among the trophies of our success was the golden umbrella of state, and a talisman, under the leopard-skin covering of which was found the head of poor M'Carthy, and which one of the native kings refused to give up.-The Burmese war was very different, both in its causes and results. The oriental pride and ignorance of that brave people, who had subdued the neighbouring states of Pegu and Assam, commenced aggressions which could scarcely be overlooked, and the consequences of which can only be condemned on a much higher theory than has yet been adopted in State affairs. In May 1824, the principal Burmese seaport, Rangoon, was taken, and within two years, after much suffering from sickness, and much slaughter of the Burmese, the great river Irrawaddy was ascended, and the country put at our mercy. A victory over a people who carried with them diviners to battle, and whose "Invulnerables" were stimulated with opium, is not much to the credit of Anglo-Saxons. But the uses of success were not dishonourable. A subsidy was exacted, which did not amount by fivesixths to the cost of the war; the Aracan territory was placed between our territories and those of the humbled "Lord of the White Elephant and Golden Foot;" and the people have doubtless since been better governed than before. It is consolatory to believe that by obliterating the footsteps of war, covering its bloody fields with harvests, and attaching to a just and beneficent sceptre peoples taken by the sword, England's crimes in the East may be expiated, and her empire established. CHAPTER VIII. THE NEW ERA-FISCAL REDUCTION AND COMMERCIAL EMANCIPATION-THE POLICY OF VANSITTART AND OF HUSKISSON-" PROSPERITY ROBINSON"-WOOL-THE SPITALFIELDS ACT AND THE SILK DUTIES-THE NAVIGATION LAWS-OPERATIVE COMBINATIONS-RESPITE OF THE PAPER CURRENCY -JOINT-STOCK MANIA-THE CRASH-A "REBELLION OF THE BELLY"-NEW CORN BILL. THE glorious change in the foreign policy of Great Britain to which the last chapter was devoted, was in itself sufficient to redeem the reign of George the Fourth from the ignoble baseness which the personal character of the monarch, and the politics of his first ministers, would have naturally induced. But the accession to office of Mr. Canning was the advent of a new era in our domestic as well as in our foreign history-the era of commercial and religious emancipation, of fiscal, legislative, and social improvement. Between 1823 and 1830, more than seven millions of taxation were taken off, and that upon an intelligible principle, and with the best results; a number of absurd and incalculably pernicious laws, affecting commerce and industry, were repealed or modified; the ancient dominance of one religious sect over all others was invaded by the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and the admission of Roman Catholics to Parliament; the mitigation of the criminal code was taken by Government out of the hands of adventurous philanthropy; the education and social elevation of the people were admitted to be in harmony with, if not to constitute, the highest interests of the State; and the great work of Parliamentary reform was considerably advanced. It is true that Mr. Canning was not the prime personal agent in all these mighty and beneficent changes-it is a remarkable instance of intellectual perversity, that to some of them he was inveterately opposed; but to him belongs the high honour, or his was the good fortune, of being instrumental in breaking down the aristocratic monopoly in government, of kindling a spirit of poetry beneath the ribs of politics, of making way for the men who effected, whether in advance or by the pressure of their age, the progressive results we have classified above, and which it will be convenient further to describe rather according to that classification than in the order of their occurrence. Mr. Huskisson was the hero of commercial emancipation, and Mr. Robinson of fiscal reduction. Both were personal friends of Mr. Canning, and entered the Ministry within a few months of his accession-much to the anger and grief of Lord Eldon-the former as President of the Board of Trade, the latter as Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Vansittart being created Lord Bexley and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Mr. Huskisson was exposed, like his more brilliant friend, to the charge of being low-born and a professional politician. He was the son of a gentleman of Staffordshire, and might have lived as a 'squire on his small estate; but abandoning the patrimony to his relations, he became, at twenty years of age, secretary to the British ambassador at Paris, and six years later Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. The economical opinions he had formed in his intercourse with men and books we may plainly gather from his measures. But it was impossible to educe from the policy of preceding financiers anything of the kind. Mr. Vansittart had held his office since 1812. Since the peace, he had remitted no less than twenty-one and a half millions of taxation; but, year by year, it was the interest which happened to be strongest that gained relief, the tax most obnoxious to the governing classes that was thrown over. Thus, it will be remembered, in 1816 the income-tax and part of the malt-tax were surrendered; and so, in 1822, another million and a half of the latter was abandoned. Between the two periods, property and assessed taxes had been reduced to the amount of £18,355,889-while excise and customs duties had been reduced more than imposed to the amount only of £3.827.400. ། Vansittart's rule appears to have been, to appease the clamorous, whether for imposition or remission; and to make up a deficiency from one source by doubling the demand upon another. The people did not then understand that taxes on articles of consumption are paid chiefly by the consumers; nor the Minister, that the consumption of an article is lessened by increasing the cost of its production. If, therefore, an excise duty which he had doubled failed to yield double its former return, there was nothing for it but to dip into that surplus fund which Mr. Pitt intended for the discharge of the debt, but which Vansittart candidly admitted "was an instrument of great force in the hands of Parliament." The managers of the sinking-fund kept on borrowing to repair the inroads made upon it by the Exchequer; the interest thus increasing while the debt was supposed to have diminished. Great, therefore, was the surprise and anger of the people to learn, in 1822, that the interest of the debt was heavier than in 1817 by £700,000. The stupidity or wickedness of this system could hardly be exceeded by that of the notion, which now became very popular, of expunging the debt from the national account, and leaving the creditors to sue for their annuities the parties to whom they had loaned the principal. The new men had to deal with such a state of things as this, on making up the budget for 1823. The entire revenue was nearly sixty millions-of which, land, windows, and houses paid £4,563,674; Customs and Excise duties, £44,813,555. The latter were maintained for the double purpose of protection and revenue. They comprehended nearly every article of foreign growth or manufacture. Corn, of course, was all but a prohibited importsome descriptions of provision, cattle for instance, were absolutely so-coffee, sugar, spirits, tobacco, so restricted that their consumption was stationary; salt had been partially given up the previous year, after a struggle with the Chancellor, who did not think the payment for it of twenty or twenty-five shillings a year could be missed by the working man, as it was bought in such small quantities. The raw or prepared material of many articles, the finished fabric of others-foreign gloves, silk, wool, cotton, flax, hemp, iron, timber-were prohibited or heavily burdened, for the sake of home and colonial producers. Then, as to imports, wool, printed cottons, hides, glass, candles, were forbidden or restricted. Connected with this was an intricate system of drawbacks and exemptions-such as on timber for building churches-which naturally led to infinite fraud and litigation. A more palpable evil was the existence of smuggling and illicit manufacture to an immense extent-with their consequent cost to the Government of five hundred thousand a-year for the preventive service and coast-blockade, besides stations and revenue cutters; an army of excisemen and Customhouse officers; the evasion of duty and the loss of fair trade. People's eyes were not shut to these anomalies and mischiefs; nor were they slow to espousing him to the young queen, his niece; but neither would he thus nullify his pretensions, nor would his partizans consent to coalesce with the liberals in Church and State, who identified their cause with the new settlement of the crown. Civil war was threatened. Some of Don Miguel's military adherents led their regiments across the frontier, and set up his standard. The Spanish Government disclaimed participation in the proceeding on the remonstrance of the British and Portugese courts; but the nucleus was permitted to remain and spread. Invasion was threatened at several points, and so formidable did appearances become that the Regency directly claimed the interposition of Great Britain, as on behalf of an ancient and faithful ally. It was withheld until distinct acts of aggression could be deposed to. On Friday [December the 11th] it was officially communicated that the frontier had been crossed in several places; by the Tuesday following, English troops were on their march, and Mr. Canning stated and defended what had been done in a speech which charmed the House and country into unanimous and high-wrought enthusiasm. It was on this occasion that he uttered the celebrated sentence-in allusion to his being the first European minister to recognise South American independence-"I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." Some passages of this oration must be given in justice to the policy of this great statesman :-"The vote for which I call, is a vote for the defence of Portugal, not a vote of war against Spain. In thus fulfilling the stipulations of ancient treaties, of the existence and obligation of which all the world are aware, we, according to the universally-admitted construction of the law of nations, neither make war upon the assailant, nor give to that assailant, much less to any other power, just cause for war against ourselves. We go to Portugal in the discharge of these sacred obligations. When there, nothing shall be done by us to enforce the establishment of the constitution; but we must take care that nothing shall be done by others to prevent it from being fairly carried into effect. Internally let the Portugese settle their own affairs; but with respect to external force, while Great Britain has an arm to raise, it must be raised against the efforts of any power that shall attempt forcibly to control the choice and fetter the independence of Portugal. There are reasons which entirely satisfy my judgment that nothing short of a point of national faith or national honour would justify, at the present moment, any voluntary approximation to the possibility of war. Some years ago, in the discussions respecting the war against Spain, I stated that the position of this country in the present state of the world was one of neutrality, not only between contending nations, but between conflicting principles; and that it was by neutrality alone that we could maintain that balance the preservation of which I believed to be essential to the welfare of mankind. I then said, that I feared the next war which would be kindled in Europe would be a war not so much of armies as of opinions. Not four years have elapsed, and behold my apprehensions realized! It is, to be sure, within narrow limits that this war of opinion is at present confined; but it is a war of opinion in which Spain (whether as government or as nation) is now engaging against Portugal; it is a war which has commenced in hatred of the institutions of Portugal! If into that war this country shall be compelled to enter, we shall enter into it with a sincere and anxious desire to mitigate rather than to exasperate; and to mingle only in the conflict of arms, not in the more fatal conflict of opinions. But I much fear that this country (however earnestly she may endeavour to avoid it) could not, in such case, avoid seeing ranked under her banners all the restless and dissatisfied of any nation with which she might come in conflict. It is the contemplation of this new power in any future war which excites my most anxious apprehension. ! . The situation of England may be compared to that of the ruler of the winds, as described by the poet Celsâ sedet Eolus arce, Sceptra tenens; mollitque animos, et tempera iras, The consequence of letting loose the passions at present chained, would be to produce a scene of desolation which no man can contemplate without horror. Such is the love of peace which the British Government acknowledges, and such the necessity for peace which the circumstances of the world inculcate . . . We go to Portugal not to rule, not to dictate, not to prescribe constitutions, but to defend and preserve the independence of an ally. We go to plant the standard of England on the well-known heights of Lisbon. Where that standard is planted, foreign dominion shall not come !" Here the orator paused, amidst great cheering from all parts of the House. Mr. Brougham declared that now indeed the nation was governed on wise, liberal, and truly English principles, and its burdens would be cheerfully borne. Mr. Hume was not so sure that the country would be willing to bear an increase of its burdens for the sake of Portugal or the Portuguese, and moved a formal amendment; for which only three or four voted, and which gave the Minister an opportunity of consummating his oratorial triumph. He accepted the comparison between the two cases of 1823 and 1826, and undertook to deduce from them the exposition and the justification of his general policy. He observed upon the favourite notion of Sir R. Wilson and other chivalrous Liberals, that the Government should retaliate upon Spain her encouragement of Portuguese |