1817]

TRIALS FOR SEDITIOUS WRITINGS

1355

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 France were all to rise that night at ten o'clock, and that the "northern clouds," or men from the north, would insurrection. 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.

The Derby

June 10.

Suppression of seditious

writings.

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 highhanded 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, which must have showed the Government, if nothing else could, how odious and useless their attempts trial. 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

Mr. Hone's

Dec. 18, 1817.

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 wellknown 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 Alien Act, which reserved to the Government the power

The Alien
Act.

May 5, 1818.

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

1818]

STRENGTH OF THE OPPOSITION

1357

The Indemnity

March 13.

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 dropped and a new Bill introduced. Even an attempt on the part of Government to gain popularity turned to its Bill. 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

Condition of

family.

character of most of its members, was now such as the royal 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 SaxeCoburg, 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 insecurity with 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

The ministers'

the present Parliament.

1819]

DISSOLUTION OF PARLIAMENT

1359

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).

Evacuation

of France by

the allies.

Nov. 30, 1818.

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.

Resumption of cash payments. May 1819.

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