A Short History of English Liberalism Part 18

[127] _Rights of Man_, Part II.

[128] Part II., Preface.

[129] Part II.

[130] _Rights of Man_, Part II., c. 3.

[131] So late as 1840 Cook, a Whig, described the _Rights of Man_ as "a fountain of evil," and denounced its "licentiousness and impiety." See his _History of Party_, iii. 399.

[132] _Parl. Hist._ (1799), x.x.xi. 467. Compare Colonel Cawthorne's speech, x.x.x. 1440.

[133] _Hansard_, I. xli. 434 (1819).

[134] _Speeches_, 24th May, 1802.

[135] _Annual Register_, 1782. There is an admirable account of these different societies in Mr. G. S. Veitch's _Genesis of Parliamentary Reform_ (1913).

[136] _Annual Register_, 1792. The a.s.sociation soon got into difficulties.

Its president, Mr. John Reeves, published a pamphlet so violently Tory in tone that the House of Commons ordered him to be prosecuted for sedition involved in contempt of itself. He was acquitted.

[137] Government spies were sometimes involved in their own net. Two of them took part in treasonable proceedings at Edinburgh, and were hanged, drawn, and quartered (_Annual Register_, 1793, _Chronicle_, 53, 58).

[138] These cases are taken from the _Chronicle_ in the _Annual Register_, 1792.

[139] _State Trials_, xxiii.; _Annual Register_, 1794, 32.

[140] _State Trials_, xxiii.

[141] _Report of Secret Committee of Commons_; _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xi. 727.

[142] _Reports of Secret Committees_ of 1795 and 1799 in the _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xi. 475, 574, 688; x.x.xiv. 579, 1000, and the consequent debates. Dr. J.

Holland Rose and Mr. G. S. Veitch come to the same conclusion as that reached in the text.

[143] Shelburne became Lord Lansdowne in 1784.

[144] _Speeches_, vi. 61.

[145] _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xiv. 992.

[146] _Hansard_, I. xli. 7, 8.

[147] _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xiv. 248.

[148] During their brief tenure of office in 1807 they stopped the Slave Trade, which Pitt's Government, while always condemning it, had never suppressed. This was the last and the n.o.blest of the public acts of Fox.

[149] _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xiv. 213.

[150] Letter to Lord Holland, in the _Correspondence of C. J. Fox_, 23rd February, 1799.

[151] _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xiv. 244. Cf. Granville and Auckland at pp. 668, 717.

[152] To Charles Grey, 8th August, 1803, 6th January, 1804; _Correspondence of C. J. Fox_.

[153] _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xi. 684 (1793).

[154] _Ibid._, x.x.x. 422 (1792).

[155] _Speeches_, v. 496.

[156] _Ibid._, 84.

[157] _Ibid._, 174.

[158] Alison's _Life of Castlereagh_, i. 21, 23.

[159] _Parl. Hist._, x.x.xi. 1367 (1795).

[160] _Speeches_, vi. 620 (1805).

[161] _Hansard_, I. x. 290.

[162] _Hansard_, I. 354.

[163] _Ibid._, I. x. 365.

[164] _Ibid._, 376.

[165] The descent upon Copenhagen is to-day used as an argument for a powerful German Navy. Our old immoralities pursue us still.

[166] _Life and Opinions of Earl Grey_, by Colonel Grey, 220.

[167] _Ibid._, 332.

[168] Yonge's _Life of Lord Liverpool_, ii. 26.

[169] Alison's _Castlereagh_, i. 500 _et seq._; Castlereagh's speech in _Hansard_, I. x.x.x. 292.

[170] Walpole's _Life of Russell_, i. 110.

[171] _Hansard_, I. xxvii. 850.

[172] _Ibid._, 862.

[173] _Ibid._, 790, 791

[174] _Hansard_, I. xxvii. 773.

[175] _Ibid._, I. xxvii. 782.