The last act of this year, 1794, was the opening of Parliament on the 30th of December. The king, in his speech, was compelled to confess the deplorable defeat of our Allies, and of our own army under the Duke of York. He had to admit that, Robespierre having fallen, there might possibly be a more pacific spirit in France; that Holland, the only ally for whom we were verbally bound to take up arms, was negotiating a peace with the French; that the United States of America had refused to coalesce with the French against us, and had, on the contrary, made a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation with us. Here, then, was an end of all real causes for anything more than a mere defensive war on our part. Yet the speech breathed a most warlike spirit, and made a great deal of the secession of the island of Corsica from France and its adhesion to England. In the same spirit were the Addresses from both Houses carried by overwhelming Ministerial majorities.

Canning, now rising into note, and Windham, declared that there were no motives for peace, but everything to necessitate the active prosecution of the war; and Windham could not help severely condemning the acquittal of Horne Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and the rest of the accused Reformers. He was called to order for thus impugning the conduct of independent juries, and reminded that no legal proofs of the guilt of the prisoners had been produced—on which he replied that they ought to have been condemned, then, on moral proofs.

Sheridan marked the opening of the year 1795 by moving, on the 5th of January, for the repeal of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. He showed that the very grounds on which this suspension had been based had miserably given way on the trials of Tooke, Hardy, and the rest; that the whole amount of arms and money on which the so-called "formidable" conspiracy had rested had been shown to be one pike, nine rusty muskets, and a fund of nine pounds and one bad shilling! He said that the great thing proved was the shameful conspiracy of the Government against the people, and their infamous employment of spies for that end; that eight thousand pounds had been spent on the Crown lawyers, and a hundred witnesses examined, only to expose the guilt of the Ministry. Windham defended the measures of Government, and charged the juries with ignorance and incapacity, for which Erskine severely reprimanded him. But the standing majorities of Pitt were inaccessible to argument, and the continuance of the suspension was voted by a majority of two hundred and thirty-nine against fifty-three. A like result attended the debate in the Lords, where, however, the Dukes of Norfolk and Bedford, the Marquis of Lansdowne, and the Earls of Lauderdale and Guildford strongly opposed the suspension.

These debates were immediately followed by the opening of the Budget on the 23rd of February—an opening which was enough to have made any men but such as were then at the head of British affairs pause in their ruinous career. There was a call for one hundred thousand seamen, for one hundred and sixty thousand regulars, and fifty-six thousand militia—total, two hundred and sixteen thousand soldiers, besides volunteers, fencibles, and foreign troops in British pay, amounting, by land and sea, to at least four hundred thousand men! For their support there were demanded sixteen million and twenty-seven thousand pounds, in addition to other taxes to make up deficiencies and interest on the Debt; the whole revenue demanded was twenty-seven million five hundred thousand pounds. Besides this there was an annual subsidy to the King of Sardinia of two hundred thousand pounds, although there was no prospect whatever of saving him. To raise all this, new duties had to be laid on tea, coffee, raisins, foreign groceries and fruits, foreign timber, insurances, writs, affidavits, hair-powder, licences, etc., and the revenue from the Post Office, while the privilege of franking had to be abridged. The only tax that the compliant aristocracy protested against was that on the powdered pates of their menials; but the country cried lustily and in vain against the increase of taxation, which, gross as it was, was but the beginning of their burdens and of the burden of posterity.

The Reformers made repeated and strenuous efforts to obtain a parliamentary expression of the desirableness of this country refraining from interfering with the internal affairs of France, and of making specific arrangements with that country. Earl Stanhope made such a motion in the Lords on the 6th of January, and the Duke of Bedford made a similar one on the 27th of February. Lord Grey had moved the same thing on the day before, but all these endeavours were rendered abortive by Pitt's standing majority. It was replied that France had no government that could be treated with, and Lord Mansfield asserted that we had a right to interfere in the internal affairs of any country that acted on principles dangerous to its neighbour. Fox, on the 24th of March, moved for a committee of the whole House to inquire into the state of the nation, but this was rejected on the ground that the times were too critical, and Canning adduced the condition of Ireland, just on the verge of rebellion, as a sufficient cause for not ascertaining our actual state.

THE PALACE OF THE TUILERIES, PARIS.

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The only attempts at reform were in the commissariat and discipline of the army. The soldiers were allowed an extra quantity of bread and meat, and the militia regiments were permitted to have artillery, and to increase their force and improve their staffs. But even these reforms were made unconstitutionally by the dictum of the Ministers, without the authority of Parliament, and occasioned smart but ineffectual remonstrances from the House. Every motion for inquiry or censure was borne down by the Ministerial majority.

The remainder of the parliamentary session was occupied with royal marriages and settlements. George III. and his queen, though pious and decorous in their own lives, had the misfortune to have amongst their sons some of the most dissolute and debauched men that ever figured in the corrupt atmosphere of courts. The Prince of Wales was become a very byword for his profligacy and extravagance. The Duke of York was but little better, so far as his means allowed him; and the Duke of Sussex, wishing to marry a woman to whom he was really attached, found the Royal Marriage Act standing in his way.