TWO:The western extremity of Lake Erie was the scene of a most unequal contest at the commencement of 1813. Colonel Procter lay near Frenchtown, about twenty miles from Detroit, with about five hundred troops, partly regulars, partly militia and sailors. In addition, he was supported by about the same number of Red Indians. The Americans, under General Winchesteran old officer of the War of Independenceamounted to one thousand two hundred men. With these Winchester had scoured the Michigan country, and, at the end of January, advanced to attack Procter. Sir George Prevost had commanded Procter to act on the defensive; but scorning this cowardly advice, he suddenly advanced by night, as the Americans had quartered themselves in Frenchtown, surprised, and captured or destroyed the whole of them, except about thirty who escaped into the woods. Winchester himself was seized by Round Head, the Indian chief, who arrayed himself in his uniform, and then delivered him up to Colonel Procter. From this point Colonel Procter hastened to cross the lake in a flotilla, and attack General Harrison at Fort Meigs. He knew that Harrison was expecting strong reinforcements, and he was anxious to dislodge him before they arrived. Procter had with him one thousand men, half regulars, half militia, and one thousand two hundred Indians; but Harrison's force was much stronger, and defended by a well-entrenched camp. Procter erected batteries, and fired across the river Miami, endeavouring to destroy the American block-houses with red-hot shot, but they were of wood too green to take fire. On the 5th of May Harrison's expected reinforcements came down the river in boats, one thousand three hundred strong. Harrison now commenced acting on the offensive, to aid the disembarkation of the troops; but he was defeated by Procter, who routed the whole of the new forces, under General Clay, took five hundred and fifty prisoners, and killed as many more. But his success had its disadvantage. His Indian allies, loaded with booty, returned to the Detroit frontier, and the Canadian militia to their farms. Procter was[107] compelled, therefore, to leave Harrison in his camp, and return also to Detroit, for Sir George Prevost had provided him with no new militia, or other force, to supply the place of those gone. Still worse, Prevost could not even be prevailed on to send sailors to man the few British vessels on Lake Erie, where the American flotilla was now far superior to the British one. In vain did Captain Barclay, who commanded the little squadron, urge Prevost to send him sailors, or the few vessels must be captured or destroyed; in vain did Colonel Procter urge, too, the necessity of this measure. Sir George, who took care to keep out of harm's way himself, sent taunting messages to Captain Barclay, telling him that the quality of his men made up for the inferiority of numbers, and that he ought to fight. Barclay, who was as brave a man as ever commanded a vessel, and had lost an arm in the service, but who did not pretend to do impossibilities, was now, however, stung to give battle. He had three hundred and fifty-six menfew of whom were experienced seamenand forty-six guns of very inferior description. The American commodore, Percy, had five hundred and eighty men, and fifty-four guns, with picked crews on all his vessels. Barclay fought till he had taken Percy's ship, and lost his remaining arm. In the end the British vessels were compelled to strike, but not till they had lost, in killed and wounded, one hundred and thirty-five men, and had killed and wounded one hundred and twenty-three of the Americans. This success enormously elated the Americans, and they now confidently calculated on defeating Procter, and annexing Upper Canada. Harrison made haste to interpose nearly six thousand men between Procterwho had now only five hundred, and as many Indiansand the country on which he was endeavouring to retreat. The forces of Procter were compelled to give ground, and Harrison inflicted a severe revenge on the Indians, for their slaughter of the Americans at Meigs. The chief, Tecumseh, being killed, they flayed him, and cut up his skin into razor-straps, as presents to the chief men of the Congress, and Mr. Clay is said to have boasted the possession of one of these. The American armies now put themselves on the track for Kingston and Montreal. Harrison marched along the shore of Lake Erie with upwards of five thousand men, and General Wilkinson, with ten thousand more, crossed Lake Ontario, towards Kingston, to join him. General Hampton, at the same time also, was marching on Montreal. Sir George Prevost was in the utmost alarm, and sent orders to General Vincent to fall down to Kingston, leaving exposed all Upper Canada. But as General Rottenburg was moving on Kingston, Vincent, who was now joined by the remainder of Procter's force, determined to disobey these orders; and several general officers confirmed him in this resolution, and offered to share the responsibility. This was the salvation of Upper Canada. The three American generals were attacked and routed. The Canadian militia did good service, and the Americans were completely driven out of both Upper and Lower Canada before winter. In their retreat they grew brutal, and committed savage cruelties on the unarmed population. They burnt down the town of Newark, near Fort George, driving about four hundred women and children out of it into the snow. They destroyed various villages in their route. This ferocity excited the British and Canadians to retaliation. Colonel Murray crossed the water, and pursued them in their own territories. He attacked and carried Fort Niagara, killed or made prisoners of the whole garrison, and captured the arms and stores. General Hull came up, with two thousand men, to check the march of Murray, who with one thousand regulars and militia, and between three and four hundred Indians, on the 30th of December, repulsed him with great slaughter, pursued him, andto avenge the poor Canadiansset fire to Buffalo and the village of Black Rock. The whole of that frontier was thus left defenceless.
THREE:These resolutions may be taken as expressing the feelings of the landed gentry as a body against the Melbourne Administration and the agitators. But the latter were not idle. O'Connell had then his "Precursor Association" in full operation. It received its name from the idea that it was to be the precursor of the repeal of the union. On the 22nd of January a public dinner was given in honour of the "Liberator" in a building then called the Circus, in Dublin, for which one thousand tickets were issued. Two days later a similar banquet was given to him in Drogheda, and there he made a significant allusion to the murder of Lord Norbury, insinuating that he had met his death at the hands of one who was bound to him by the nearest of natural ties, and had the strongest interest in his removal. Mr. O'Connell volunteered the assertion that the assassin of Lord Norbury had left on the soil where he had posted himself, "not the impress of a rustic brogue [a coarse rough shoe, usually made of half-dressed leather], but the impress of a well-made Dublin boot." There was no ground whatever for the malignant assertion, which was one of those errors of judgment and of taste that too often disfigured the great "Liberator's" leadership.
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THREE:Thus the entente cordiale was broken, and the two Powers were left isolated in Europe, for the efforts of Louis Philippe to form an alliance with the Austrian Court were without success. In the circumstances Lord Palmerston's foreign policy during these eventful years was inevitably somewhat unsatisfactory. When Austria, in defiance of pledges, annexed the Republic of Cracow, he could only issue a solitary protest, which was completely disregarded. In Portugal affairs were once more in complete confusion, the Conservative party, headed by the Queen, being in arms against the so-called Liberals led by Das Antas. Palmerston left them to fight it out until foreign intervention appeared inevitable from Spain, if not from France; then he made an offer of help to the Queen Donna Maria, on condition that she would grant a general amnesty and appoint a neutral Administration. The terms were accepted by the Conservatives. The Liberal Junta submitted on hearing that its fleet had been captured by the British, and the civil war came to an end. Meanwhile, in Switzerland Lord Palmerston was upholding the cause of the Diet against the secessionist cantons known as the Sonderbund, by refusing to countenance the intervention of the Powers in Swiss affairs, which was advocated by Prince Metternich and also by Guizot. For a moment his position was dangerous, as Guizot declared that the opportunity had come for France to take vengeance upon England by forming another Quadruple Treaty, from which Great Britain should be excluded. But the prompt victory of the Diet's general, Dufour, over the forces of the Sonderbund saved the situation, and owing to Palmerston's representations the victorious party abstained from vindictive measures. Thus revolution was postponed in Europe for another year, and Palmerston attempted similar results in Italy, whither he sent Lord Minto, the First Lord of the Admiralty, on a special mission to support constitutional reforms in Sardinia and at Rome, where the new Pope, Pius IX. by title, was supposed to be the friend of progress. But the blind hostility[550] of Metternich prevailed. The reforms granted by his puppet princes were wholly insufficient in extent, and events in Italy were evidently hastening towards an upheaval, when the train of the European explosion was fired in France.
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THREE:General Cartaux arrived and took up his position in the villages around Toulon. He was reinforced by General Doppet, from the Rhone, and General Dugommier, from the Var; and the latter had in his corps-d'arme a young lieutenant of artillery, who contained in his yet unknown person the very genius of warnamely, Napoleon Buonaparte. Cartaux was a man who had risen from the ranks; Doppet had been a physician in Savoy; and Dugommier was acting on a plan sent from the Convention. Buonaparte suggested what he thought a much superior plan. "All you need," he said, "is to send away the English; and to do that, you have only to sweep the harbour and the roadstead with your batteries. Drive away the[423] ships, and the troops will not remain. Take the promontory of La Grasse, which commands both the inner and outer harbour, and Toulon will be yours in a couple of days." On this promontory stood two forts, Equilette and Balaquier, which had been much strengthened by the English. It was resolved to assault these forts, and batteries opposite to them were erected by the French under Buonaparte's direction. After much desperate fighting, vast numbers of troops being pressed against the forts, that of Balaquier was taken. This gave the French such command of the inner harbour, that Lord Hood called a council of war, and showed the necessity of retiring with the fleet, and thus enabling the Royalists to escape, who would otherwise be exterminated by their merciless countrymen. This was agreed to, and it was resolved to maintain the different forts till the ships had cleared out. The Neapolitans behaved very ill, showing no regard for anything but their own safety. They held two fortsone at Cape Lebrun, and the other at Cape Lesset; these, they said, they would surrender as soon as the enemy approached. They made haste to get their ships and men out of harbour, leaving all else to take care of themselves. The Spaniards and Piedmontese behaved in a much nobler manner. They assisted willingly all day in getting on board the Royalistsmen, women, and children. All night the troops began to defile through a narrow sallyport to the boats under the guns of the fort La Malaga. This was happily effected; and then Sir Sidney Smith, who had recently arrived at Toulon, and had volunteered the perilous office of blowing up the powder-magazines, stores, arsenals, and the ships that could not be removed, began his operations. He succeeded in setting fire to the stores and about forty ships of war that were in the harbour.The Association had become so formidable, and was yet so carefully kept within the bounds of law by "Counsellor O'Connell," in whose legal skill the Roman Catholics of all classes had unbounded confidence, that the Government resolved to procure an Act of Parliament for its suppression. Accordingly, on the 11th of February, 1825, a Bill was brought into the House of Commons by the Irish Chief Secretary, Mr. Goulburn, under the title of Unlawful Societies in Ireland Bill. The plural form caused a great deal of debating. The Government declared they wished to include the Orange Society as well as the Catholic Association. But the Opposition had no faith in this declaration, and Mr. Brougham stated that they would put down the Catholic Association with one hand and pat the Orange Society on the back with the other. The debates on the subject were very animated, and touched upon constitutional questions of the widest interest to the public. The Irish Attorney-General said he did not deny that if a set of gentlemen thought fit to unite for those purposes, it was in their power to do so; but then came the question as to the means which they employed, and those means he denied to be constitutional. "They have," he said, "associated with them the Catholic clergy, the Catholic nobility, many of the Catholic gentry, and all the surviving delegates of 1791. They have established committees in every district, who keep up an extensive correspondence through the country. This Association, consisting originally of a few members, has now increased to 3,000. They proceeded to establish a Roman Catholic rent; and in every single parish, of the 2,500 parishes into which Ireland is divided, they appointed twelve Roman Catholic collectors, which make an army of 30,000. Having this their army of collectors, they brought to their assistance 2,500 priests, and the whole ecclesiastical body. And thus provided, they go about levying contributions on the peasantry." This Mr. Plunket pronounced to be unconstitutional, though not in the strict sense illegal; the Association was a representative and a tax-levying body. He denied that any portion of the subjects of this realm had a right to give their suffrages to others, had a right to select persons to speak their sentiments, to debate upon their grievances, and to devise measures for their removal. This was the privilege alone of the Commons of the United Kingdom. He would not allow that species of power to anybody not subjected to proper control. But to whom were those individuals accountable? Where was their responsibility? Who was to check them? Who was to stop their progress? By whom were they to be tried or rebuked if found acting mischievously? People not acquainted with Ireland were not aware of the nature of this formidable instrument of power, greater than the power of the sword. Individuals connected with it went into every house and every family. They mixed in all the relations of private life, and afterwards detailed what they heard with the utmost freedom. The Attorney-General could not conceive a more deadly instrument of tyranny than it was when it interfered with the administration of justice. Claiming to represent six millions of the people of Ireland, it denounced as a public enemy, and arraigned at the bar of justice, any individual it chose to accuse of acting contrary to the popular interest. Thus the grand inquest of the people were the accusers, and there was an unlimited supply of money to carry on the prosecution. The consequence was that magistrates were intimidated, feeling that there was no alternative but to yield, or be overwhelmed by the tide of fierce popular passions.
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- THREE:LORD NELSON. (After the Portrait by Sir William Beechey, R.A.)
THREE:[102]Nevertheless, the results actually attained in the first two years were briefly these: first, the[466] chargeable letters delivered in the United Kingdom, exclusive of that part of the Government's correspondence which formerly passed free, had already increased from the rate of about 75,000,000 a year to that of 208,000,000; secondly, the London district post letters had increased from about 13,000,000 to 23,000,000, or nearly in the ratio of the reduction of the rates; thirdly, the illicit conveyance of letters was substantially suppressed; fourthly, the gross revenue, exclusive of repayments, yielded about a million and a half per annum, which was sixty-three per cent. on the amount of the gross revenue of 1839, the largest income which the Post Office had ever afforded. These results, at so early a stage, and in the face of so many obstructions, amply vindicated the policy of the new system. But by its enemies that system was declared to be a failure, until the striking evidence of year after year silenced opposition by an exhaustive process.
THREE:The English now began to contemplate taking the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. General Johnstone was dispatched in April with five ships of the line, some frigates, and smaller vessels, having on board General Medows and three regiments for this purpose; but encountering Admiral Suffren in the way, after an indecisive action, Johnstone fell in with and took a Dutch East Indiaman of great value, and learned through it that Suffren had managed to reach the Cape and give the alarm, and that the Cape was put into strong defence. Johnstone, therefore, made for Saldanha Bay, where he learned that a number of other Dutch East Indiamen were lying. Four of these he secured; the rest were run ashore by their commanders and burnt. During the autumn both Dutch and French suffered much from the British on the coasts of Coromandel and the island of Sumatra. They also took from the Dutch Negapatam, Penang, and other places.Poor Law Amendment Act { 585 unions 13,964
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