Wade's Chronology—Jan.-June 1832

A.D. 1832. PREROGATIVE COPYRIGHTS.—The enquiries of a parliamentary committee during the session of 1831, elicited some curious facts relative to the copyrights vested in the crown. In England, the exclusive right of printing bibles is enjoyed by the king's printer, concurrently with the two universities; in Ireland, of the king's printer is shared with Trinity College; in Scotland the whole was in the hands of the king's printer. The late Scotch patent expired in 1838; the Irish will expire in 1851; the English not till 1860. Exclusive of the sale by the universities, the king's printer for England sold in the ten years from 1821 to 1830 inclusive, bibles, 569,164; testaments, 637,890; prayer-hooks, 182,811; psalms, 189,544. The Bible Society and the Naval and Military Bible Society, are the chief purchasers. In 1829, of 51,500 bibles and 75,691 testaments sold by the English patentees, no less a proportion than 45,541 of the former and 68,025 of the latter were bought by these two societies, both of whom are supported by voluntary subscriptions. Several instances of typographical errors were adduced to the committee, in the current edition of the scriptures.

January

Jan. 2. Chief Justice Tindal opened the commission for the trial of the Bristol rioters. Of 180 rioters taken into custody, 4 were executed and 22 transported.

13. Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton committed suicide pending an inquiry into his conduct by a court-martial. The charges against him were, that he had not displayed, during the Bristol riots, that firmness and decision required in a British officer. A bad state of health, and absence of experience in actual service, seem to have been the leading causes of the colonel's errors. He was fifty-two years old.

17. Parliament met after the holidays.

28. Died at Cheltenham, in his 80th year, Dr. Bell, the introducer into England of the Madras system of education. Shortly before his death, this meritorious divine had transferred very large sums to different bodies for the improvement and diffusion of education. Among the sums so appropriated, were upwards of £100,000 for the establishment of schools in the town of St. Andrew's, where he was born, and £10,000 to the lately erected British Naval School.

31. A General Cemetery, comprising nearly fifty acres, opened on the Harrow Road. It is the first imitation in Eng1and of the burial ground of Père la Chaise, so long the admiration of foreigners visiting Paris.

February

Feb. 13. CHOLERA MORBUS.—A notice issued from the council office, Whitehall, announcing that fatal cases of the Asiatic spasmodic cholera had occurred at Rotherhithe, spread indescribable alarm through the metropolis. Hitherto, this dreadful malady had only made its appearance in the country towns and villages, especially in the north of England. In the dense and luxurious population of the capital, the most frightful mortality was anticipated and all the horrors which Defoe had depicted of the great plague rose before the imagination. A bill was hurried through parliament, empowering the privy Council to make regulations in towns or districts affected or threatened with the pestilence, and that the expenses thereby incurred should be defrayed out of the poor-rates. Parochial and district boards were forthwith organized; temporary hospitals got ready for the reception of the sick; medical persons kept in constant attendance to minister to the afflicted, and the interment of persons dying of the disease was hastened. These demonstrations put the public on the alert, and individuals sought safety by timely precautions. Surgeons and apothecaries, previously unemployed, were overwhelmed with patients, real or imaginary, and the shops of the chymists and druggists were rapidly cleared of their principal contents, especially camphor and other reputed disinfecting agents.

Cleanliness and increased attention to the general health may have checked the progress of the malady, or if the precautions adopted were disproportioned to the occasion, it was an excess on the safe side. The physicians were divided in opinion, some contending that no new disease existed, and that it was not contagious. However this may have been, that a virulent cholera existed is unquestionable: its ravages were great in the present and two following months of March and April: it then abated, but again burst forth at the end of summer with more violence than ever. It is probable, that during this second attack, when, from prudential reports of cases and deaths for London were discontinued, that the disease was most destructive. In the whole year, the deaths from cholera, within the limits of the Bills of Mortality, amounted to 3,200; in the past year of 1831 to only 48. On September 2nd, the amount of cases reported by the Central Board, exclusive of London, was 68,855, and the deaths, 24,180. Little was heard of the cholera at the close of November. It next appeared in the Canadas and United States; having thus made the tour of the globe, beginning in Asia, and after devastating Moscow and the northern parts of Europe, visiting the British isles and France, and next crossing the Atlantic, may have been lost in the great west country, or absorbed in the monsoon of the Pacific Ocean, or returned to the supposed place of its origin, Hindostan.

23. A French expedition landed at Ancona. Disputes had arisen between the Pope and his liberal subjects, and to render unnecessary any pretext for Austrian intervention, by which papal tryanny would have been augmented, the French, without giving umbrage to that power, took possession of the citadel. His Holiness protested loudly against the “invasion” of the legations, and both Austria and England manifested symptoms of jealousy at the of the French in Italy, which they did not finally evacuate till six years after, when the Austrians withdrew from the papal territories.

26. An ukase of the emperor Nicholas decrees that Poland shall henceforth be incorporated with Russia, but have its separate administration, and its own civil and criminal code of laws. Other measures were adopted in the course of the year for discouraging the use of the French and Polish languages; the university of Warsaw was dissolved, with the exception of the faculties of medicine and theology, and 5,000 families of Polish gentlemen transplanted from the province of Podolia to the line of the Caucasus.

28. The king held a levee, at which an address was presented by the earl of Roden from the protestants of Ireland, against the Irish Reform Bill. It was signed by 230,000 persons, and was of such magnitude, that it required two men to bear it to the royal presence.

March

Mar. 1. The first carriage for the conveyance of passengers on a railway in France commenced, running from St. Etienne to the Loire.

3. Incendiary fires in the neighbourhood of Dunstable, and property to the amount of £5,000 destroyed.

21. A general fast-day. Much disorder was occasioned by persons assembling in Finsbury Square, supposing that meat and bread were to be distributed. Their majesties heard prayers in the grand music room of Windsor Castle. The commons attended at St. Margaret's church and the lords walked in procession to Westminster Abbey, which attracted great numbers of spectators, no such procession having taken place for many years!

27. The cholera broke out with alarming virulence in Paris: 1000 deaths occurred in the first week. It was much more fatal in the French than in the British capital. Of 45,675 deaths in Paris in 1832, the enormous number of 19,000 was occasioned by cholera. The mortality was greatest in the most unhealthy quarters, where the streets are narrow and the houses very lofty. As the pestilence appeared in the capital without previous manifestation in the sea-ports or frontier towns it strengthened the opinion that the disease was not contagious, but atmospheric or epidemic.

April

Apr. 1. Riot at Paris, occasioned by the chiffoniers refusing to submit to the municipal regulations made for preventing the spread of the cholera. This class of persons gained a miserable pittance by raking among the sweepings, which the Parisians heaped outside their doors to be removed by the scavengers in the night. As a sanitary precaution, the nuisance was sought to be removed by light carts with more than ordinary dispatch, which the chiffoniers considered as an invasion of their rights. A disturbance ensued, to which the Republicans and Carlists, generally on the watch for an emeute, promptly lent their aid. It continued two days, and a printer and several others were wounded in the conflicts with the police and military.

14. REFORM BILL IN THE LORDS.—After an arduous debate, continued through four nights, the second reading of this popular bill was carried at seven o'clock in the morning by a majority of nine, the numbers being, for the bill 184, against it, 175. An accession of fifty votes had been obtained since the rejection of the bill last October. Several bishops had, in the interim, joined the ministers, and a new party, denominated “waverers,” had sprung up in the lords, who contributed to carry the second reading, but on whom little dependence could be placed for carrying the bill unmutilated through its ulterior stages. Of the peers actually present only a majority of two votes for the bill, and as proxies are not admitted in committee, the prospect of ministers being able to carry their measure undamaged through this ordeal appeared very precarious. Parliament adjourned on the 18th to May 7, for the Easter holidays.

May

May 2. A bronze statue of the late Mr. Canning, by Westmacott, placed on its pedestal in Palace-yard. The figure is colossal, and measures twelve feet high; the face considered an admirable likeness, but the loose robe thrown over his shoulders too heavy, and the pedestal too small for the figure it supports.

The Rev. E. Irving excluded from the Scotch Church. He was expelled for heresy concerning the human nature of Jesus Christ, and for allowing the exercise of alleged supernatural gifts in his chapel.

7. Ministers defeated in the lords by a majority of 35, on the motion of lord Lyndhurst that the disfranchising clause should be postponed, and the enfranchising clause first considered: the numbers were 151 to 115. Upon which, earl Grey moved the adjournment of the committee to the 10th.

Great meeting at Birmingham to petition government to pass the Reform Bill unmutilated. The London Political Union met, when 1200 new members enrolled their names. A resolution agreed to, that no taxes should be paid till the reform bill had been passed.

9. RESIGNATION OF MINISTERS.—The inability of ministers to carry such an efficient measure of reform as they deemed advisable was the avowed ground of their resignation. Previous to this, the popular opinion had been that earl Grey had received ample powers, in case of need, for the creation of peers; but it now appeared that the king’s assent so to exercise the royal prerogative had neither been given nor asked, and it was only after the defeat of the 7th that ministers tendered to the crown the alternative of their resignation or an increase of the peerage. To the latter expedient the king was reluctant to resort, and the resignation of the reform ministers was accepted.

His majesty then sent for lord Lyndhurst to advise as to what means existed for forming an administration that would carry an “extensive measure of reform” without obliging the king to have recourse to his prerogative of creating peers. On this basis, a communication was opened by the learned lord with the duke of Wellington and sir Robert Peel. Without being minister himself, the duke offered his services to support the administration of sir R. Peel, and, though still disapproving of all reform, take as much of the reform bill as his grace could carry through the upper house of parliament. Further than this, the duke could not consistently nor even decently lend his aid, his own recent declaration still sounding in the public ear that “no reform was required, and that while he was minister none should be attempted.” The clear understanding, however, imposed by the terms of the royal commission was that if sir Robert Peel accepted the premiership, he must support an extensive reform. To this official condition the baronet's objections were insuperable. “He had,” he said, “never ceased to be opposed to the bill, and had argued against its revolutionary character. He would not consent to pass it as it was; and with the majority against him he had no hope of being able to modify it.”—(House of Commons, May 18th.)

The overture to sir Robert having wholly failed, and the impossibility of forming an administration that was at all likely to endure being self-evident, the duke of Wellington recommended to the king to recall his former servants. The conditions on which the Whigs resumed office on the 18th were honourable to their firmness and integrity. They were, that the bill should be carried into effect “unimpaired in all its principles, and uninjured in its essential provisions;” and the royal assurance was obtained that so far as it depended upon the king, the “means of conducting the bill to a successful issue should not be wanting.”—(Earl Grey, House of Lords, May 17 and 18.) After this declaration, and the receipt of a private message from the king, the anti-bill peers professed to consider their deliberative wisdom controlled by an irresistible power, and rather than have their house “swamped” by new creations withdrew their opposition to the further progress of the bill. Other causes contributed essentially to the successful issue of this great legislative struggle. Pending the ministerial interregnum of nine days, lord Ebrington's motion was carried by a large majority of the commons, expressive of their confidence in the ministers and regret at their resignation.

Out of doors, the country was in a very alarming state of unanimity. The tide set all in one direction. Against the bill there was neither moral nor physical force. About its ultimate success no one affected to doubt; that was deemed certain because the nation had willed it. The newspapers were almost entirely on the popular side, and kept up a raking fire against the “Oligarchy” and “usurping Borough-mongers.” At London, Birmingham, Manchester, and other large towns simultaneous meetings were held to petition the house of commons to stop the supplies. In the metropolis, placards were everywhere exhibited, enjoining the union of all friends to the cause—an enforcement of the public rights at all hazards—and a general resistance to the payment of taxes, rates, and tithes. The political societies were in active communication, and at their meetings and in the leading daily journals projects for organizing and arming the people were openly discussed and recommended. In case of need, the population of the large towns was ready to be precipitated on the metropolis. But this extremity was rendered unnecessary. The firm and generous devotion of William IV. to “an extensive reform,” whether carried by Whigs or Tories, deprived the hostile section of the aristocracy of the sole fulcrum, by which, with the least chance of success, it could hope to resist the universal sentiment. The date of the subjoined regal circular, which has been alluded to above, addressed to the peers by the king's private secretary, sir Herbert Taylor, will show the time when the great state screw, in possession of the crown, was applied to the upper chamber:—

“St. James's Palace, May 17, 1832.
MY DEAR LORD,—I am honoured with his Majesty's commands to acquaint your Lordship, that all difficulties in the arrangements in progress will be obviated by a declaration in the House to-night from a sufficient number of peers, that, in consequence of the present state of affairs, they have come to the resolution of dropping their further opposition to the Reform Bill, so that it may pass without delay, and as nearly as possible in its present shape.
I have the honour to be,
Yours sincerely,
HERBERT TAYLOR”

The triumph of the Reform Bill was now assured: its clauses passed rapidly through the committee of the lords with merely verbal and elucidatory amendments, and on the 4th June, on earl Grey moving that it be read a third time, the question was carried by 106 to 22.

May 15. Died at Paris, of cholera, aged 54, M. CASIMIR PERIER, the able prime minister of France. M. Perier was a banker, and extensive proprietor of manufactories, out of which he had realized immense riches. He had taken a resolute and intrepid part in the overthrow of the government of Charles X., and was the firm friend of regulated freedom. As a minister of Louis Philip he deprecated anarchy and foreign war; and in an eloquent address to the chamber of deputies, March 7, vindicated the pacific and conservative policy of his administration. He was succeeded in office and in political principles by marshal Soult, the minister-of-war.

On the same day died of paralysis at Paris, aged 63, BARON CUVIER, the great comparative anatomist.

30. DEATH OF SIR JAMES MACINTOSH.—The health of this amiable man and eloquent writer and statesman, which was never robust, had suffered by his residence in India. His death, however, which took place at his house in Langham Place, London, was hastened by the feverish excitement produced by the small bone of a fowl lodging in his throat. He was born in 1765, at Aldourie on the banks of Loch Ness within seven miles of Inverness. His father was a military captain, and from him he inherited a small estate, which for two centuries had been in the family.

[rest omitted]

June

June 3. FUNERAL OF GENERAL LAMARQUE.—The inveterate hostility of the Carlists and Republicans continued to endanger the government of Louis Philip. La Vendée and three other departments, containing a population of 2,000,000, were on the point of insurrection, and by a royal ordinance of the 4th were placed under martial law. The capital had been a scene of almost uninterrupted tumults since the beginning of the year, and plots were constantly being formed, suspected persons arrested, and ministers, by prosecutions sought to curb the violence of the opposition journals. At this juncture, the public funeral of general Lamarque offered a favourable opportunity for bringing into focus all the elements of political discontent; and as the throne of the king had been established by one daring outbreak of popular resistance, it might be overturned by another. The general himself had been one of the movement party,—a popular deputy and distinguished soldier of the republic and the empire. He was generally beloved; and an immense procession was formed to do honour to his remains, consisting of deputies and peers, national guards, the artillery of the city, and the exiled patriots of Poland, Germany, Spain, and Belgium. Spirited orations were delivered from a platform by M. Mauguin, Lafayette, marshal Clausel, and the Portuguese general Saldanha.

The refusal of the duke of Fitzjames to pay respect to the deceased, or a quarrel between the Amis du Peuple and a regiment of dragoons, was the beginning of the disturbance. Cries were raised of “Aux armes,” “A bas Louis Philippe,” “Vive la république.” Barricades were formed, the lamps broken, and attempts made to unpave the streets. The rioters, aided by some of the pupils of the Polytechnique school, displayed all the spirit of the days of July; but the population not being so unanimous, and the king and his minister-of-war acting with firmness, order was ultimately restored. This, however, was not accomplished without an immense sacrifice of life: in the terrible conflicts in the streets between the populace and the military 1,000 persons were killed or wounded.

In the course of the night of the 5th, seals were placed on the presses of the Tribune, Quotidienne, and the Courier de l'Europe, by order of the police. Next day, the king issued three ordinances declaring Paris in a state of siege, dissolving the company of the artillery of the national guard, and disbanding the pupils of the Polytechnique School. This was almost as great a stretch of power as Charles X. had been dethroned for attempting, and, if constitutional, demonstrated that the liberties of the French were still held by uncertain guarantees. But the arbitrariness of the king was corrected by the tribunals. On the 30th, the Court of Cassation decided that the ordinance declaring Paris in a state of siege was illegal; and annulled the sentences pronounced by courts-martial on the prisoners convicted of rioting and rebellion.

6. DEATH OF JEREMY BENTHAM.—This celebrated jurist and law reformer expired in Westminster, in the 85th year of his age, of an attack of bronchitis. He survived to hear of the success of the Reform Bill, an event he hailed with satisfaction, and during the last quarter of a century had witnessed the gradual spread in the New and Old World of those principles of legislation, that had formed the staple occupation of his life to inculcate. His earliest literary labours are dated so far back that they have not inaptly been considered antediluvian;—he was a young with the Scotts, and at Lansdowne-house mingled in the society of Dunning, Pratt, Wedderburn, and other lawyers and orators of the first American war.

[rest omitted]

June 7. ROYAL ASSENT TO THE REFORM BILLS.—This was given to the English bill on the 7th by commission, and an end put to the political suspense and excitement which had existed in an intense degree ever since the dissolution of the Wellington ministry at the close of 1830. The public joy was evinced by congratulatory addresses, partial illuminations, the projection of almshouses for the deserving indigent, dinners to the poor, exhibition of flags, the ringing of church bells, and other peaceful demonstrations.

The disfranchisement of the decayed boroughs, and the enfranchisement in their stead of great and populous towns, effected a momentous change by substituting real in place of the nominal representation that previously existed. An entire new constituency of ten pound householders was created in cities and boroughs, which, though a fixed amount, was a variable standard, in different parts of the kingdom, so as to include in the burgess order a proportion of every class of householders or occupants. The county representation was cast entirely anew. Six representatives were given to Yorkshire, two for each riding; Lincolnshire, Devon, Kent, Lancashire, and twenty-two other large counties were divided, and two knights given to each division; Berkshire and six other counties were to return three instead of two members each; Carmarthen, Denbigh and Glamorgan two instead of one member. The county constituency was greatly extended. Heretofore, it had been restricted to forty-shilling freeholders. It was extended to copyholders of £10 per annum; to lessees of £10, if for not less than sixty years, or of £50, if not less than twenty years; and to tenants-at-will, if occupying at a yearly rent of not less than £50. The last clause was carried against ministers; it was objected to as bringing in a class of electors too dependent on their landlords; but was supported by Mr. Hume and other strenuous reformers, who declared that the sole principle for which they had contended, and the basis of the Reform Bill itself was the enfranchisement, not disqualification of any class.

The reform bills for Scotland and Ireland, and the bills for dividing the counties and for fixing the boundaries of cities and boroughs, followed close on the heels of the English Reform Act, and were completed before the close of the legislative session. The reform bill for Scotland received the royal assent July 17; that of Ireland August 7. An addition of eight members was made to the representation of Scotland, and five to Ireland, making, with the five added to Wales, a deduction of eighteen from the representation of England. There was no popular representation in Scotland prior to the reform act. The burgess representatives were returned by the decayed corporations of the royal burghs. The county representatives by freeholders, whose title consisted in holding of the crown a mere right of superiority over lands, being themselves crown vassals, while the real proprietors of the land were vassals under them, paying feu-duties trifling in themselves, and on no value unconnected with the political privilege. It followed that the elective franchise was wholly dissevered from property. A man might have an estate of £2,000 and no right to the superiority. If so, he had no vote. On the other hand, of all the voters of a county not one might possess a foot of land there. By the new act existing franchises are preserved; all persons lawfully on the roll of freeholders in any shire, continue eligible to vote; but the franchise is extended to the owner of any land, house, feu-duties or other heritable subject of the yearly value of £10. In cities and towns, the right of voting has been taken form the town councils and delegates, and extended to every person occupying a tenement of £10 a year.

The Irish Reform Act proceeded on the same liberal principle of enfranchisement, but preserving existing rights. To Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Galway, and the university of Dublin, one additional member to each was given. Right of voting in boroughs extended to £10 tenants; in counties to copyholders and leaseholders, same as in England, with the exception of the alteration of fourteen for twenty years, and £20 for £50 in respect of lessees. An effort was made by Mr. O'Connell to obtain the restoration of the franchise to the forty-shilling freeholders, but this was successfully resisted on the ground that the ‘forties’ in Ireland were not a description of freeholders qualified by independence or intelligence, to exercise the franchise, either with benefit to themselves or others. The following exhibits the relative state of the representation in counties and boroughs, before and after the reform acts:-

The loss of England on the popular side has been a transfer of 18 of her representatives to the other divisions of the empire, and the increase, relative to the cities and boroughs, in the number of county members. Her chief gain has been an increase in the number, and improvement in the intelligence and independence of the constituency. Scotland has benefited the most, and Ireland, probably, in the smallest degree by the reform acts.

18. The Duke of Wellington returning from the Tower assaulted by the populace in Fenchurch-street, and nearly dismounted.

19. A stone thrown at his Majesty while on the grand stand at Ascot races, which hit him on the forehead. The offender was a discharged Greenwich pensioner, with only one leg, who acknowledged he committed the outrage in revenge that no notice had been taken of a petition which he had sent. He was tried and convicted of intending some bodily harm to the king, and sentenced to be beheaded, but respited.

26. Hon. G. Spencer, brother of viscount Althorp, ordained a roman catholic priest at the hands of Cardinal Zarla in the church of St. Gregory at Rome.

28. Diet at Frankfort issued their manifesto of measures adopted to preserve order and tranquillity in Germany. It excited great agitation, being mainly directed against the freedom of the press, and alleged seditious assemblages, and bound each member of the German Confederacy to mutual assistance in case of political disturbances. About a fortnight after it was followed by a second decree, interdicting the circulation of the journals. The mandates of the diet were enforced in Hanover, by the duke of Cambridge, the representative of the king of England.

30. Chantrey's statute of the late James Watt placed on its pedestal, in George-square, Greenock. The face is fine and said to be a good likeness. Mr. Watt sat to Chantrey some time before his death, and it is from the bust then made that the statue in white marble, in Westminster Abbey, and another of the same material in the British Museum, have been modelled.