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A.D. 1831. Jan. SPECIAL COMMISSIONS.—The two special commissions appointed at the close of the past year to try the rioters and incendiaries, completed in the present month their painful duty. On the 9th, judgment of death was recorded against 23 prisoners for the destruction of a paper-machine in Buckinghamshire; in Dorset, on the 11th, against 3 for extorting money and two for robbery; at Norwich, 45 persons were convicted of machine-breaking and rioting; at Ipswich, 3 for extorting money; at Petworth, 26 for machine-breaking and rioting; at Gloucester, upwards of 30; at Oxford, 29; and at Winchester, out of 40 convicted, six were left for execution, of whom, however, only two were executed. At Salisbury, 44 prisoners were convicted, of whom two were executed on the 25th. Altogether, upwards of 800 offenders were tried, and all of those convicted were, with the exception of the four executed, sentenced to various terms of transportation and imprisonment. The prosecutions were firmly but discreetly conducted; and they checked the outrages against property, especially in the southern counties.
10. Trial and conviction of Richard Carlile for a libel, tending to excite the agricultural labourers to riot and the destruction of property. He was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in the Compter, to pay a fine of £200, and to find sureties to keep the peace for ten years.
12. The cholera Morbus, which had been fatally prevalent at Moscow, extended to St. Petersburgh.
Feb. 1. At the anniversary meeting of the Birmingham political union, Mr. Attwood stated that the union had now on its books 9000 individuals paying from 4s. to £2 2s. each.
3. Parliament re-assembled. Earl Grey, in the lords, and Viscount Althorp, in the commons, announced that a plan of parliamentary reform had been agreed upon by ministers, which would be introduced by lord John Russell.
Duke of Nemours elected king of Belgium. The French king refusing his consent, lest the jealousy of other powers might be excited, the election became void.
7. The New Testament presented to the king, at Brighton. printed in gold, on porcelain paper, and, for the first time, successfully executed on both sides.
9. A meeting of the subscribers to a fund to erect a monument to the memory of the celebrated John Locke. The subscription had been open since 1806, and amounted only to £846; which being insufficient to defray the expense of a monument in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, it was resolved to erect one in the London University.
11. Lord Althorp brought forward the BUDGET. It was proposed to abolish 210 places. The taxes on tobacco, newspapers, and advertisements to be reduced; those on coals, candles, printed cottons, and other articles, abolished. Reductions estimated at £4,080,000; the new duties to be imposed at £2,740,000. It was proposed to tax the transfer of funded property, and passengers by steam-boats, but these propositions were abandoned.
12. Messrs. O'Connell, Steele, and Barrett pleaded guilty to fourteen counts of an indictment, charging them with holding political meetings contrary to the proclamation of the lord lieutenant. The act under which they were convicted expired, pending the general election of this year, before they were called up for judgment, so that they escaped punishment.
19. St. John Long, against whom a verdict of manslaughter had been returned by a coroner's jury in the case of Mrs. Lloyd, whose death was alleged to caused by his medical practice, was tried and acquitted at the Old Bailey. His mode of treatment was by rubbing and unction.
20. Battle of Grochow, near Warsaw, between the Poles and Russians. The conflict was most obstinate; the Russians losing 7000, the Poles 2090 men.
22. New election law introduced into the French chamber of deputies. By this law the elective qualification is reduced from 300 to 240 francs, paid in direct taxes, and that of eligibility to the rank of deputy, from 1000 to 500 francs. This alteration, it is calculated, will augment the number of electors to 210,000.
Mar. 1. INTRODUCTION OF THE RETORM BILL.—This important measure was looked forward to with intense interest. It was introduced by lord John Russell in a speech remarkable for accuracy and research. He said the grievances in parliamentary representation, of which the people chiefly complained, were three: first, the nomination of members by individuals; secondly, elections by close corporations; and thirdly, the expenses of elections.
It was proposed to meet the first grievance by the disfranchisement of boroughs; 60 boroughs, not having a population of 2000 were to be totally disfranchised; and 47 boroughs, with a population of only 4000, the members returned by each to be reduced from two to one. Weymouth, which sent four members, was to send two. This would reduce the number of members 168; part of which vacancies were to be supplied by giving representatives to large towns, and by increasing the number of county members. In boroughs, the elective franchise was to be extended to householders paying a £10 rent; in counties, to copyholders of £10 a-year, and leaseholders of £50 per annum. Persons already in possession of the right of voting not to be deprived, if actually resident. For lessening the expenses of elections, non-resident electors to be disfranchised, and the duration of elections to be shortened by increasing the facilities for taking the polls.
No compensation to be given to the proprietors of the disfranchised boroughs, which was justified under the precedent of the forty-shilling freeholders of Ireland, who had received no compensation for the loss of their votes. As to the duration of parliaments, his lordship seemed favourable to shortening them, but reserved that branch of reform to a future and separate occasion. He expressed doubts of the expediency of voting by ballot, and concluded with moving for leave to bring in a bill for amending the representation in England.
The bill was read a first time without a division, after an animated discussion that lasted seven days. The second reading was carried on the 22nd, after a debate of two days, by a majority of ONE; the numbers being 302 to 301. The chief objections against the bill were, that it reduced the number of the house of commons; that it was founded on the basis of population, without reference to property or the payment of taxes, and that it was a robbery of corporations, revolutionary and subversive of the constitution. On the commitment, April 18th, general Gascoyne moved that the number of members ought not to be diminished. For the motion 299, against it 291. Majority against ministers 8. Three days after, ministers were again defeated by 164 to 142, upon a question of adjournment, by which the voting of supplies was postponed. Ministers then tendered the resignation of their offices to the king, which he declined to accept. They next recommended that parliament should be dissolved, to which his majesty assented and promptly executed.
In the two protracted discussions on the Reform Bill, the chief speakers for the measure were,—lord Althorp, Hume, Macauley, Shiel, lord Morpeth, Gisborne, E. G. S. Stanley, Wyse, sir James Graham, D. O’Connell, Dr. Lushington, lord Ebrington, Hobhouse, lord Tavistock, lord Palmerston, Tennyson, lord Howick, R. Grant, Stanley, J. Wood, lord Stanley, alderman Waithman, T. Duncombe, H. L. Bulwer, C. Grant, W. Cavendish, Rice, J. Campbell, C. Fergusson, sir T. Denman, and sir W. Horne; against,—sir R. Inglis, H. Twiss, lord Gower, sir Charles Wetherell, viscount Mahon, Baring, lord Darlington, C. Wynne, H. Davies, sir R. Peel, col. Sibthorpe, sir G. Clerk, Tyrrell, North, W. Y. Peel, Bethell, Praed, M. Attwood, sir J. Yorke, Goulburn, Courtenay, Croker, Calcraft, G. Bankes, K. Douglas, serg. Lefroy, sir G. Warrender, Cartwright, sir R. Vyvyan, V. Stuart, sir E. Sngden, lord Valletort, sir J Shelley, Shaw, sir James Scarlett, sir T. Acland, general Gascoyne, Sadler, lord Stormont, sir R. Wilson, and S. G. Price.
10. Entry of the Austrian troops into Modena for the purpose of suppressing the insurrection there. They subsequently took possession of other revolted places, add succeeded in restoring the authorities that had been deposed.
13. M. Lafitte and most of his colleagues resigned; the former succeeded by M. Casimir Perier. Sebastiani and Soult retained their places at the head of the foreign and war departments. A more firm resistance to the movement party was the anticipated policy of the new ministry.
31. The Russians defeated at Wawz, with the loss of 14,000 men, after a battle of two days, by the Poles under general Skrzynecki. Loss of the Poles inconsiderable.
April 7. Revolution in Brazil. The emperor, Don Pedro, abdicated in favour of his son, Dom Pedro II, a child five years old, and embarked with the rest of his family on board a British ship of war. A regency was appointed to act in the name of the young emperor. Jealousy of the constitutionalists, whom the emperor had patronised, and who had arrived in great number in Brazil, after the triumph of his brother Miguel over the emperor's daughter, Donna Maria, queen of Portugal, was the chief cause of the discontents of the Brazilians. The military joined the natives in their defection.
7. Miss Foote, the popular actress, married to the earl of Harrington.
22. Parliament prorogued by the king, and the next day dissolved. His majesty said he had determined on this step, to take the sense of the people on a change in the representation. The anti-reformers deprecated dissolution, and a tumultuous altercation between them and their opponents was only interrupted by the sudden arrival of the king. London and most other towns were illuminated in consequence, and the windows of the lords Wellington and Londonderry, sir R. Peel, sir Robert Wilson, and others opposed to the reform bill, were broken by the populace. During the six months' duration of the Wellington parliament, the chief measures that had been completed were the repeal of taxes and the settlement of the civil list. The last was fixed at £510,000, which reduction was effected by transferring the charges unconnected with the royal maintenance and dignity to the other departments of the public expenditure. The civil list pensions were limited to £75,000. An addition of 7,680 men was made to the army, and 3,000 to the navy. These augmentations were rendered necessary by the disturbed state of the agricultural districts, and the agitation in Ireland.
23. Duke William of Brunswick assumes the sovereignty, with the consent of the king of England and the German diet, owing to the incapacity of his brother.
30. A Polish corps, under Dwernicki, being hard pressed by the Russians, retreated into Austrian Gallicia, and, surrendering to the Austrian authorities, were treated as prisoners and sent into Hungary.
May 4. A British fleet appearing in the Tagus obtains the redress of certain grievances, which, before its arrival, had been refused by the Portuguese government.
6. At a review of the second regiment of life guards in Windsor Park, the king presented them with a pair of silver kettledrums weighing 1900 ounces. It is the first royal donation of the kind since George III. presented, in 1789, kettle-drums of silver to the Blues.
10. Certain districts of the counties of Clare, Galway, Roscommon, and Tipperary proclaimed in a state of disturbance. Large bodies had for some time assembled to turn up pasture land for the alleged purpose of creating employment.
13. Ikey Solomons, a notorious thief and receiver of stolen goods, sentenced at the Old Bailey to 14 years' transportation.
26. The subscriptions raised in England to relieve distress in Ireland amount to £60,000, independent of the assistance afforded by government.
28. A coroner's inquest which had been sitting for some days on the bodies of several persons who had been killed in an affray with the police, at Castlepollard, in Ireland, returned a verdict against the chief constable, and 18 of the police, of having caused the death of the said persons, by firing at them. The grand jury subsequently ignored the bills preferred against them for murder, and the relations refusing to proceed against them for manslaughter, the prosecution was abandoned.
GENERAL ELECTION.—An appeal having been made to the people, the greatest excitement prevailed during the elections. The reform bill was considered the king’s measure as well as that of his ministers, and for the time the country was divided into two parties; those in favour of the bill and those against it: the former constituting an overwhelming majority of the nation, comprising a union of all the different classes of parliamentary reformers, who joined, during the elections, in one common rallying cry of “The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill.”
In Ireland, two pledged supporters of the bill were elected for Dublin. Scotland became unusually agitated, and Mr. Jeffrey, the lord advocate, was returned amidst much tumult for Edinburgh. In England, the anti-billmen were signally defeated. Mr. Bankes was rejected in Dorsetshire; Sir R. Vyvyan in Cornwall; sir E. Knatchbull in Kent; sir T. Acland in Devonshire. In the city of London, all the four members were pledged to support the bill. Out of the eighty-two county members for England, all were pledged to the bill, with the exception of about half-a-dozen returned by the counties of Westmoreland, Bucks, Salop, Huntingdon, and Monmouth.
The opponents to the ministerial measure stood nowhere with vigour, except in the universities, where the church authority predominates; and popular enthusiasm proved more than a match for the anti-bill proprietors of boroughs, even in the existing state of parliamentary representation.
June 3. Paganini, the celebrated violin-player, gave his first concert at the Opera House with great success.
4. Prince Leopold elected king of Belgium by the congress at Brussels.
Disturbances among the workmen employed in the iron works at Merthyr Tydvil, owing to low wages and the high price of provisions. The riot act being read, instead of dispersing, they made an attack on the military, who firing, several of the rioters were killed and wounded.
6. Duncan McCraig, a minister of the Scottish church, convicted at Edinburgh of stealing books, and sentenced to be transported for 14 years.
7. The Old Boar's Head, in Great East Cheap, the scene of many of Shakspeare's stories, removed, to make way for the approaches to the New London Bridge.
8. Upwards of 3,000 men assembled to destroy the enclosures in the forest of Dean, under a mistaken notion that every 21 years they had a right to level them; the rioters succeeded in destroying fifty miles of wall and fences, and throwing open 10,000 acres of plantation.
10. Proclamation in the Gazette requiring all vessels coming from the Baltic to perform quarantine, owing to the prevalence of the cholera morbus in Russia and adjacent parts.
13. Sailed from the London Docks for Canada, with their wives and families, 300 Chelsea pensioners; they had received four years’ pay and grants of land from the British government. There were, also, along with them, several passengers going out at the expense of their parishes, and tradesmen paying their own passage.
14. NEW PARLIAMENT met and re-elected C. M. Sutton, speaker. It was opened by the king, in person, on the 21st. He recommended to their consideration the expediency of a reform in the representation; announced the continuance of amicable relations with foreign powers; the settlement of the affairs of Belgium; and adverted to disturbances in Ireland, and the cholera morbus in Russia. Addresses were agreed to in both houses without a division.
18. At Newtonbarry in Ireland, in a seizure for tithes, thirty-five persons killed or severely wounded by the yeomanry, who began firing on the multitude without orders. A coroner's jury, which sat on the dead, was discharged without giving a verdict.
22. Two young men found drowned in the Serpentine. One was a gentleman, the other a pickpocket, in whose pockets were found a coral necklace, 26 handkerchiefs, a pocket book, and 26 pawnbrokers' duplicates. The pickpocket fell a victim to his own humanity—so inconsistent is human nature—by diving after the other sufferer, with a view to save him.
24. REFORM BILL.—Lord John Russell a second time obtained leave to introduce this measure, and adverted to the opinions of Chatham, Pitt, and Fox, in favour of improving the representative system. To afford tine to bring forward the reform bills for Scotland and Ireland, the second reading was deferred to July 4th, when an elaborate debate ensued, in which sir James Macintosh, Macauley, sir R. Peel, the Bulwers, lord Althorp, Wm. Brougham, and sir F. Burdett shone conspicuous. It continued three nights, ending on the third, and the house dividing, 367 for the second reading, 23l against it; majority, 136 in favour of the bill.
It was next committed and underwent a long, severe, but beneficial scrutiny; every clause was carefully discussed as it arose; imperfections were discovered, acknowledged, and remedied: these occupied the house almost uninterruptedly until the 19th September, when, on the third reading there was another eloquent display of three nights, in which sir James Scarlett, Macauley, Croker, J. Williams, C. Wynn, Crampton, and Pemberton mingled. The house divided—for the bill, 345; against it, 236; majority, 109. The bill then passed the commons amid loud cheers, and next day was taken up to the lords by upwards of 100 members, headed by lords Althorp and Russell.
29. Common council of London withdrew their objection to the admission of Jews to the freedom of the city.
July 4. Robert Taylor found guilty of blasphemy after a twelve hours’ trial. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in the county gaol of Surrey, and to pay a fine of £200.
7. Mr. Cobbett tried for a libel in his Political Register, the tendency of which, it was alleged, was to excite the peasantry to the destruction of property. After the jury had been locked up fifteen hours they were discharged by the judge, as there was no likelihood of agreeing in their verdict.
11. Portuguese government having refuse satisfaction for injuries committed on French subjects by the Portuguese authorities, the passage of the Tagus was forced by admiral Roussin, and the Portuguese fleet, lying off Lisbon, taken possession of. This compelled the court of Lisbon to submit to the terms dictated by the French, which included the dismissal of some Portuguese functionaries, an indemnity for expenses incurred by the expedition, the reversal of all sentences pronounced against Frenchmen for political opinions, and the publication of these humiliating terms in the Lisbon Gazette.
14. At Winchester, Mr. Deacle recovers £50 damages against Messrs. Bingham Baring and Francis Baring, magistrates, for false imprisonment.
16. Hon W. L. Wellesley committed by the Lord Chancellor for contempt of court, in having withdrawn his daughter from the custody of the persons appointed by the Court of Chancery.—(See 1827, Feb. 1st.) Mr. Wellesley, after having remained several days in confinement, submitted to the court, and, having restored his daughter, was discharged.
19. After the erection of major Cartwright's statue in Burton Crescent, nearly 600 of his admirers dined at the White Conduit House. Sir F. Burdett and Mr. O'Connell were present, and Mr. Hume in the chair.
Aug 1. Opening of New London Bridge; the king and queen attended the ceremony, going by water in state. An elegant pavilion was erected on the bridge, in which a splendid banquet was prepared for their majesties and other guests. The time occupied in the erection of this masterly structure, from the driving of the first pile, had been seven years, five months, and thirteen days. The fall of water at the ebbing of the tide, which was formerly so dangerous, has been completely remedied by the increased waterway afforded by the removal of the cumbrous piers of the old bridge.
2. Awful fire at Pera, a suburb of Constantinople, in which the hotels of the foreign embassies, with a number of churches, and 5000 houses, fell a prey to the flames.
12. The Dutch recommenced hostilities against the Belgians, and, attacking them at Louvaine, compelled them, under the command of king Leopold, to retreat. The advance of a French army towards Brussels deterred the Hollanders from pursuing their victory.
17. Rothsay castle, steam-boat, plying between Liverpool and Beaumaris, wrecked in the night with nearly 200 passengers and crew on board, of whom only 22 were saved. The captain and mate seem to have intoxicated and the vessel not sea-worthy.
19. A bronze statue erected in Hanover square to the memory of the late Mr. Pitt, on a pedestal of granite: the statue is ten feet high and weighs four tons. Mr. Chantrey is the sculptor.
Sept. 7. After two days' hard fighting, Warsaw capitulated and was taken possession of by the Russians.
8. Coronation of their majesties. There was a royal procession from St. James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey, but there was no banquet in Westminster Hall. A grand dinner given at St. James’s. In the evening the illuminations in the metropolis were splendid and general; the theatres, Vauxhall Gardens, and many places of public entertainment were open free of expense, and a display of fire-works took place in Hyde Park, which attracted an immense concourse of spectators.
21. The copyright of sir Walter Scott’s miscellaneous prose-works, which comprise six volumes 8vo., sold by auction for £240. The manuscripts of the Waverley novels been previously sold at Evans's. The Monastery, bound in green morocco, brought £18; the Antiquary, £42; Rob Roy, £50.
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