326 ACQUISITIONS OF RUSSIA. [1774. Frederick, "we must figure to ourselves a party of one-eyed people thoroughly beating a party of blind men." Eventually the whole country between the Danube and the Dnieper fell into the hands of the Russians. The Crimea was overrun by them. They became masters of Kertsch, Yenikale, and Kaffa. The Turkish fleet was destroyed in the bay of Chesme, by a Russian squadron which had sailed from Cronstadt to the Mediterranean. The Russian admiral was assisted by English officers, every indirect aid having been given by the British government to Russia; which power, wrote lord Rochford, in 1772, "his majesty cannot but look upon as the natural ally of his crown, and with which he is likely, sooner or later, to be closely connected." There was an armistice after the Russian fleet returned to the Baltic, having been very efficiently resisted by Gazi Hassan, an adventurer who raised himself by his genius and daring to be capitan pasha.* Peace was concluded in 1774. The acquisitions of Russia by the peace of Kuchuk-Kainarji may be thus summed up: Russia obtained the Great and the Little Kabarda, the fortresses of Azof, Kilbarun, Kertsch, and Yenikale; the country between the Bog and the Dnieper; the free navigation of the Black Sea, and a free passage through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles; the co-protectorship over Moldavia and Wallachia; and the protectorship over all the Greek churches within the Turkish empire, The Khanat of the Crimea was declared independent, but it soon became a prey to Russia. *The sketch of this remarkable man in "Anastasius" is held to be perfectly accurate.Note by Lord Mahon, vol. v. p. 473. 1773.] SUPPRESSION OF THE JESUITS. 327 The suppression of the Jesuits, in 1773, "though it has been so long expected," writes Burke, "is so remarkable an event that it will stamp the present year as a distinguished era."* The event was expected, because the abolition of the society by Pope Ganganelli, Clement XIV., was a final measure of the proscription which had been carried on against them, for some years, by the Roman Catholic powers of Europe. They had been expelled from Portugal, in 1759, with many odious circumstances of severity. In 1764, the Society was suppressed in France, and their property confiscated. In 1767, the members of the Order were driven out of Spain. Clement XIII. strenuously defended the Jesuits. He believed that they were amongst the firmest supporters of the papacy, and the most faithful champions of religion. He would consent to no change in their constitution; and he was supported by the obstinacy of their chief, Lorenzo Ricci.† The Bourbon courts had real or supposed injuries of the Jesuits to revenge. Madame de Pompadour, it is said, had been affronted by her confessor, a Jesuit, who exhorted her wholly to amend her life. The king of Spain believed that they were plotting to put his brother upon the throne. Clement XIII. died in 1769. His successor had been raised to the papal throne by the Bourbon influence. But he was a man of liberal and moderate opinions; and he saw that the institution had outlived its uses as an instrument of papal supremacy, and was out of harmony with the prevailing opinions of his time. However predisposed against the Jesuits, he took several years for inquiry and counsel. On the 31st of July, 1773, he thus pronounced his decision: "Inspired, as we humbly trust, by the Divine Spirit, urged by the duty of restoring the unanimity of the Church, convinced that the Company of Jesus can no longer render those services, to the end of which it was instituted, and moved by other reasons of prudence and state policy which we hold locked in our own breast, we abolish and annul the Society of Jesus, their functions, houses, and institutions." When Ganganelli said "the Company of Jesus can no longer render those services to the end of which it was instituted," he expressed a truth of larger comprehension than their services to the papacy. They had, in spite of their political intrigues, rendered essential aid to the progress of knowledge. Their missions had done more for the spread of information as to the geography of distant countries, than for the conversion of the peoples amongst whom they went. Their success as educators had done more for the freedom of the human mind than their notions of papal authority for its enslavement. They had advanced literature and science amidst their incessant efforts to hold society in thraldom. They had waged unceasing war against Protestantism, and during that conflict the prevailing thoughts of Europe had been advancing, and had left them behind. "The general course of events, the development of modern civilization, the liberty of the human mind, all these forces against which the Jesuits were called to contest, were arrayed against them, and conquered them." A recent writer has expressed this more tersely: 'They stood in the way of the age, and the age swept them from its path." § The same acute thinker says: * "Annual Register," 1773, p. 3. Ranke-"History of the Popes," vol. iii. p. 209. Guizot-"Civilisation en Europe "-Douzième Leçon§ Buckle-"Civilization in England," vol. i. p. 783. 3:28 HOME POLITICS. [1772. "They were the last defenders of authority and tradition; and it was natural that they should fall in an age when statesmen were sceptics, and theologians were Calvinists." Johnson, whilst most men exulted in their destruction, "condemned it loudly as a blow to the general power of the Church, and likely to be followed with many dangerous innovations, which might at length become fatal to religion itself." * He was addressing a French abbé, and was perhaps right with regard to France. There are subjects of home politics which ought to be fully treated in a special history of a particular era, but which must be slightly noticed in a work embracing the whole field of British progress. Thus, in the year 1772, when Wilkes was contending for the shrievalty of London instead of battling with a House of Commons; when the country was no longer agitated with Remonstrances and Addresses; when Woodfall was reporting the debates of Parliament without the terror of the serjeant-at-arms before his eyes,-there were interesting discussions in both Houses on petitions of some of the clergy and laity that Subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles might not be enforced at the Universities. But we cannot enter upon any detail of these proceedings. Nor can we do more than notice that the Dissenters then obtained a majority in the House of Commons for a repeal of the Test Acts, but were defeated in the Upper House. Time gradually matures into practical measures the theories, sometimes crude and undigested, by which social reforms are advanced. There has been, since 1772, a partial concession to the spirit of religious liberty on the subject of Subscription. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts was amongst the earliest of those vast improvements which have made the age of queen Victoria so essentially different from the age of George IV. The constant agitation of questions like these gradually determines public opinion, and reforms are accomplished without violence or ill-will. Thus, in March, 1772, Mr. Montague moved for leave to bring in a Bill to repeal so much of the Act of the 12th of Charles II. as directs that every 30th of January should be for ever kept as a day of fasting and humiliation. When the debates were very meagrely reported, a joke was sometimes carefully preserved; and we learn from the Parliamentary History that Mr. Stephen Fox said he thought the ceremony of the day did no harm, unless,-addressing the Speaker,-" it obliges you, sir, to go to church once a year." In 1859, the 30th of January passed out of the Calendar by Act of Parliament; and the form of prayer, which was called "impious" in the debate of 1772, has vanished from our Liturgy. The motion was rejected. The strongest prejudice must, however, yield at last, and the most prejudiced know that time will settle these conflicts of principle. "I am against abolishing the fast for the 30th of January," said Johnson. "But I should have no objection to make an Act continuing it for another century, and then letting it expire." The time he had contemplated had nearly run out when this solemn mockery could no longer be endured. Upon a question of political economy, the Parliament of 1772 was in advance of public opinion. It was a period of scarcity. The price of wheat was * Mrs. Piozzi's "Anecdotes."-Note in Boswell. 1772.] THE QUEEN OF DENMARK. 329 35 per cent. above the average. Harvests were deficient throughout Europe. Adam Smith represents the feeling of his time in saying "In years of scarcity the inferior ranks of people impute their distress to the avarice of the corn merchant." The statute of Edward VI. enacted, that whoever should buy any corn or grain with intent to sell it again, should be reputed an unlawful engrosser, and be subject to various penalties. The statute of Charles II. permitted the engrossing of corn when it was cheap, but the buyer was not to sell again in the same market within three months. The statute of 1772 "For repealing several Laws therein mentioned against Badgers, Engrossers, Forestallers, and Regrators," boldly declares that these laws are" detrimental to the supply of the labouring and manufacturing poor of this kingdom." The preamble to the statute says, that "it hath been found by experience that the restraints laid by several statutes upon dealing in corn, meal, flour, cattle, and sundry other sorts of victuals, by preventing a free trade in the said commodities, have a tendency to discourage the growth and to enhance the price of the same." Nevertheless, the Common Law was not yet rendered inoperative by public enlightenment. In 1800, the clamours against corn dealers were as violent as in the days of the Tudors; and a merchant was convicted, before lord Kenyon, for regrating, that is, for selling thirty quarters of oats at an advanced price in the same market on the same day on which he had bought them. The commencement of the year 1772 brought to George III. an accumulation of family anxieties. On the 29th of January, a courier arrived from Denmark with the intelligence that the queen of Denmark, sister of the king of England, had been sent as a prisoner to the castle of Kronberg. Caroline Matilda, the youngest of the numerous family of Frederick, prince of Wales, was born in 1751; and was married in 1766, to Christian VII., king of Denmark. She is described as very beautiful; of a sweet nature; one whose life would have been happy had she been united to a worthy husband. The king of Denmark was as debased in morals as he was low in intellect-a spiritless wretch, who had given up all care of his subjects to his favourite, Struensee. Verging towards idiocy, the king left his consort to transact state affairs in council with Struensee. The minister was rash and presumptuous; and provoked the hostility of a strong party of the court, who were led by the dowager-queen, Juliana Maria, the step-mother of Christian VII. formidable conspiracy was organized against Struensee; and Caroline Matilda was destined to be the victim with him, upon an accusation against her of conjugal infidelity. She had borne the king a son and a daughter, and had been recently confined with a second daughter. At midnight the king's chamber was suddenly entered; and he was required to sign an order for the arrest of his queen, of Struensee, and of his colleague in the ministry, Brandt. The king was told that they had entered into a plot to depose him; and in terror for his own personal safety, he hesitated not to resign his queen and his ministers into the hands of their enemies. Caroline Matilda was dragged from her chamber, refused access to her husband, and with her infant carried off to the castle of Kronberg. Struensee and Brandt were beheaded, after a pretended trial. Proceedings against the queen were suspended by the interposition of the government of George III.; and, after a captivity of four months, she was received on board a British man-of-war, but was not per 330 THE ROYAL MARRIAGE ACT. [1772. mitted to take her child with her. In the castle of Zell, in Hanover, she passed the remaining three years of her unhappy life. There is a record of M. Roques, the pastor of the French Protestant church at Zell, who was frequently consulted by the queen on the distribution of her charities, that on her death-bed she made a solemn declaration that she had never been unfaithful to her husband. When this distressing news arrived in England, the mother of George III. was dangerously ill. The king, as Walpole relates, was advised to conceal this new misfortune from the Princess Dowager; but he replied, "My mother will know everything, and therefore it is better that I should break it to her by degrees."* On the 8th of February the king wrote this short note to lord North: "My mother is no more." Of the five sons of the princess of Wales, two had died-Edward, duke of York, and Frederick, the youngest son. William, duke of Gloucester, and Henry, duke of Cumberland, were at this time under the serious displeasure of their brother the king. The Marriage-Act of 1753 especially excepted members of the royal family from its operation. George II. is represented to have said, “I will not have my family laid under these restraints." In 1771, the duke of Cumberland, then in his twenty-sixth year, became deeply enamoured of Mrs. Horton, the daughter of an Irish peer, Simon Luttrell, lord Irnham. The duke had been previously notorious for his intrigues; and a jury had awarded damages of ten thousand pounds against him in an action for criminal conversation brought by lord Grosvenor. The letters of this very silly prince of the blood, produced on this occasion, were the public scorn. In October, 1771, the duke of Cumberland induced Mrs. Horton to accompany him to Calais, where they were married according to the forms of the English Church. The pair were forbidden the Court. What was the mortification of the king, what was the triumph of Wilkes, exclaims Walpole, "when it was known that this new princess of the blood was own sister of the famous colonel Luttrell, the tool thrust by the Court into Wilkes's seat for Middlesex?"+ The duke of Gloucester, in September, 1766-he then being in his twenty-third year-had married the widow of the earl of Waldegrave. This lady was a natural daughter of sir Edward Walpole; and as the wife of the nobleman who had been governor to prince George, had been distinguished for her exemplary character. Walpole says, "The duke of Cumberland's marriage was a heavy blow on lady Waldegrave, and seemed to cut off all hopes of the king's permitting the duke of Gloucester to acknowledge her for his wife." The duke of Gloucester's marriage was kept secret. On the 20th of February the following royal message was brought down to both Houses of Parliament: "George R. His Majesty being desirous, from paternal affection for his own family, and anxious concern for the future welfare of his people, and the honour and dignity of his crown, that the right of approving all marriages in the royal family (which ever has belonged to the kings of this realm as a matter of public concern) may be made effectual, recommends to both Houses of Parliament to take into their "Last Journals of Horace Walpole," edited by Dr. Doran, vol. i. p. 4. Ibid., p. 360. |