Nor were events cheering in the West Indies during 1795. The reconquest of Guadaloupe, due to the insufficiency of the British force sent out in 1794, led to disastrous consequences. The French firmly established themselves in the island and made it a centre for operations, St. Lucia was taken, and insurrections of French inhabitants, negroes, and native races were fomented and supported in St. Vincent's, Grenada, and Dominica. An insurrection of the Maroons caused much trouble in Jamaica, and the government of the island imported bloodhounds from Cuba to track the fugitive insurgents. Great indignation was expressed in parliament at this measure, and it was asserted that the dogs tore the natives in pieces. Dundas explained that the home government was not responsible for the importation of the dogs, and promised that if they were used for such a horrid purpose the practice should be stopped. In 1796 a large force was sent to the West Indies under Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Christian. St. Lucia was retaken and the British power re-established in the Antilles. The French, however, retained Guadaloupe, and privateers both from that island and Cuba did much damage to the West India trade. England gained largely by the alliance between Holland and France, for it threw the Dutch colonies open to attack. Their rich settlements in Ceylon, Malacca, and on the Malabar coast; the Cape (September, 1795); Demarara, Essequibo, and the Moluccas (1796) were taken without difficulty.
England's naval power was already forwarding the increase of her trade, and the total loss of commerce with France, Holland, and the Belgian Netherlands was more than counterbalanced by its increase with Germany, Russia, and the United States. With the United States some serious difficulties with respect to neutral rights were happily settled in 1794 by a treaty which was negotiated on their part by Jay, and finally ratified in 1796. Yet the year 1795 was one of great distress among the poor. Two bad harvests in succession raised the average price of wheat, which in 1792 had been 43s., to 75s. 2d. Bread riots broke out in Sussex, in Birmingham, Nottingham, Coventry, and other places. Bills were passed with the object of husbanding the supply of wheat; liberal bounties were granted on importation, and the members of parliament entered into an agreement to curtail the use of wheaten flour in their own households. A bill for the regulation of wages, introduced by Whitbread, the brewer, and advocated by Fox, was opposed by Pitt and was rejected. Starving men are quick to believe assertions that their sufferings are caused by ill-government, and the corresponding society, encouraged by the failure of the prosecutions in 1794, was active in spreading political discontent. At a large meeting held in St. George's Fields on July 29, an address to the king was voted and resolutions were passed demanding annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and above all peace, as remedies for the high price of food. Parliament was summoned for October 29. On the 26th, a meeting in Copenhagen Fields, Mary-le-bone, at which 150,000 persons are said to have been present, adopted a strongly worded "remonstrance" to the king, praying for parliamentary reform, the dismissal of the ministers, and a speedy peace. When the king went to open parliament a large crowd greeted him with hisses and cries of "Bread! Peace! No Pitt!" His carriage was pelted, and a missile, probably from an air-gun, broke the glass. On his return the same cries were raised; there was more pelting, and the king was only rescued from the crowd by the arrival of some horse-guards. George, than whom no braver man lived in his dominions, remained perfectly calm throughout these scenes, read the royal speech without a sign of excitement, and the next night went with the queen and the princesses to Covent Garden theatre, where he was received with enthusiasm. The soldiers also acted admirably and abstained from hurting any one.
REPRESSIVE ACTS.
The insult to the king and the proceedings of the corresponding society were met by repressive measures. Proclamations relating to the outrage and to seditious assemblies were followed by two bills, one introduced in the lords by Grenville, the other in the commons by Pitt. The first, the treasonable practices bill, extended the crime of treason to spoken and written words not followed by any overt act, and created a new crime by subjecting to heavy penalties any one convicted of inciting others to hatred of the sovereign or the established government. The second, the seditious meetings bill, forbade all political meetings of which notice had not previously been given by resident householders, and empowered any two justices to dissolve a legally constituted meeting at their discretion by using the riot act. Both these measures were grievous encroachments on liberty. Apart from its extension of the law of treason, the first might be used to prevent all discussion of political reforms; the second checked the public expression of opinion on public affairs. The ministry, however, was acting in accordance with the will of parliament and of the vast majority of the respectable part of the nation, who were alarmed and indignant at the success of seditious agitators in exciting political discontent among the uneducated classes. England was engaged in a struggle for existence, and could not afford to tolerate sedition. Looking back on issues then incalculable, we may think that repression was carried farther than was necessary; but anything was better than the least sign of weakness in dealing with seditious practices. Excited meetings, over one of which Fox presided, were held to condemn the bills. Numerous petitions, mostly got up by the corresponding society, were presented against them; and many were presented in their favour. They were violently opposed by the minority in parliament, and Fox declared that if they became law, obedience would no longer be a question of duty but of prudence, a direct incitement to rebellion only to be excused as uttered in the heat of debate, an excuse which is also needed for some foolish and intemperate language on the other side. The sedition bill, which was limited to three years, was amended by giving up the clause empowering magistrates to dissolve meetings at their discretion as dangerous to the public peace. The two bills were passed in both houses by overwhelming majorities. The treason act was only to last during the king's life, and both acts proved quite harmless, for neither was ever called into operation.
Pitt's budget for 1796 included another loan of £18,000,000 and several new taxes, one of them on salt. He proposed duties on legacies and on collateral successions to real estate. The first was easily carried, but Fox, in spite of his democratic professions, seized on the proposal to make landed estates equally liable with other property to taxation, as an opportunity for thwarting the government by exciting the selfishness of the landed gentry, and Pitt found that so many of his supporters were hostile to the tax that he withdrew his proposal. Nor was the inequality redressed until 1853, when Gladstone, following Pitt's lead, made all successions alike liable to duty. As at the end of the session in May parliament was near the term of its natural life, a new parliament was elected. The returns showed that the government had lost no ground in the confidence of the country: as a rule, the large constituencies elected supporters of Pitt; indeed, twenty-three of Fox's small following were returned for nomination boroughs.
The policy of England in 1796 was closely connected with the course of the war between her Austrian ally and the French. In March Bonaparte took the command of the army of Italy. He defeated the Austrians at Montenotte, and compelled the Sardinian king to abandon the coalition. He crossed the Po, forced the passage of the Adda at Lodi, and occupied Milan on May 14. The Austrians fell back behind the Mincio, and garrisoned the strong fortress of Mantua. Bonaparte levied contributions on the Dukes of Parma and Modena, forced the papal states to submission, occupied Leghorn, which was thus closed against our ships, and reduced the Grand Duke of Tuscany to obedience. In June Ferdinand of Naples and the pope made armistices with France. The Austrian power in Italy depended on the possession of Mantua. Wurmser forced Bonaparte to raise the siege, and the Austrians though defeated at Lonato and Castiglione, regarrisoned the place. A second attempt by Wurmser to relieve it was defeated in August, and he was shut into Mantua. If Hotham had destroyed the French fleet in the Mediterranean, Bonaparte would not have carried everything before him in the Italian states south of the Po. As it was, his success had an unfortunate effect on England's naval war.
FLEET LEAVES THE MEDITERRANEAN.
After 1795 the French made no more attempts to cope with an English fleet. They employed their navy only in military expeditions and in the destruction of British commerce.[265] The watch upon their ports was slackly kept and ships constantly left them. Much damage was done to England's trade, specially by privateers; her navy was largely employed in convoy duty, and actions between small squadrons and single ships were frequent. In this year a French squadron cruelly ravaged the coast of Newfoundland, another captured part of a West India convoy, and a third made some prizes in the Levant. Warfare of this kind, though troublesome to England, could not affect her maritime supremacy. That was impaired by the results of Bonaparte's campaign in Italy. In December, 1795, the command in the Mediterranean was taken by Sir John Jervis, a fine seaman and a strict disciplinarian, who soon brought the fleet to a high state of efficiency. He kept a strict watch on Toulon, and employed Nelson in intercepting the French communications by sea. By the end of June the ports of Tuscany, Naples, and the papal dominions were shut against his ships; Corsica was restless, and the fleet was in danger of being left without a base. In July Nelson, who was then blockading Leghorn, occupied Elba in order to gain a harbour and establish a place of stores at Porto Ferrajo. A new danger, however, threatened the fleet, for Spain, influenced by Bonaparte's successes, made an offensive and defensive alliance with France by a treaty signed on August 19; and as the Spaniards had over fifty ships of the line, the position of the British fleet became critical. And there was work for it elsewhere, for Portugal was in need of help. The Austrian cause in Italy seemed almost hopeless, and Jervis received orders to evacuate the Mediterranean.
Then better news came to England; the Austrians had achieved a signal success in Germany. Two French armies under Jourdan and Moreau crossed the Rhine in the summer and acted independently of each other. After a campaign of about two months Jourdan was defeated by the Archduke Charles at Amberg, and again near Würzburg on September 3, and was forced to recross the Rhine. Moreau advanced as far as Munich, for Bonaparte intended, after the fall of Mantua, which he believed would not be delayed, to effect a junction with him in Bavaria. Jourdan's overthrow left Moreau in a critical position, and he only saved his army by a masterly retreat through the Black Forest. Bonaparte's hope that he would soon bring the war to an end by marching into Bavaria, and on Vienna, was disappointed. His army was kept on the Mincio, for Mantua remained untaken, and another army under Alvinzi was preparing to march to its relief. Italy was not conquered yet, and on October 19 the cabinet decided that the fleet should remain in the Mediterranean.[266] It was then too late. Corsica and Elba were abandoned; Ferdinand of Naples made peace with France, and Jervis sailed for Lisbon. After three years in the Mediterranean the fleet retired from its waters; its departure left that sea closed to British commerce, assured Bonaparte's communications, and strengthened his hold over Italy.
NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE.