ONE:The Duke of Wellington's declaration against Reform had all the effect of an arbitrary prohibition thrown in the way of a violent passion. The effect was tremendous; a revolutionary flame was kindled everywhere at the same instant, as if the whole atmospherenorth, south, east, and westwas wrapt in a sheet of electric fire. No words from any statesman in English history ever produced such an impression. The transports became universal; all ranks were involved; all heads, save the strongest and most far-seeing, were swept away by the torrent of excitement. John Bull's patience was gone. Parliamentary Reform was right; the time was come when it should be granted; and no man, not even the Duke of Wellington, should be allowed to withstand the nation's will. The unpopularity of the Duke with his own party swelled for the moment the current of the movement. High Churchmen declared that Reform would raise a barrier against Papal aggression, which they felt to be necessary, as experience had shown that the existing Constitution afforded no security. The old Tories, in their resentment on account of the concession to the Catholic claims, appeared to be ready to support the popular demands, if by so doing they could mortify or overthrow the Government. The inhabitants of the towns, intelligent, active, progressive, longed for Parliamentary Reform, because they believed it would remove the impediments which retarded the advancement of society. There were only two classes of the community who were believed at the time to be opposed to the Reform movement: first, the aristocratic Whigs, because Parliamentary Reform would destroy the influence by which they had for a century after the Revolution governed the country, but their accidental position as popular leaders obliged them for the time to go with the current; second, the class to whom Mr. Cobbett applied the term "borough-mongers," including all those who had property in Parliamentary seats, and could sell them, or bestow them, as they thought proper. The former, it was argued, were obliged to conceal their attachment to the old system, which had secured to a few great families a monopoly of government and its emoluments. The latter had become so odious to the nation that their opposition availed little against the rapid tide of public feeling and the tremendous breakers of popular indignation.The genius of Lord Stair was anything but military, and soon led him into a dilemma. Instead of waiting, as he had first determined, for the reinforcements of Hessians and Hanoverians, he advanced up the river, with the intention of drawing supplies from Franconia. He advanced to Aschaffenberg, which he reached on the 16th of June; but Noailles had rapidly followed him, and adroitly seized on the fords of both the Upper and Lower Main, thus cutting off Stair both from his own stores at Hanau, and from the expected supplies of Franconia. At this critical moment King George arrived at the camp, and found Noailles lying in a strong position, and Stair cooped up with his army in a narrow valley between the wild and hilly forest of Spessart, which extends from Aschaffenberg to Dettingen and the river Main. To render his case the more desperate, he had quarrelled with Aremberg, who had let him pursue his march alone; and Stair now lay, with only thirty-seven thousand men, in the very grasp, as it were, of Noailles and his sixty thousand men.
THREE:Apprehensions of this kind were not lessened by the memorable speech of Mr. Canning, delivered on the 15th of February, in which he gave a narrative of his labours and sacrifices in the Catholic cause, and complained of the exactions and ingratitude of its leaders. Having shown how he stood by the cause in the worst of times, he proceeded:"Sir, I have always refused to act in obedience to the dictates of the Catholic leaders; I would never put myself into their hands, and I never will.... Much as I have wished to serve the Catholic cause, I have seen that the service of the Catholic leaders is no easy service. They are hard taskmasters, and the advocate who would satisfy them must deliver himself up to them bound hand and foot.... But to be taunted with a want of feeling for the Catholics, to be accused of compromising their interests, conscious as I amas I cannot but beof being entitled to their gratitude for a long course of active services, and for the sacrifice to their cause of interests of my ownthis is a sort of treatment which would rouse even tameness itself to assert its honour and vindicate its claims."
THREE:The siege of Badajoz was again resumed, but with the same almost insurmountable obstacle of the deficiency of the requisite material for siege operations; and on the 10th of June, learning that Marmont, the successor of Massena, was marching south to join Soult, who was also to be reinforced by Drouet's corps from Toledo, Wellington fell back on Campo Mayor, gave up the siege of Badajoz, and gathered all his forces together, except a considerable body of British and Portuguese, whom he left at Alemtejo. Marmont, observing Wellington's movement, again retired to Salamanca. Some slight man?uvring followed between the hostile commanders, which ended in Wellington resuming his old quarters on the river Coa. On this, Soult also retired again to Seville.Sheridan marked the opening of the year 1795 by moving, on the 5th of January, for the repeal of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. He showed that the very grounds on which this suspension had been based had miserably given way on the trials of Tooke, Hardy, and the rest; that the whole amount of arms and money on which the so-called "formidable" conspiracy had rested had been shown to be one pike, nine rusty muskets, and a fund of nine pounds and one bad shilling! He said that the great thing proved was the shameful conspiracy of the Government against the people, and their infamous employment of spies for that end; that eight thousand pounds had been spent on the Crown lawyers, and a hundred witnesses examined, only to expose the guilt of the Ministry. Windham defended the measures of Government, and charged the juries with ignorance and incapacity, for which Erskine severely reprimanded him. But the standing majorities of Pitt were inaccessible to argument, and the continuance of the suspension was voted by a majority of two hundred and thirty-nine against fifty-three. A like result attended the debate in the Lords, where, however, the Dukes of Norfolk and Bedford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Earls of Lauderdale and Guildford strongly opposed the suspension.