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Pitt's India
Act.

created a board of control, which was to be appointed by the government of the day. This board was to have supreme control over the civil and military administration of the Company. All the patronage, however, was to be left in the hands of the Company, but the crown reserved a right of veto in the case of appointments to the chief offices. This settlement satisfied both the Company and the country, and remained in force till 1858.

Impeachment of Warren Hastings.

On

In 1785 Warren Hastings came back from India, and the next year Burke moved his impeachment before the House of Lords for high crimes and misdemeanors, especially on the charge of injustice to the Rajah of Benares. examining the evidence, Pitt found it impossible to defend Hastings in many respects, but he remained neutral, and Burke and Sheridan had the chief management of the prosecution, assisted by Sir Philip Francis, the supposed author of "Junius' Letters,” who had been a member of Hastings' council, and had done his best to thwart him. The trial lasted six years, for the lords rarely sat to hear evidence. In the end Hastings was acquitted; but the trial was a good thing, as it diffused much knowledge about India, and was a warning to other officers not to follow Hastings' footsteps. Since Pitt's Act and Hastings' trial, the civil service of India has been very different from what it was before. The officials have set before themselves a high standard of duty to the natives, and have reckoned among their numbers some of the noblest of Englishmen.

Pursuing his own and his father's policy, Pitt advocated the reform of Parliament, and in 1785 he proposed to disfranchise thirty-six Pitt's reform rotten boroughs, and to give the members to the

Commercial

scheme. counties and to London. The motion, however, was not agreeable to the king, and was thrown out by 248 votes to 174. It was, however, as a financier that Pitt achieved the most striking success. He had had an excellent training in political economy, the science which tries to explain the policy. process by which wealth is created and distributed, on which subject a great deal of light had lately been thrown by the publication of Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." This book had taught that all nations would benefit by a free exchange of their goods, whereas it had been the practice of governments to discourage

their people from buying from other nations, for fear that they would reduce the stock of gold in the country. The new plan was called Free Trade.

Pitt adopted it, and in 1786 he made a commercial treaty with France, by which both countries lowered their customs duties, and so made a step in the direction of free trade. This treaty was a good thing for both countries. Trade increased, and even the revenue reaped the benefit; for as there was less smuggling under the new law than under the old, the customs duties amounted in the aggregate to a larger sum. In 1785 Pitt attempted to apply the same system to the trade between England and Ireland; but the English merchants were so hostile to the measure that he had to abandon the greater part of it, to the loss of both countries. Pitt next brought forward a scheme paying off the for paying off the National Debt. It was very complicated, but as at bottom it consisted in raising extra taxes each year in order to pay the debt, it left the country as before, and after a time it was abandoned, though not till 1828.

Scheme for

National Debt.

Inquiry about the slave

The feeling which prompted the impeachment of Hastings led also to an inquiry into the horrors of the slave trade, and in 1787 an association was formed for its total abolition. This could not be done at once, but in 1788 a bill was passed for the better regulation of slave-ships, and the next year, through the efforts of Wilberforce, Fox, and Burke, resolutions condemning the slave trade itself were introduced.

trade.

The country was completely absorbed in Pitt's useful reforms, when an event happened which suddenly threatened to deprive Pitt of his power, and to place Fox and Burke

The king

insane.

The natural

in office. As early as 1765 the king had been becomes : threatened with madness, and in 1788 he became completely insane. The case was a difficult one. person to be regent was the Prince of Wales, but the prince was very unpopular. In 1772, at the instance of The Royal the king, the Royal Marriage Act had been passed, Marriage Act. by which all the descendants of George II. were forbidden to marry without the consent of the reigning sovereign. Of this act the prince had taken advantage to marry Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Roman Catholic, which by the Bill of Rights would have forfeited the

crown had the marriage been legal. As it was, he could plead the Royal Marriage Act against the legality of his own marriage. This action was universally disapproved. Moreover, the prince had Unpopularity contracted immense debts, and was addicted to of the prince. gambling. More important, however, than all, he was attached to Fox, and it was well known that his first act as regent would be to dismiss Pitt, and make Fox Prime Minister; and Fox, eager for power, declared that the heir-apparent had an inherent right to assume the reins of government. In these difficult circumstances Pitt behaved very well. He did not refuse to make the prince regent, but he declared that Parliament alone could give him the title, and that Parliament had the right to recovers. lay down the conditions on which he should hold it. Happily, before anything was settled the king recovered, and he and Pitt became more popular than ever.

The king

Commercial prosperity.

Good fortune as well as good management had attended Pitt. Without any effort on his part, his ministry gained the benefit of a great wave of commercial prosperity. Before the reign of George III., and for nine years into it, England had been chiefly an agricultural country, and had exported corn. She had some manufactures, chiefly woollen and cotton, but her trade in them was not considerable. However, in the latter half of the eighteenth century a great change took place. Arkwright applied the invention of roller-spinning, by which a strong thread was spun by passing through revolving rollers, instead of by the slow method of the spinning-wheel; then Hargreaves devised a spinning-jenny, by which many threads could be spun at once; and finally, Crompton combined the two inventions in his mule. Hardly had this been done, when Mr. Cartwright, a clergyman, invented a power-loom, in which machinery did what human hands had had to do before. Soon after this had been done, Watt's improved steam-engine was used instead of water-power to drive the new machines. The demand for new machinery caused a great demand for iron, which could now be obtained cheaper than formerly, in consequence of the use of pit coal instead of charcoal in smelting it; while Brindley's introduction of canals, and Telford's improvements in road-making, facilitated the exchange of goods and the bringing of materials to the districts where they were wanted.

These improvements in the arts were of more value to England than the discovery of the richest gold-mine. Fortunately for England, in this country the coal-mines and the iron-mines lie near together, and give every facility for the construction of machinery and the carrying on of manufactures. The energy of her sons was not slow to avail itself of a new source of wealth, and within a very few years the nation, which had thought herself ruined by the loss of her American colonies, had started upon a career of wealth, which enabled her to support without ruin a contest to which the American war had been a trifle.

CHIEF GENERAL EVENTS UNDER GEORGE III.,

1760-1789.

Prosecution of Wilkes for No. 45 of the North Briton

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East India Company acquires the administration of Bengal

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Open publication of Parliamentary debates begins
Lord North's Regulating Act for India

Lord George Gordon riots

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Independence of the United States acknowledged
Trial of Warren Hastings begins

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CHIEF TREATIES, BATTLES, AND SIEGES, 1760-1789.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE WARS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Chief Characters of the Time.-Pitt; Fox; Burke; Priestley; Paine; Napoleon Buonaparte; Lord Howe; Sir John Jervis; Lord Nelson; Admiral Duncan; Sir Sidney Smith; Lord Edward Fitzgerald; Lord Cornwallis; Lord Castlereagh; Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth; Lord Grenville; George Canning; Lord Mornington, afterwards Marquess Wellesley; Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington; the Duke of Portland; Wilberforce; Lord Liverpool; Perceval; Sir John Moore; Sir Francis Burdett; William Cobbett.

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Importance of the French

THE contest to which we referred in the last chapter arose out of the French Revolution, an event of such importance that it forms as great an epoch as the Reformation, and of such far-reaching consequences that we are still living Revolution. under the influence of the movement. Roughly speaking, this revolution means the revolt of Europe against the privileges left by feudalism. Though the movement began in France, all European countries in the last quarter of the eighteenth century retained in their customs much that was feudal in origin. This system had been the framework of society in the Middle Ages, and had then been most useful; but by degrees society took a new

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