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MASSEY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.* TUE period from 1793 to 1802—from the declaration of war with France to the peace of Amiens—over which the events recorded in this volume extend, is not one which can be regarded with much satisfaction by the friends of liberty. Commencing with a groundless panic, it ends in a fool's paradise. Under the influence of the pity and horror which the proceedings of the revolutionary Government of Franca naturally produced, and inflamed by the gorgeous rhetoric of Burke, the upper classes of this country seemed disposed at the outbreak of the war to sur- render even the moderate constitutional freedom which our ancestors had won for us, while in 1802 all men were shouting for joy over a peace which had in it no one element of durability. In the meantime, a vast debt was incurred, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and oppressive State prosecutions were the order of the day. In Ireland, a cruel rebellion, cruelly provoked and cruelly repressed, was followed by a great constitutional im- provement secured by shameless bribery. Our laud forces every- where, except in Egypt, were handled without success or ability, while even the glory of the navy was tarnished by mutiny. For all these things the person chiefly respoesible is Pitt.

For a long time he withstood the tide of popular feeling. In the debate on the Army Estimates of •February 9th, 1190, the night of the first rupture between Burke and Fox, he spoke on the state of France with a moderation equally removed from the extravagant censure of the one and the extravagant approbation of the other. But an atmosphere of strong popular belief seems to have in it something contagious. An Englishman in the East gets to have a sort of half faith in magic—to think, as the author of "Eothen" says, that " there must be something in it "—not by virtue of anything he has seen, but because lie has lived exclu- sively among people who are ail firmly persuaded of its reality. So, probably, Mr. Pitt, during the next two or three years, was silently undergoing a change, of which he was himself, perhaps, hardly conscious, and which at last manifested itself suddenly. Certainly the circumstance which, according to Mr. Massey, im- mediately provoked it, was scarcely of a nature to account for so great an alteration. A French plot, or supposed plot, to revolutionize the country through agents of the Convention, of which Sir J. B. Burgess, the Under Secretary, first heard from a foreigner in the street, even when combined with the order for

* A History of Englund during the Reign of George III. By William Massey, MP. Vol. IV. London: Parker, Sou, and Bourn. 1803.

three thousand daggers to a Birmingham manufacturer, which drove Burke to the theatrical feat of throwing one on to the floor of the House of Commons, would scarcely have shaken the resolution of the Premier, if it had not been previously sapped. A Cabinet Council was summoned, at which Burgess was present. After the ministers were gone, at four in the morning, Pitt sat musing over the fire, and, turning to Burgess, asked, " What he thought of the state of affairs?" adding, "probably by this time to-morrow we may not have a hand to act or a tongue to utter." He then said "that nothing could save the country but a war." This singular incident Mr. Massey has gleaned from the Locker MSS., but it may be doubted whether, with the pardonable partiality of a discoverer, he has not attributed to it, standing alone, rather more importance than it deserves. The plot must be taken in connection with the decree of the 19th of November, exhorting all nations to rise against their rulers, and promising them material aid.

It is, however, certain that from this time forth Pitt, who only a few months before had declared the map of Europe to be closed, prepared for immediate war, and not without reason. If the decrees and plots of the Convention might well have been despised, regard for her own safety rendered it necessary for this country to resist the annexation of Belgium. But, strangely enough, the only legal and technical justification of the war was the deliberate breach of an unjustifiable treaty—the treaty with Holland and this country, by which the Scheldt was closed. The foolish French phrase that the closing of a navigable river was contrary to the rights of man, went scarcely beyond the truth. It was not just that the great province of Flanders should be deprived of its natural outlet for the profit of the Dutch. But France had been a party to the injustice so long as Flanders was Austrian; and was, therefore, by no means entitled to abrogate the treaty in so imperious a fashion. But any of the avowed causes of war might have been easily- arranged, had it not been for the spirit of propagandism which animated the French Government, and of which these outrages were but the sign. It was, in truth, a war of opinion, and this it was which indisposed both parties for measures of conciliation.

That Pitt was a bad War Minister is, perhaps, not remarkable. The really strange thing is that, taking office as a mere lad, he should have been so far in advance of his contemporaries on com- mercial and domestic subjects. He literally never had the leisure to acquaint himself with foreign affairs. Thus he neither anti- cipated hostilities, nor, after they had broken out, had any idea of their true nature. It was always to be a short war. To the last the forces of the country were frittered away in a series of petty enterprises, and when the peace which he was pursuing seemed in 1805 finally to vanish from his sight, he died of a broken heart.

But much as he undervalued the power of France, lie mis- understood his own countrymen still more. Under the influence of the general panic he mistook the wild dreams of a few obscure individuals for wide-spread disaffection. The meanest and most ignorant of men—bill-stickers and disbanded soldiers—were for a few idle words consigned to the tender mercies of the Quarter Sessions—tribunals about as fit to try cases of political libel as of poaching. Under the auspices of Lord Kenyon, one coffee-house politician was fined 2001. and imprisoned for two years for using strong language about the King and proposing the French Republic as a toast; another, for saying that he was for equality and no King, was imprisoned six months, made to stand in the pillory, and struck off the roll of attorneys ; while, by way of reaching the acme of absurdity, a still harsher punishment was inflicted on two debtors in the Fleet for posting up a dreary joke about bastilles being no longer necessary since the French Republic had rooted out tyranny—a proceeding which was con- strued to be proof of a conspiracy to break prison and incite the other prisoners to do the like. At last the tide turned—Mr. Perry, the editor of the Morning chronicle, was acquitted ; but Pitt still persevered. The judges had already laid it down that any hostile criticism of established institutions, or proposal to amend them, was sedition in a period of public excitement. An attempt was now to be made to extend the still more dangerous doctrine of constructive treason. Hardy, Home Tooke, and some others, were charged with high treason on evidence which, so far as it was trustworthy, was only sufficient for a con- viction for sedition. The Attorney-General, Scott, who afterwards justified his conduct by alleging that he dreaded that the prisoners would defend themselves from the lesser charge by showing themselves to be guilty of the greater, took nine mortal hours in setting forth the crime of the accused,

and the Solicitor replied in a speech of ten, during fainted. Seven were sufficient for the defence, but the spa was Erskine. All the prisoners were acquitted. A few mond later a mob of rioters assaulted the King on his way to Parlia- ment. His life was endangered, but the . outbreak was clearly unpremeditated. It was, in fact, a bread riot, caused by the dearness of provisions, and the consequent unpopularity of the war. But it was made a pretext for the enactment of laws to further restrict the right of public meeting, and to make writing, preaching, and speaking, which had hitherto only been criminal when connected with overt acts, themselves overt acts consti- tuting high treason. This provided for the conviction of future Hardys and Tookes ; and it was further declared that any person writing, preaching, or speaking so as to stir up "hatred or dis-

like " of the King, or " the established Government and Consti- tution," should be guilty of a high misdemeanour. So that when M. de Persigny claims English authority for his prosecutions for inciting to hatred and contempt of the Imperial Government, he is not entirely without reason.

If any one would justly appreciate the panic of the upper classes, let him reflect what manner of' man it was that was hurried into these excesses. That intellects of the calibre of the King's, of Lord Kenyon's, of Lord Auckland's, and Bishop Horsley's, should have been bewildered by events horrible in themselves. and utterly strange to all the habits of thought of that generation, is intelligible. But Pitt was the friend of Parlia • mentary reform, of the abolition of the slave trade, was the disciple of Adam Smith, the minister whose fate it was to be all his life proposing measures which were either defeated or muti- lated by the ignorance and bigotry of his supporters. The

middle classes, who at first shared, soon threw off their terror_ The juries, who at first succumbed to Lord Kenyon, returned to more manly sentiments. But it was not till 1801 that the Habeas Corpus was restored, and then Mr. Pitt was no longer a minister of the Crown.

There seems to be no ground for thinking that in this repres- sive policy Pitt was deferring to prejudices which he did not share. The love of power, with which he has been reproached, never, we think, induced bins to do that which in his judgment ought not to be done, though it often enough led him to leave undme what he felt that he ought to do. But it seems impossible altogether to justify, or, perhaps, to comprehend, his conduct with reference to the Irish Catholic claims. Pitt himself, in 1794, according to Mr. Henry Grattan, intimated to his father that the Government would not oppose Catholic emancipation. • Yet when Grattan introduced the bill, Pitt, in deference to the King's miserable scruple about his coronation oath, recalled the Lord Lieutenant for supporting it, and thus ensured its rejection- Nevertheless, in order to secure the passing of the Act of Union, he allowed Lord Cornwallis to hold out expectations to the Catholics which the King, in his letters of June 11th, 1798, and January 24th, 1799,* had clearly forbidden him to offer. He should have known the strong will of George III. too well to fancy that it would yield even to his threat of resignation, and a statesman is not justified in gaining support by holding out hopes which he knows he cannot satisfy. When finally he found that his resignation was accepted, and that the King would really part with Mr. Pitt rather than tolerate the religion of his

Catholic subjects, with a strange levity he wished to withdraw his resignation, and even allowed the subject to be broached to Ad- dington. An attempt has been made to justify this conduct, on the

ground that the King's illness put emancipation out of the field of practical politics ; and this might be so, if power were valuable for its own sake, and not because it enables the minister to carry out the measures which he deems to be for the public good. But Pitt did value power for its own sake, and it is much to be doubted whether, if he had thought that his resignation would have been so readily accepted, his sense of what was due to the Irish Catholics, whom he had misled, would have been sufficiently keen to induce him to tender it.

This volume is marked by the same faultless, but tame modera- tion of thought, which has distinguished its predecessors, while the style is neither eloquent nor concise, and the narrative of military operations singularly dull. So that it is with more re- gret than surprise that we observe Messrs. Porkers' adver- tisements announce that, either from weariness or want of support, Mr. Massey has abandoned his task, and that the history of England during the reign of George III. is to stop short with the peace of Amiens.

• see Stanhope'e "Life of Pitt," Vol. III, appendix rd., avid.