Notes:
[Footnote 148: It is somewhat remarkable that Lord Macaulay, in his endeavors to estimate the population in 1685, takes no notice of any of these details mentioned by Mr. Abbott.]
[Footnote 149: The details of this census of 1801 are given in a note in the preceding chapter (see page 185), from which it appears that the entire population of the United Kingdom was in that year 16,395,870. Sir A. Alison, in different chapters of the second part of his "History of Europe," gives returns of subsequent censuses, from the last of which (c. lvi., s. 34, note), it appears that in 1851 the population amounted to 27,511,862. an increase of 11,116,792 in half a century.]
[Footnote 150: "Lives of the Chief-justices," by Lord Campbell, iii., 87, life of Lord Kenyon.]
[Footnote 151: "What is this," said George III. to Mr. Dundas, "which this young lord (Castlereagh) 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."-Life of Pitt, iii., 274.]
[Footnote 152: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clxxxiv., life of Lord Erskine.]
[Footnote 153: "Lives of the Chancellors," c. clix., life of Lord Thurlow.]
[Footnote 154: See "Memoires de M. de Metternich," ii., 156.]
[Footnote 155: "Lives of the Chief-justices," iii., 175.]
[Footnote 156: Lord Stanhope, "History of England," i., 133.]
[Footnote 157: "Lives of the Chief-justices," ii., 451. He is quoting H. Walpole.]
[Footnote 158: Ibid., iii., 187.]
[Footnote 159: Campbell's "Lives of the Chief-justices," II., 139, life of Chief-justice Holt; and p. 418, life of Lord Mansfield.]
[Footnote 160: "Life of Wilberforce," i., 158.]
[Footnote 161: The division in the Lords was 100 to 36; in the Commons, 283 to 16.]
[Footnote 162: Afterward the Earl Grey of 1831.]
[Footnote 163: See especially his "Letters to Lord Castlereagh," p. 814; and "Life of Lord Liverpool," i., 512; ii., 35, 49, 127.]
[Footnote 164: Lord Colchester's "Diary," ii., 49, dated April 3, 1806, says eighteen years. But Mr. Windham's speech, as reported in the "Parliamentary History," second series, vi., 685, says sixteen years; and as he divides the ages into three classes, the two latter of which, from twenty-four to thirty-two, and from thirty-two to forty, are of eight years each, it is probable that the younger class was of the same duration, i.e., from sixteen to twenty-four.]
[Footnote 165: Lord Colchester's "Diary," ii., 300.]
[Footnote 166: See "Diary of Lord Colchester" (Speaker at the time), c. xxxvi., p. 316. He gives the whole of the Prince's letter to Perceval (which had been composed by Sheridan), and of Perceval's reply. The Regency Bill became law February 5, 1811.]
[Footnote 167: A letter of Lord Wellesley to Lord Grey, June 4 (given by Pearce, "Life of Lord Wellesley," iii., 270), shows that Lord Moira had been in communication with Lord Grey and Lord Grenville before Lord Wellesley had given up the idea of forming a ministry. And though Lord Grey in his reply (p. 272) expresses his conviction that Lord Moira's letter was not "an authorized communication," but only "a private communication," it is clear that it could not have been written without the privity of the Regent.]
[Footnote 168: "Life of Sheridan," ii., 425.]
[Footnote 169: Pearce's "Life of Lord Wellesley," iii., 276. All the letters which passed between Lord Grey, Lord Grenville, Lord Moira, and Lord Wellesley himself are given at full length by Mr. Pearce in that chapter.]
[Footnote 170: Stapleton's "George Canning and his Times," p. 202.]
[Footnote 171: Mr. Stapleton affirms that his Royal Highness actually did adopt this plan on this occasion: "His Royal Highness adopted the unprecedented course of commanding his servants to elect the First-minister. Their choice fell on Lord Liverpool."-George Canning and his Times, p. 208. Mr. Stapleton, however, gives no authority for this assertion, and he was probably mistaken, since Lord Liverpool's papers afford no corroboration of it, but rather tend to disprove it.]
CHAPTER VII. The Toleration Act.-Impropriety of making Catholic Emancipation (or any other Important Matter) an Open Question.-Joint Responsibility of all the Ministers.-Detention of Napoleon at St. Helena.-Question whether the Regent could Give Evidence in a Court of Law in a Civil Action.-Agitation for Reform.-Public Meetings.-The Manchester Meeting.-The Seditious Meetings Prevention Bill.-Lord Sidmouth's Six Acts.
The war was daily becoming of more exciting interest, and, so far as our armies were concerned, was rapidly assuming greater proportions. While the Duke of Portland was still at the head of affairs, Napoleon, by his unprovoked attacks on both the Peninsular kingdoms, had at last opened a field of action to our armies, in which even the most sanguine of those who placed a loyal confidence in the old invincibility of English prowess could not have anticipated the unbroken series of glories which were to reward their efforts. For four years Lord Wellington had contended against all the most renowned marshals of the Empire,[172] driving them back from impregnable lines of defence, defeating them in pitched battles, storming their strongest fortresses, without ever giving them room to boast of even the most momentary advantage obtained over himself; and he was now on the eve of achieving still more brilliant and decisive triumphs, which were never to cease till he had carried his victorious march far into the heart of France itself.
At such a time it may well be supposed that the attention of the new ministry was too fully occupied with measures necessary for the conduct of the war to leave it much time for domestic legislation. Yet even its first session was not entirely barren.
In the first excitement of the Restoration, when the nation was still exasperated at the recollection of what it had suffered under the triumphant domination of the Puritans, two laws had been framed to chastise them, conceived in a spirit as intolerant and persecuting as had dictated the very worst of their own. One, which was called the Conventicle Act, inflicted on all persons above the age of sixteen, who should be present at any religious service performed in any manner differently from the service of the Church of England, in any meeting-house, where more than five persons besides the occupiers of the house should be present, severe penalties, rising gradually to transportation; and gave a single magistrate authority to convict and to pass sentence on the offenders. The other, commonly known as the Five Mile Act, forbade all ministers, of any sect, who did not subscribe to the Act of Uniformity, and who refused to swear to their belief in the doctrine of passive obedience, from teaching in any school, and from coming within five miles of any city, corporate town, or borough sending members to Parliament, or any town or village in which they themselves had resided as ministers. The latter statute had fallen into complete disuse, and many of the provisions of the former had been relaxed, though magistrates in general construed the relaxing enactments as leaving the relaxations wholly at their discretion to grant or to withhold, and were very much in the habit of withholding or abridging them. Other statutes, such as the Test Act, had subsequently been passed against every sect of Dissenters, though they had only imposed civil disabilities, and had not inflicted penalties. But the new Prime-minister was a man to whose disposition anything resembling persecution was foreign and repugnant. Before his predecessor's unhappy death he had already discussed with him the propriety of abolishing laws conceived in such a spirit; and he no sooner found himself at the head of the government than he prepared a bill to carry out his views. He drew a distinction between the acts inflicting penalties and those which only imposed disabilities. With these latter he did not propose to interfere; but, in July, his colleague, Lord Castlereagh, introduced into the House of Commons a bill to repeal the Conventicle Act and the Five Mile Act altogether, and, when it had passed the Commons, he himself moved its adoption by the Lords, enforcing his recommendation by the argument, that "an enlarged and liberal toleration was the best security to the Established Church, a Church not founded on the exclusion of religious discussion, but, in its homilies, its canons, and all the principles on which it rested, courting the investigation of the Scriptures, upon which it founded its doctrines." At the same time, while urging the repeal of acts which he truly branded as a disgrace to the statute-book, he was not blind to the duty imposed on him, as responsible for the public tranquillity, of taking care that meetings held ostensibly for purposes of devotion should not be perverted to the designs of political agitators; and therefore he provided in the bill for the registration of all places appropriated to religious worship, and for the exaction from "the preachers and teachers in those meetings of some test or security in the oaths to be taken by them." He had already secured the acquiescence of the bishops, and he was equally successful now in winning the assent of the House. The conditions, such as they were, did not prevent the bill from being entirely acceptable to the Non-conformists; and though their spokesman in the House of Commons, Mr. W. Smith, member for Norwich, confessed a wish "that it had gone a little farther, and had granted complete religious liberty," he at the same time expressed sincere gratitude on the part of the Non-conformists for what was thus done for them; and declared that, "as an act of toleration, it certainly was the most complete which had hitherto been passed in this country." It was, in fact, the beginning of the abandonment of that system of discouragement of and hostility to all sects except the Established Church, which had hitherto been regarded by a large party as one of the most essential principles of the constitution. And as such it makes the year 1812 in some respects a landmark in our constitutional history.