ONE:The French army in Spain numbered more than two hundred thousand men, and of these more than one hundred and thirty thousand lay in the provinces bordering on Portugal, or between it and Madrid. Victor had thirty-five thousand in Estremadura; and close behind him, in La Mancha, Sebastiani had twenty thousand more. Northward, in Old Castile, Leon, and Asturias, Kellermann and Bonnet had ten thousand. Soult, in Galicia, was joined by Ney and Mortier, making his army again upwards of fifty thousand, with whom he contemplated returning into Portugal. General Dessolles had fifteen thousand men at Madrid to protect the intrusive King Joseph; and Suchet and Augereau, in Aragon and Catalonia, commanded fifty thousand. Almost all the strong fortresses in the country were in their hands. The only circumstances favourable to the Allies were that the French generals were at variance amongst themselves; that none of them paid any deference to the commands of King Joseph, who was nominally generalissimo; and that the Spaniards were, everywhere where woods and mountains favoured them, harassing the French in a manner that made them very sick of the country, and that often reduced them to a state of severe privation.
ONE:But Pitt was already doing his own work and paving his own way. He wrote to the king on the 25th of April, informing him of the determined opposition he felt himself called upon to make to Addington's mode of administration, but assuring him that he would never attempt to force Fox upon him. This was saying, as plainly as he could speak to the king, that he was ready to resume the helm himself, and that, with the opposition that he could exert, the Government of Addington could not go on. Accordingly, Pitt received a notice that his Majesty would soon call for him to attend on him. On the 30th of April the Marquis of Stafford, in the House of Lords, gave notice of a motion identical with that of Fox in the Commonsnamely, for inquiry into the national defences. Lord Hawkesbury immediately entreated the marquis to postpone his motion, for reasons which, he assured the House, it would deem fully satisfactory if he were at liberty to state them. It was at once understood that negotiations were on foot for a change of Administration. Lord Grenville, who was a relative of Pitt, but at the same time pledged to include Fox in any offers to himself of entering the Ministry, called upon Lord Hawkesbury to be more explicit; but he declined, and after some discussion the motion was postponed. Pitt, in fact, had received a message from the king, and on the 2nd of May, through Lord Chancellor Eldon, presented a letter sketching a plan of a new Cabinet, in which he included not only Lord Grenville but Fox also. On the 7th he had, for the first time, an interview with the king, which lasted three hours, and Pitt then more fully stated his views, and recommended a mixed Cabinet on the ground that there was every prospect of a long war, and that it was desirable that they should have a strong administration. Whether such a coalition would have been strong is more than doubtful, opposed as the views and tempers of Fox and Pitt were. But the king would not allow the name of Fox to be in the list. On the other hand, Lord Grenville refused to become part of an Administration from which Fox was excluded. He said he could not accept office in a Cabinet formed on the basis of exclusion, being convinced that an effective government could only be secured by uniting in it as large a proportion as possible of the weight, talents, and character to be found in public men of all descriptions. Pitt was thus forced to form a Government on a narrow Tory basis. On the 11th of May the Marquis of Stafford said, in the House of Lords, that he understood that a certain right honourable gentleman, who had turned his great abilities to the subject of the national defences, was about to take the management of public affairs, and that he therefore withdrew his motion. The next day the public announcement was made that Addington had resigned, and that Pitt had accepted the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Of the Addington Ministry Pitt retainedLord[496] Chancellor Eldon; the Duke of Portland, President of the Council; the Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Privy Seal; his own brother, the Earl of Chatham, Master-General of the Ordnance; and Lord Castlereagh, President of the Board of Control. To these he added Dundas, now Lord Melville, as First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Harrowby as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, in place of Lord Hawkesbury; and Lord Camden as Secretary of the Colonies, in place of Lord Hobart. Lord Mulgrave became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in place of Lord Pelham. George Canning, now becoming a marked man, was made Treasurer of the Navy, in place of Tierney, but this gave him no seat in the Cabinet. Huskisson was Secretary to the Treasury, and Mr. Perceval remained Attorney-General.
ONE:But the great glory of this session was not the exposure of Davison and his fellow thieves, but the stop put to the operations of a much larger class of rascals. The death of Fox had been a sad blow to Wilberforce and the abolitionists, who had calculated on his carrying the prohibition of the slave trade; but Lord Grenville and his Cabinet seemed to have made up their minds to have the fame of achieving the grand object of so many years' exertion for the suppression of the African slave trade. Wilberforce, to his inconceivable joy, discovered that Spencer Perceval, the leader of the Opposition, and his party were willing to co-operate for this purpose. The king and royal family alone remained as adverse to the abolition of slavery as they were to the emancipation of the Catholics. The abolitionists, however, had so imbued the country with the sense of the barbarity and iniquity of the traffic, that royal prejudice could no longer swamp the measure, nor aristocratic apathy delay it. Lord Grenville brought in a Bill for the purpose into[532] the Peers on the 2nd of January, 1807: the 12th was fixed for the second reading. Before this took place, counsel was heard at the bar of the House against the measure, who repeated all the terrible prognostics of ruin to the West Indies and to Britain from the abolition, with which the planters and proprietors of the West Indies, the merchants and slave captains of Liverpool and Bristol, had so often endeavoured to alarm the nation. The emptiness of these bugbears had, however, been now too fully exposed to the people by the lectures, speeches, and pamphlets of the Abolition Society, and Wilberforce had all along merely to use the arguments in Parliament with which they had abundantly furnished him. Lord Grenville now introduced the second reading by an elaborate speech, in which he condensed and summed up these arguments. He was warmly supported by the Duke of Gloucestera liberal exception to his familyby Lords King, Selkirk, Rosslyn, Northesk, Holland, Suffolk, Moira, and the Bishops of Durham, London, and others. The Dukes of Clarence and Sussex as zealously opposed him, as well as Lords Sidmouth, Eldon, Ellenborough, Hawkesbury, St. Vincent, and many others. The second reading was carried, after a debate which continued till five o'clock in the morning, by one hundred against thirty-six. The third reading was also carried with equal ease, and the Bill was brought down to the Commons on the 10th of February. Lord Howick proposed its reading in an eloquent speech, and it was opposed, with the usual prediction of ruin, by Mr. George Hibbert, Captain Herbert, and General Gascoyne, who said the nation was carried away by sentimental cant, the result of an enormous agitation by the Quakers and Saints. The first reading, however, passed without a division, and the second on the 24th of February, by two hundred and eighty-three against sixteen. The House gave three cheers. Seeing the large majority, and that the Bill was safe, Lord Grenville recommended Wilberforce to strengthen it by inserting the penalties, which he did; but they left a great advantage to the slave merchants by allowing them to clear out their vessels from Great Britain by the 1st of May, and gave them time to deliver their human cargoes in the West Indies till the 1st of January, 1808a liberty which was sure to create a great sending out of vessels for the last occasion, and a fearful crowding of them. However, the accursed trade was now doomed, as far as British merchants could go, though it was soon found that it was not so easy to suppress it. When it was seen that the Bill must pass, Lords Eldon, Hawkesbury, and Castlereagh, who had hitherto opposed it, declared themselves in favour of it. It was carried in both Houses by large majorities, and received the royal sanction on the 25th of March. So easily was the Bill passed, at last, that Lord Percy, the day after it had left the Commons, moved in that House for leave to bring in a Bill for the gradual emancipation of the slaves; but this being deemed premature, and calculated to injure the operation of the Bill for the abolition of the trade, and to create dangerous excitement in the West Indies, the motion was discouraged, and so was dropped.On the 2nd of July, in a letter to Lord Francis Leveson Gower, the Viceroy gave his opinion of the state of Ireland in these terms:"I begin by premising that I hold in abhorrence the Association, the agitators, the priests, and their religion; and I believe that not many, but that some, of the bishops are mild, moderate, and anxious to come to a fair and liberal compromise for the adjustment of the points at issue. I think that these latter have very little, if any, influence with the lower clergy and the population.
