Majesty for the better enabling the trustees appointed under an act of the last session of parliament, for settling and securing an annuity on Arthur, duke of Wellington, and his heirs, and for empowering the lords of the Treasury to advance out of the consolidated fund of Great Britain a sum of money to purchase an estate in order to accompany the said title, to carry into effect the provisions of the said act with respect to the purchasing a suitable residence and estate for the duke of Wellington and his heirs." Mr. W. Smith said he wished it were possible that some other mode could be devised of rewarding such transcendent merit as the duke of Wellington's, instead of a pecuniary compensation. However, as all other modes of approbation were exhausted, he must at least express his desire that the sum now voted should be employed in the erection of a palace rather than in purchasing one. Every Briton must look at Blenheim with emotions of pride and satisfaction very different from what would be felt if it were merely a house that had been built for another and purchased for the duke of Marlborough. For his own part, he would rather add £50,000 more to the present vote, if by so doing he thought the erection of a mansion for the duke of Wellington would be secured. ... Sir T. Acland could not but feel anxious to mark the sense of the nation on this victory in the most distinct manner; and he should be much disposed to favor the idea of building a palace, if he did not feel that any suitable mansion purchased for the duke of Wellington in consequence of a vote of that House, would bear the same character which would attach to a palace purposely erected for him. If he thought the effect would not be the same, he would willingly consent to a grant of half a million or a whole one to accomplish so desirable an object. The duke of Wellington had greatly raised the military character of England. In India his conduct obtained for him the approbation of his country: he had been praised as the saviour of Spain and Portugal. One thing only was wanting to complete his own glory and that of his country a triumph over him who was said to have conquered every other general 404. News of to whom he had been opposed. This object was gained. It was reserved for his last triumph to supply all that was wanting to the consummation of his glory. Many had heretofore doubted what would be the result of a contest in which he and Buonaparte fought hand to hand; that doubt was gone forever. We now saw renewed the splendid days of Cressy and Agincourt, and this we owed to the duke of Wellington, who had now gained the last triumph necessary for his own fame, or for that of his country. The unmeasured, unreasoning, bitter, and ignorant hatred for Napoleon that had grown up in England is well reflected in the following article in the London Times, published the day the news of his surrender reached England. Our paper of this day will satisfy the sceptics, for such there were beginning to be, as to the capture of that bloody miscreant, who has so long tortured Europe, Napoleon Buonaparte. Savages are always found to unite the greatest degree of cunning to the ferocious part of their nature. The cruelty of this person is written in characters of blood in almost every country in Europe and in the contiguous angles of Africa and Asia which he visited; and nothing can more strongly evince the universal conviction of his low, perfidious craft, than the opinion, which was beginning to get abroad, that, even after his capture had been officially announced both in France and England, he might yet have found means to escape. However, all doubts upon this point are put at an end by his arrival off the British coast, and, if he be not now placed beyond the possibility of again outraging the peace of Europe, England will certainly never again deserve to have heroes such as those who have fought and bled at Waterloo for this his present overthrow. The lives of the brave men who fell on that memorable day will have been absolutely thrown away by a thoughtless country, the grand object obtained by their valour will have been frustrated, and we shall do little less than insult over their remains, almost before they have ceased to bleed. But Fortune, seconding their undaunted efforts, has put it in our power to do far otherwise. Captain Sartorius of the Slaney, frigate, arrived yesterday with dispatches from Captain Maitland of the Bellerophon, confirming all the antecedent accounts of Buonaparte's surrender, with various other details, and closing them by their natural catastrophe - his safe conveyance to England. He is, therefore, what we may call, here. Captain Sartorius delivered his dispatches to Lord Melville, at Wimbledon, by whom their contents were communicated to Lord Liverpool, at his seat at Coombe Wood; summonses were immediately issued for a cabinet council, to meet at 12 o'clock; what passed there was, of course, not suffered to transpire. Our narrative must therefore revert to the Slaney, frigate, and the accounts brought by her. She had been sent forward by Captain Maitland to Plymouth, with the dispatches announcing that Buonaparte was on board the Bellerophon, with a numerous suite. But it was the intention of Captain Maitland, himself, to proceed to Torbay, and not land his prisoners until he had received orders from government. Buonaparte's suite, as it is called, consists of upward of forty persons, among whom are Bertrand, Savary, Lallemand, Grogau, and several women. He has been allowed to take on board carriages and horses, but admission was denied to about fifty cavalry, for whom he had the impudence to require accommodation. This wretch has really lived in the commission of every crime so long that he has lost all sight and knowledge of the difference that exists between good and evil, and hardly knows when he is doing wrong, except he be taught by proper chastisement. A creature who ought to be greeted with a gallows as soon as he lands, to think of an attendance of fifty horsemen ! He had at first wanted to make conditions with Captain Maitland as to his treatment, but the British officer very properly declared that he must refer him upon this subject to his government. When he had been some time on board, he asked the captain what chance two large frigates, well manned, would have with a seventy-four. The answer, we understand, which he received to this inquiry did not give him any cause to regret that he had not risked his fortune in a naval combat with the relative forces in question. By the way, we should not have been surprised if he had come into an action with the two frigates and then endeavoured to escape in his own and leave the other to her fate. It has been the constant trick of this villain, whenever he got his companions into a scrape, to leave them in it and seek his own safety by flight. In Egypt, in the Moscow expedition, and at Waterloo, such was his conduct. . . . The first procedure, we trust, will be a special commission, or the appointment of a court-martial to try him for the murder of Captain Wright. It is nonsense to say, as some have, that courts-martial are instituted only to try offenses committed by soldiers of the country to which they belong: it was an American court-martial that tried and shot Major André as a spy; and Buonaparte himself appointed commissions of all kinds, and in all countries, to try offenses committed against himself. CHAPTER XIX THE PERIOD OF REFORM, 1815-1852 I. CONTESTS BETWEEN CONSERVATIVES AND RADICALS The discord and conflict of classes at home became even more intense when peace was attained abroad, after the long period of war. This fact is well exemplified in the democratic sentiments expressed in the following passages from Cobbett's Weekly Register. A letter to the journeymen and laborers of England, 405. An article in Cobbett's Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, on the cause of their present Weekly Reg. miseries; on the measures which have produced that cause; ister on the remedies which some foolish and some cruel and insolent men have proposed; and on the line of conduct which journeymen and laborers ought to pursue, in order to obtain effectual relief, and to assist in promoting the tranquillity and restoring the happiness of their country. Friends and Fellow-Countrymen : wealth Whatever the pride of rank, of riches, or of scholarship may Labor the have induced some men to believe, the real strength and all source of all the resources of a country ever have sprung and ever must spring from the labor of its people; and hence it is that this nation, which is so small in numbers and so poor in climate and soil compared with many others, has, for many ages, been the most powerful nation in the world: it is the most industrious, the most laborious, and, therefore, the most powerful. Elegant dresses, superb furniture, stately buildings, fine roads and canals, fleet horses and carriages, numerous and stout ships, warehouses teeming with goods, -all these, and many other objects that fall under our view, are so many marks of |