СНАР. V. 1820. to suspend their operations till public order should be restored. It commanded all persons to desist from labour from that day forward; and it denounced as enemies to the king and traitors to the country all who should be found in arms against the intended regenerators of their native land. The anonymous placard, in the first instance, fulfilled its intended object. The morning of Monday broke, and Glasgow wore an extraordinary aspect. The labouring men of the city resumed their usual work; but they were almost immediately the objects of threatening visits, and were compelled to desist from it. The streets were filled with a crowd wandering about in enforced idleness; and the business of the second city in the kingdom was suspended at the dictate of an anonymous authority, whom no one could identify, and whose power or whose weakness no one knew. The magistrates hastily collected as large a military force as they were able to gather together. The Volunteer corps were called out; a few regular troops were marched into the city; and the population were warned by a proclamation against the designs of the disaffected. The counter proclamation of the magistrates immediately answered every purpose. The power of the agitators had consisted in the terror which their proceedings had inspired; their power ceased the moment that it was seen that the authorities were not afraid of them. The well-disposed resumed their ordinary occupations. With one solitary exception the ill-disposed concealed themselves. One of the Stirlingshire Yeomanry accidentally discovered an armed body of Radicals on the road between Kilsyth and Falkirk, and reported his discovery to his commanding officer. Eleven cavalry soldiers and eleven of the Yeomanry were detached to scour the road, and they succeeded in driving the rebels to some high ground called Bonnymuir, where they sheltered themselves behind a wall. The troops, after calling on the Radicals to surrender, succeeded in 1 The failure of this miserable outbreak, and the subsequent execution of the Cato Street conspirators, mark the termination of one of the unhappiest periods of English history. During the five years which had succeeded the conclusion of the war, society in England had been passing through an unprecedented crisis. Unexampled distress had led to almost universal discontent; and the poorer classes, crushed beneath their present misfortune, had listened to the treacherous advice of unprincipled agitators, and had been induced to perpetrate outrages of the most reprehensible character. The upper classes, instead of examining the grievances of which their poorer fellow-citizens complained, saw in every fresh disorder new reasons for repressive legislation of the severest character. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; the right of public meeting was restricted; the freedom of the press was limited; the right to possess arms was denied; and the elective franchise was rigidly confined to the few fortunate persons who happened to enjoy it. The result of these measures was, in one sense, successful. The Ministry succeeded for the moment in repressing the designs of the populace, and in stamping out the disorders which desolated the land. The country 1 Ann. Reg., 1820, Hist., p. 39. Lockhart's Scott, p. 430. CHAP. V. 1820. V. 1820. became quiet; but the quiet was the calm of the flood which for a moment is arrested by a barrier it is unable to overwhelm. The increasing weight of the gathering waters sweeps away at last the obstacle to their progress. The increasing power of the agitated populace swept away in the end the feeble barriers of the governing classes. The penning-up the waters only increases the ultimate violence of the flood. The postponement of reform in 1820 made the revolution more serious when it became irresistible in 1832. For the moment, however, the country had been crushed into peace; but events of a startling and unexpected character gave a new turn to men's thoughts, and the wrongs of a queen induced a fickle populace to forget for a time their own grievances. The increasing liberality of the age made some concessions necessary, and the growing weakness of the Government compelled it to concede some reforms. From these various causes the history of the country assumed a new phase. Years were still to elapse before political reform was conceded by Parliament. But the era of repressive legislation, sweetened by no concessions, was gone for ever. CHAPTER VI. VI. 1816. Princess It is difficult at the present time to realise the solitary CHAP. life which in 1816 was the lot of the princess who was the presumptive heiress to the throne of England. Her father, vexed at her refusal to marry the Prince of Orange, The was subjecting her to unusual and unmerited restraints. Charlotte. Her mother, on whose affection she had hitherto relied, had abandoned the country where she had experienced so much unhappiness. Her grandfather, who in previous years had interposed in her behalf, was hopelessly insane; and her warm, impulsive disposition instinctively recoiled from the prim decorum which characterised her grandmother, the queen. With her mother's family she had no acquaintance; and the head of it, Brunswick's fated chieftain,' had just died a soldier's death in the last campaign. Though the princess was nearly twenty years old, the Regent, annoyed with her conduct, refused her access to her most intimate acquaintances. She was only permitted to write to her warmest friend on condition that her letters passed through the hands of a lady-inwaiting. There seems even reason to think that her allowance was stopped, and that she had literally no money of her own to spend on anything.' Moved from Windsor to Weymouth, from Weymouth to London, from London to Weymouth, with little society and few amusements, the unhappy girl pined, grew thin, and slept badly. 'It makes me sad to think,' she wrote, 'of the time past or the time to come: I don't know which is most painful, the past or the future.'1 1 Lady Rose Weigall's Memoir of Princess Charlotte, p. 148. CHAP. 1816. Her married life and death. A better time, however, was speedily coming. A few years before, during the period of her engagement to the Prince of Orange, she had accidentally met, at Carlton House, Prince Leopold, the youngest of the three sons of the Duke of Saxe Cobourg. The prince had been 'pointed out to her as a supposed admirer of a young lady of her acquaintance, and she' had expressed her wonder, as he was so handsome, that the young lady did not seem more flattered by his attentions.'1 The princess's casual remark was, some time afterwards, repeated to the prince, and Leopold was consequently induced, after a decent interval, to pay his court to the heiress presumptive of the crown of England. The Regent was probably weary of the contest with his daughter. Prince Leopold had favourably impressed the people whom he had met on his previous visit to England; and it was the interest of all classes that the fair-haired daughter of the isles' should marry. They all fondly dreamed,' with Byron,' our children should obey her child.' Under these circumstances the negotiations for the marriage were rapidly brought to a successful issue. Parliament voted 60,000l. for the princess's outfit, and 60,000l. a year for her sustenance. Claremont, the beautiful seat of Mr. Ellis, was purchased for her residence; and, late after dinner on the 2nd of May, in accordance with the singular custom of the time, the Princess Charlotte was duly married, in the drawing-room of Carlton House, to Prince Leopold of Saxe Cobourg. 6 The remainder of Princess Charlotte's short life was spent in the happy society of her husband at Claremont. Admirably suited to each other, she loving him with all the force of her impulsive temperament, he gently checking the buoyancy of her spirits when they led her to exceed the limits of dignity or prudence,' the prince 1 Lady Rose Weigall's memoir, p. 133. 2 Childe Harold, Canto iv. st. 170. |