But of all the parties which remembered their wrongs and indignities, the Roman Catholic clergy were the most uncomplying and formidable. They had seen the Pope seized in his own palace at Rome, and forced away out of Italy and brought to Fontainebleau. But there the resolute old man disdained to comply with what he deemed the sacrilegious demands of the tyrant. Numbers of bishoprics had fallen vacant, and the Pontiff refused, whilst he was held captive, to institute successors. None but the most abandoned priests would fill the vacant sees without the papal institution. At length Buonaparte declared that he would separate France altogether from the Holy See, and would set the Protestant up as a rival Church to the Papal one. "Sire," said the Count of Narbonne, who had now become one of Buonaparte's chamberlains, "I fear there is not religion enough in all France to stand a division." But in the month of June Buonaparte determined to carry into execution his scheme of instituting bishops by the sanction of an ecclesiastical council. He summoned together more than a hundred prelates and dignitaries at Paris, and they went in procession to Notre Dame, with the Archbishop Maury at their head. They took an oath of obedience to the Emperor, and then Buonaparte's Minister of Public Worship proposed to them, in a message from the Emperor, to pass an ordinance enabling the archbishop to institute prelates without reference to the Pope. A committee of bishops was found complying enough to recommend such an ordinance, but the council at large declared that it could not have the slightest value. Enraged at this defiance of his authority, Buonaparte immediately ordered the dismissal of the council and the arrest of the bishops of Tournay, Troyes, and Ghent, who had been extremely determined in their conduct. He shut them up in the Castle of Vincennes, and summoned a smaller assembly of bishops as a commission to determine the same question. But they were equally uncomplying, in defiance of the violent menaces of the man who had prostrated so many kings but could not bend a few bishops to his will. The old Pope encouraged the clergy, from his cell in Fontainebleau, to maintain the rights of the Church against his and its oppressor, and thus Buonaparte found himself completely foiled.

The year 1812 opened, in England, by the assembling of Parliament on the 7th of January. The speech of the Regent was again delivered by commission. The great topic was the success of the war in Spain under Lord Wellington, whose military talents were highly praised. There was a reference also to the disagreements with America, and the difficulty of coming to any amicable arrangement with the United States. Lords Grey and Grenville, in the Peers, pronounced sweeping censures on the continuance of the war with France, and on the policy of Ministers towards America, from which source they prognosticated many disasters. In the Commons, the Opposition used similar language; and Sir Francis Burdett took a very gloomy view of our relations both with France and North America, and declared that we could anticipate no better policy until we had reformed our representative system.

Another topic of the speech was the mental derangement of the king, which was now asserted, on the authority of the physicians, to be more hopeless; Mr. Perceval argued, therefore, the necessity of arranging the Royal Household so as to meet the necessarily increased expenditure. Resolutions were passed granting an addition of seventy thousand pounds per annum to the queen towards such augmented expenditure, and to provide further income for the Prince Regent. Two Courts were to be maintained, and the Regent was to retain his revenue as Prince of Wales. The Civil List chargeable with the additional seventy thousand pounds to the queen was vested in the Regent; and no sooner were these particulars agreed to than he sent letters to both Houses, recommending separate provision for his sisters; so that the Civil List was at once to be relieved of their maintenance and yet increased, simply on account of the charge of a poor blind and insane old man, who could only require a trusty keeper or two. The separate income agreed to for the princesses was nine thousand pounds a-year each, exclusive of the four thousand pounds a-year each already derived from the Civil List—so that there was needed an annual additional sum of thirty-six thousand pounds for the four princesses, besides the sixteen thousand pounds a-year now being received by them. Some members observed that the grant to the Regent, being retrospective, removed altogether the merit of his declaration during the last Session of Parliament that, "considering the unexampled contest in which the kingdom was now engaged, he would receive no addition to his income." In fact, little consideration was shown by any part of the royal family for the country under its enormous demands. It was understood that there was once more a deficiency in the Civil List, which would have to be made up.

Mr. Bankes again introduced his Bill—which was about to expire—for prohibiting the grant of offices in reversion; and he endeavoured again to make it permanent, but, as before, he was defeated on the second reading in the Commons. He then brought in a Bill confined to two years only, and this, as before, was allowed to pass both Houses. Great discussion arose on the grant of the office of paymaster of widows' pensions to Colonel MacMahon, the confidential servant of the Prince Regent. This was a mere sinecure, which had been held by General Fox, the brother of Charles James Fox; and it had been recommended that, on the general's death, it should be abolished; but Ministers—more ready to please the Regent than to reduce expenditure—had, immediately on the general's decease, granted it to Colonel MacMahon. Ministers met the just complaints of the Opposition by praising the virtues and ability of MacMahon—as if it required any ability or any virtue to hold a good sinecure! But there was virtue enough in the Commons to refuse to grant the amount of the salary, Mr. Bankes carrying a resolution against it. But Ministers had their remedy. The prince immediately appointed MacMahon his private secretary, and a salary of two thousand pounds was moved for. But Mr. Wynne declared that any such office was unknown to the country—that no regent or king, down to George III., and he only when he became blind, had a private secretary; that the Secretary of State was the royal secretary. Ministers replied that there was now a great increase of public business, and that a private secretary for the Regent was not unreasonable; but they thought it most prudent not to press the salary, but to leave it to be paid out of the Regent's privy purse.

On the 19th of February Lord Wellesley resigned his office of Secretary of Foreign affairs, because he did not approve of the employment of some of his colleagues. The Prince Regent now showed that he had no intention of dismissing the present administration. He proposed to Lords Grey and Grenville to join it, but they absolutely declined, knowing that, with the difference of the views of the two parties on many essential questions, especially on those of the Catholic claims, of the prosecution of the war, and of our relations with America, it was impossible for any coalition Cabinet to go on. Lord Castlereagh succeeded the Marquis of Wellesley in the Foreign Office, but on the 11th of May a fatal event put an end to the Ministry and the life of Spencer Perceval.

On the afternoon of this day, Monday, the 11th of May, as the Minister was entering the House, about five o'clock, a man of gentlemanly appearance presented a pistol, and shot him dead—at least, he did not survive two minutes. In the confusion and consternation the man might have escaped, but he made no such attempt; he walked up to the fireplace, laid down his pistol on a bench, and said, in answer to those inquiring after the murderer, that he was the person. He gave his name as Bellingham, expressed satisfaction at the deed, but said that he should have been more pleased had it been Lord Leveson Gower. In fact, his prime intention was to shoot Lord Gower, but he had also his resentment against Perceval, and therefore took the opportunity of securing one of his victims. It appeared that he had been a Liverpool merchant, trading to Russia, and that, during the embassy of Lord Leveson Gower at St. Petersburg he had suffered severe and, as he deemed, unjust losses, for assistance in the redress of which with the Russian Government he had in vain sought the good offices of the ambassador. On his return to England he had applied to Perceval; but that Minister did not deem it a case in which Government could interfere, and hence the exasperation of the unhappy man against both diplomatists. The trial of the murderer came on at the Old Bailey, before Chief Justice Mansfield, on the Friday of the same week. A plea of insanity was put in by Bellingham's counsel, and it was demanded that the trial should be postponed till inquiries could be made at Liverpool as to his antecedents. But this plea was overruled. Bellingham himself indignantly rejected the idea of his being insane. He declared that the act was the consequence of a cool determination to punish the Minister for the refusal of justice to him, and he again repeated, in the presence of Lord Leveson Gower, that his chief object had been himself for his cruel disregard of his wrongs. Both Lord Mansfield and the rest of the judges would hear of no delay; a verdict of "Wilful Murder" was brought in by the jury, and they condemned him to be hanged, and he was duly hanged on the following Monday at nine o'clock, exactly the day week of the perpetration of the act.

ASSASSINATION OF SPENCER PERCEVAL. (See p. [23].)

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