- THREE:But at length the Legislature adopted a measure which attempted to go to the root of one of the greatest evils that afflicted Ireland. This was a Bill for facilitating the transfer of encumbered estates, which was passed into law, and is generally known as the Encumbered Estates Act. It was introduced by the Solicitor-General, Sir Samuel Romilly, on the 26th of April. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory than the state of landed property in that country. Many of the estates had been in Chancery for a long series of years, under the management of receivers, and periodically let at rack-rents. Many others which were not in Chancery were so heavily mortgaged that the owners were merely nominal. Others again were so tied up by family settlements, or held by such defective titles, that they could not be transferred. Consequently, a great portion of the landed property of the country was in such a condition that capital could not be invested in it, or expended on it. The course of proceeding in Chancery was so slow, so expensive, so ruinous, and the court was so apparently incapable of reform, that nothing could be expected from that quarter. The Government, therefore, proposed to establish a commission, invested with all the powers of that court, and capable of exercising those powers in a summary manner, without delay and without expense, so that an encumbered estate could be at once sold, either wholly or in part, and a parliamentary title given, which should be good against all the world. This important measure met with general approval in both Houses. Indeed it was hailed with satisfaction by all classes of the community, with the exception of a portion of the Irish landed gentry. There were three commissioners appointed, lawyers of eminence and experience in connection with land. By a subsequent enactment in 1849, it was regulated as a permanent institution, under the title of the Landed Estates Court; the three commissioners were styled judges, ranking with the judges of the Law Courts. The number of petitions or applications for sale made to this court from the 17th of October, 1849, to the 1st of August, 1850, was 1,085, and of this number those by owners amounted to 177nearly one-sixth of the whole. The rental of the estates thus sought to be sold by the nominal proprietors, anxious to be relieved of their burdens, was 195,000 per annum, and the encumbrances affecting them amounted to no less than 3,260,000. The rental of the estates included in 1,085 applications, made by others not owners, amounted to 655,470 per annum, and the debt upon these amounted to the enormous sum of 12,400,348. One of the estates brought before the court had been in Chancery for seventy years, the original bill having been filed by Lord Mansfield in 1781. The estates were broken up into parcels for the convenience of purchasers, many of whom were the occupying tenants, and the great majority were Irishmen. Generally the properties brought their full value, estimated by the poor-law valuation, not by the rack rents which were set down in the agents' books, but never recovered. The amount of capital that lay dormant in Ireland, waiting for investment in land, may be inferred from the fact that in nine yearsfrom 1849 to 1858the sum of twenty-two millions sterling was paid for 2,380 estates. But in the pacification of Ireland the Act accomplished far less than was hoped by Sir Robert Peel, who practically forced the measure upon the Ministry. Men of capital looked for a fair percentage for their investments: many of them were merchants and solicitors, without any of the attachments that subsisted between the old race of landlords and their tenants, and they naturally dealt with land as they did with other mattersin a commercial spiritand evicted wholesale tenants who were unable to pay. ONE: GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE:At length, after much mischievous delay, the Government ventured to lay hands upon the disseminators of sedition and the organisers of rebellion. On the 13th of May John Mitchel was arrested and committed to Newgate. On the 15th, Mr. Smith O'Brien, who had been previously arrested and was out on bail, was brought to trial in the Queen's Bench, and arraigned on ex officio information as being a wicked, seditious, and turbulent person, and having delivered a speech for the purpose of exciting hatred and contempt against the Queen in Ireland, and inducing the people to rise in rebellion. He was defended by Mr. Butt, a Conservative barrister, who spoke of the ancient lineage and estimable character of the prisoner, concluding thus:"Believe me, gentlemen, all cannot be right in a country in which such a man as William Smith O'Brien is guilty, if guilty you pronounce him, of sedition." At the conclusion of this sentence the majority of the bar, and of the people in court, rose from their seats and loudly cheered, the ladies in the galleries waving their handkerchiefs. The jury were locked up all night without refreshments, but they could not agree. The next day Meagher was tried, with a similar result, and was hailed by a cheering multitude outside, whom he addressed from a window in the Nation office. Mitchel, however, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to transportation for fourteen years; he was immediately conveyed in the police prison van to a small steamer which waited in the bay, and then to a man-of-war which conveyed him to Bermuda. ONE:Spain and Portugalstill nominally existing under their native princes, but very much under the influence of Buonaparteadmitted British goods to a great extent. Buonaparte himself had winked at the introduction of them into Portugal, because that country had paid him large sums to permit it. But now he determined to enforce a rigid exclusion, and to make the breach of his dictated orders a plea for seizure of the country. In fact, he had long resolved to seize both Spain and Portugal, but to employ Spain first in reducing her neighbour, and by that very act to introduce his troops into Spain herself. He complained, therefore, that Portugal had refused to enforce the Berlin decree; and he entered into a treaty with Spain at Fontainebleau, which was signed on the 29th of October. By this infamous treaty, Spain agreed to assist France in seizing Portugal, which should be divided into three parts. The province of Entre Minho y Douro, with the town of Oporto, was to be given to the King of Etruria, the grandson of the King of Spain, instead of Etruria itself, which Buonaparte wanted to annex to France, and this was to be called the kingdom of Northern Lusitania. The next part, to consist of Alemtejo and Algarve, was to be given to Godoy, who was to take the title of Prince of Algarve. The third was to remain in the hands of the French till the end of the war, who would thus be at hand to protect the whole. In fact, it never was the intention of Buonaparte that either Godoy or the King of Etruria should ever be more than a temporary puppet; but that the whole of Spain and Portugal should become provinces of France under a nominal French king.These reverses were calculated to make France more compliant; yet Pitt was astonished to find,[171] instead of compliance, a great spirit of resistance. Choiseul would by no means admit that Belleisle was an equivalent for Minorca. He demanded Guadeloupe and Belleisle too, simply in lieu of the French conquests in Germany. He now demurred to the surrender of Cape Breton, or in any case to forego the right of fishing along its coasts. He was not content with Amaboo or Acra; he demanded Senegal or Goree. He declined also to destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk, raised in contempt of the treaty of Utrecht. All captures made at sea previous to the declaration of war must be restored; and in Germany, though he was willing to withdraw the French troops, it was only on condition that the troops commanded by Prince Ferdinand should not reinforce the Prussian army. GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
- THREE:[See larger version] ONE:The night was cold, and the two armies lay on the ground. In the middle of the night Anderson of Whitburgh, a gentleman whose father had been out in the 'Fifteen and who knew the country well, suddenly recollected a way across the bog to the right. He communicated this to Hepburn of Keith and Lord George Murray, who went to waken the prince, who, sitting up in his heap of pea-straw, received the news with exultation. He started up, a council was called, and as it drew towards morning it was resolved to follow Anderson as their guide immediately. An aide-de-camp was despatched to recall Lord Nairn and his five hundred, and the army marched after Anderson in profound silence. It was not without some difficulty that they crossed it, after all; some of the soldiers sank knee-deep, and the prince himself stumbled and fell. When they reached the firm ground the mounted pickets heard the sound of their march, though they could not see them for the thick fog. The dragoon sentinels demanded who went there, fired their pistols, and galloped off to give the alarm.With the military he had a far more violent contest. After the battle of Plassey, Meer Jaffier had conferred on the officers of the army what was called double batta, meaning an additional allowance of pay. Clive had always told the officers that it was not likely that the Company would continue this; and, now that the territories of Jaffier were become virtually their own, he announced that this must be discontinued. The Governor and Council issued the orders for this abolition of the double batta; he received in reply nothing but remonstrances. The officers, according to Burke's phrase, in his speech of December 1st, 1783, "could not behold, without a virtuous emulation, the moderate gains of the civil service." Clive was peremptory, and found his orders openly set at defiance by nearly two hundred officers, headed by no less a person than his second in command, Sir Robert Fletcher. These gentlemen had privately entered into a bond of five hundred pounds to resign on the enforcement of the order, and not to resume their commissions unless the double batta was restored. To support such as might be cashiered, a subscription was entered into, to which the angry civilians of Calcutta are said to have added sixteen thousand pounds. The conspirators flattered themselves that, in a country like India, held wholly by the sword, Clive could not dispense with their services for a single day. They were mistaken. On receiving the news of this military strike, Clive immediately set off for the camp at Monghyr. He was informed that two of the officers vowed that if he came to enforce the order, they would shoot or stab him. Undaunted by any such threats, although in failing health, and amid drenching rains, he pursued his journey, and, on arriving, summoned the officers of the army, and, treating the threats of assassination as those of murderers, and not of Englishmen, he reasoned with them on the unpatriotic nature of their conduct. His words produced the desired effect on many; the privates showed no disposition to support their officers in their demand, and the sepoys all shouted with enthusiasm for Sabut Jung, their ideal of a hero. The younger officers, who had been menaced with death if they did not support the conspiracy, now begged to recall their resignation, and Clive allowed it. He ordered Sir Robert Fletcher and all who stood out into arrest, and sent them down the Ganges to take their trial at Calcutta. Many are said to have departed with tears in their eyes. By this spirited conduct Clive crushed this formidable resistance, and averted the shame which he avowed not all the waters of the Ganges could wash outthat of a successful mutiny. GET AWESOME FEATURE LIST
THREE:Pichegru, on his part, having driven back Clairfait, turned round on the Duke of York, who lay at Tournay. There he met with a severe repulse, and fell back with heavy loss; but Clairfait having again advanced to regain Courtrai, Pichegru once more engaged and defeated him. Clairfait then fell back into Flanders, to cover Ghent, Bruges, and Ostend. Pichegru, urged on against his better judgment by St. Just, who was the Commissioner from the Convention, sent Kleber and Marceau across the Sambre to attack General Kaunitz; but Kaunitz gave the French a severe defeat, killing four thousand of them; and had the Austrians been as rapid as they were brave, they might have nearly exterminated the whole of the French division. This success inspirited the Allies to advance actively, but the Duke of York, not taking into account the habitual slowness of German troops, shot ahead, expecting to fall in with Clairfait's columns at Turcoing; but there he only found the French, under Souham and Bonnaud, who well nigh enveloped him by their vast numbers, totally defeated, and nearly took him prisoner. This gave such a panic to the Austrians, that the entire army fell back, and Francis II., thoroughly discouraged, withdrew from the command and left it to the Prince of Coburg. The Duke of York rallied, and maintained his ground at Tournay against Pichegru, and Kaunitz followed up his advantage against Kleber and Moreau, driving them across the Sambre; but these were only temporary successes. Jourdain, finding no Prussians in the Moselle, drew nearer to the camp of Pichegru. There were various conflicts at Ypres, Charleroi, and on the plains of Fleurus. The Allies drove the French three times across the Sambre, but they returned with fresh and never-ending forces, and compelled the Allies to a general retreat. Bruges opened its gates to the French; Pichegru, aided by Moreau, compelled the Duke of York to retire successively on Oudenarde, Tournay, and Antwerp, places filled with the fame of Marlborough. At Antwerp the Duke of York was joined by Lord Moira, with ten thousand men, intended originally for La Vende, but too late to prevent the massacre of Savenay. The English garrison quitted Ostend, and came round to Antwerp; and the British occupied that town, whilst Clairfait lay at Louvain, and the two armies, unitedly, protected Mechlin.
THREE:[94]
THREE:The news of his liberation was carried that night by the mail coaches over all parts of the country, and produced extraordinary excitement throughout the south and west, particularly in Cork, which Mr. O'Connell then represented. There the whole population seems to have turned out, some of the streets being so packed that it was impossible to get along. Processions were soon formed, with bands of music, and green boughs. Even the little children were furnished with the emblems of victory. Along the country roads, too, as well as in the towns and villages, every little cabin had its green boughs stuck up, and its group of inhabitants shouting for "the Liberator." At night, in the towns, every house was illuminated, while bonfires blazed on the mountains, and the horizon seemed on fire in every direction. On the following Sunday the liberation of the prisoners was celebrated in the Metropolitan Church, Dublin. Archbishop Murray sat with his mitre on, and in his grandest robes, on an elevated throne, with crimson canopy. On the opposite side, beneath the pulpit, were chairs of state, on which sat O'Connell and the rest of the "Repeal martyrs." A Te Deum was sung for the deliverance of the liberator of his country; a sermon was preached by O'Connell's devoted friend and chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Miley, who ascribed the liberation, not to the law lords, but to the Virgin Mary.For some time after the revival of true poetry the old forms still hung about what in spirit was new. The last of the old school of any note may be said to have been Dr. Johnson and Dr. Darwin. Johnson was too thoroughly drilled into the dry, didactic fashion of the artificial past, he was too bigotedly self-willed to be capable of participating in the renovation. In fact, he never was more than a good versifier, one of that class who can win prizes for University themes on the true line and square system of metrical composition. His "London," a mere paraphrase of the third book of "Juvenal," and "The Vanity of Human Wishes" are precisely of that stamp. Johnson lived at the time of Chatterton's appearance, but he completely ignored him, and he ridiculed the simplicity of the poems introduced by Bishop Percy by absurd parodies on them, as
