BOOK IV. 1812 CHAPTER XVII. BRITISH HISTORY: Meeting of Parlament—Establishment of the Royal Household― Negociations for an extended Administration-The Prince Regent invested with the unrestricted Powers of the Sovereign-Mr. Perceval retained in his Situation as Prime Minister-Alarm occasioned by the Murders in the Metropolis-Inquiry instituted into the Policy and Operation of the Orders in Council-Assassination of Mr. Perceval-Trial and Execution of Bellingham the Assassin— Sketch of the Life and Character of Mr. Perceval-Motion of Mr. Stuart Wortley for an Address to the Prince Regent, beseeching his Royal Highness to appoint a strong and efficient Administration-Carried by a Majority of four-Negociations for a New Ministry consequent thereon-Failure of the Negociations, and Continuance of the existing Administration in Office under certain Changes and Modifications-List of the Administration as constituted in June, 1812-Revocation of the Orders in Council-Finances—Motion in favour of the Catholics-New Toleration Act-Dissolution of Parliament-Overtures for Peace made by France-Political Relations between Great Britain and America-Captain Henry's Mission-War declared by the United States against England-Historical Sketch of the Rise, Progress, and Suppression of the Commotions in the Manufacturing Districts of England, popularly styled “Luddism.” THE year 1812, by re-uniting all the prerogatives of the crown in the person of the prince CHAP. XVII. regent, may be considered as the actual commencement of a new reign, while the ministerial negociations by which this period was distinguished, put to the test the strength of the different political parties, and demonstrated the existence of a preponderating mass of power on the part of the executive, which, when brought into exercise, reduces them all to comparative insignificance. The parliament was convened at an early period, as well on account of the im portant concerns of the country in general, as for the purpose of delegating to his royal highness the prince regent, the full powers of government, which had, during the preceding year, limited him in the exercise of the royal prerogative. Both houses met accordingly on the 7th of January, when a speech was delivered by the lord chancellor, in the name of the prince regent. The speech, after lamenting the disappointment of the hopes so confidently entertained of his majesty's speedy recovery, congratulated parliament on the skill and valour displayed by the British army in the peninsula of Spain and Portugal, as well as upon the extinction of the colonial power of the enemy in the east; and concluded with an assurance on the part of his roya! highness, that he would continue to employ all such means of conciliation for adjusting the existing differences between Great Britain and America, as might be consistent with the honour and dignity of his majesty's crown. The state of the king's health was the first object that engaged the attention of parliament, after the usual address on the speech had been passed. Two reports by the queen's council on this melancholy subject, the first dated the 5tli of October, 1811, and the second, the 5th of January, 1812, were laid before parliament; and committees were appointed by both houses to examine his majesty's physicians. These inquiries proved the improbability of the king's complete and final restoration to health, although the physicians, with one exception, concurred in declaring that they did not entirely despair. The history of this most afflictive case was altogether singular: during the early stages of his majesty's illness, the most sanguine hopes were cherished; the king was visited by his family; he took exercise in the open air; the bulletins, for a short time, were discontinued; and his subjects, with that feeling of loyalty which his numerous virtues inspired, rejoiced in the prospect presented by these favourable appearances. A marked change, however, took place about the beginning of July, 1811, and although, from that period downwards, his majesty had been able at intervals to converse with his medical attendants, yet the symptoms of his illness gradually became more discouraging, until, in the beginning of the present year, they had assumed such an aspect as almost to close the door of hope against his complete restoration to mental health. At a very early period of the session, Mr. Perceval came forward with a plan for the arrangement of his majesty's household, which seemed neither to imply confident hope nor absolute despair of his recovery. Parliament, he He 1812 quer income of fifty thousand a year, which, BOOK IV, with the seventy thousand pounds voted by parliament, would leave a deficiency of fifty thou- CHAP. XVII. sand pounds; but this sum, it was judged, might be dispensed with, as the prince had not so large a family as his royal father. To this plan it was objected, that it was involved in unnecessary perplexity; and that, by establishing two courts, one for the prince regent, and another for the queen, a great unnecessary expense was incurred, and a dangerous and conflicting influence created. These objections were not thought of sufficient weight to influence the decision of parliament, and the plan proposed by Mr. Perceval ultimately passed both branches of the legislature, along with a cotemporary bill, by which the sum of a hundred thousand pounds was voted to the prince regent to meet the expenses which his royal highness had incurred, or might yet incur, on his assumption of the royal authority. In addition to the ample provision made for the royal household, the liberality of parliament was this year called forth in favour of the Princesses Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, and Sophia, to each of whom a grant of nine thousand per annum was made, exclusive of four thousand per annum, granted to each of the princesses from the civil list, in the 18th and 39th years of his majesty's reign. The princesses had hitherto lived in family with their royal parents, but the melancholy circumstances which had recently occurred, placed them in the same condition as if the demise of the crown had actually taken place, and it became necessary therefore to make a suitable provision for the establishment of these august females.. said, had last year made full provision for supplying the exercise of the royal authority; and as the law now stood, all the prerogatives, as well as all the duties of the sovereign, would, on the 18th of February, devolve on the prince regent; and as the civil list would of course at that time be transferred to his royal highness, it became necessary to make some provision for the personal comfort and dignity of the king. His majesty's civil list he considered as the proper fund for such a provision; and as separate establishments for the regent and the king would now be necessary, he had to propose that an addition of £70,000 per annum should be made to the civil list, out of the consolidated fund. then proceeded to state, that as the lord steward and lord chamberlain had duties to perform immediately connected with the royal functions, it would be necessary that these officers should be placed round the person of the regent; and that, in their room, the first gentleman of the bed-chamber should be substituted as the chief officer of the king's household, with the vicechancellor as his deputy; that four lords and as many grooms of the bed-chamber, a master of the robes, and seven or eight equerries, together with his majesty's private secretary, should form the new officers of the proposed establishment, which of course must be placed under the controul of the queen, to whom the care of his majesty's person must continue to be intrusted. The annual expense of this establishment was estimated at a hundred thousand pounds, and this sum it was proposed to take from the civil list, with a reservation that any deficiency should be drawn from the treasury, and that any surplus should go in aid of the public supplies. In the circumstances in which the queen was. placed, it was judged proper to add ten thousand a year to her income. It was further proposed, that all pensions and allowances which the king was accustomed to grant to the objects of his bounty, were to be paid as formerly out of the privy purse; that the expenses incurred for medical assistance should be paid out of the revenue of the duchy of Lancaster; and lastly, that a commission of three persons should be appointed, one of them to be a master in chancery, and the other two to be named by the queen and the prince regent, for the management of the king's private property. In virtue of this arrangement, one hundred thousand pounds were to be appropriated to the king's household, together with sixty thousand pounds, the amount of the king's privy purse, and ten thousand pounds.to the queen, making an aggregate sum of £170,000 a year. To meet these charges, the prince regent consented to give up his exche The near approach of the period when the restrictions upon the royal authority, as exercised by the prince regent, expired, awakened in the minds of the political parties into which the country is divided, a deep and general interest; and their expectations, their hopes, and their fears, were respectively predominant, according to the light in which they viewed the conduct of the royal personage by whom the question that had so long hung in suspense was to be decided. When the prince first resolved to continue Mr. Perceval in his office as prime minister, he considered himself as acting solely as his father's representative, and expressly declared, that an impulse of public duty alone dictated that decision. These motives were not only expressly laid open to Mr. Perceval, but every opportunity seemed, in the early period of the regency, to be taken, to prove to that gentleman and his colleagues, that their services were merely tolerated, and that the attachments of the prince towards his own political and personal friends * * See Vol. 11. Chap. XII. p. 169. 1812 BOOK IV. remained unaltered. Only a few months, however, elapsed, before it became manifest that the CHAP. XVII. dislike of the prince had gradually passed to endurance; and long before the period arrived for the removal of the restrictions, it began to be conjectured that this feeling had given place to something approaching to interest and attachment. The evidence of this fact was displayed in the month of February, when the prince took a decisive step, such as left little doubt in the minds of cool and impartial persons, that he wished for no material change in the policy of his government, and that his wish for a change of men to administer public affairs, was by no means ardent. On the 13th of February, when the restrictions were on the eve of their termination, the prince regent addressed a letter to the Duke of York, in which, after stating the motives by which his mind had been influenced, while he considered himself in the situation of the representative of his royal father, he adds, "A new era is now arrived, and I cannot but reflect with satisfaction on the events which have distinguished the short period of my restricted regency. Instead of suffering in the loss of any of her possessions, by the gigantic force which has been employed against them, Great Britain has added most important acquisitions to her empire. The national faith has been preserved inviolate towards our allies; and if character is strength, as applied to a nation, the increased and increasing reputation of his majesty's arms will shew to the nations of the continent how much they may still achieve when animated by a glorious spirit of resistance to a foreign yoke. In the critical situation of the war in the peninsula, I shall be most anxious to avoid any measure which can lead my allies to suppose that I mean to depart from the present system. Perseverance alone can achieve the great object in question; and I cannot withhold my approbation from those who have honourably distinguished themselves in the support of it. I have no predilections to indulge -no resentments to gratify-no objects to attain, but such as are common to the whole empire. If such is the leading principle of my conduct and I can appeal to the past in evidence of what the future will be-I flatter my. self I shall meet with the support of parliament, and of a candid and enlightened nation." This letter concludes with the expression of a wish on the part of his royal highness, that some of those persons with whom the early habits of his public life were formed, would strengthen his hands, and constitute a part of his government. Two days after the date of this letter, Lords Grey and Grenville, to whom the Duke of York had, in compliance with the request of the prince regent, communicated his sentiments, addressed a reply to his royal highness, in which they confined themselves to those passages in the prince's letter which they supposed to have a more immediate reference to themselves: in this reply they beg leave most earnestly to assure his royal highness, that no sacrifices, except those of honour and duty, would appear to them too great to be made, for the purpose of healing the divisions of the country, and uniting both its government and its people. All personal exclusions are entirely disclaimed; they rest solely on public measures; and it is on this ground alone that they express the impossibility of uniting with the present government. Twice before they had acted on this impression; the reasons then given still existed, and were strengthened by the increased dangers of the times; nor had there, down to the moment of writing this letter, appeared even an approximation towards such an agreement of opinion on the public interests, as could alone form a basis for the honourable union of parties previously opposed to each other. Into a detail of these differences they expressed an unwillingness to enter; they em braced, however, almost all the leading features of the present policy of the empire; but, on the affairs of Ireland, so far were they from concurring in the sentiments of his majesty's ministers, that they entertained opinions directly opposite, and were firmly persuaded of the absolute necessity of a total change of the present system of government in that country, and of the immediate repeal of those civil disabilities under which so large a proportion of his majesty's subjects still labour, on account of their religious opinions. This answer, which was the only one which could be expected from statesmen who had, on former occasions, repeatedly declined to sacrifice their honour and consistency, to the acquirement of the patronage and emoluments of office, was decisive, and proved the utter hopelessness of all attempts to accomplish a fair and honourable union between Lords Grey and Grenville and the present ministers. The regent, in offering to include some of his former friends in the ministerial arrangements, had evidently been prompted by considerations of consistency rather than of inclination; and by the result of this negociation, Mr. Perceval was fixed more firmly than before in his office of prime minister. ministry, as it was at present constituted, consisted of two parties, at the head of one of which was Mr. Perceval, and at the head of the other the Marquis Wellesley. The differences between these statesmen were partly personal and partly political; the high and aspiring views of the Marquis Wellesley would not permit him to serve under Mr. Perceval, though he had no objections to serve with him, or to serve under The either Earl Moira or Lord Holland ;* and when it appeared, at the expiration of the restrictions, that the prince regent intended to continue Mr. Perceval at the head of his councils, the marquis resigned the seals of his office into the hands of his royal highness. The Marquis Wellesley, in assigning the reasons for this step, expressed a conviction, founded on experience, that the cabinet, as then constituted, neither possessed ability nor knowledge to devise a good plan, nor temper and discernment to adopt it; but his principal objection arose from the narrow and imperfect scale on which the efforts on the peninsula were conducted.* On the subject of the catholic claims, against the concession of which Mr. Perceval was decidedly opposed, the Marquis Wellesley declared, that, in his judgment, an intermediary principle should be adopted, equally exempt from the extreme of instant, unqualified concession, and of peremptory, eternal exclusion.* On the resignation of this minister, the seals of the foreign department were put into the hands of the Earl of Liverpool, pro tempore; but Lord Castlereagh was afterwards appointed to that department; and the earl continued in his station of secretary of state for war and the colonies. These negociations and arrangements, which engrossed so large a share of the public attention, were thought by Lord Boringdon to demand the intervention of parliament; and on the 19th of March, that nobleman submitted to the house of lords a motion for an address to the prince regent, beseeching his royal highness to form an efficient administration. This motion, which was stren uously opposed by his majesty's ministers, called BOOK IV. Although the first year of the regency had * Statement of the Marquis Wellesley. The family of Mr. Timothy Marr, silk-mercer, No. 29, Ratcliffe Highway, consisting of himself, his wife, an infant son, fourteen weeks old, and an apprentice boy, were all found murdered, between twelve and one o'clock on Sunday morning, the 8th of December, 1811. On entering the house, the horrid spectacle presented itself of James Gohen, the apprentice, lying on his face in the shop, with his brains dashed out, and part of them actually covering the ceiling. On further search, Mrs. Marr was found lying on the floor, near the street door, and Mr. Marr behind the counter, in the shop, both weltering in their blood, from mortal wounds in the head; and the child in the cradle, finding, in its innocence and infancy, no protection from the barbarous hands of the assassin, had its throat cut from ear to ear Plunder was no doubt the object of the ruthless murderer; but the unexpected return of the servant maid, who had been dispatched, about twelve o'clock at night, on some little domestic errand, created an alarm, and obliged him to decamp without his booty. On the 19th of the same month, another family was murdered in Gravel-Lane, only two streets distant from the house of Mr. Marr, and with circumstances which led to the suspicion that the bloody intent was formed in the same sanguinary mind, and executed by the same relentless hand. The scene of this second series of murders was the King's Arms public-house, and the victims were Mr. and Mrs. Williamson, the keepers of that house, and their servant maid. A lodger, roused by the cries of murder, let himself out of a two pair of stairs window by the sheets of his bed, and alarmed the neighbourhood. On the outer door being forced open, the mistress of the house, and the maid servant, were found lying one upon the other, by the kitchen fire, quite dead, with their throats cut from ear to ear; and on continuing the search, Mr. Williamson was found in the cellar, a lifeless corpse, with one of his legs broken, and his head nearly severed from his body. The murderer, unfortunately, had escaped. But the retributive finger of Providence speedily pointed to the person of John Williams, alias Murphy, a sailor, who had, for some months, lodged at a neighbouring public house; and the evidence of the guilt of this wretch was every day accumulating, when, on the 27th of December, he terminated an existence which had become intolerable, by hanging himself with his neck-handkerchief, in his cell in the Cold-Bath-Fields prison. The coroner's inquest assembled on this occasion, returned a verdict of felo de se, and the body of the assassin and suicide was committed to the earth with every possible mark of ignominy, while his memory was consigned to universal execration. 1812 BOOK IV. murders formed part of a system, the object of which no one could fathom, and to the extent of CHAP. XVII. which the human mind, always prone to magnify danger, could fix no limits. 1812 Some radical defect, it was supposed, must exist in the system of police, which exposed the inhabitants of the first city in the empire to such dangers, and many persons, in the moment of panic, seemed disposed to surrender their liber ties, with a view to secure the protection of their persons. Under such impressions, a cry was raised for the establishment of an armed police; but the rashness of this proposal was soon detected, and the principal measure resorted to by government on this occasion was the establishment of a more efficient nightly watch than had hitherto existed in London. The bill for improving the police of the metropolis was succeeded by a motion for an inquiry into the state of the nation. This motion, which was made by Sir Thomas Turton, and involved the whole system of government, foreign and domestic, was chiefly remarkable for the exhibition it afforded of the strength of the parties in parliament, and a majority of seventy voices in favour of ministers, who resisted the proposed investigation, sufficiently proved, that under the powerful influence of royal favour, they were able to maintain their stand in the face of the opposition of their rivals, and the secession of their colleagues. But the subject which occupied the attention of parliament most closely during the present session, and which, in the existing state of the country, was of the highest importance, was an inquiry into the policy and operations of the orders in council, not so much as they regarded other countries, but as they affected the interests of the manufacturing and commercial classes in our own. There were several points at issue between those who maintained that the British orders in council ought to be repealed, and those who held an opposite opinion; they differed respecting the nature, extent, and causes of the distresses which prevailed in the manufacturing districts, and respecting the manner in which those distresses might be most effectually removed. The evil was so manifest, that its existence could not be denied; but the advocates for the orders in council insisted, that it had been greatly exaggerated; that similar distresses had prevailed at former periods; that, in fact, the present state of things necessarily resulted from the unusual fluctuations in trade, and that its removal was probably not far distant. How ever that might be, they held, that the repeal of the orders in council would not remove or greatly diminish the distress, and that it was unfair to hold out such an idea, since it excited expectations which certainly could not be realised. Notwithstanding this reasoning, the belief that the orders in council were the principal causes of the decay in trade, and of the consequent distresses both among the merchants, the manufacturers, and the labouring classes, was very strongly prevalent. Petitions were poured into the house of commons from all the principal manufacturing districts in the kingdom, and from those sea-ports which chiefly depended for their commerce on the intercourse with America; and the petitioners begged for permission to be allowed to establish their case by evidence before parliament. They asserted, that if the prayer of their petitions were complied with, they could prove that unparalleled distresses prevailed throughout the most populous. parts of Great Britain, and that these distresseshad been gradually increasing ever since the promulgation of the orders in council, till they had at length become intolerable. This subject was brought before parliament in the house of lords by the Marquis of Lansdowne, and in the commons by Mr. Brougham, who both, with distinguished force of eloquence, pressed for the appointment of a committee, to take into consideration the present state of the commerce and manufactures of the country, particularly with reference to the orders in council, and the trade by licenses. But the inquiry was resisted by ministers, and their adherents, in both houses of parliament, and the motions were rejected by considerable majorities. The petitioners, feeling the urgency of the case, still persevered; the distresses and agitations in the country increased and extended themselves; and dissatisfaction spread among many descriptions of persons, who had been remarkable for their peaceful and contented demeanour. Still, however, it is proba ble, that Mr. Perceval would have continued firm in his determination, not to appoint a committee, nor to hear evidence, had not many of the members of the house of commons, who usually supported his measures, and who pos sessed great weight in the house and in the nation, expressly declared, that they thought a committee ought to be appointed, and that, as. the petitioners were so numerous and so urgent, it would have the appearance of slighting their distresses, if they were denied the opportunity of proving their allegations. At length ministers gave a reluctant consent to the appointment of a committee, and to the hearing of evidence. On the 29th of April the evidence began, but on the 11th of May the progress of the investigation was interrupted, and the whole nation thrown into the utmost consternation and, * See Vol. II. Chap. IV. page 53. |