was afterwards resented by the Town Council. The Convention also sent down from London resolutions strongly condemning this employment of the metropolitan force; for which Lovett and Collins, the Secretaries, and a Dr. Taylor, were apprehended by the authorities. The Chartists, refused the use of the Town Hall, insisted on meeting in a place called the Bull-ring; the police attempted to dislodge them, but were unable, without the aid of the military. The day after the refusal to consider the Petition, there was a far worse outbreak than any before. Several houses were burned down, and it was some days before quiet was restored. As the winter advanced, there were riots at Sheffield and other places. In many towns of the Northern and Midland counties, processions levied contributions of food and money upon the shopkeepers. In addition to the old device of running upon the savings-banks, the more violent leaders recommended "a sacred month" -a month of cessation from labour, and abstinence from taxed articles of food-the election of representatives, exclusive dealing, and the acquisition of arms. Another novel and eccentric device was, attending the cathedrals and churches in great numbers-an enviable opportunity and inspiration to the preachers, if they had but known it! In the summer and autumn assizes, Henry Vincent was tried, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment; William Lovett and Joseph Collins to the same (Taylor was discharged); three of the Birmingham rioters to death; Stephen, to eighteen months' imprisonment; McDouall, for sedition, to twelve months'; and thirty or forty others to various terms of imprisonment: Vincent, Lovett, and Collins, conducted their own defence; and were complimented by the Crown council on the ability and moderation they displayed. In September, the Convention dissolved itself, by a resolution carried by the Chairman's casting vote. O'Connor was presently afterwards arrested and held to bail on a charge of sedition ;—it was a matter of wonder and complaint with many, that he had been at large so long, while the leaders of another section of Chartists had been under lock and key. The Ministry then congratulated the country through their Attorney-General (Sir John Campbell) that Chartism was extinct. But by putting some of the best men out of the way, they had abandoned it to the worser; and the agitation whose peaceful forms they had discouraged, had become a conspiracy. On the night of Sunday, November the 3rd, Mr. Frost, a magistrate of Newport, marched bodies of armed men, four or five thousand strong, upon that town. Mr. Frost had been appointed by Lord John Russell a borough magistrate some years before. Learning that Mr. Frost had been elected a delegate to the Convention, his lordship called upon him to resign his commission; but received a spirited refusal, on the ground that the Convention was a perfectly legal assembly; and he was not superseded. His brother magistrates were prepared for the attack; and posted them

selves, with a company of foot soldiers, in the principal inn of the town. They awaited the assault of the first column, led by Frost in person, and received an irregular volley of slugs, which wounded the Mayor-Mr. (afterwards created Sir Thomas) Phillips-and several other persons. But one or two rounds from the soldiers routed the miserable array. The insurgents took to flight; Frost was captured; Williams and Jones, who were advancing with other columns, disbanded their men, but were also captured. The three were tried for high treason by a special commission. The evi dence disclosed the existence of preparations for a really formidable rising, had Newport been carried; and as it is not necessary to design the death or overthrow of the Sovereign to constitute the guilt of high treason, the prisoners were convicted, and left for execution. But the hearts of a large portion of the middle classes revolted from the thought of the gallows and the hangman's knife being employed to vindicate the throne of a youthful Queen, on the eve of marriage; Chartists who condemned the enterprise no less than they deplored the fate of its authors, joined in pleading for clemency; the judges were divided on a technicality raised by the prisoners' counsel; and so the punishment of death was commuted to transportation for life.

The Charter had given a form and aim to political discontents; but Chartism, even of the lowest kind, must not be saddled with the odium of all this turbulence. The country had entered upon a long, dark season of commercial depression-a phrase that covers, in this high state of civilization, an infinitude of misery; ruin to the embarrassed, penury to the labourers, destitution to the poor. The harvest of 1836 had been inferior to those of the previous five years; that of '37 was still worse; the harvest of '38 yielded one-fourth less than that of '34-" the most deficient crop of any since 1816." As the price of bread went up, wages went down, manufacturers and traders stopped, employment grew scarce, with so regular a step as to strike the dullest ear. Amidst the indifference of one class, the dismay of another, the blind anger of a third, a band of hopeful, because percipient and resolute men, arose. In September, 1838, fifty or sixty persons formed themselves, at Manchester, into the Anti-corn-law League. With the opening of Parliament in 1839 an Anti-corn-law Convention assembled in London. The silence of the Queen's speech on the subject called forth reprobatory resolutions from many public meetings. On the 7th of February, Mr. Villiers moved that evidence be heard at the bar on the operation of the corn-laws; which Lord John Russell counselled the House to reject as unprecedented and inconvenient-and the House did so, by 361 to 172. The Lords contemptuously negatived a similar motion by Lord Brougham. The delegates adjourned to Manchester, and at once appealed from Parliament to the people. The "Anti-Bread-Tax Circular" started; Mr. Paulton, and other efficient lecturers, sent about the country;

was

and local associations formed in all the principal towns. With the opening of the session of 1840, another convention assembled in London. Mr. Villiers repeated his motion, which was defeated by 300 to 117 votes; but Mr. Hume obtained a committee on import duties, whose report became the text-book of Free-traders. Female influence was enlisted by a method novel to political agitation-tea-parties. The constituencies were also specially addressed; and a vacancy occurring in the representation of Walsall, it was contested on simple free-trade principles. In such good earnest did the League do its work-aided by the sharp teaching of adversity—that by the beginning of 1841, a falling Ministry clutched at its strength for salvation. The Whigs had added to all their other sins the unpardonable one, in a commercial community, of an insolvent exchequer. The revenue had fallen nearly two millions below the expenditure. Ministers resolved to attempt its replenishment, and to renew their lease of office, now absolutely run out, by an experiment on free-trade. True, the Premier had declared, not many years before, that it was the maddest of all madness to dream of altering the corn-laws; and more recently, that an attempt to do so would cost more than it would be worth. True, Lord John Russell had even rejected information on the subject, and had refused the prayer of three million petitioners on a reference to precedents. But the hardest words must be eaten now. Accordingly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. F. Baring), proposed a fixed duty of eight shillings per quarter on corn, and a reduction of the sugar and timber-duties. The sense of the House was tested first on the proposed new sugar duties; and Ministers were outvoted by 36 [281 to 317]. With inimitable nonchalance, Mr. Baring intimated the next day, that he should move the renewal of the existing duties. Sir Robert Peel checkmated his tenacious opponents by a motion of no confidence (moved by Sir J. Yarde Buller), which he carried by a majority of one [312 to 311]. But Ministers had resolved to save the country-they therefore dissolved the Parliament [June 22nd].

It was not domestic difficulties alone that were thickening upon the falling Ministry. They had ruptured our friendship with France, commenced a war upon China, and incurred unforeseen disasters in Afghanistan. In 1839, the standing quarrel between the Sublime Porte and Mohammed Ali broke into open war. Syria was the subject of dispute and the field of conflict. The Sultan declared his rebellious vassal deposed; and all Europe saw that it was likely Mohammed would respond by annihilating his master. To prevent the destruction of the Turkish empire, and consequent disturbance of the "balance of power," the diplomatists of the five great monarchies intervened. The utter defeat of the Turkish army by Ibrahim; the death, at that moment, of the old Sultan; the enlightened views of his youthful successor, Abdul Medjid; gave promise of a satisfactory settlement between

the two parties without foreign intervention. But a treacherous Turkish admiral carried over the fleet under his command to Alexandria. Four of the five powers insisted upon its restoration, while France was believed to be secretly counselling its retention. After much tardy diplomatizing, the representatives of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, suddenly concluded a convention (July, 1840) without the assent of France. The convention required the surrender of Syria and the fleet, as the condition of Mohammed's retaining Egypt. Mohammed delayed, the young Sultan grew impatient, and Ibrahim was evidently preparing for the worst. A British fleet, under the command of Sir Robert Stopford, blockaded Alexandria and the Syrian ports; then bombarded Beyrout; and, finally, Commodore Napier captured St. Jean d'Acre* (November the 3rd), and drove Ibrahim's forces out of Lebanon. France was greatly incensed at these proceedings, and at the omission even of her name from the Queen's speech in which the convention was announced. M. Thiers was then prime minister; it was his rôle to inflame this bad feeling to the uttermost; Louis Philippe was as earnestly in favour of peace, and refused to sanction the increased armaments which his minister demanded, but, with the cunning that discoloured and warped all his actions, took advantage of the war-spirit to obtain money for advancing those fortifications of Paris, which it is now evident, he had contemplated from the first as a protection from no foreign foe. Mohammed was confirmed in the hereditary possession of Egypt, but was obliged to surrender Syria. The lawlessness which soon again prevailed in that interesting country, in contrast with the order, industry, and improvement, which Mohammed's vigorous rule everywhere secured, forced all who knew the facts to inquire on what principle tens of thousands of human lives were sacrificed, and the general cause of human advancement retarded, for the maintenance of arbitrary political arrangements. But even on the ethics of diplomacy, the proceedings we have now to relate appear utterly indefensible. In 1838, the Chinese Government resolved upon the absolute suppression of the trade in opium, which was a principal article of traffic between our East India merchants and their people. Since 1834, English commissioners had been in communication with the Celestial authorities on the subject; and our Government were amply forewarned of the prohibition. Considerable delay appears to have taken place at Down

* The fortress had long been deemed impregnable; and this attack upon it was the first occasion on which war-steamers were employed. There were four of these vessels in the action, and they proved by the rapidity of their movements, and the prodigious execution of the shells thrown from them, that a new device, almost as important as the invention of gunpowder, had been introduced into the "art of war." The fortress was all but destroyed in less than three hours. One of the shells thrown exploded a magazine, by which 2,000 Egyptians were killed. The total loss on the side of the assailants was only 60 killed and wounded.-It is estimated that, in all, 100,000 lives were lost, during the war.

ing-street in coming to a decision upon this information; but when the decision was made, it was that which could alone be expected from any civilized power-that if our merchants chose to act as smugglers, they must take the consequence. Before this decision was known at Canton, however, the Celestial Commissioner Lin had made a blockade of the factories; and our Superintendent, Captain Elliott, had delivered up 20,263 chests of opium, and written to the Governor-General of India for ships and troops. Notwithstanding Lord Palmerston's instructions, Captain Elliott felt that he was pledged to stand by the smugglers. In November, 1839, a fleet of Chinese war-junks was fired into by our vessels; and the next summer, the island of Chusan was taken, and the preliminaries of a treaty drawn out. When that treaty arrived in England, it was disallowed; and Sir Henry Pottinger sent out as a plenipotentiary.-It was with a very different people we had got embroiled in another quarter. Between our north-western frontier and Persia there lay the great plain of the Punjab, the mountainous Afghan territory, and a broad belt of desert. The Punjab was possessed by the Shieks, the most warlike race in India, and whose chief, Runjeet Singh, the "Lion of Lahore," had raised them to a high state of military discipline. The Afghan monarchy had been for some years disputed by several pretenders. One Dost Mohammed finally obtained the ascendency, and the defeated Shah Sujah took refuge among the Shieks, who had profited by the dissensions to possess themselves of Attock, the key of India at the north-west, and the province of Peshawur. War then ensued between Dost Mohammed and Runjeet Singh; the unfortunate Shah taking refuge from both with the British, to whom also the Afghans applied for help against Runjeet, but without success. Dost Mohammed then turned to Persia for assistance. The young Shah (he had succeeded to the throne in 1834) eagerly responded, in the hope of obtaining the long-coveted fortress of Herat. But here British interests were supposed to be threatened. The court of Teheran was known to be in close communication with that of St. Petersburg; and a Persian garrison in Afghanistan seemed but the head of a Russian army advancing upon Hindostan. To strengthen suspicion, a Russian agent was found among the Afghans themselves, offering the assistance which the British refused. Notwithstanding the explicit assurance of the Russian representatives, and the failure of the Persians to capture Herat after a siege of eleven months, it was decided at Calcutta that we must possess ourselves of Cabul, or prepare to see the Czar follow the path of Alexander, of Tamerlane, and of Mahmoud. And it was resolved as a pretext for invasion to set up the imbecile Shah Sujah against the

* It was held by an independent Afghan chieftain, who was readily given up by the other chiefs as the price of alliance with Persia. The defence was conducted by a young Englishman Lieut. Pottinger.