[280] Grenville to Woronzow, Oct. 16, 1797, Dropmore Papers, iii., 381.
CHAPTER XIX.
IRISH REBELLION AND NAVAL SUPREMACY.
In spite of Duncan's victory the French directors were set on an invasion of England. All their vague designs for the extension of French supremacy led up to the ruin of the power which they recognised as their most formidable enemy. From the Adriatic to the North sea a vast republic was to furnish the armies of France with recruits. Europe was to be united in a coalition against England. The Mediterranean was to be a French lake. Every port was to be shut against England's ships; England's commerce was to be destroyed and her pride humbled. A quicker means of bringing her into subjection seemed possible. On a foggy night an army might be carried across the Channel unobserved by her fleet. What a Norman duke had done might be done by a mighty republic, and the English crown might be lost in a second battle of Hastings. The victors would march on London, and be received as deliverers by a people groaning under the oppression of "that monster Pitt". They failed to understand that Pitt had the nation at his back, and that even the most violent whigs would resist to the death an invasion of their country. They formed an "army of England," and appointed Bonaparte to command it. On his return to Paris in December, 1797, he set himself to prepare for the invasion. Transports for over 24,000 men were soon ready at Boulogne, Ambleteuse, Calais, and Dunkirk, and boat-builders were hard at work. In February he made a tour of the coast from Etaples to Ostend and heard what sailors said about the scheme. On the 23rd he told the directors that France could not gain supremacy by sea for some years, and that without that no operation could be more hazardous than an invasion of England, that a surprise was possible only in the long winter nights, and that their naval preparations were too backward for such an attempt to be made that year.[281] He turned to other projects of conquest which might lead to the destruction of England's commerce in the east and of her power in India. For some while longer he ostensibly devoted himself to preparations for invasion. The "army of England," which in April numbered 56,000 men, was quartered in the towns of the north, and every port from Havre to the Texel was crowded with transports. But by that time the army had lost its commander and the great scheme was definitely abandoned. Nevertheless, the directors determined to be ready if an opportunity for invasion should occur, and maritime preparations were continued. In May a flotilla from Havre attacked the islands of St. Marcouf, which had been seized by Sir Sidney Smith in 1795, and was beaten back by the little garrison. Equally feeble efforts were made by England to check the preparations for invasion. On tidings that the transports built at Flushing were to be conveyed to Ostend by canal in order to avoid the British fleet, a force of 1,200 men was sent to destroy the sluices of the Bruges canal. They landed near Ostend and blew up the great sluice. A storm prevented them from re-embarking and, after a smart engagement, they were all taken prisoners. If the thing was worth doing, a sufficient force should have been sent to do it.
INVASION THREATENED.
The threatened invasion rallied the nation to the support of the government. Though Fox and the other seceders had ceased to attend parliament, they kept up an agitation against the ministry. Fox's birthday, January 24, was celebrated by a public dinner. The Duke of Norfolk in proposing his health said that Washington began the war of independence with only 2,000 men, yet America was free; he saw that number before him, let them apply his words. He afterwards called on the company to drink "our sovereign's health, the majesty of the people". Considered in connexion with the circumstances of the time his words were in the highest degree seditious. The government, strong in the support of the nation, took up the silly and insolent challenge, and the duke was deprived of his lord-lieutenancy and the command of his militia regiment. In May, Fox repeated the toast at a meeting of the whig club. The ministers discussed what notice should be taken of his offence. It is not pleasant to find Pitt considering whether he might be led on to utter similar words in parliament and be sent to the Tower for the rest of the session. With all his greatness Pitt lacked the generosity which was a redeeming trait in Fox's character. The anxieties of the past year, combined with his unfortunate failing, had shaken his health and his temper had suffered. It was finally decided that Fox should be removed from the privy council, and the king struck his name out of the council book with his own hand.
The belief that the country was in danger evoked patriotic enthusiasm, and £2,300,000 was subscribed to augment the produce of the triple assessment. Pitt's supplementary budget announced a further loan of £3,000,000 and imposed fresh taxes. Chiefly as a means of supporting credit he brought forward a scheme for the commutation of the land tax. For many years the tax had been granted at four shillings in the pound; he proposed to make it perpetual at that rate, to enable landowners to redeem it, and to apply their payments to the reduction of debt. The bill, though opposed in both houses on the plea that it was unfair to the landed interest, was carried by large majorities. The alien act and the suspension of habeas corpus were revived, for with the enemy threatening the country disloyalty was intolerable. With a view to the organisation of defence the government was empowered to ascertain the number of men who were prepared to take up arms in case of invasion, to instruct each as to what he should do, and to arrange for the removal of helpless persons, cattle, and other property from the coast.
It was a time of overwhelming anxiety to the ministers, for, in addition to the expected invasion, they had to meet rebellion in Ireland. With so great a strain upon him, Pitt was unable to bear with patience the attempts of Tierney, the leader of the non-seceding section of the opposition, to thwart his measures. On May 25 he brought in a bill to abrogate certain exemptions from naval service, and asked the house to pass it through all its stages in one day. Tierney objected, and Pitt accused him of desiring to obstruct the defence of the country. The speaker ruled that the imputation was unparliamentary. Pitt repeated his words, haughtily declaring that he would "neither retract from nor explain them". The next day Tierney sent him a challenge. They met on Sunday afternoon, the 27th, on Putney heath, Pitt accompanied by his friend Dudley Ryder, afterwards Lord Harrowby, the paymaster of the forces, and Tierney by Colonel Walpole. Two shots were exchanged on each side without effect, Pitt firing his second shot into the air. Honour was then declared to be satisfied. Wilberforce, in common with many other religious people, was much shocked, and gave notice of a motion against duelling by members of the house, but was persuaded to withdraw it, for Pitt threatened to resign if it was carried. The king expressed his disapproval, telling Pitt with characteristic good sense that a public man should remember his duty to his country before what was due to himself. Not until that generation had well-nigh passed away was duelling virtually extinguished by the condemnation of society. In contrast to the lack of moral perception on that point stands the quickening of the public conscience with reference to the slave trade. Wilberforce again brought in his annual motion for its abolition. It was seconded by Pitt and vigorously supported by Fox, who pertinently asked why the minister did not use his majority to accomplish the end he professed to desire. It was lost only by four votes. The rest of the session was largely taken up by the affairs of Ireland.
There, as we have already seen, religious animosity strengthened the party of rebellion. Its leaders also took advantage of agrarian and other grievances to allure the peasantry. The catholic peasants were little moved by the questions which weighed with their more educated neighbours and with the dwellers in towns. They were not enamoured of the republican sentiments which appealed to the Ulster presbyterians, and did not care a straw about parliamentary reform for its own sake, nor for catholic emancipation. Their motives were more personal. They were poor and oppressed. The national parliament, though it refused to grant political reforms, had done much to improve the condition of the country by subsidies for promoting manufactures, fisheries, and canals, and by bounties on exported corn. The financial position of Ireland was bettered, but the lot of the peasantry grew worse. Corn bounties and the high prices of war time caused a rise in the value of land. Holdings were subdivided, and, as the agricultural population was large, were eagerly taken at high rents. The tenants could not make a living, especially as they were ignorant and generally thriftless. The chief cause of their discontent was the system of tithe which pressed heavily on the small cultivators. They believed that a reformed parliament would rid them of that intolerable burden. Finding that reform was withheld, they readily listened to men who bade them look for relief to France, where tithe had been abolished. High rents, exacted by the agents of absentee landlords or by middle-men, who rented large tracts of land and sublet them in small holdings, were another though lesser grievance from which they hoped to be delivered by revolution. Sentiment urged them in the same direction. Proud and sensitive they resented the dominance of an alien race; they held the wrongs of their forefathers in remembrance, and looked back with mournful longing to the age, invested by their poetic imagination with glory and happiness, when Ireland was yet unconquered. The United Irishmen told them that a fresh conquest would be attempted, that the Orangemen, encouraged by government, designed to rob them of their land and destroy them. They looked to France for protection and were ready to take up arms against the crown.