IX. and a variety of circumstances had given it a peculiar and CHAP. delightful character. The long security from foreign warfare or domestic dissension; the necessity of cultivating 1792. the yeomanry with a view to parliamentary influence; the passion for field sports, which seems indelible in the AngloSaxon blood, had combined to make the nobles and landholders almost universally reside upon their estates. The principal ones had houses in London or Edinburgh, but their homes were in the country. Their libraries, their pictures, their palaces, their tombs, their hearts were there. Thus they were identified in feeling, interest, and amusements with the rural population; and a feeling had grown up between them akin to that which subsisted in La Vendée between the seigneurs and peasants. They followed the same hounds, joined in the same festivities, sat in the same church, were carried at last to the same churchyard. One common faith united the rich and the poor. The graceful steeple of the parish church frequently arose from amidst the oaks of the nobleman's park, and his younger brother held the living. The noble pastor, often highly educated, visited the poor in their affliction ; he joined the rich in their festivity; he was the link which united the extremes of society, too apt in the progress of opulence to be severed from each other. The counties. were covered with manor-houses, the fields with cottages; fearless poverty spread into nature; haughty opulence sought to improve its beauties. The abundance of enclosures and hedgerow timber gave the country the appearance of a continued forest; but the frequent green meadow, trim garden, flowering orchard, and ornamented cottage, bespoke the abode of happy and contented man. 24. ness of A monarch was on the throne peculiarly fitted for the stormy period in which his lot had been cast. With little Great firmeducation, and no great acquired information, George III. George III. had yet that solid judgment, that native sagacity, which so often compensates all other deficiencies, and for the want of which all the most laboured accomplishments can VOL. II. Ꮓ 1792. CHAP. seldom afford any compensation. Simple in his tastes, IX. correct and decorous in his manners, essentially patriotic in his affections, he faithfully represented the feelings of the best part of the British people. Though he frequently, from the effects of external disaster or internal faction, became, for a time, the object of vehement obloquy to the noisy multitude, yet these ebullitions were transient, and he never failed, ere long, to regain that favour with the unthinking many which he never lost with the thinking few. He was a more valuable king of England, at that period, than one with more shining talents or extensive knowledge might have been; for he was in less danger of being swept away by philosophical theories of which he was ignorant, or delusions which arose out of views that he did not possess. His temper was obstinate; but, directed by good sense, this peculiarity seldom led him into error, and often was productive of incalculable advantage. He was the very opposite of Louis XVI.; without his philosophic speculation, with less unforeseeing philanthropy, he had incomparably more firmness and resolution.* 25. State of Great Bri Nine years of peace had enabled Great Britain to recover, in a great degree, the losses and exhaustion of the tain in 1792. American War. If she had lost one empire in the Western, she had gained another in the Eastern world. The wealth of India began to pour into her bosom; and a little island in the west of Europe already exercised a sway over realms more extensive than the arms of Rome had reduced to subjection. A vast revenue, amounting to * An eminent instance of this had recently occurred. When London was in flames during the dreadful riots of Lord George Gordon in 1780, and the Cabinet was assembled to deliberate on what should be done, an order to the military to fire upon the people, if in the act of breaking into or destroying, was made out; but the Lord-Chancellor and other cabinet ministers declined to sign it, from doubts as to its legality. Upon this the King asked the Attorney-general (Wedderburn) "if the order was agreeable to the law of England." The Attorney replied that it was. "Give me the papers," cried the monarch, "and I will sign it myself." He did so; the troops immediately acted upon it, and in six hours the devastation was at an end. But George III. was ready in his IX. 1792. £7,000,000 annually, was already derived from her Indian CHAP. possessions; and, although nearly the whole of this great sum was absorbed in their costly establishment, yet her rulers already looked forward with confident hope to the period, now never likely to be realised, when the empire of Hindostan, instead of being as heretofore a burden, should be a source of revenue to the ruling state, and the wealth of India really become that mine of gold to Britain, which it had long proved to numbers of her children. Her national debt, amounting to £244,000,000, and occasioning an annual charge of £9,317,000 was indeed a severe burden upon the industry of the people; and the taxes, though light in comparison of what have been imposed in later times, were still felt as oppressive. But, nevertheless, the resources of the state had augmented to an extraordi- 1 Ann Reg. nary degree during the repose which had prevailed since xxxiii. 153. the conclusion of the former contest.1 and military forces. Commerce, agriculture and manufactures had rapidly in- 26. creased; the trade with the independent States of North Revenues, America had been found to exceed what had been enjoyed and naval with them when they were in a state of colonial dependence; and the incessant exertions of every individual to better his condition had produced a surprising effect upon the accumulation of capital and the state of public credit. The Three per Cents, from 57, at the close of the war, had risen to 90; and the overflowing wealth of the capital was already finding its way into the most circuitous foreign trades, and hazardous distant investments. The national revenue amounted to £16,000,000, and the army included 32,000 soldiers in the British Isles in the pay of riding-school, if tranquillity had not been restored, to have ridden at the head of his Guards into his burning capital.-WRAXALL's Memoirs, i. 356, 357. The same account is given in substance by Lord Campbell in his Life of Lord Loughborough—an impartial, though rather unwilling, witness to the merits of George III. or Lord Loughborough. His Majesty, on the Attorney-general's answer, said, that "this had been decidedly his opinion, though he would not previously venture to express it; but that now, as supreme magistrate, he would see it carried into effect. The requisite orders were issued to the troops, and the conflagrations were stopped."-Lives of the Chancellors, vi. 138. IX. 1792. CHAP. Government, besides an equal force in the East Indies maintained by the Company, and thirty-six regiments of yeomanry. But these forces were rapidly augmented after the commencement of the war, and before 1796 the regular army of Britain amounted to two hundred and six thousand men, including forty-two thousand militia. More than half of this force, however, was required for the ser1Jom.i.250. vice of the colonies; and experience has proved, that xxxiii. 124. Britain can never collect much above forty thousand men Finance at any one point on the continent of Europe. The real Committee, strength of England consisted in her inexhaustible wealth, 1791. State in the public spirit and energy of her people, in the moral influence of centuries of glory, and in a fleet of a hundred App. 247. and fifty ships of the line, which gave her the undisputed command of the seas.1* Ann. Reg. Report of May 10, Papers. James, i. Table i. 27. in the na in the army. But, though abounding in all the resources, England, at Depression this period, had little of the moral strength so necessary tional spirit, in war. During the disastrous contest in America, the and abuses national glory had been seriously tarnished. Two large armies had laid down their arms to the enemy; and even the ancient supremacy of the seas seemed to be in hazard, when the combined fleets of France and Spain rode triumphant in the British Channel. The glorious defence of Gibraltar had alone maintained the ancient celebrity of the English land forces; the splendid victory of the 12th April, under Rodney, vindicated the long * The British Navy on 5th January 1792 contained-- Fit for Service. Line, 115 -JAMES'S Naval History. I. Appendix, 247. Total. 153 89 The European powers had the following naval establishments at this time : IX. 1792. established prowess of her seamen. Nor was either the CHAP. army or the navy in such a state as to render any early success probable in any new contest. Abuses of the most flagrant description existed in every department of the land forces; young men were appointed to commissions by purchase, or in consequence of parliamentary influence, without any knowledge of their profession; promotion was seldom awarded to real merit; and no academies or schools were in existence to teach the inexperienced officer even the rudiments of the military art.* It was by slow degrees, and in the school of adversity, that the British army was improved, and her commanders rendered capable of turning to good account that undaunted courage, which 1 Jom. i. in every age has formed the honourable characteristic of 251. the British people. 1 the national the eigh England, like the other monarchies of Europe, had slum- 28. bered on, contented, prosperous, and for the most part in- Slumber of glorious, during the eighteenth century. The bright aurora mind during with which it was ushered in, in the days of Eugene and teenth cenMarlborough, had afforded no true promise of the gene- tury. ral character of the political era which followed. The fierce passions, the heart-stirring feelings, the enduring energy of the civil wars, had passed into the page of history, and, with the licentious profligacy of Charles II., were pictured only in contemporary annals, or the reflective mirror of the national theatre. "The period," says Mackintosh," from the English to the French Revolution was the golden age of authentic history. Governments were secure nations tranquil, improvement rapid, manners mild, beyond the example of any former age. The English nation, which possessed the greatest of all human blessings, a wisely-constructed popular government, necessarily enjoyed the largest share of every other benefit. To such a length was this system carried, that it was not unusual for infants to obtain commissions in the cradle, and draw pay regularly for sixteen years before they joined their corps. The well-known answer when a loud noise was heard in a nursery in Scotland, "Oh, it's only the Major roaring for his parritch!" shows how common this abuse had become in families of influence. |
