The advance of the allies into France was unchecked, and on the 7th of July Paris was again occupied. The entrance of the allies upon the country of France at once exhibited the different feelings by which they were actuated; while Blücher and the Prussians thought of nothing but vengeance, Wellington, true to the constant policy of England, insisted upon regarding France as a friendly country to which he was restoring its legitimate sovereign. He succeeded in restraining his violent colleague, who wished to put Napoleon to death, to lay a large contribution on Paris, and to blow up the bridge of Jena over the Seine, the name of which he considered an insult to Prussia. Wellington had no instructions how to act with regard to Napoleon, he therefore allowed him to follow his own course. The Emperor, embarking in an English frigate, the Bellerophon, attempted in his usual theatrical manner to claim the hospitality of the Prince Regent, but the dread of his name and ambition, and the proved danger of allowing him to remain in Napoleon banished to St. Helena. Europe, prevented the English Government from entertaining any such ideas, and Napoleon was sent to end his days as a prisoner in St. Helena.

The influence of England, naturally increased by the great part it had played in the war in Belgium, was sufficient to give the direction to the negotiations which followed the second restoration of the Second Treaty of Paris. Nov. 20, 1815. Bourbons. The Government succeeded in procuring that the Treaty of Vienna completed on June 9th and the first Treaty of Paris (May 1814) should be upon the whole maintained, but it could not refuse to allow some punishment to fall on France for the events of "the hundred days." The country was vigorously confined to its limits in 1790, losing all the additions which the first Treaty of Paris had given it; it was compelled to bear much of the expenses of the war; while its immediate good conduct was secured by an army of occupation, which was for five years to hold the northern fortresses under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The war contribution was to consist of 700,000,000 francs, a sum which was to be paid in five years, during which time the northern fortresses were held as guarantee. This treaty was signed on the 20th of November.

The completion of the settlement of Europe had been carried out during the recess of Parliament. From July 1815 to February 1, 1816, the Government had been able to act entirely unchecked. On that day Parliament reopened, and Castlereagh resumed his seat in Opposition in the Parliament. Feb. 1, 1816. all the triumph of his completed negotiations. But with the conclusion of the war came the hour of trial for the Tory ministry. The mediocrity of their talent, the reactionary character of their political views, had been forgotten, or even regarded as favourable points in their administration, while they stood forth firmly and energetically to express and give effect to the great wish of the nation, the destruction of the Napoleonic rule. With the return of peace the great questions of home politics were again becoming of importance, and the tendencies of the party fostered by their successful warfare were to call into existence an opposition not only in Parliament but among the nation at large. Already voices were raised against the late negotiations; though, no doubt, the real magnanimity shown towards France, the advantages gained for England on the sea, and the security for some years of peace which the elaborate system of balance was thought to give, were fully in accordance with the wishes of the majority of the nation. There were men who, undazzled by the glories of the late war, saw that the policy of England had in fact favoured absolutism,—that, for the sake of the balance of power, countries had been handed over quite irrespective of the wishes of the people to sovereigns for whom they felt no natural affection,—that a dynasty disliked by a large section of the people had been forced upon France, and was upheld by English bayonets, and that in spite of the efforts of England the influence of Russia had been increased. It appeared to them that the intercourse with foreign powers had rendered our negotiators absolutists. Their conduct with regard to the Holy Alliance showed The Holy Alliance. Sept. 1815. that this was not in fact the case. The Holy Alliance, or Convention of September, by which the enthusiastic and sentimental Emperor of Russia joined with his brother sovereigns of Prussia and Austria to declare that henceforward their policy should be ruled on Christian principles alone, had been rejected by the English Government, which saw danger in this brotherly and religious bond between absolute monarchs, and declared through the Duke of Wellington that the English Parliament would require "something more precise." In fact, though in no way wishing to disturb the English Constitution, the Tory Government had been led into a course of policy which was not in accordance with English traditions. The conclusion of a war the burden of which had been upon the whole patiently borne, should have brought with it the real blessings of peace; but these were not found in the declaration of the Government that it intended to keep up the war taxes, and to keep on foot an army of 150,000, an intention which, when taken in conjunction with the close alliances entered into with foreign powers, seemed to mean that England was henceforward to attempt to take its place as one of the great military powers of the Continent.

It was upon the two points of taxation and economy that the Government first met with opposition. Mr. Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared his intention of continuing half the income and property tax, which from the first had been avowedly a war tax. The Opposition to this measure was headed in the Commons by Brougham. By a skilful use of parliamentary tactics, he succeeded in gaining time, which he employed in procuring a flood of petitions exhibiting the feeling of the country so strongly that the Government was beaten. Apparently in dudgeon at his defeat, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that as he had lost the income tax he should also throw over the malt tax, a step which Castlereagh explained by saying that Government was going to contract a loan, and £2,000,000 or £3,000,000 more or less would make no difference. The recklessness of this assertion points to one of the evils which the late war had produced;—an unbounded and lavish supply of money, and the habit of spending almost without question if success could be obtained, had destroyed all idea of economy in the minds of the ministers. The angry feeling excited in the people by this carelessness of the public money was not diminished by the extravagances of the Court, and the constant demands for money to supply the deficiencies of the Civil List. Although £800,000 was the sum granted in exchange for the hereditary revenues, the average of late years had been considerably above a million; in 1815 it had reached nearly a million and a half. On this point the ministers were themselves obliged to take the initiative, and a Bill was passed for the better regulation of the Civil List. But while the demand for economy, for the reduction of the war expenditure, and the return of England to its usual independent position with regard to the Continent, afforded themes for the Opposition in Parliament, an agitation of far more importance had sprung into existence outside its walls.

At the opening of the session the Prince Regent's speech had congratulated the country upon the prosperity of agriculture, and of all branches of trade and manufacture. But it was, in fact, a time of Agricultural depression. unexampled distress. The principle of protection which had found favour with the mercantile world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been extended to agriculture. In 1670, a period of great plenty having reduced the price of corn, it was thought necessary to impose heavy dues on its importation. Up to 53s. 4d. a duty of 16s. a quarter was imposed, between that and 80s., a duty of 8s. a quarter. The price at which importation, free or at a nominal duty, was allowed had been more than once changed. In 1804 it had been set at 66s. During the latter years of the war there had been constantly deficient harvests. In 1812 and 1813 the quarter of wheat had risen to 171s. The average price during six years, from 1808 to 1813, had been 108s. During several of those years the Continental System had virtually excluded foreign competition. The effect of the high prices was most disastrous upon agriculture; while the suffering of the labourer had, as has been explained, been very great, the class of farmer had changed, the careful small cultivator had given place to ostentatious spendthrifts. To secure great returns land wholly unfitted for the purpose had been brought under the plough, crop after crop of corn had been grown to the exhaustion of the soil, and many advantageous and necessary forms of agriculture had been thrown aside for the cultivation of corn. The year 1813 was one of extraordinary plenty, the surplus crop was enough to continue that plenty during the two following years; the effect was a very rapid fall in prices. Such a fall naturally entailed the restoration of a better system of husbandry, and the ruin of many of those who had embarked on the false course. Peace added still further to this distress. Violent efforts were made in Parliament by the landed interest, which was very strong, to bolster up the evil system. It was proposed in 1813 that importation should be subject to a prohibitory duty till the price of wheat reached 105s. the quarter. This demand was reduced to 84s. in 1814. Circumstances prevented its being carried then, but in 1815, when the foreign markets were again opened, the terror of approaching cheapness enabled farmers and landlords to combine and hurry through the House a Corn Law, fixing the price at which corn might be imported at 80s. In spite of this, however, the distress continued. In fact, the false inflation of late years was giving way, and agriculture entering upon a more natural course. The agricultural interests still complained, and still asserted the necessity of relief, but as, in order to win their support, the Government had already given up the malt tax, there was really scarcely anything left to give them, and their complaints remained unanswered; and as the distress, although it was caused chiefly by the fault of the agriculturalists, and was but a fair counterpoise to the enormous profits they had lately been making, was a terrible reality, the poorer classes continued to suffer.

The depression was not confined to the agricultural interest. The removal of the restrictions caused by the Continental System excited lively hopes among the trading community. During the war our exports had chiefly depended upon an organized contraband trade. Even so, in 1811, shipments had been made to the Continent to the value of £11,000,000. It was supposed that, without restrictions, the sum might be doubled. Everybody wished for a share in the golden harvest, and much money was transferred from legitimate and lucrative trade to the purchase of colonial produce for exportation. But what is called effective demand for any commodity depends not on the desire of the purchaser, but upon his power of purchase. The exhausting wars of late years so limited that power of purchase that the exports of England either lay in the ports unsold or were got rid of at less than the cost price. Nor did our restrictive commercial policy allow a ready interchange of commodities, which might have tended to render the disaster less. Peace with America had produced somewhat the same effects. Thus, both in agriculture and in commerce, widespread suffering and distress existed.

The difficulties were increased at the time by a considerable reduction in the circulating medium. The fall in agricultural profits had ruined many banks in agricultural districts, and induced others to Riots and political meetings. restrict their issue of paper money. A severe winter, a deficient harvest, and the rise of the price of wheat before the close of the year (1815) again to 103s., came to complete the general misery. The effect was a widespread series of riots; rick-burning and machine-breaking were constant, especially in the east of England. At Littleport, in the isle of Ely, the town was for two days in the hands of the mob (May 22), and the tumult was only suppressed after the military had been called out. In the coal and iron districts, though the people on the whole behaved well, great meetings of unemployed operatives took place; while in Nottingham and the neighbourhood the Luddite disturbances broke out with fresh vehemence. The discontent and unhappiness of the people before long assumed the shape of a political movement. The change must be attributed to the writings of Cobbett more than to any other single cause. For some years he had published a Liberal periodical called "The Weekly Political Register," in which, with remarkable clearness of style and simple power of argument, he had constantly attacked the Government. In 1816, he changed the price of his paper from a shilling to twopence, and it at once became the oracle of the working classes. His view was, that all the evils of the time might be cured by reform of Parliament. He indeed went far beyond what the nation was then fit for, demanding universal suffrage and annual Parliaments. But his work was the beginning of the great agitation which continued till the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832.

Against this new sort of opposition without the walls of Parliament the Government set to work with violent measures of repression. The Hampden Clubs, which had sprung up in all directions for purposes of parliamentary reform, no doubt had fallen in many cases into the hands of dangerous demagogues. In London they appear to have become connected with a body of men known as Spencean philanthropists, after Spence, who, at the beginning of the century, had made himself notorious by his socialistic plans. To this society belonged Thistlewood, the two Watsons, and a man of the name of Meeting in Spa Fields. Dec. 2, 1816. Preston. Castle, a spy of the police, crept in among them, and probably urged them to more reckless action than they would otherwise have taken. According to his account, a great plot was on foot for taking the Tower, seizing the Government, and establishing a Committee of Public Safety. A meeting in Spa Fields in connection with this plot was held upon the 2nd of December. It was to be addressed by Mr. Hunt, a vain and empty demagogue, but before he arrived the Spenceans had begun to act upon their own authority. Young Watson had led a number of men to Snow Hill to ransack a gunsmith's shop, and had there shot a gentleman who had remonstrated with him. The crowd then marched to the Royal Exchange, where they were met by the Lord Mayor, who courageously withstanding them, with only seven assistants, easily dispersed them. Preston appears also singlehanded to have climbed the wall of the Tower, and have summoned the guard to surrender. Beyond this nothing formidable was done.

While hunger and misery, the depression of trade, and the influence of a few able demagogues, were driving the poorer classes to acts of violence, and a dangerous union was being established between social and political discontent, the middle classes were gradually arriving at the same conclusion as their inferiors with Petition from the Corporation of London. regard to the necessity of a thorough change in the constitution of Parliament. In December, only a few weeks after the uproar in Spa Fields, the Corporation of London, of late the firm supporters of the policy of Government, addressed a petition to the Prince Regent, which throws a striking light upon the feelings which the conduct of Government since the war had excited. After a rapid summary "of the distress and misery, no longer limited to one portion of the Empire, and under the irresistible pressure of which the commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing interests are equally sinking," the address goes on to say: "Our grievances are the natural effect of rash and ruinous wars, unjustly commenced and pertinaciously persisted in, where no rational object was to be attained; of immense subsidies to foreign powers to defend their own territories or to commit aggressions on those of our neighbours; of a delusive paper currency; of an unconstitutional and unprecedented military force in time of peace; of the unexampled and increasing magnitude of the Civil List; of the enormous sums paid for unmerited pensions and sinecures; and of a long course of the most lavish and improvident expenditure of the public money throughout every branch of the Government, all arising from the corrupt and inadequate state of the representation of the people in Parliament, whereby all constitutional control over the servants of the Crown has been lost, and Parliaments have become subservient to the will of Ministers."

It began to be evident that, as the great common interest of the war disappeared, and the popularity and influence derived from its successful termination wore itself out, the Tory party, with its repressive and reactionary doctrines, would find itself wholly unable to handle with success the domestic questions which inevitably arose. For some years longer it successfully held its position. Circumstances enabled it again to separate the middle and lower classes, and full time was allowed it to exhibit its repressive principles of home government.

The success of the Government was due to the excesses of the mob, and to the exaggerated fear which it was found possible to excite among the propertied classes. The Regent had scarcely opened Parliament, with an assurance that he was well convinced of the Attack on the Regent. June 28, 1817. loyalty of the great body of his Majesty's subjects, but was determined to omit no precautions for preserving public peace, when, as he was returning from the House, he was ill-received by the people, and a missile thrown from the crowd even broke one of the windows of his carriage. This outrage encouraged the Government to take vigorous measures. It was not difficult to represent the whole project of reform as being indissolubly Repressive measures of the Government. March. mixed with the extreme doctrines of Cobbett and the Spenceans. A secret committee of both Houses was appointed to inquire into the public disaffection; that of the Lords reported the existence of a great network of societies and clubs, which, under pretence of parliamentary reform, were attempting to infect the minds of all classes with a spirit of disaffection, and contempt of law, religion, and morality, while no endeavours were omitted to prepare the people to take up arms on the first signal of the accomplishment of their design. The Commons committee declared (Feb. 19) that the Hampden Clubs aimed at nothing short of revolution. Armed with these reports, which were no doubt extraordinarily exaggerated, Government introduced and carried Bills for preventing attempts to seduce soldiers and sailors from their allegiance, to give to the Prince Regent all the safeguards of an actual sovereign, to prevent seditious meetings, and lastly (March 3), for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act till the 1st of the ensuing July.

The effect of these Acts was at once to give a certain reality to the dangers on the false apprehension of which they had been based. Public meetings being impossible, secret meetings, with all the dangers which invariably attend them, sprang into existence. The worse affected and more dangerous leaders of the people began to acquire influence, and desperate designs, fomented and betrayed by spies in the employment of Government, began to be entertained. It is impossible to suspect benevolent gentlemen such as Lord Sidmouth of wilfully entrapping ignorant artisans to their own destruction; but it is certain that use was constantly made of spies who found it to their own advantage to concoct and betray treasonable and atrocious conspiracies. The most notorious of these spies was a man of the name of Oliver, who, giving himself out as a delegate of London reforming societies, succeeded in giving a new impulse to the plots in various parts of the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Derbyshire. The violent suppression by the military and constables of a peaceable meeting, known as the meeting of blanketeers, at Manchester on the 29th of March, made the people more ready to listen to his suggestions. The meeting was a peaceful one, and acquired its name from the blankets or coats which many of those assembled had strapped upon their backs. A few of them set out upon a foolish march, intending to petition the Prince Regent in person; but their intentions appear to have been quite peaceful, and though many were apprehended, they were all discharged before trial. It seems probable that what is known as the Derby insurrection was one of the consequences of Oliver's representations. A man of the name of Brandreth, known as "the Captain," went from house to house near Pentridge, spreading such assertions as that England, Ireland, and The Derby insurrection. June 10. France were all to rise that night at ten o'clock, and that the "northern clouds," or men from the north, would come down and sweep all before them. A few men collected in arms at his summons. They do not seem ever to have numbered much more than an hundred, and were without difficulty dispersed, and many of them taken prisoners by the military at a short distance from Nottingham. Such disturbances as these were held to justify a second suspension of the Habeas Corpus.

But it was not only against seditious actions that Lord Sidmouth determined to proceed, but against seditious writings also. On the 27th of March he wrote a circular to the Lords Lieutenant of counties, in which he declared that in the opinion of the law officer the justices of the peace might issue a warrant to apprehend any person charged before them on oath with the publication of blasphemous or seditious libels, and compel him to give bail to answer to the charge. Considering the jealousy with which any political interference with the liberty of the press was regarded, and that by Fox's Libel Bill even the judges were held unfit to decide on the character of a libel, which was to be left to the decision of the jury, it is difficult to conceive a more high-handed interference with what was generally regarded as a constitutional privilege. Considerable use was made of the instructions, yet on the whole with so little success that the Government procured but a single conviction. The most important of these trials was that of Mr. Hone's trial. Dec. 18, 1817. Mr. Hone, which must have showed the Government, if nothing else could, how odious and useless their attempts to stifle the free expression of opinion was. Hone was a quiet and inoffensive publisher, a great collector and reader of old books. He had published certain political parodies, of which the subject can be pretty well understood from the titles they bore, "The Sinecurist's Creed," "The Litany, or General Supplication." It was against their alleged blasphemous character that proceedings were taken. Each parody was the subject of a separate trial, and the whole proceedings occupied three days. On the first day Mr. Justice Abbott, on the second and third Lord Chief-Justice Ellenborough occupied the bench. Hone defended himself, basing his argument on the essential difference between parodies intended to throw scorn upon the work parodied and those in which well-known writings were travestied for the purpose of ridiculing some other subject, and supporting himself by innumerable instances of political parodies couched in biblical forms coming from the pens of well-known and respected writers. His erudition enabled him to continue for many hours on each day producing instances of this kind. With astonishing firmness he refused to be browbeaten by Lord Ellenborough, and upon the third day even attacked his judge for the partisan spirit in which he had charged the jury the preceding evening. In all three trials, after a brief consideration, the jury acquitted him. The persistency with which the charges against Hone were pressed after his first acquittal entirely discredited the grounds of public morality on which the Government was professedly acting, and had all the appearance of a vindictive desire for revenge on the part of men smarting under deserved political satire.

The system pursued by the Tories, though for the time it was successful in keeping up a general dread of popular violence, and thus temporarily hushed the agitation for reform, was gradually alienating from Government all classes but the one immediately connected with it, and forcing the nation at large to look upon Government itself as its natural enemy, and to fix its hopes more and more upon some constitutional change. Indeed, though its large majority in the House enabled the Government to reject all liberal measures, and to pass those which it itself produced, a powerful Opposition began to show itself within the walls of the House, which the conduct of the Administration did not tend to conciliate. The extension of the The Alien Act. May 5, 1818. Alien Act, which reserved to the Government the power of removing aliens who were objects of suspicion, and which had already been twice renewed since the peace, for a further period of two years, was regarded as an attack upon the English right of asylum in favour of the Continental despotisms. It was warmly opposed, and a flaw found in it which secured its rejection. By the Act of Union, shareholders in the Bank of Scotland became naturalized subjects. An alien, by taking shares in the Bank, could therefore evade that Act. A clause was introduced to check this means of evading the Act; but as naturalized subjects had certain exemptions with regard to the payment of duties, the Lower House held that the introduction of the clause was an infringement of their privilege, as being in fact the introduction of a money clause. It had therefore to be The Indemnity Bill. March 13. dropped and a new Bill introduced. Even an attempt on the part of Government to gain popularity turned to its discredit. A show was made of destroying numerous sinecures; but as this destruction was coupled with a Pension List of an amount almost equal to that of the sinecures destroyed, the trick excited more anger than gratitude among the public. But the great contest of the time was on the subject of the indemnity demanded by the ministry to cover acts done during the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. A sealed bag of papers was laid upon the table of the House, which the Government demanded should be referred to a committee of secresy. The committee was to be appointed by ballot, but lists were circulated among the ministerial majority of the members for whom they should vote; in fact, therefore, the committee was nominated by the Government itself. The report declared that the suspension was necessary, and that the Government had used the powers given them well. But the demand for an indemnity, while the grounds for that indemnity were kept studiously secret and examined only by the Government nominees, for the avowed purpose of keeping from the public the names of the witnesses who had given secret information, increased still further the bad impression which the employment of men like Oliver had already created.

Under other circumstances loyalty for the Crown might have served to lessen the growing division between the Government and the people; the state of the royal family, and the character of most of its members, was now such as to weaken all such feeling. For the old King and Queen there was doubtless respect and pitying affection; but it was known that both the afflicted monarch himself and his faithful wife and guardian might at any moment die. As it was, they lived retired from the public view. The Prince Regent, the ostensible sovereign of the country, was understood to be little more than a selfish voluptuary. His reception on the opening of Parliament of 1817 shows how much he had lost the affections of the people. His unhappy domestic relations, shortly to become the ground of a keen party struggle, not only afforded a perpetual subject of scandal, but seemed to forbid the possibility of a direct male heir to the throne. The people's hopes were centred on the Princess Charlotte, the Regent's only daughter, but lately married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, and the blow was felt to be heavy when she died in 1817, immediately after giving birth to a child which did not live. It seemed for the instant highly probable that the large and strong family of the old King would come to an end in the first generation. Before the close of the following year this probability was lessened. No less than four members of the royal family were then married—Princess Elizabeth, the Duke of Clarence, the Duke of Cambridge, and the Duke of Kent, who married respectively the Landgrave of Hesse Homburg, the Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the Princess Augusta of Hesse, and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg Saalfield, the widow of the Prince of Leiningen and sister of Prince Leopold. Had the family been at all popular such events, under the circumstances, would certainly have afforded joy to the nation. As it was, they only afforded an opportunity for the expression of a deeply fixed belief in the extravagance and wastefulness of the royal family. Of all the marriages that of the Duke of Kent with a sister of Prince Leopold was alone well received. The demand for an increase of income on behalf of the other princes was strongly resisted in Parliament; the sum proposed for the Duke of Clarence was reduced by nearly half, and a grant of £6000 for the Duke of Cumberland, who had been married three years previously, was absolutely rejected by a majority of six members, a result which was received with loud cheers.

The insecurity felt by Government, in spite of its large majority, in the present Parliament betrayed it into conduct which still further increased its unpopularity. The Parliament was now in its sixth session, and therefore approaching its time of dissolution. But several circumstances might call it again into existence. A clause in the Regency Act provided that Parliament should be summoned on the death of the Queen. The ministry had lately got the clause repealed; but the death either of the King or Regent, if happening before the day appointed for the assembling of the new Parliament, would have caused the reassembling of the old. Both King and Queen might die at any moment; nor was the Regent's health good. The dissolution was therefore hurried on in a manner which caused much anger. On the 10th of June Parliament was prorogued and dissolved at the same time, a form of proceeding unprecedented since the days of Charles II. The temper of the country was not improved by this step, and the elections were attended with the bitterest party strife. In Westminster Sir George Murray, who stood on the Tory interest to replace if possible Lord Cochrane, who had withdrawn to take command of the navies of Chili, was so ill-used that his life was thought to be in danger. Several Radical candidates offered themselves, among others Hunt the orator; but the more respectable inhabitants contrived to save themselves from the disgrace of such representatives by bringing in Romilly, without any expense of his own, at the head of the poll. The other member was Sir Francis Burdett. In the same way the City of London elected four Liberals, rejecting three old ministerial representatives. This clearly showed the rising temper of the middle classes. But as the representation was then arranged no great change was possible, and the ministers found themselves still in possession of a large majority (July).

Before the assembling of the new Parliament (Jan. 14, 1819) one piece of foreign history deserves notice. A congress was held at Aix-la-Chapelle (Oct. 2, 1818), at which the final evacuation of France by the allies, although only three of the five years stipulated were accomplished, was agreed upon. This wise and just act seems to have been chiefly due to the Duke of Wellington, in opposition to some of the extreme Tories of the Cabinet.

In spite of their parliamentary majority, the ministry did not feel very secure upon their seats, and it was perhaps more with a view of re-establishing their credit with the country than from increased wisdom that the Cabinet so far changed its views with regard to the currency question as to accept the truth of the doctrines which Francis Horner had some years (1811) before laid down, and introduced a measure in accordance with the plans of Ricardo, the political economist, for the resumption of cash payments. The Bank had already issued a considerable quantity of gold. Since 1817 as much as £6,000,000 had been put into circulation, but as the paper money still continued, as a matter of course this partial action produced no good effect; the gold had found its way out of the country, chiefly to France. It was now ordered that this voluntary payment in gold should cease. An examination of the affairs of the Bank proved that it was in excellent condition, and a series of resolutions were passed and subsequently embodied in Bills by Mr. Peel. By these, from the 1st of February 1820, the Bank was obliged to exchange its notes for gold ingots, in not less quantity than sixty ounces, at the rate of 81s. the ounce; in October of the same year the rate was to be reduced to 79s. 6d. the ounce; on the 1st of May 1822 the rate was reduced to the regular mint price of £3, 17s. 10½d.; and in May 1823 all notes were to be paid on demand in legal coin. As a fact, on the 1st of May 1821 the Bank resumed complete payment in cash.

Several divisions in Parliament clearly showed the growing weakness of Government. The Foreign Enlistment Bill, to prevent English subjects from serving in a foreign service or fitting out ships of war for foreign countries, was carried by a majority of thirteen only, the ground of opposition being that the Bill was in fact directed to the injury of the revolted colonies of Spain in America, in whose ranks many Englishmen were serving. Like the Alien Act of the preceding session, the Bill was considered as a proof of that legitimist and absolute tendency of which the Government was accused. Again, in the great Catholic emancipation rejected. May 3. question of Catholic emancipation, which was brought forward by Grattan in the best speech he ever made in the House, the Government were victorious by a majority of two only in a very full House; while it was actually defeated by Reform of Scotch burghs. May 6. a majority of five on the question of the reform of Scotch burghs, which it had got rid of in the last session. The system in those burghs had been in existence ever since the fifteenth century, and so acted as to perpetuate the administration in the hands of one party, often of one family only, as the retiring members of the corporation had the right of electing their own successors. For years the burghs had been bent upon ridding themselves of this exclusive government; as in the case of other reforms, their efforts had passed out of sight during the tumult of the French wars, again to be called into existence on the resumption of peace. In 1817 certain irregularities of form in the burgh of Montrose had caused the elections to be set aside by the law courts. The Crown had been compelled to give a new charter, in which a certain popular element was admitted. Other burghs at once began to clamour for similar changes. To their petitions, however, the Government turned a deaf ear. When the elections in Aberdeen were quashed by the law courts, as those at Montrose had been, the old constitution had been re-established, and Lord Archibald Hamilton now took up the cause of the burghs. He demanded a copy of the new warrant, and was defeated by five only. Pressing his success, he demanded that the petitions of the burghs should be referred to a select committee. A large majority of the burghs themselves were loudly calling for reform. The population of those who desired it amounted to 420,000, as opposed to 60,000, the population of those who had not petitioned. The proof of the wish of the people most interested was too strong for the House; in spite of the Government opposition, Lord Archibald's motion was carried in a House of nearly 300 by a majority of five. As the ground of opposition had been avowedly that a change in the burghs was but the beginning of parliamentary reform, this victory shows how the opposition to that measure was gradually breaking down.

In spite of these signs of weakness, the ministers were upon the whole well satisfied with the session. They believed in the success of their repressive measures in the year 1817, and thought that the state of the country was both quieter and more prosperous than it Chronic sufferings of the poor. had been. Complaints of the depression of agriculture, and poverty and suffering among the agricultural poor, were indeed chronic; they depended upon causes over which the immediate action of Government had little control. Exaggerated rents were seeking their natural level; over-cultivation, especially of corn, was giving place to more rational agriculture, and the enormous prosperity enjoyed by the agriculturists during the war was shrinking to modest and hard-won profits; the change could not but be attended with some depression and many painful contrasts. At the same time the action of the Poor Law as then administered, the injudicious fostering of the population which had gone on during the war, and the law of settlement which prevented free competition of labour, of necessity caused misery among the labourers. It was when the manufacturing and mercantile interests were also touched, when, under the action of restrictive corn laws, prices rose, while work was not to be had, that the social dangers of the country became from time to time great.

The prosperity of the year 1818 had been rather apparent than real; there had been much over-trading; a more healthy spirit appears to have arisen in the beginning of 1819, but the effects of the preceding folly were now to be felt. In the first half of the year the number of bankruptcies were almost double the average, the price of corn was still as high as 75s., work was scarce, and wages fell, and before the year was over the ministry found upon their hand difficulties even greater than those they had experienced in the Political meetings. gloomy year of 1817. For again the political question was ready to start to life, again leaders of a higher class were ready to take advantage of the sufferings of the people, and men of more extreme views among themselves were eager to lead them into desperate and revolutionary designs. There had been great meetings near Leeds, Glasgow, and at Ashton-under-Lyne, in June. On the 28th of that month, Sir Charles Wolseley and the Rev. Joseph Harrison had made violent speeches at a great assembly at Stockport, and Sir Charles had been elected the "legislatorial representative" for Birmingham. At the same time the reformers were found to be engaged in drilling. No arms were seen, and it is asserted by one of their leaders that the only object of their drilling was to secure order and regularity and the better appearance at a forthcoming great meeting at Manchester. On the other hand, it was held by those who dreaded popular movements that the drilling had been long and secretly continued, and was a part of a great plan for an exhibition of physical force. The object of the Manchester meeting, which was to be held on the 9th of August, was to choose a representative as Birmingham had already done. The meeting was declared illegal; a requisition was therefore sent to the proper officials, begging them to call it legally. On their refusal, it was determined to hold it, legal or not, on the 16th, in St. Peter's Field. Thither, on the day appointed, large bodies of men, well dressed and without arms, but in something like military array, marched from all The Manchester Massacre. Aug. 16, 1819. the neighbouring towns, and collected round a hustings, from which Hunt was to address them. Their number perhaps amounted to about 80,000, all pressed together in a space of not more than three acres. The magistrates had formed no very definite notion of what to do. They had assembled a considerable military force, of which a troop of Manchester yeomen about forty strong and six troops of the 15th Hussars formed a part. A warrant was out against Hunt, and with extreme imprudence it was determined to execute it while he was on the hustings, as had been done in the case of Harrison on a previous occasion. Just as Hunt was beginning to speak, a strange pressure made itself visible to the crowd. The magistrates had come to a house overlooking the field; they had intrusted their warrant to the chief constable; he had declared he could not execute it without military aid, and the yeomen had pressed into the crowded space. As was natural, they had been separated and brought to a complete standstill. Upon this the magistrates seem to have lost their presence of mind, to have believed that the yeomanry were in danger, and to have ordered the 15th Hussars to extricate them. The consequence was a fearful charge, which swept everything before it, and, as one of the officers says, "by the time they had reached the other side of the field the fugitives were literally piled up to a considerable elevation above the level of the ground." The effect of the panic on so closely-packed a multitude, among whom the soldiers were using the sword, sometimes the flat and sometimes the edge, was fearful; about thirty wounded persons were carried to the infirmary, and forty more found their own way there in the course of the day. The actual wounds given by the soldiers do not appear to have been very many. Hunt and some of his followers were apprehended; the charge of high treason against them was subsequently dropped, and they were obliged to find bail to stand their trial for misdemeanour.

The Manchester Massacre, as it was called, was the result of accident and the bad management of the magistrates, but the Government seemed to make the act entirely their own when they lavished approbation on the conduct of the authorities, and when they induced the Prince Regent himself to write an approving letter. As usual in England, the employment of the military except in the very last necessity excited the anger of very many even of the wealthier classes. Among those who had suffered from it its effect was simply to exasperate; for the time the temper of the people seems to have been really dangerous. The point, on the other hand, which struck the ministerialists was the weakness of the existing laws for the suppression of sedition, and in accordance with their view it was thought necessary to hold an autumnal session, which met on the 23rd of November, and which passed by large The Six Acts. majorities a series of enactments known as "The Six Acts." These were respectively entitled, "An Act to prevent delay in the administration of justice in cases of misdemeanour;" "An Act to prevent the training of persons in the use of arms and the practice of military evolutions;" "An Act for the prevention and punishment of blasphemous and seditious libels;" "An Act to authorize justices of the peace, in certain disturbed counties, to seize and detain arms;" "An Act to subject certain publications to the duties of stamps upon newspapers, and to make other regulations for restraining the abuses arising from the publication of blasphemous and seditious libels;" and "An Act for preventing the assembling of seditious assemblies." Having passed these repressive measures, the Parliament was again prorogued (Dec. 29) till February 1820. In the interval, on the 29th of January, the old King died, in his eighty-second year.

GEORGE IV.