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1794-1795 END OF THE REIGN OF TERROR

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scanty following continued in opposition, partly because, though they loathed the bloody scenes in France, they thought that England ought to remain at peace; partly because they held that the best way to meet French revolutionary ideas in England was to push on internal reforms. Before the end of the year the violent proceedings in the English law-courts received a check by the refusal of juries to convict Horne Tooke, Hardy, and Thelwall, who were accused of seditious practices. They were no doubt acquitted because

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ordinary Englishmen resumed their usual habit of distrusting government interference, as soon as the irritation caused by the Reign of Terror was at an end.

19. The Treaties of Basel. 1795.-French conquests did not come to an end with the Reign of Terror. In January 1795 a French army under Pichegru overran the Dutch Netherlands and established a Batavian republic on a democratic basis. About the same time there was a third and final partition of Poland, in which Austria, Prussia, and Russia all shared. Prussia had no more to gain in Poland, and on April 5, being unwilling to help Austria to make conquests in France, she concluded peace at Basel with the French Convention. On July 12 Spain, following the example of Prussia, also signed a treaty of peace at Basel.

20. The Establishment of the Directory in France. 1795.-Pitt

failed to appreciate the real difficulties of the war on which he had embarked. In spite of all the atrocities of the Terror, the feeling in France was so strong against any reaction in favour of the old nobility, that there was not the slightest chance of overthrowing the Republican government by giving aid to the French emigrants. The Count of Puisaye, an emigrant royalist, persuaded Pitt to disembark him and a number of other emigrants in Quiberon Bay, in the belief that the country round would take up the royalist cause. The expedition ended in entire failure. In October a new constitution was established by the Convention. The legislature consisted of two councils, and the executive of a body of five Directors. The violent stage of the French Revolution had come to an end, and there were many in England who thought that it would be desirable to make peace with a government which gave some hopes of moderation and stability, especially as the burden of the war had given rise to grave discontent in England. When George III. drove through the streets on October 29 to open Parliament, he was surrounded by a hooting mob. A bullet pierced one of his carriage windows.

21. The Treason Act and the Sedition Act. 1795.–Pitt could see nothing but revolutionary violence in this outburst. He carried through Parliament two Bills, one declaring the mere writing, preaching, or speaking words against the king's authority to be treason, and the stirring up hatred against the king's person or the established government and constitution to be a punishable misdemeanour; the other forbidding all political meetings unless advertised beforehand, and permitting any two justices to disperse them if they thought them dangerous. Against these Bills Fox spoke with extreme vehemence ; but Pitt's supporters did him more harm than his opponents. "The people," said Bishop Horsley, "had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them." The two Bills became law, but public feeling was so set against them that they were never put into operation.

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1785-1791.-In

1. The Irish Government and Parliament. 1785, when Pitt was aiming at a commercial union with Ireland, he had expressed a desire to make · England and Ireland one country in effect, though for local concerns under distinct legislatures.' The difficulty, however, lay in the unfitness of the Parliament at Dublin to play the part of a legislature 'for local concerns.' It Three-fourths of the was in no true sense representative. population were excluded as Catholics from sitting in Parliament Nor was the Irish House of and from voting at elections.

Commons in any sense representative of the remaining Protestant fourth. The number of its members was three hundred, and of these, two hundred were chosen by less than one hundred Morepersons, who controlled the elections of petty boroughs. over, as the ministers in Ireland were responsible, not to Parliament, but to the Lord Lieutenant, the Lord Lieutenant could, except in times of great excitement, govern without reference to the wishes of the House of Commons, and whenever it seemed desirable to him to have the House of Commons on his side he could, by a lavish distribution of places and pensions, buy up the votes of the members or of their patrons, as neither had any constituents to fear. Usually, however, the Lord Lieutenant who wished

to lead an easy life preferred to govern in accordance with the wishes of the corrupt faction which formed the Parliamentary majority.

2. The United Irishmen and Parliamentary Reform. 17911794. Nowhere were the objections to this state of things felt more strongly than amongst the Presbyterians, who formed a great part of the population of Ulster, and especially of the flourishing town of Belfast, and were excluded as completely as the Catholics from office and from Parliament. Amongst the upper and middle classes in Ulster, religious bigotry had almost died out, and they had, for some time past, been ready to admit Catholics to the franchise and to put them on political equality with themselves. Then came the influence of the French Revolu tion, and, in October 1791, the Society of United Irishmen was founded at Belfast by Wolfe Tone, himself a Presbyterian. Its object was to unite Catholics and Protestants by widening the franchise and by opening office and Parliament to all without distinction of creed. Pitt took alarm, but in 1793, in order to baffle this extreme demand, he obtained from the Irish Parliament two Acts, the one freeing the Catholics from some of the worst penalties under which they suffered, and the other allowing them to vote for members of Parliament. As, however, they were still disqualified from sitting in Parliament, the concession was almost illusory, and, moreover, only a minority of seats depended on election in any real sense. In 1794 a very moderate Reform Bill, proposing the increase of independent constituencies, was rejected in the Irish House of Commons by a decisive majority.

3. The Mission of Lord Fitzwilliam. 1794-1795. The seceders from the Whig party who joined Pitt in 1794 urged him to strengthen the Irish Government by granting Catholic emanci pation and moderate reform, so as to keep in check the revolutionists on the one hand and the corrupt officials on the other. Pitt consented to send Lord Fitzwilliam, one of the Whig seceders, to Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant, rather because he wished to gratify his new allies than because he personally approved of the change. Fitzwilliam himself understood that there was to be a complete change of system and that justice was to be done to the Catholics; but he had held only verbal communications with Pitt, and there was probably a misunderstanding between the two statesmen. At all events, Pitt told Fitzwilliam that not one of the existing officials was to be dismissed except for actual misconduct. With Pitt as, at the best, a hesitating ally, Fitzwilliam's mission was doomed to failure. Fitzwilliam himself hastened that failure He

1795

FITZWILLIAM IN IRELAND

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landed in Dublin on January 4, 1795, and, almost at once, in defiance of his instructions, dismissed two of the worst of the officials, one of whom, John Beresford, was popularly known as the king of Ireland from the unbounded influence which he had gained by jobbery. He and the Irish Chancellor, Fitzgibbon, complained to the king that his ministers, in favouring Catholic emancipation, were leading him to a breach of the oath which he had taken at his coronation to defend the Protestant religion, and the king gave Pitt to understand that he would never consent to such a measure. Pitt was, moreover, subjected to pressure from English opinion, where the Catholics were anything but popular, and where any proposal to reform Parliament savoured of the principles of the French Revolution. In these views Pitt to some extent shared, and began to look for the best remedy for Irish difficulties in the constitution of a common Parliament for the two countries, as there had been a common Parliament for England and Scotland since 1707 (see p. 685). Fitzwilliam, whose arrival in Dublin had been welcomed as a message of peace from England, was promptly recalled, and Ireland was once more handed over to a Parliament dominated by place-hunters who, under the pretence of maintaining Protestantism, banded themselves together with the object of gaining wealth and position. "Did I ever give an honest vote in my life?" is a sentence which is said to have escaped from the lips of a member of this faction.

4. Impending Revolution. 1795-1796.-Such an evil system was too provocative to remain long unassailed. In the Irish Parliament, Grattan spoke vehemently in favour of a Bill for Catholic emancipation, but the Bill was rejected. Lord Fitzwilliam's recall was followed by an outburst of violence. The Catholic gentry and middle classes were at that time quite ready to make common cause with the Protestants of their own standing in resistance to any popular movement; but the mass of Irish peasants had grievances of their own so bitter that it was difficult for a Parliament hostile to their race and creed to govern them. The payment of tithes, especially, weighed heavily on an impoverished population, and was the more deeply felt as the money went to the support of a clergy of a creed hostile to that of those from whom it was exacted. If the Catholic gentry had been allowed to sit in Parliament, they would at least have brought their influence to bear in favour of an amelioration of the lot of the Catholic peasant in this respect. With respect to another grievance, it is doubtful whether the introduction of Catholic landlords into Parliament

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