A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3)

1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821
1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827
1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833
1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839
1840 1841 1842 1843 1844 1845
1846 1847 1848 1849 1850 1851
1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 1857

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME TWO

FULL PAGES IN COLOR

• The First Steam Railway.       Painted by Edward L. Henry      Frontispiece
• Balaklava.       Painted by Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler)
• Solferino.       Painted by E. Meissonier
• Last Moments of Maximilian.       Painted by J. Paul Laurens

FULL PAGES IN BLACK AND WHITE

• American Inventors.       Painted by C. Schussele
• The King of Rome.       Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence
• Lord Byron.       Painted by Maurin
• Beethoven and His Admirers.       Painted by A. Grafle
• Queen Victoria Taking the Oath.       Painted by Sir George Hayter
• Lord Tennyson.       Painted by Frederic Sandys
• Washington Irving and His Friends.       Painted by Daniel Huntington
• The Battle of Inkermann.       Painted by Gustave Doré
• Wagner and Liszt.       Painted by W. Beckmann
• Opening of the Opera.       Painted by Edouard Detaille
• Execution of Sepoy Rebels.       Painted by Verestchagin
• The Emperor of China Receiving the Diplomatic Corps.

1816

AN ERA of peace and reconstruction had begun. After a generation of war and turmoil France was started on her new career of parliamentary government. The brief period of retaliation ended with the so-called amnesty act of January, which condemned Napoleon and all his relatives to perpetual exile. Parliamentary rule in France The Chambers now entered into a prolonged discussion of the propositions for a new election law. The Ministry was headed by the Duc de Richelieu, who had taken the place of Talleyrand and Fouché. The latter was compelled to leave France forever. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who succeeded Davoust, reorganized the army on a permanent footing of military equality which satisfied even Napoleon's veterans. In the Chambers, the Comte d'Artois represented the ultra-royalist right wing, while the left was brilliantly led by Lafayette, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Guizot, during the same year, for the first time ascended the tribune as spokesman of the moderate party—the so-called Doctrinaires.Revival of French letters Chateaubriand so offended the king by his book "La Monarchie selon la Charte" that his name was crossed from the list of the Council of State. Yet he remained the foremost man of letters in France.

Béranger was the foremost lyric poet. A typical song by him is that rendered by Thackeray:

It was the period of a new revival for French literature.

In the other Latin countries, Spain, Portugal and Italy, the restoration of Reaction in southern Europe the old monarchies was not attended by like beneficent results. In Spain, the re-establishment of the Inquisition stifled free thought and free speech to such a degree that some of the most progressive Spaniards emigrated to the revolted Spanish dependencies in America. The return of Bourbon rule in Naples and Sicily was made odious by a general suppression of Freemasons and kindred secret societies.

In the German States, similar measures of persecution were invoked against the student societies at the universities. The University of Erfurt was suspended. The Duke of Hesse, who had gained early notoriety by renting his subjects to foreign armies, now revived corporal punishment together with the stocks and other feudal institutions. In Wurtemberg serfdom was re-established.Metternich's influence Throughout Germany the reactionary suggestions of Prince Metternich were carried into effect. A good opportunity for Metternich to assert his ascendency was presented by the first session of the new German Diet. Late in the year the delegates from all the States of the New Germanic Confederation met at Frankfort, Austria holding the permanent presidency. Count Buol von Schauenstein opened the Diet with a solemn address, which fell flat. First of all, it was settled that Hesse would have to cede a large part of Westphalia to Prussia. Next, the title of the Duke of Cambridge to rule as Regent in Hanover was fully recognized. In all resolutions relating to fundamental laws, the organic regulations of the Confederation, the jura singulorum and matters of religion, unanimity German Confederation established was required. All the members of the Confederation bound themselves neither to enter into war nor into any foreign alliance against the Confederation or any of its members. The thirteenth article declared, "Each of the confederated States will grant a constitution to the people." The sixteenth placed all Christian sects on an equality. The eighteenth granted freedom of settlement within the Confederation, and promised "uniformity of regulation concerning the liberty of the press." The fortresses of Luxemburg, Mainz and Landau were declared common property and occupied in common by their troops. A fourth fortress was to be raised on the Upper Rhine with twenty millions of the French contribution money. This was never done. For future sessions of the Diet the votes were so regulated that the eleven States of first rank alone held a full vote, the secondary States merely holding a half or a fourth of a vote, as, for instance, all the Saxon duchies collectively, one vote; Brunswick and Nassau, one; the two The Frankfort Diet Mecklenburgs, one; Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Schwartzburg, one; the petty princes of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck, one; all the free towns, one; forming altogether seventeen votes. In constitutional questions the six States of the highest rank were to have each four votes; the next five States each three; Brunswick, Schwerin, and Nassau, each two; and all the remaining princes each, one vote. This arrangement, as it turned out, proved fruitful of endless trouble.

Austria and Prussia at that time contained forty-two million inhabitants; Unfair representation the rest of Germany merely twelve million. The power of the two predominant States, therefore, really were in proportion to that of the rest of Germany as seven to two, whereas their votes in the Diet stood merely as two to seventeen, and in the plenary assembly as two to fifteen.

Though Prussia had lost Hanover and East Friesland, she had received Prussia predominant sufficient compensation still—thanks to Hardenberg's diplomacy—to start her on her future career as the predominant German State. Incorporated with the Prussian provinces now were half of Saxony, the Grandduchy of Posen, a portion of Westphalia, nearly all of the Lower Rhine region from Mainz to Aix-la-Chapelle, and Swedish Pomerania, for which Prussia paid some eight million thalers by way of indemnity.

In Holland, the new Stadtholder, Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau, having incorporated Belgium as an integral part of the kingdom of the Restoration of the Netherlands Netherlands, set himself to nullify the French racial traits of his Belgian subjects. A suggestion of future strife on this score could already be found in Van der Palm's memorial on "The Restoration of the Netherlands," published during this year.

The final settlement of Napoleon's great upheaval of Europe left England feverish and exhausted. The prolonged financial strain of twenty years of war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of England's commanding position Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued possession of the Rock of Gibraltar, and of Malta, the old stronghold of the Knights of Malta, together with the British protectorate over the Ionic Isles, assured to England her commanding position in the Mediterranean. At home the pressure of the heavy taxes required to meet the financial legacies of the war was imbittered by the general distress of the country. The new tax on the importation of grains resulted in famine prices. Industrial depression Corresponding tariff restrictions abroad kept British markets overstocked with goods. Mills and factories had to be shut down, while at the same time the labor market was glutted with several hundred thousand discharged sailors and soldiers. The starving working people grew bitter in their opposition to new labor-saving devices. Thus the appearance of the first steamship on the Thames and of the earliest ships constructed of iron, followed shortly by Sir Francis Reynold's invention of an electric clock-work telegraph and by James Watt's introduction of stereo plates in book-printing, heightened this feeling. The resentment of laboring men found expression in riotous meetings at Manchester, Littleport and Nottingham. The movement spread to London. A great labor meeting was held there on the Spa fields. The favorite newspaper of the workingmen, Cobbett's radical "Two Penny Register," rivalled the London "Times" in power. In Parliament the leaders of the radical opposition grew ever more importunate. Not until the end of the year did matters mend. The most comforting sign of better times was a partial resumption of specie payments by the Bank of England, followed shortly by the opening of the first Savings Bank in London. Other memorable events of the year were the acquisition of the famous Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, Art and Letters celebrated in Keats's sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," and the publication of Shelley's long poem "Alastor," and Leigh Hunt's "Story of Rimini." A diplomatic setback pregnant with future trouble was the dismissal of Lord Amherst, the British Ambassador at Pekin, for refusing to kow-tow to the Emperor of China.

In America the depression of commerce and industry resulting from the war Depression in America with England continued unabated. To relieve the situation, the Secretary of the Treasury, A.J. Dallas, proposed as a measure of relief the chartering of a new national bank with increased capital and enlarged powers and the readjustment of the tariff by the imposition of higher duties. The bank was Financial relief measures chartered for twenty-one years with a capital of $35,000,000, a portion of the stock to be owned by the government and the institution to have in its management five government directors in a board of twenty-five. The tariff policy of Madison was sustained by the Southern party and opposed by the Federalists, especially in New England. Thus it became more a question of sectional interests than of abstract political economy. The capital of New England was invested in shipping, so that the exclusion of articles of foreign production was bound to injure, by a high tariff, New England's Tariff vs. Free Trade carrying trade. On its part, the South sought to establish a home market for its cotton—almost the only staple of the Gulf States. Efforts were made to encourage the domestic manufacture of those coarse fabrics which were indispensable in a slave-holding region. The question thus grew into a struggle between slave labor and free trade. The free-trade party was led by Daniel Webster, and the tariff party by Calhoun. During the first year of the new tariff the value of foreign imports fell off about thirty-two per cent. In the adjustment of capital and trade to an enforced industrial policy, the American people passed through a commercial crisis which Changes in New England paralyzed the flourishing sea-ports of the New England coast. Newburyport, Salem, Plymouth, New London, Newport, and intermediate places sank from lucrative commercial centres into insignificant towns. Manchester, Lowell, Fall River, Pawtucket, Waterbury and other New England cities on the other hand became great manufacturing places.

The Fourteenth American Congress, under the leadership of Clay, imposed a protective tariff of about twenty-five per cent on imported cotton and woollen goods, with specific duties on coal and iron. The average duties on imports amounted almost to prohibition. Late in the year Indiana was admitted as the nineteenth State.

The tranquillity of the end of Madison's administration was broken by new troubles with the southern Indians. General Jackson by his impulsive manner of dealing with the Indians of Florida nearly forced the United States into a war with Spain and England. The Indians had reason to complain of the injustice that had marked their treatment by the whites. Florida had become a refuge for runaway slaves from Georgia and South Carolina. The treaty of 1814 was repudiated by many of the Creeks, who resented the new settlements of the whites. Those who were most dissatisfied made common cause with the Seminoles. For a year, General Gaines, in command at the frontier, complained to the authorities at Washington of the conduct of the Indians and Spaniards. General Jackson, to War with Florida Indians whom the matter was referred, wrote to Gaines that the forts standing in Spanish territory "ought to be blown off the face of the earth, regardless of the ground they stand on." In July, a detachment of men and gunboats under Colonel Church advanced upon Fort Negro. A shot from one of the boats blew up the powder magazine. The fort was laid in ruins. Of the 324 inmates 270 were killed. Most of the survivors were wounded.

During this year, the "Washington," the first American line-of-battle ship put to sea with seventy-four guns on her decks. The first American rolling mill and plant for puddling iron-ore were built at Red Stone Bank in Pennsylvania. Bishop Asbury, the founder of Methodism in the United States, preached his last sermon at Richmond, Virginia. During the same year he Death of Gouverneur Morris died at the age of seventy-one. Other noted Americans who died this year were Gouverneur Morris of New York, and Spaulding, the reputed author of the book of Mormon.

Miranda, the South American revolutionist, expired on July 14, in a dungeon Death of Miranda at Cadiz. A British officer who saw him shortly before his death, described him as "tied to a wall with a chain about his neck like a dog." Ever since his defeat and detention in Venezuela, his last years had been spent in captivity. He passed from prison to prison—now at San Carlos, now in Porto Rico, and finally in Spain. Miranda's failure to obtain grants of amnesty for Bolivar and his fellow rebels, when he came to terms with the Spanish general Monteverde, left him discredited with the patriots of South America. In the meanwhile, Miranda's friend, San Martin, was fighting in Independence of Argentine Chile and Peru for South American independence, and was aided in his struggle by Louis Beltran, an unfrocked friar. On July 9, the independence of Argentine was proclaimed. Pueyrredon was made President of the new republic. Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia established independent governments.

After Miranda's defeat and the fall of Porto Cabello, Bolivar had fled to Curaçoa. He enlisted a corps of refugees in Cartagena and headed an The struggle in Venezuela expedition into New Granada. There he rallied more revolutionists about him, and, capturing Madalena from the Spaniards, fought his way through to Caracas. He was welcomed there with extravagant demonstration as the "Savior of Venezuela." After one more victory on the field of Araure his star declined. The Spanish general, Boves, defeated him at La Puerta, and took a terrible vengeance on the patriots. The wounded and prisoners were killed on the field; the homes of all reputed rebels were burned to the ground; and the entire population of Aragua was massacred.

Montalvo, the Spanish War Minister, reported officially: "General Boves Spanish vengeance does not distinguish between the guilty and innocent—soldiers or non-combatants. All alike are killed for the crime of being born in America." Bolivar retired to New Granada and thence to Jamaica. An attempt to assassinate him there failed; for the negro cut-throat who had undertaken to murder Bolivar killed the wrong person. Bolivar crossed over Bolivar's adventures to Hayti. There he raised a new expedition. A negro leader, Petion, then acting-governor of Hayti, helped him in this enterprise, and strongly advised him to proclaim the freedom of all slaves as the first step on landing in his country. "For, how can you free your country," said Petion, "if you don't free all the people in it?" Bolivar heeded his advice. With six ships and one hundred and fifty men, he set out to reconquer Venezuela from Spain. He landed at Margerita, where he had the good fortune to capture several Spanish ships. With them he returned to Santo Domingo for more men and ammunition. Petion furnished him with funds. Thus reinforced, Bolivar made a dash for Barcelona in Venezuela. The end of the struggle was at hand.

1817

BOLIVAR landed on the north coast of Venezuela on the first day of the new year. His landing place, Barcelona, was a small town at the foot of the Maritime Andes, so unprotected against attack that he resolved to leave it at once. He marched his force in the direction of Santa Fé in New Granada, hoping to push through to Peru. Marino and Piar, two insurgent leaders operating in the south, joined forces with Bolivar, and brought 1,200 additional men. By the time their joint column had penetrated well into General Piar shot Orinoco, the three leaders were at odds with each other. Piar tried to incite revolt among his followers. Bolivar caused Piar to be seized, and after a drum-head trial had him shot. In the meanwhile a Spanish force had swooped down on Barcelona, and massacred the inhabitants. Things were at this pass when the standard of revolt was once more raised in Chile by O'Higgins Bernado O'Higgins. He was a natural son of Ambrosio, and had just returned from school in England. At the time the supreme command of the revolutionary forces was given to him this famous South American leader was still a young man, as was his chief lieutenant, MacKenna. By his clever handling of the campaigns that followed he won the title of "El Primer Soldado del Nuevo Mundo"—the first soldier of America. It was still at the San Martin outset of his career, in 1817, that help came to the Chileans from Buenos Ayres across the Andes. The man who brought this aid was San Martin.

At Mendoza, on January 17, San Martin reviewed his little army of 5,000, all Gaucho horsemen, as lightly clad and provisioned as the Indians of the Pampas. The women of Mendoza presented the force with a flag bearing the emblem of the Sun. San Martin held the banner aloft, declaring it "the first flag of independence which had been blest in South America." This same flag was carried through all the wars along the Pacific Coast. And under its tattered shreds San Martin was finally laid to rest sixty years later.

Marching from Mendoza, San Martin made a feint of crossing the Andes by way of Planchon, thereby inducing a Spanish column under Captain-General Marco del Ponte to concentrate at Talca. During the progress of these movements, San Martin and his followers crossed the mountains by the steep route of Putaendo and Cuevas. Three hundred miles of the stiffest mountain riding were covered in less than a fortnight. Early in February, San Martin's army, now barely 4,000 strong, descended upon Villa Nueva. On February 7, Battle of Chacabuco they fought their first battle on Chilean soil with the Spanish outposts at Chacabuco. Driving the Spaniards before him, San Martin, advanced into the plain, and presently joined forces with O'Higgins' infantry. New mounts were provided for the cavalry. At the strong post of Acuoncagua the Spaniards made a stand, but they were outnumbered by the insurgents. San Acuoncagua Martin delivered a frontal attack, while O'Higgins outflanked the enemy with an impetuous charge, with the result that the whole Spanish force was routed beyond recovery. The officers fled to Valparaiso. By the middle of February, San Martin entered Santiago de Chile. A new republican junta was formed and complete independence of Spain was declared. O'Higgins assumed the position of dictator.

All Chile was free now except in the south. General Ordoñez, commanding the Spanish forces there, was defeated and fell back to Talcahuano. San Martin prepared to invade Peru. Anticipating such an attack, Abascal, the Spanish Viceroy of Peru, despatched Osorio with an expedition of 3,500 veterans, Battle of Talca who had just arrived from Spain, to Talcahuano. As soon as these reinforcements came, Ordoñez set out from Talcahuano with the vanguard to march on Santiago de Chile, and met the patriot forces near Talca. The revolutionists largely outnumbered the Spaniards, but were poorly disciplined and ill-provisioned. While they lost time the Spanish main column under Osorio came up. Ordoñez took advantage of the clumsy manœuvres of the revolutionists to drive a sharp attack between their two wings, piercing their centre. The battle was won after the first fifteen minutes. O'Higgins was wounded and had to be carried out of the fight. San Martin, with his right wing, fell back on San Fernando. With great difficulty O'Higgins managed to reach Santiago, where he was presently joined by San Martin. Steadily the Spanish column advanced on Santiago. The two revolutionary leaders by almost superhuman efforts succeeded in rallying and equipping a force of 5,000 defenders. On April 5, Battle of the Maypo the Spanish army appeared before Santiago de Chile. Near the Maypo, nine miles from Santiago, the revolutionists took up a strong position. Osorio opened the battle about noon with artillery. Soon all the troops were engaged, the fiercest fight raging around a hacienda where San Martin and O'Higgins had their headquarters. Several times the ranch was lost and retaken. By sundown the Spaniards advanced all along the line. The battle seemed lost to the patriots. At this juncture, as the famous regiment of Burgos on the Spanish right was drawing in its deployed lines for a final column attack, Colonel O'Brien, at the head of the insurgent cavalry reserves, charged into the opening and overthrew the Burgos battalions. O'Higgins immediately charged the rest of the Spanish right wing, and San Martin simultaneously attacked in the centre. The whole Spanish army gave Liberation of Chile away. More than 2,000 Spaniards were killed and wounded. Osorio with his staff escaped to Peru. The victory of Santiago not only freed Chile, but left Peru open to the revolutionists.

In the United States of North America, during this interval, a new President had begun his administration. James Monroe was inaugurated as President in his fifty-ninth year. He had been a member of the Continental Congress, and at thirty-six a Minister to France. Under Madison he served as Secretary of War. Crawford, Calhoun, Meigs, Wirt and Rush were members of his Cabinet, and were all of the dominant Democratic-Republican party. Business throughout the country began to revive almost at once when the re-chartered National Bank went into operation in Philadelphia on the day of Monroe's inauguration.

In June, President Monroe undertook a three months' personal inspection of the military posts of the country. Passing through New York, Boston and Portland, and crossing New Hampshire and Vermont to Ogdensburg, he took a boat to Sackett's Harbor and Niagara. From there he went to Buffalo and Detroit, and returned to Washington. Everywhere the people greeted him by thousands. Monroe on this occasion wore the three-cornered hat, "Era of good feeling" scarlet-bordered blue coat and buff breeches of the American Revolutionary army. The "Boston Journal" called the times the "Era of Good Feeling," and the expression has passed into American history as a characteristic of Monroe's entire administration.

It was an era notable for the extraordinary growth of the Western States. Settlers were encouraged to buy government land on the instalment plan, and the States refrained from levying taxes on these lands until years after the settlers had received their title deeds. Endless processions of prairie wagons passed through New York and Pennsylvania. On one turnpike alone, 16,000 vehicles paid toll during the year. Pittsburg at this time had a population of 7,000 persons. The log cabin was the house of all, with its rough chimney, its greased paper in a single window, its door with latch and string, a plank floor and single room, corn husk brooms and its Dutch oven. In the newly broken ground corn and wheat were planted, which, when harvested, were thrashed with the flail and winnowed with a sheet. Little Western prairies settled settlements sprang up here and there on the rolling prairie, with store-taverns, blacksmith shops and mills. This a thousand times repeated was seen in western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan.

During the same year the newly organized territory of Mississippi, formed from a division of Alabama, was admitted as the twentieth State to the Union. The first line of steam propelled ocean packets was organized to run between New York and Liverpool. In the western frontier town of St. Louis the first steamboat made its appearance. On July 4, ground was broken for The Erie Canal the Erie Canal, which was to connect the city of New York with the great inland waters. On the strength of this progressive achievement De Witt Clinton became a candidate for the governorship of New York. Among other notable events of this year were the foundation of the New York State Library, Gallaudet's foundation of the first school for the deaf and dumb at Hartford, and the establishment of the earliest theological seminaries of the Episcopal Church in America, as well as of the first Unitarian Divinity School at Harvard. William Cullen Bryant, barely come of "Thanatopsis" age, published his master work, "Thanatopsis," in the "North American Review."

In other parts of the world, likewise, the return of peace was followed by a general advance in culture and civilization. Shortly after the re-establishment of the American National Bank, Canada followed suit with government banks at Montreal and Quebec. Hanka, in Bohemia, claimed to have discovered the famous medieval lyrics of Rukopis Kralodvorsky written at Stenography the end of the thirteenth century. Across the border in Poland the new University of Cracow began its career. In Munich, Franz Gabelsberger invented the first working system of shorthand, which, in a perfected form, is still in use in Germany. During this year common school education took an immense stride in Germany, after the establishment in Prussia of a distinct Ministry for Public Education. Unfortunately the government soon German liberalism came into conflict with the bolder spirits at the universities. By reason of the more liberal privileges allowed to it by the Duke of Weimar, the University of Jena took the lead in the national Teutonic agitation inaugurated by Fichte. On October 18, the students of Jena, aided by delegates from all the student fraternities of Protestant Germany, held a festival at Eisenach to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation. It was also the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. Five hundred ardent young men, among them scholars who had fought at Leipzig, Ligny and Waterloo, assembled in the halls of Luther's Wartburg Castle. They sang and The Wartburg festival drank, and fraternized with the members of the militia of Eisenach. In the evening they had a torchlight procession and lighted a huge bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. In imitation of Martin Luther's burning of the Pope's Bull they consigned a number of their pet aversions to the flames. Thus they burned a soldier's straight-jacket and corporal's cane, as well as a recent pamphlet by one Schmalz written in defense of the old Prussian bureaucracy. Rash words were uttered about the broken faith of princes. They were aimed at King Frederick William of Prussia, who had promised to give his country a constitution, but had failed to keep his word. The Wartburg festival, childish as it was in many of its manifestations, created singular alarm throughout Germany and elsewhere. The King of Prussia sent his Prime Minister, Hardenberg, to Weimar to make a thorough investigation of the affair. Richelieu, the Prime European courts alarmed Minister of France, wrote from Paris whether another revolution was breaking out; and Metternich insisted that the Duke of Weimar should curtail the liberties of his subjects. The heavy hand of reaction fell upon all German universities. German scholars were compelled to turn their interests from public affairs to pure science and scholarship, to the benefit of German learning. The study of history and archeology took an Advances in scholarship upward turn with Brentano's publication of old German ballads and Lachmann's original version of the Nibelungen songs. At this time an Italian archeologist, Belzoni, was adding new chapters to ancient history by his original researches in Egypt, which resulted in the removal of the Colossus of Memnon to Alexandria, and in the opening of the great Cephren African missionary work pyramid. In distant South Africa the first English missionaries began their labors among the blacks. Although the Governor of Natal at first refused to permit Robert Moffat, the first Wesleyan missionary in those parts, to disturb the Kaffirs with his preachings, Moffat pressed on undismayed and soon established a mission beyond the Orange River.

In England, industrial depression dragged on. Early in the year riots broke out in London on the opening of Parliament. While driving to the House of Lords, the Prince Regent, now grown thoroughly unpopular on account of the scandals with his wife, was hooted by a crowd in St. James's Park. The Green Bag inquiry police claimed that an air gun had been discharged at the Prince and made an attack on the crowd. A number of persons were injured. This was followed in February by the great Green Bag Inquiry, when Lord Sidmouth laid before Parliament a green bag full of reports concerning seditions. Bills were introduced to suspend the habeas corpus act and to provide for the coercion Manchester Blanketers of public meetings. Seditious publications were likewise to be suppressed. In March occurred the rising of the so-called Blanketers in Manchester—dissatisfied workingmen who started in a body for London carrying blanket rolls and other necessaries. Their march was stopped by the military. In April, seven members of the so-called society of Luddites were hanged at Leicester for breaking labor-saving machinery. Shortly afterward eighteen persons were hanged for forging notes on the Bank of England. It was found that since the redemption of specie payments no less than 17,885 forged notes had been presented. Nearly two hundred persons Dissatisfaction in England were apprehended and tried in court for this offence. Shortly afterward another insurrection which broke out in Derbyshire, and which was led by Jeremiah Brandrett, was suppressed by soldiers.