A Correspondent of the Literary Gazette writes: “I have been afforded an opportunity of examining many of the letters of Napoleon which figure in the Imperial collection; and I assure you that the commission charged with the duty of saying what should and what should not be published, had a most arduous task to perform. For of all the ‘cramped pieces of penmanship’ that were ever seen his are the most cramped and unintelligible. The manner in which the letters are formed would frighten a writing-master into fits, and the lines never run straight, whilst not unfrequently they come into collision. And what is singular is that a great many of the words are grossly misspelt, and that others are only half-written. O vanity of human genius! O triumph for dull little schoolboys! The man who conquered more kingdoms than Alexander knew not orthography!”

Invasion of England projected by Napoleon I.

Such were the conditions of this attack; and such the forces with which Napoleon expected “to conquer the world in London;” and his letters to Soult, to Bruix, to Déeres must convince the reader that he was in earnest in his scheme of “planting the tricolour on the Tower.” The problem for Napoleon to solve was how to transport across the Channel an army of 150,000 men, with horses, cannon, baggage, and equipments, in spite of the naval superiority of England. In these first preparations we must allow he succeeded beyond our worst expectations. Within fourteen months from the commencement of the war he had gathered within ten leagues of our coast, and had placed beyond the power of attack, a flotilla mounting 2000 guns, and able to transport his superb army, which, though numbering 150,000 men, could embark in less than a single tide, and were fully trained for a naval encounter.

So far, at least, as regards the Government, it must be confessed that our preparations to meet this attack were unequal to the danger. In the Channel especially—the point menaced—the naval arrangements made by the Admiralty were very faulty and even ridiculous. Such a Power as England should never have allowed the flotilla to assemble at Boulogne at all; and when it had assembled it should have been assailed by a mass of gunboats and light vessels, which we might have sent out in enormous numbers. Yet the Admiralty persisted in encountering the flotilla with 18 and 12-pounder frigates, which drew too much water to close the shore, and, at long range, were no match for their powerfully armed, though small antagonists; the result was that on no occasion were we able to damage the enemy seriously, and that on some we suffered severely.

In England as well as in France it was thought that the flotilla was to risk the passage unaided, its heavy armament suggesting the notion that Napoleon believed it a match for our fleet in the narrow strait between Dover and Calais. We now know, however, that this was an error, and that Napoleon never intended to embark unless supported by a covering squadron, which, having for a time the command of the Channel, would completely protect the flotilla and the army. In order to have the mastery of the Channel for the forty-eight hours required for the transit, the problem was so to manœuvre his fleets as to bring a superior force off Boulogne, in spite of the numerous English squadrons which watched or blockaded them in all their harbours. He devised a twofold scheme for this end, adapted to the circumstances of the seaboard, and which experience proved to be feasible.

This volume, however, proves sufficiently that, brilliant as were Napoleon’s designs, he could not inspire Villeneuve and Ganteaume with the daring energy of Nelson and Cochrane, or make British seamen of his sailors. The want of discipline, the timidity, and the inexperience, of which there are proofs, explain how Napoleon’s deep-laid designs were brought to an end on the day of Trafalgar.

However, in 1805, Napoleon renewed his invasion scheme, the details of which he thus narrates in the 11th volume of his Correspondance, 1863:

Thus, in the spring of 1805 Napoleon collected within ten leagues of our shores a flotilla of nearly 4000 vessels, which, moored under the batteries of Boulogne, and armed with very heavy cannon, had long repelled our attempts to destroy them. Encamped around lay the veteran legions which had been selected for the descent, and had been trained with such care to embark and expedite the passage, that Napoleon writes, “150,000 men with a due proportion of guns and horses could within four tides effect a landing.”

His plan was marked with much ingenuity. The aspect of an armed flotilla induced our Admiralty to think that Napoleon relied on it alone to cross; and they felt assured that when at sea, three or four ships would suffice to destroy it. Accordingly, our Channel fleet was reduced to a force of not more than six sail; and the mass of the British Navy was employed either in blockading the enemy’s squadrons or in distant expeditions on the ocean. Could, therefore, one of the blockaded fleets effect its junction with another, and penetrate into the unguarded Channel, a temporary ascendancy at sea might be gained, under cover of which the flotilla could cross and ferry over the French army.

It is only in this volume that we see how nearly Napoleon’s design succeeded so far as regards the descent, and also what were the causes of its failure. Whatever we may think of his project as a whole, it must be allowed that in August, 1805, when Villeneuve put to sea from Ferrol, the Emperor had good reason to expect that his Admirals would fulfil their mission:—

In England the Whigs laughed at the idea of the invasion as a ministerial bugbear. “Can anything equal,” says Lord Grenville in 1804, “the ridicule of Pitt riding about from Downing-street to Wimbledon, and from Wimbledon to Cox-heath, to inspect military carriages, impregnable batteries, and Lord Chatham’s reviews? Can he possibly be serious in expecting Bonaparte now?” So also wrote Fox a year afterwards—“The alarm of invasion here was most certainly a groundless one, and raised for some political purpose by the Ministers.” Whatever the Whigs might then think, there is no doubt now as to Bonaparte’s intentions. “Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours, and we are masters of the world,” are his famous words. His design to invade this country was never relinquished, was cherished as the darling scheme of his life, until within a month or two before Pitt’s death, when the battle of Trafalgar destroyed his hopes for ever.—Selected and abridged from reviews in the Times.

Fate of the Duc d’Enghien.

While the First Consul was meditating the descent upon England, in 1804, his life and government were imperilled by the conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru. The Duc d’Enghien, as is well known, was the innocent victim of this affair, having been arrested on neutral territory, and shot in a ditch, without a trial, in order to strike the Bourbons with terror. While the printed account shows that the plot was a formidable one, that the death of Napoleon and a counter-revolution were really not remote contingencies, and that there were some slight grounds to suspect an intrigue between Dumouriez and the Duke, it also impliedly acquits that Prince of any share in the main conspiracy, and throws the guilt of his cruel fate exclusively on the First Consul. From the list of charges against the Duke, entirely in Napoleon’s writing, it is plain that he did not possess any proofs, sufficient even for the tribunal of Vincennes to convict the prisoner of a design against his life.

These monstrous charges speak for themselves, and accord well with the midnight dungeon, the irresponsible conclave, the undefended prisoner, and the grave dug before the trial for the victim! Moreover, the volume of Napoleon’s Correspondance in which these details are given, has not a trace of the alleged over-rapidity of Savary, of the suppression of the Prince’s letter by Talleyrand, of the order said to have been given to Real to suspend the execution after the sentence, and to await the result of a regular examination—of the hundred and one excuses, in short, which have been urged for Napoleon by his apologists. On the contrary, from the following letter we infer that he wished to avoid discussion about a purpose already determined, and that he feared lest public opinion should condemn his design on the Duc d’Enghien. It is addressed to the Commandant of Vincennes:—

Napoleon’s Government, though very despotic, was not, however, usually cruel; and this great crime which, perhaps, was caused by the haunting dread of an assassin’s arm, was an exception to its general tenor.—Times review.

Last Moments of Mr. Pitt.

The news of Austerlitz was the last blow which killed Pitt. The gout, which had hitherto confined its attacks to his extremities, assailed some vital organ. He was not without hopes of getting better. Lord Wellesley found him in high spirits, though before the interview was over Pitt fainted in his presence. His last moments are described by the Hon. James Stanhope, who was present in the room when he died; so that at last we seem to have authentic information of a scene which has hitherto been very imperfectly described. “I remained the whole of Wednesday night with Mr. Pitt,” says Mr. Stanhope in a paper drawn up by him, and of which Earl Stanhope has availed himself in his Life of Pitt. “His mind seemed fixed on the affairs of the country, and he expressed his thoughts aloud, though sometimes incoherently. He spoke a good deal concerning a private letter from Lord Harrowby, and frequently inquired the direction of the wind; then said, answering himself, ‘East; ah! that will do; that will bring him quick.’ At other times he seemed to be in conversation with a messenger, and sometimes cried out ‘Hear, hear,’ as if in the House of Commons. During the time he did not speak he moaned considerably, crying, ‘Oh, dear! Oh, Lord!’ Towards twelve the rattles came in his throat, and proclaimed approaching dissolution.... At about half-past two he ceased moaning.... I feared he was dying; but shortly afterwards, with a much clearer voice than he spoke in before, and in a tone I never shall forget, ‘Oh, my country! how I leave my country!’ [referring, as it was natural for him to do, to the disastrous state of the continental war produced by the battle of Austerlitz.] From that time he never spoke or moved, and at half-past four expired without a groan or struggle,” 23rd January, 1806. He received the Sacrament from the Bishop of Lincoln. Mr. Pitt gave his watch to his servant, who handed it over to Mr. Dundas, M.P., more than twenty years after Mr. Pitt’s death. That watch, a mourning-ring, and box containing the hair, were bequeathed to the Rt. Hon. R. N. Hamilton; and the watch is now preserved in the Fitzwilliam Museum, at Cambridge.

“Pitt is the most forgiving and easy-tempered of men,” says Lord Malmesbury. “He is the most upright political character I ever knew or heard of,” says Wilberforce. “I never once saw him out of temper,” says George Rose. One day, when the conversation turned upon the quality most needed in a Prime Minister, and one said “Eloquence,” another “Knowledge,” and a third “Toil,” Pitt said, “No; Patience.” It was an answer worthy of the great statesman, and recalls that of Newton, who said that he owed his splendid discoveries to the power of fixed attention. Pitt was wonderfully patient, and this which is commonly regarded as a slow virtue he combined with uncommon readiness and rapidity of thought. “What an extraordinary man Pitt is!” said Adam Smith; “he makes me understand my own ideas better than before.” The Marquis Wellesley has left this character of Pitt—a man of princely hospitality and amiable nature:

This was “the Heaven-born Minister.” This was “the pilot to weather the storm.” This is he who stands forth as the greatest of our statesmen, and the story of whose life, as fitly told by Lord Stanhope, will have undying interest throughout the world.

Who would have supposed forty years ago that a day was coming when a Frenchman would unhesitatingly write the apology—we had almost said the panegyric—of William Pitt—ce Pitt, as the members of the Jacobin Club used to call him? And yet such is the case. By way of preface to a translation of Lord Stanhope’s last work, M. Guizot has given a very good estimate both of the political relation in which England stands to France, and also of the character of the great British statesman. He conclusively shows that Pitt was positively opposed to a war with France, and did all he could to prevent the inevitable catastrophe.

What drove George the Third mad.

How strange is it to find, upon a close examination of the biography of Mr. Pitt, that early in the present century, the mention of the measure which twenty-eight years later became the law of the land, had the effect of disturbing the reason of the Sovereign: yet so it was. “Pitt had become in a manner pledged on the union of the Irish with the British Legislature to provide for what has since been called the Emancipation of the Catholics. The probability is, that from the first he had underrated the King’s repugnance to the measure; but it has been suggested that had there been no treachery in the camp, and had he been the first to broach the subject to George III., he might have had his own way, and carried the acquiescence of the King. As it was, Lord Loughborough had, contrary to all rule, made the King aware of Pitt’s intentions, and had, for his own selfish purposes, sought to strengthen His Majesty in a most absurd view of his duty. So it happened that instead of Pitt breaking the subject to the King, the King, in a fit of impatience, breaks out upon Dundas. Referring to Lord Castlereagh, who had recently come from Dublin, he said, “What is it that this young lord has brought over which they are going to throw at my head?... The most Jacobinical thing I ever heard of! I shall reckon any man my personal enemy who proposes any such measure.” “Your Majesty,” replied Dundas, “will find among those who are friendly to that measure some whom you never supposed to be your enemies.” The time for action had evidently come: it was necessary for Pitt to break the silence; he wrote to the King explaining his views, and pointing out that if they were not acceptable it would be necessary for him to resign. Pitt did resign; his successor was appointed, but before the formal transfer of office could take place, the King went mad, and it was this Catholic question that drove him mad. He recovered in a fortnight and told his physician to write to Pitt, “Tell him I am now quite well—quite recovered from my illness; but what has he not to answer for who is the cause of my having been ill at all?” Pitt was deeply touched, and at once conveyed an assurance to the King through the same physician that never again during the King’s reign would he bring forward the Catholic question. Previous to that illness, Pitt had two clear alternatives before him—“Either I shall relieve the Catholics, or I shall resign,”—and he resigned accordingly. But after the illness all was changed. Any one attempting to relieve the Catholics would incur the risk of the King’s derangement. There was but a choice of evils, and it was natural that Pitt should regard it as the lesser evil to postpone indefinitely the settlement of the Catholic claims, which, nevertheless, he regarded as of the utmost importance.”—Times review.

The Rt. Hon. George Rose, when Secretary of the Treasury, had frequent conversations with George III., whom he occasionally received at his house at Cuffnells. Evidently the King took the lion’s share in every dialogue. His remarks and his gossip must have been often amusing, and not always uninstructive. He invariably turned the conversation to personal subjects, and he commented freely on the numerous politicians whom he had in his time employed and baffled. He had a peculiar dislike to Lord Melville, he resented Lord Grenville’s pride, and he accurately described Lord Auckland as an inveterate intriguer. Of himself he said that he seldom forgot and never forgave, but that he always tried to believe the best of every man until he had proved his demerit. Many, he added, improved when they found that they had received more than justice; but it never occurred to him that his own opinion might not form an accurate and sufficient standard of merit.

During the latter part of the time, George III., notwithstanding the continuance of some delusions, was perfectly competent to understand the state of affairs, and there was every reason to suppose that he would become convalescent before his son could take his seat as Regent. For the remainder of his reign, his Ministers and his subjects regarded his occasional insanity as one of the ordinary contingencies of the Constitution. Mr. Pitt, during his second Administration, sometimes obtained from the physicians a written certificate of the King’s competence before he entered his presence for the transaction of business.

Predictions of the Downfal of Napoleon I.

At a moment when the prestige of the Empire was accepted everywhere, Wellington not only expressed doubts as to the stability of that edifice, which seemed as if it must endure for ages, but pointed out distinctly the causes which must operate to throw it down, and the means by which its fall might be hastened. From that hour, whilst prosecuting the war in Spain, he took care as much as possible, to regulate his own proceedings according to the general state of Europe. Something told him that the little army on the Mondego had a mighty part to play in the sanguinary drama which agitated the world; and that not the fate of the Peninsula alone was at stake, nor yet the question of England’s supremacy, but the independence and liberty of all nations, menaced by the ambition of one man.

In December, 1811, Wellington wrote to Lord William Bentinck: “I have long considered it probable that we shall see a general resistance throughout Europe to the horrible and base tyranny of Bonaparte, and that we shall be called upon to play a leading part in the drama, as counsellors as well as actors.”

In a letter to Lord Liverpool, in 1811, Wellington wrote: “I am convinced, that if we can only hold out a little longer, we shall see the world emancipated.” And to Dumouriez, July, 1811: “It is impossible that Europe can much longer submit to the debasing tyranny which oppresses it.”

Brialmont and Gleig summarily observe: “It may truly be said that the Duke foretold in succession, the final success of the war in Spain—the influence which that war would exercise over public opinion in other nations—the general rising of Europe against Bonaparte—the fall of the Empire—the disastrous campaign in Russia—and the awakening of the public spirit in Germany.”

When, in 1807, Haydon dined with Sir George and Lady Beaumont, he met there Humphry Davy, who was very entertaining, and made a remark which turned out a singularly successful prophecy; he said, “Napoleon will certainly come in contact with Russia, by pressing forward in Poland, and there, probably, will begin his destruction.” This was said five years before it happened.

Lord Mulgrave, afterwards Marquis of Normanby, first raised Haydon’s enthusiasm for Wellington by saying, one day, at table, “If you live to see it, he will be a second Marlborough.”

Wellington predicts the Peninsular Campaign.

The following is illustrative of the prophetic perception of Wellington at the outset of the contest:—“He dined in Harley-street one day in June, 1808, just before he set out in command of the expedition which was assembling in Cork harbour. The ladies had withdrawn, and he sat tête-à-tête with his host, and was silent. On being asked what he was thinking of, he replied, ’To tell you the truth, I was thinking of the French whom I am going to fight. I have never seen them since the campaign in Flanders, when they were already capital soldiers; and a dozen years of successes must have made them still better. They have beaten all the world, and are supposed to be invincible. They have besides, it seems, a new system, which has out-manœuvred and overwhelmed all the armies of Europe. But no matter, my die is cast. They may overwhelm, but I do not think they will out-manœuvre me. In the first place, I am not afraid of them, as everybody else seems to be; and secondly, if what I hear of their system of manœuvres be true, I think it a false one against troops steady enough—as I hope mine are—to receive them with the bayonet. I suspect that all the continental armies were more than half beaten before the battle began. I, at least, will not be frightened beforehand.’”

The Battle of Waterloo.

Why the issue of this campaign was so different from that of many of its splendid forerunners may be accounted for with perfect certainty. The Duke and Blucher were different men, of greater ability, and better united than the Generals of any previous coalition, and the large majority of their troops were capable of heroic exertions. The Duke was not the man to allow an accident of time to ruin an ally, and at the crisis of the campaign, on the 16th, he baffled the Emperor by his tactical skill and the intrepidity of his British infantry. Of the subsequent moves by which he won the greatest battle of modern times, it is enough to say that they defy criticism, while the heroism of two-thirds of his army has not been surpassed in military annals. As for the Prussian troops, their stand at Ligny and their subsequent rally and advance to Waterloo, are worthy of the highest commendation; and Blucher’s celebrated march from Wavre is said to have wrung from Napoleon himself the admission that “it was a flash of genius.” It was this combination of talent and valour, unlike anything he had encountered before, that brought the superior numbers of the allies to bear upon Napoleon at last, and involved him and his army in ruin.

As for the armies that met in this bloody strife, we Englishmen think it enough to say that, except the Belgian and Nassau levies, they all did their duty like soldiers. The weak falsetto of M. Thiers detracts from the manhood of that dauntless cavalry “who rode round our squares like their own,” and from the renown of that veteran infantry “who bore nine rounds before they staggered.” Nor will the heroism of Ligny be forgotten, nor the glory of England at Waterloo fade, because an historian chooses to write that the Prussian army “was well beaten,” and that the “English, excellent in defence, are very mediocre on the offensive.” At this time, surely, a French historian might describe the campaign of 1815 with a candid regard to truth alone, and without pandering to the ignoble worship of military despotism.

Wellington’s Defence of the Waterloo Campaign.

“After dinner the conversation turned on the Waterloo campaign, when Croker alluded to the criticisms of the French military writers, some of whom contended that the Duke had fought the battle in a position full of difficulty, because he had no practicable retreat. The Duke said: ‘At all events, they failed in putting it to the test. The road to Brussels was practicable every yard for such a purpose. I knew every foot of the ground beyond the forest and through it. The forest on each side of the chaussée was open enough for infantry, cavalry, and even for artillery, and very defensible. Had I retreated through it, could they have followed me? The Prussians were on their flank, and would have been on their rear. The co-operation of the Prussians in the operations I undertook was part of my plan, and I was not deceived. But I never contemplated a retreat on Brussels. Had I been forced from my position, I should have retreated to my right, towards the coast, the shipping, and my resources. I had placed Hill where he could have lent me important assistance in many contingencies, and that might have been one. And, again, I ask, if I had retreated on my right, would Napoleon have ventured to have followed me? The Prussians, already on his flank, would have been on his rear. But my plan was to keep my ground till the Prussians appeared, and then to attack the French position; and I executed my plan.’”

It matters little whether it be a pleasing tradition or an historical fact, but it was commonly said that after the Peace, which crowned the immortal services of the Duke of Wellington, that great general, on seeing the playing-fields at Eton, said, there had been won the crowning victory of Waterloo.

Lord Castlereagh at the Congress of Vienna.

“Contemporaries saw that many small States were crushed by the arrangements of Vienna, and that one or two of the larger monarchies, especially that of Russia, were sensibly strengthened. Therefore they concluded that the aim and end of the Congress of Vienna was to aggrandise the greater monarchies, and that the English Minister, biassed by political prejudices or dazzled by royal condescension, had unworthily lent himself to the accomplishment of that object. As the confidential correspondence of that period makes its appearance bit by bit, we are learning to form a juster estimate of what Lord Castlereagh effected at the Congress. It is hard to set limits to the evils which would have been the result of greater facility or less caution on the part of the English plenipotentiary. That Alexander would, but for Lord Castlereagh’s obstinate resistance, have absorbed the whole of Poland into the Russian empire, and that Prussia would have indemnified herself by the annexation of the whole of Saxony, appears certain; and that France and Austria would have plunged Europe back into war, in their efforts to resist, seems not improbable. The greediness of the Powers who had met to divide the spoil threatened incessantly to bring them into collision; and it was on Lord Castlereagh that the ungracious task of moderating their extravagant pretensions fell. If he had failed, and the Congress had come to the abrupt and angry close which seemed more than once inevitable, Napoleon’s return would have been safe and easy. It was hard, but it was unavoidable, that those who only saw the result in a considerable accession to Alexander’s frontier, should have accused Lord Castlereagh of being his tool, when he had been, in reality, resisting Alexander’s pretensions up to the very brink of war.”

This late justice to the eminent diplomatic services of Lord Castlereagh, reaches us some forty years after his death; thus giving the lie to the coarse and unfeeling ribaldry of the so-called “Liberal,” upon the awful termination of the statesman’s life.

The Cato-street Conspiracy.

Early in the year 1820—a period of popular discontent—a set of desperate men banded themselves together with a view to effect a revolution by sanguinary means, almost as complete in its plan of extermination as the Gunpowder Plot. The leader was one Arthur Thistlewood, who had been a soldier, had been involved in a trial for sedition, but acquitted, and had afterwards suffered a year’s imprisonment for sending a challenge to the minister, Lord Sidmouth. Thistlewood was joined by several other Radicals, and their meetings in Gray’s-Inn-lane were known to the spies Oliver and Edwards, employed by the Government. Their first design was to assassinate the Ministers, each in his own house; but their plot was changed, and Thistlewood and his fellow conspirators arranged to meet at Cato-street, Edgeware-road, and to proceed from thence to butcher the Ministers assembled at a Cabinet dinner, on Feb. 23rd, at Lord Harrowby’s, 39, Grosvenor-square, where Thistlewood proposed, as “a rare haul, to murder them all together.” Some of the conspirators were to watch Lord Harrowby’s house; one was to call and deliver a despatch-box at the door, the others were then to rush in and murder the Ministers as they sat at dinner; and, as special trophies, to bring away with them the heads of Lords Sidmouth and Castlereagh, in two bags provided for the purpose! They were then to fire the cavalry-barracks; and the Bank and Tower were to be taken by the people, who, it was hoped, would rise upon the spread of the news.

This plot was, however, revealed to the Ministers by Edwards, who had joined the conspirators as a spy. Still no notice was apparently taken. The preparations for dinner went on at Lord Harrowby’s till eight o’clock in the evening, but the guests did not arrive. The Archbishop of York, who lived next door, happened to give a dinner-party at the same hour, and the arrival of the carriages deceived those of the conspirators who were on the watch in the street, till it was too late to give warning to their comrades who had assembled at Cato-street, in a loft over a stable, accessible only by a ladder. Here, while the traitors were arming themselves by the light of one or two candles, a party of Bow-street officers entered the stable, when Smithers, the first of them who mounted the ladder, and attempted to seize Thistlewood, was run by him through the body, and instantly fell; whilst, the lights being extinguished, a few shots were exchanged in the darkness and confusion, and Thistlewood and several of his companions escaped through a window at the back of the premises; nine were taken that evening with their arms and ammunition, and the intelligence conveyed to the Ministers, who, having dined at home, met at Lord Liverpool’s to await the result of what the Bow-street officers had done. A reward of 1000l. was immediately offered for the apprehension of Thistlewood, and he was captured before eight o’clock next morning while in bed at a friend’s house, No. 8, White-street, Little Moorfields. The conspirators were sent to the Tower, and were the last persons imprisoned in that fortress. On April 20th, Thistlewood was condemned to death after three days’ trial; and on May 1st, he and his four principal accomplices, Ings, Brunt, Tidd, and Davidson, who had been severally tried and convicted, were hanged at the Old Bailey, and their heads cut off. The remaining six pleaded guilty; one was pardoned, and five were transported for life.

Southey relates this touching anecdote of Thistlewood’s last hours:—

The selection of Cato-street for the conspirators’ meeting was accidental; and the street itself is associated but indirectly in name with the Roman patriot and philosopher. To efface recollection of the conspiracy of the low and desperate politicians of 1820, Cato-street has been changed to Homer-street.

Money Panic of 1832.

advice which was followed to a prodigious extent. On Monday, May 14, (the bills having been profusely posted on Sunday!) the run upon the Bank for coin was so incessant, that in a few hours upwards of half a million was carried off: we remember a tradesman in the Strand bringing home, in a hackney-coach, 2000 sovereigns. Mr. Doubleday, in his Life of Sir Robert Peel, states the placards to have been “the device of four gentlemen, two of whom were elected members of the Reformed Parliament. Each put down 20l.; and the sum was expended in printing thousands of these terrible missives, which were eagerly circulated, and were speedily seen upon every wall in London. The effect is hardly to be described. It was electric.” The agent was a tradesman of kindred politics, in business towards the east end of Oxford-street; and it must be admitted that he executed the order completely.

A Great Sufferer by Revolutions.

Origin of the Anti-Corn-Law League.

“We have our Banksian, our Linnæan, our Hunterian Societies, and why should not at least our greatest commercial and manufacturing towns possess their Smithian Societies, devoted to the purpose of promulgating the beneficent truths of the ‘Wealth of Nations’? Such institutions, by promoting a correspondence with similar societies that would probably be organized abroad (for it is our example in questions affecting commerce that strangers follow), might contribute to the spread of liberal and just views of political science, and thus tend to ameliorate the restrictive policy of foreign governments through the legitimate influence of the opinions of its people.

“Nor would such societies be fruitless at home. Prizes might be offered for the best essay on the corn question, or lecturers might be sent to enlighten the agriculturists, and to invite discussion upon a subject so difficult and of such paramount interest to all.”

The pamphlet from which the preceding extract is taken, was published in the early part of the year 1835, about four years before the formation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, and at a time when, owing to the very low price of grain, and the prosperity of the manufacturing districts, the question of the Corn-laws scarcely attracted the slightest attention, either in Manchester or in any other part of the country.

Wellington’s Military Administration.