Wilkes against Lord Halifax, for the seizure of his papers, was tried, and the jury gave him four thousand pounds damages.
TWO:Charles was anxious to follow up his victory by marching directly into England, trusting to the effect of this signal triumph to bring all inclined to the Stuart dynasty to his standard. He was confident that if he met with anything like success on the way, a rapid march would put London in his possession. And, in truth, such was the miserably misgoverned condition of the country at the time, that, had he come with a tolerable French army, nothing could have prevented him from becoming master of the kingdom. Never was England so thoroughly exposed to foreign danger, so utterly unarmed and unprotected,[98] whilst it had been sending such armaments to the Continent. Fortunately, the French had not supported the Pretender on this occasion, as they had promised, and fortunately, too, when Charles came to review the army with which he proposed to enter England, there remained of it only one thousand four hundred men. The rest had gone home with their booty; nay, some had gone and were returning, not to fight, but to carry off more which they had concealed.
TWO:In May the gingham-weavers of Carlisle and that neighbourhood held a similar gathering, and in June meetings were held on Hunslet Common, near Leeds, at Glasgow, Ashton-under-Lyne, and other places. The meeting at Glasgow, on the 16th of June, was held on the Green, and amounted to thirty or forty thousand people. They complained of the low wages for cotton-weaving, and proposed a petition to the Prince Regent, praying that he would enable them to get over to Canada, promising that all such as received that favour should repay the outlay by yearly instalments. But the bulk of the assembly protested against emigration, asserting that the remedy for their distresses lay in annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and the consequent reduction of taxation; and they proposed that they should march up to London in a body, and present their petition to the Prince Regent in person. At Ashton the chair was taken by the Rev. Joseph Harrison, and the strange creature called Dr. Healey, of whom Bamford gives an extraordinary account in his "Life of a Radical," made a most wild and seditious harangue. At a great meeting at Stockport, on the 28th of the same month, a very different personage presided. This was Sir Charles Wolseley, of Wolseley Park, in Staffordshire. Sir Charles said that he had been engaged in the outbreak of the French Revolution, and had assisted in the taking of the Bastille, and that he would spend his last drop of blood, if it were necessary, in destroying the Bastilles of his own country. The acquisition of such an advocate of Reform was not likely to be received with apathy. Sir Charles was invited to preside at a similar meeting at New Hall, near Birmingham, on the 12th of July. At this meeting he was elected "legislatorial attorney and representative" for that town. This was a circumstance that excited the alarm of Government. They immediately issued warrants for the apprehension both of Sir Charles and of Dr. Harrison for seditious expressions used at the Stockport meeting. Sir Charles was arrested at his own house, at Wolseley Park; and Harrison was taken on the platform of a public meeting, at Smithfield, in London, on the 21st of July, at which Hunt was presiding. On conveying Harrison to Stockport, the constable who arrested him was attacked by the mob, and a pistol was fired at him, the ball of which lodged in his body.The growth of our commerce during these seventy-two years is shown by the amount of our exports. In 1697that is, nine years after the Revolutionthe amount of exports was only 3,525,907; but in the three next years of peace they rose to 6,709,881. War reduced these again to little more than 5,000,000, and at the end of the reign of Anne, during peace, they rose to 8,000,000. At the end of the reign of George I. the war had so much checked our commerce, that the exports scarcely amounted to that sum, the average of the three years1726, 1727, and 1728being only 7,891,739. By the end of the reign of George II., however (1760), they had risen to 14,693,270. Having by this period driven the fleets of France and Spain from the ocean, we rather extended our commerce than injured it. Thus, during these seventy-two years, our exports had increased from about three millions and a half annually to more than fourteen millions and a half annually, or a yearly difference of upwards of eleven millionsa most substantial growth.
THREE:DUEL BETWEEN THE "GUERRIRE" AND THE "CONSTITUTION." (See p. 36.)
THREE:Mr. Canning, who had been on terms of intimacy with her Majesty, declined to take any part in the proceedings, declaring that nothing would induce him to do anything calculated to reflect upon the honour and virtue of the queen. The queen intimated to the Lord Chancellor that she meant to come in person to the House of Lords when her case should next be discussed there. He answered that he would not permit her to enter without the authority of the House, for which she must previously apply. She then desired that he would deliver a message to the House in her name, which he declined, stating that "the House did not receive messages from anybody but the king, unless they were sent as answers to Addresses from the House." The petition was presented by Lord Dacre, on which occasion the Lord Chancellor declared that he had no objection to its being submitted to the consideration of the House, adding that "he would sooner suffer death than admit any abatement of the principle that a person accused is not therefore to be considered guilty." Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman were then called in to support the petition, which prayed that their lordships would not prosecute a secret inquiry against her. The powerful pleading of these two orators had an immense effect upon the public mind. On the following day Lord Grey moved that the order for the appointment of a secret committee should be discharged. His motion was negatived by a majority of one hundred and two to forty-seven. This was the first division on the proceedings against the queen, and so large a majority naturally gave great confidence to the Government. The secret committee accordingly set to work, opened the green bag, and examined the charges. On the 4th of July they brought in their report, which stated "that allegations supported by the concurrent testimony of a great number of persons in various situations of life, and residing in different parts of Europe, appeared to be calculated so deeply to affect the character of the queen, the dignity of the Crown, and the moral feeling and honour of the country, that it was indispensable that they should become the subject of a solemn inquiry, which would best be effected in the course of a legislative proceeding." On the 5th Lord Liverpool introduced the Bill of Pains and Penalties against her Majesty, which, having recited in the preamble that she carried on an adulterous intercourse with Bergami, her menial servant, enacted "that she should be degraded from her station and title of queen, and that her marriage with the king should be dissolved." Counsel were again heard against that mode of proceeding, a second reading was set down for the 17th of August, when the preamble was to be proved, and the trial to begin.
