THE anticipations in which we ventured to indulge on recording in our pages the pacification of Paris, have not been falsified by the event. Four years of tranquillity have now consolidated the general peace of Europe. The confederated potentates have judged it safe to withdraw their armies of occupation from the territory of France; and the throne of Louis XVIII. appears to have acquired additional stability from a measure which has thrown him for support upon the affections of his people.

Thus, the long series of transactions, military and political, arising out of the memorable French revolution, may be regarded as closed; and no future historian of that event will find it necessary to pursue his narrative beyond the peace of Paris, unless to record the resolu tions of the assembled sovereigns at the convention of Aix la Chapelle.

Not only the part taken by Great Britain in the first war with revolutionary France, but the renewal of hostilities after the peace of Amiens, was in great measure the result of the personal character and individual will of George III.; on which account it appeared desirable in the annals of his reign to carry on the history of this memorable contest to its termination, although the sovereign, so far from being an agent in its final developement, was not even an intelligent witness of the event. But a similar plea cannot be urged for pursuing further the course of European history.

With respect to domestic affairs, the case is different : the monarch, even in his deep seclusion, might still be in some measure regarded as ruling the destinies of Britain, through ministers originally of his own appoint. ment; and a continued, though brief, narrative of home affairs will be required to bring us down to the period which, by closing the life and the afflictions of the aged sovereign, has rendered his character a fit subject for the pen of history.

482

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A. D. 1816.

YEAR OF GEORGE III. 56 & 57.

PARLIAMENT 4 & 5.

Prince Regent's Speech. - Motion respecting the Holy Alliance. Motion respecting the Spanish Regency and Cortes. Army Estimates. Question of the Continuation of the Property Tax carried against Ministers. War Malt-tax repealed. - Distressed state of Agricul ture. Message to Parliament respecting the Marriage of the Princess Charlotte.-Motion respecting the Resumption of Cash Payments.Question of Catholic Emancipation negatived. Alien Bill. - Civil List Expenditure. · Consolidation of the English and Irish ExcheSilver Coinage. quers. Committee appointed for the Revision of the Statute Book. Prorogation of Parliament.- Embarrassed state of the Country.- Disturbed state of the eastern Counties. Insurrection in the Isle of Ely,· Distress of the Iron Manufacturers. Petitions for Redress of Grievances and for Parliamentary Reform. Spa-fields Meeting and Tumult.- Marriage of Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Sare Cobourg - of Princess Mary to the Duke of Gloucester. - Expedition against Algiers.

Budget.

ON February 1st, parliament was opened by commis

sion; the speech delivered in the name of the Prince Regent was filled with the happiest auguries of returning prosperity. It congratulated the two houses not only on the restoration of the country to a state of profound peace, through the re-establishment of the throne of the Bourbons and the alliances contracted with all the confederated powers, but on the flourishing condition of the commerce, manufactures and revenue of the kingdom. The commons were also assured, that they might rely on the disposition of his royal highness to co-operate in such measures of economy as should be found consistent with the security of the country and

the station which it occupied in Europe. Copies of the treaties concluded were then laid before parliament.

Lord Castlereagh soon after made a motion, which was acceded to, for the erection of a naval monument in honour of the battle of Trafalgar, of Lord Nelson, and of the officers and seamen who lost their lives on that glorious occasion,-a counterpart to the resolution lately carried for a Waterloo monument, dedicated to the Duke of Wellington and the army.

In

On February 9th, Mr. Brougham moved for the production of a copy of a treaty entered into at Paris on September 26th, between the sovereigns of Austria, Russia and Prussia; and which had received the sign manual of these potentates. By the tenor of this singular document, which received the name of the Holy Alliance, and was couched in the most devout and solemn language, the high contracting parties declared their resolution to take for their sole guide, both in their domestic administration and foreign relations, the precepts of the holy religion of Christ their Saviour. consequence, they bound themselves to the observance of three articles: the first of which united them in a fraternity of mutual assistance, and in the common protection of religion, peace and justice; which in the second article was explained to notify, that they regarded themselves as delegated by Providence to govern three branches of one and the same Christian nation, of which the Divine Being, under his three characters, was the sole real sovereign; the third article declared a readiness to receive into this holy alliance all the powers who should solemnly avow the sacred principles which had dictated it. Politicians were much perplexed to comprehend the meaning of an engagement at once so vague and so serious, which appeared to bind the contracting parties to nothing more than as Christian princes they stood already pledged to observe; and it was stated to have originated in a kind of enthusiastic impression made upon the mind of the Emperor Alexander, who had published a manifesto on the subject, dated on Christmas-day.

Lord Castlereagh resisted the production of this document, although he admitted that the Prince Regent had been urged by a joint letter of the three sovereigns to accede to it, and had in reply expressed his satisfaction at the nature of the treaty, and given an assurance that the British government would not be one of the least disposed to act up to its principles. Subsequent events seem to indicate, that a resolution to support the authority of each other against any revolutionary movements among their own subjects was the true object of this mystical combination of princes, veiled by so thick a mantle of religion.

Another unsuccessful motion was brought forward by Mr. Brougham, for an address to the Prince Regent, "humbly entreating him to take into his gracious consideration the sufferings of the late Spanish regency and Cortes; and representing, that the alliance at present subsisting between his royal highness and his catholic majesty affords the most favourable opportunity for interposing the good offices of Great Britain in their behalf with the weight that belongs to her and to the sentiments of this House and of the people." The speech of the mover served at least the purpose of a historical narrative of the cruelties perpetrated by Ferdinand VII. against the brave men who had contended for his crown, and a protest against measures by which he had compromised the interests and in some degree the honour of the British nation; whilst the answer of Lord Castlereagh exhibited a temper decidedly hostile to the party in Spain called that of the Liberales, and a disposition to reprobate the invective so freely bestowed in this country on the conduct and character of his catholic majesty.

The subject of army estimates was productive of warm debates in both Houses. After a good deal of preliminary discussion, the secretary at war, Lord Palmerston, proposed for the year 1816, an establishment for Great Britain and Ireland of 176,615 men, inclusive of the forces stationed in France, and of 30,480 men proposed to be disbanded; but exclusive of the regiments in the service of the East India company, of the foreign corps

After

in British pay, and of the embodied militia. being strongly contested in every stage of their progress, both this resolution and all the grants of money founded upon the different items which it comprehended, were carried by government; but a respect for the general opinion out of doors, afterwards led ministers to make some reductions on various articles of expence. The navy estimates were carried without deduction, though not without debate.

The continuation of the property tax was opposed by numerous petitions to parliament, which continued pouring in from day to day, and which were enforced by numerous speeches, turning either upon the distresses of the country, which rendered such an impost too grievous to be longer borne, or upon the breach of public faith involved in the renewal, during a time of peace, of what, at the period of its imposition, was universally regarded as a war-tax. At length, on March 18th, the question was decided by a petition presented by Sir William Curtis from the merchants, bankers and traders of the city of London, convened at the mansion-house, and supported by no less than 22,000 signatures, among which appeared the names of many persons of the first respectability, a considerable proportion of whom, though original supporters of the tax, now united with their fellow-citizens in reprobating its continuance. At the conclusion of a debate in which the voices of the speakers were drowned in impatient cries of question, the division exhibited the following numbers: for the continuance of the tax 201, against it 238-majority 37.

Subsequently to this important defeat, the chancellor of the exchequer surprised the House by voluntarily tendering a resignation of the war-tax on malt. After being deprived, he said, of the principal resource on which he had calculated, he must of necessity have recourse to the money market, and it was of little importance that the amount of the malt duty should be added to the loan.