[See larger version] Lord Fitzgerald, a pension and peerage.The new Administration arranged itself as follows:The Duke of Portland, First Lord of the Treasury; Lord North, Home Secretary; Fox, Secretary for Foreign Affairs; the Earl of Carlisle, Privy Seal; Lord John Cavendish, again Chancellor of the Exchequer; Admiral Lord Keppel, the head of the Admiralty again; Lord Stormont, President of the Council; the great stumbling block, Thurlow, removed from the Woolsack, and the Great Seal put into commission; Burke again Paymaster of the Forces, and his brother Richard as Secretary to the Treasury in conjunction with Sheridan. Such was this strange and medley association, well deserving Burke's own description of a former Administration, as of a strange assemblage of creatures, "all pigging together in one truckle-bed." Those who formed exclusively the Cabinet were Portland, North, Fox, Cavendish, Carlisle, Keppel, and Stormont, so that the great Whigs had taken care again to shut out Burke, who was only a man of genius. Such an incongruous company could not long hold together. The king did not conceal his indignation at seeing Fox in office; the whole Court openly expressed its loathing of the anomalous union; the country had no confidence in it; Fox felt that he had wounded his popularity by his sudden and violent change.
FORE:The Scottish burgh question was brought forward again this Session. The magistrates of the burgh of Aberdeen having been elected, in 1817, in the same corrupt manner as those of Montrose had been in 1816, the Court of Session had declared the election illegal. The burgh of Montrose was found to have been disfranchised; but this was not the case with Aberdeen, and the magistrates applied to Government to grant a warrant for a new election, or rather a re-election of themselves. This the Government, in the face of the decision of the Court of Session, as well as of a numerously signed petition from the burgesses praying that the election should be by open poll, issued. On the 1st of April Lord Archibald Hamilton moved an address to the Prince Regent, praying for a copy of this warrant. It was strenuously resisted by Ministers, but the motion was lost by only a small majority. On the 6th of May Lord Archibald Hamilton renewed his motion in another formnamely, that the petitions which had been presented from Scottish burghs on the subject of Reform should be submitted to a committee of inquiry. He showed that out of sixty-six royal burghs thirty-nine had voted for Reform; that these thirty-nine contained a population of four hundred and twenty thousand souls, whilst the remaining twenty-seven contained only sixty thousand. The preponderance was so great that, in spite of the opposition of Ministers, the House took another view of the matter, and Lord Archibald's motion was carried, though only by one hundred and forty-nine votes against one hundred and forty-four.
[See larger version]All this time "the great Admiral Vernon," as the Opposition delighted to call him, in disparagement of all the commanders favourable to the Government, lay still with his ships and afforded no assistance to the land troops. When Wentworth bitterly complained of this, to show that it was impossible to operate on the town from the harbour, Vernon sent into the inner harbour the Galicia, a Spanish ship which had been taken. This ship kept up a cannonade on the town for several hours, producing little effect, and was fired on from the town with as little. The men were then brought off in boats, the Galicia's cable was cut, and she was suffered to run upon a shoal, where she soon filled. The troops were now hastily re-embarked; the unhealthy season was at its height, and the men were swept away by fever more rapidly than they had been mowed down on land. The heavy rains had set in, and the troops in a few days were reduced to one half their number. Admiral Vernon instead of undertaking any enterprise which might have retrieved the honour of the British arms, set sail from Jamaica with the forces in July, and anchored in the south part of Cuba in a bay, on which he bestowed the appellation of Cumberland Harbour. Here the remains of that fine fleet and army, capable of achieving the most brilliant conquests under able commanders, were suffered to corrode away under the influence of inactivity, the season, bad salted provisions, and excess of rum.The Viceroy rejoined with unabated spirit, replying to all the fresh matter introduced by the Duke in a lofty tone of self-justification. There is caustic irony in the following allusion to the king, as an apology for his conciliatory policy:"I[292] have, in fact, been most anxious to imitate, as far as my humble faculties would permit, the example of his Majesty himself during his visit to Ireland, and have scrupulously attended to the king's benign and paternal admonition, when his Majesty quitted the kingdom, to inculcate good fellowship and cordiality among all classes, and to promote conciliation." It is dangerous to use the argumentum ad hominem with a kingstill more so to make his conduct the object of sarcastic allusions; and it was evident that Lord Anglesey could not long remain in the position of a representative of his Majesty. There was certainly an animosity against him in the highest quarters, which appeared in the construction put upon the accidental dropping in of his son and some of his household, from curiosity, to witness, as they thought unnoticed, the debates of the Associationa circumstance which he had long ago explained, and with which he thought it particularly unfair that he should be now upbraided.Such was the state of public feeling that preceded the dissolution of Parliament. This event was the signal for the wildest exultation and triumph among the people. There was a general illumination in London, sanctioned by the Lord Mayor. In Edinburgh and other cities where the civic authorities did not order it, the Reform Clubs took upon themselves to guide the people in their public rejoicings. In many places the populace broke the windows of those who refused to illuminate; and in some cases those who did comply had their windows smashed, if suspected of Tory principles. In Scotland the mobs are said to have been peculiarly violent. Sir Archibald Alison states that the windows of his brother, Professor Alison, whose life had been devoted to the relief of the poor, though illuminated, "were utterly smashed in five minutes, as were those of above a thousand others of the most respectable citizens." The Lord Provost of Edinburgh was seized by the mob on the day of the election, who tried to throw him over the North Bridge, a height of ninety feeta crime for which the ringleaders were afterwards convicted and punished by the judiciary court. The military were called out, but withdrawn at the request of Lord Advocate Jeffrey. At Ayr, he says, "the Conservative voters had to take refuge in the Town Hall, from which they were escorted by a body of brave Whigs, who, much to their honour, had them conveyed to a steamboat." "No person anywhere in Scotland could give his vote for the Conservative candidate." At Lanark a dreadful riot occurred, and the Conservative candidate was seriously wounded in the church where the election was going forward. At Dumbarton the Tory candidate, Lord William Graham, only escaped death by being concealed in a garret, where he lay hidden the whole day. At Jedburgh a band of ruffians hooted the dying Sir Walter Scott. "I care for you no more," said he, "than for the hissing of geese." Sir Walter, in his diary, says:"The mob were exceedingly vociferous and brutal, as they usually are now-a-days. The population gathered in formidable numbersa thousand from Hawicksad blackguards. I left the burgh in the midst of abuse and gentle hints[335] of 'burke Sir Walter!'" In London the windows in the houses of the leading Anti-Reformers were all broken. The Duke of Wellington was not spared in this raid against the opponents of popular rights. The windows of Apsley House were smashed with volleys of stones. It happened, unfortunately, that the duchess lay dead within at the time. She had expired just as the booming of the guns in St. James's Park announced the approach of the king to dissolve Parliament. The crowd knew nothing of this. The Duke, however, was determined that he would not suffer an outrage like this another time. He had iron shutters put up, so as to guard every window which was liable to be assailed, either from Piccadilly or Hyde Park; and to the day of his death they remained.
