Besides these startling facts, the time allowed for the delivery of all English property was limited to the space of twenty-four hours after the issue of the Proclamation; and if, after that time, any persons were discovered to have secreted, or withheld, British goods, or articles, of any description, they were to be subjected to military execution. The British subjects who were arrested in Hamburgh, and had not escaped, were ordered to Verdun, or the interior of France, as Prisoners of War.
This was enough to close all hopes of reconciliation, and, although the English Newspapers took a courageous view of the blockade, and attempted to laugh at its ever being practicable to carry out, yet it undoubtedly created great uneasiness, and intensified the bitter feeling between the belligerents.
This, then, was the position of affairs at the end of 1806. Consols, during the year, varied from 61 in January to 59 in December, having in July reached 66½.
The quartern loaf was fairly firm all the year, beginning at 11¾d. and ending at 1s. 1d. Average price of wheat 52s.
CHAPTER XIV.
1807.
Passing of the Slave Trade Bill—Downfall of the “Ministry of all the Talents”—General Fast—Election for Westminster—Death of Cardinal York—Arrival in England of Louis XVIII.—Copenhagen bombarded, and the Danish Fleet captured—Napoleon again proclaimed England as blockaded.
THE YEAR 1807 began, socially, with the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the debate on which was opened, in the Lords, on January 2nd, and many were the nights spent in its discussion. On February 10th, it was read a third time in the Upper House, and sent down to the Commons, who, on March 15th, read it a third time, and passed it without a division. On the 18th, it was sent again to the Lords, with some amendments. It was printed, and these amendments were taken into consideration on the 23rd, and the alterations agreed to on the same date; and exactly at noon on March 25th, the bill received the Royal Assent by Commission, and became Law. This Act, be it remembered, did not abolish Slavery, but only prohibited the Traffic in Slaves; so that no ship should clear out from any port within the British dominions after May 1, 1807, with slaves on board, and that no slave should be landed in the Colonies after March 1, 1808.