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Leader (1850-1860), 23rd July 1859, Edition 2 of 2, Page 18, laws, against which the peasantry rose i...

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      Thbxife And Times Of Chaules James Fox. ...

      brother , Jack Smythe * Lord Onslpw , Lord Southampton , Mr . Edward Bouverie , and Mr Keit , were present . Two -witnesses signed there names to the certificate of marriage . The following , in relation to this matter , must be quoted in extenso : —; "In the spring of 1787 it was announced in the House of Commons by Alderman Ijfewenham that application would be made to Parliament for the payment of the Prince of Wales s debts . Mr . Eolle < the hero of the « Kolliad . ' ) rose and declared that , if such a motion were made , he would move the pre-Tious question , as the proposal' involved matter by ¦ '¦ which the Constitutionboth in Church and 3

      On the whole , there are traces of more careful authorship in the present than , in the former , volume ; but we could have desired a larger proportion of biographical interest .

      , State , might be injuriously affected . These words were supposed to allude to a report of the private marriage of the Prince , which had appeared in the newspapers . On a succeeding day , Mr . Fox , who had not been in the house when Mr . Rolle spoke , took an opportunity of notichig the report in question , the truth of which he denied in toto , ' in point of fact as well as law . The fact not only never could have happened legally , but never did happen in any way whatsoever , and had from the beginning been a base and malicious falsehood / On being further questioned , he declared that 'he had direct authority for what he said . ' .

      " When we reflect that Mr . Eolle had made his allusion some days before , his speech being on the 24 th , and Mr . Pox ' s on the 30 th of April—when -we consider Mr . Fox ' s strict veracity and singular caution regarding all matters of fact , —we cannot Ibut arrive at the conclusion that between the 24 th and the 30 th of April Mi * . Fox had received from the Prince the direct authority he asserted himself to have received . We have already seen the terms in which the Prince had" contradicted by letter the report of his intended marriage just before its celebration , and he could have little scruple in repeating Ms falsehood by word of mouth , when the marriage had already taken place *

      " On the morning after the denial of the marriage by Mr .. Fox , the Prince called at the house where 3 £ frs . Fitzherbert was living with a relation . He went up to her , and , taking hold of both her hands , and caressing her , he said , ' Only conceive , Maria , what Fox didyesterday : he went down to the House , and . denied that you and I were man and wife . ' Mrs . Fitzherbert made no reply , but changed countenance and turned pale . * "On the same day the Prince saw Mr . . Grey , and endeavoured to persuade him to say something in

      Parliament to satisfy Mrs . Fitzherbert , and take off the edge of Fox ' s declaration . This Mr . Grey positively refused , saying no denial could be given without calling in question Mr . Fox ' s veracity , which no one , lie presumed , was prepared to do . After some time , the Prince , with prodigious agitation , owned the marriage . He at length put an end to the conversation by saying abruptly , •« Well , if nobody else will , Sheridan must . ' Sheridan accordingly went to the House of Commons , and paid some vapid compliments to Mrs . Fitzherbert , which took away nothing from the weight of Mr . Fox ' s denial .

      "On the day after Mr , Fox ' s declaration , a gentleman of his acquaintance went up to him at Brooke ' s , and said , I see by the papers ^ Mr . Fox , you have denied the fact of the marriage of the Prince -with Mrs . Fitzherbert . You have been misinformed . I was present at that marriage . * ' Mr . Fox now perceived how completely he had been duped . He immediately renounced the acquaintance of the Prince , and did not speak to him for more than a year . " This , it must be owned , is an important statement . Lord John properly denounces these transactions as heartless ,, and says that the Princess Caroline of Brunswick was their victim . Fortunately for the nation , he adds , the marriage of the Prince of Wales and Mrs , Fitaherbert was „ not < mrsed with issue . Had a son been born from this marriage , a disputed , or at least a doubtful succession must have been the result ; for the Roman Catholic subjeots of the Crown were bound to believe in the validity of the marriage , and they might have disputed the binding nature of an Act of Parliament which set aside tao legitimate issue of a reigning king . The remaining portion of this volume deals with more public transactions , such as the regency , foreign affairs—thq invasion of Holland by Prussia and armament against Russia—the Frenoh Revolution , in its connexion both with the Continent and Great Britain , the war with JJVance , the Reign of Terror , and the author ' s opinion on the cora- > mencement , the progress and the conduct of the war . In all these transactions , Mr . Fox bore his part .

      870 The Leader. ("No. 487- July 23, 1859

      870 THE LEADER . ( "No . 487- July 23 , 1859

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      Laws, Against Which The Peasantry Rose I...

      laws , against which the peasantry rose in arms in the fourteenth century , and like our defunct corn laws , to oppress and plunder some for the advantage of others . Under the influence of such institutions even the Duke of Wellington became a sentimental supporter of corn laws in England , and where their influence was not , and where the interest of his party was not at stake , he was a free trader . Freedom of all kinds is naturally the gif t of God , and institutions which limit it , while they fetter the limbs , pervert the mind , and are grievous injuries mankindBesides the three articles alluded to

      THE REVIEWS . The Edinburgh : Review ; No . CCXXIH . — This venerable periodical rather assumes the jaunty airs of youth than has . received a new life . In the present number , a sentimentalist for squires and b ishops , writing in the style of a young Puseyite parson , attacks Douglas Jerrold because he was a sentimentalist for poachers and Dissenters . " He wrote , " says the reviewer , " elaborate essays on subjects on which he had not done his best to form a clear and impartial judgment" - —a sentence which would stop an immense quantity of writing , and which should have stopped the pen of the

      reviewer rather than of jerrold . His sympathies and sentiments were on the side of suffering , the sentiments and sympathies of the reviewer are on the side of wellr dressed , sleek oppression , though it be not so much designed as arising from customs and institutions , investigation into which is cut short by the classes with which the reviewer sympathises , wrapped up in a mantle of thoroughly satisfied sentimental reverence . Jerrold ' s sentimentalism . was healthy , like all unperverted sensibility , which is always on the side of truth and justice ; the reviewer ' s sentimentalism is an

      example of the ease by which sentimentalism can be arrayed by education on the side of injustice . Accordingly , he condemns JerrOld for directing his caustic writing against the brutalities of naval discipline and war . The other writers in the old Review are less offensively youthful , and the author o f a useful paper on the State of the . Navy is as plodding and care-taking as an official drawing up a document for publication . He'does not mean to make out a case against his friends in successive

      Admiralties , but his description of the deplorable condition of our navy , in contrast with the vast sum of money spent on it , demonstrates that this money has been taken from the people on false pretences . They have not got the navy they have been so enormously charged for , and are safe rather from the sufferance of France , as he shows , than . their , own guns . Those who wish to know the present helpless condition to which the spendthrift aristocracy has reduced us , should study the pages

      of this aristocratic review . In an artiple on Brialmont's " Life of the Duke of Wellington , " which treats the subject fairly , there is this passage : — " Between the foresight of the Duke of Wellington s Indian and his English policy we may trace a marked contrast . Throughout his parliamentary life he cannot be said to have done more than accept facts and principles already forced on him ; but in India , near a quarter of a century before the commercial monopoly of the Company had expired , he clearly sots forth the advantages of an entire system of free trade , then one of the most startling

      of conceivable innovations in the east . The cause of this contrast probably is , that in now countries men instinctivol y free themselves from the trammels of usage , and that where there are no fixed , political principles , which , when originally founded in the interest of parties , are more likely to be false than true , they are freer to form just as well as bold conclusions . Albuquerque certainly had no pretensions to the scion tine political economy of Mr . Ricardo , But more than three centuries elapsed between the rise of political economy- in Europe'and the astute principles of commercial interchange which Albuquerque in the fifteenth age laid down in the Eastern seas . '' This is an illustration of an , important principle , and it is the more valuable because the writer seems rather a man of the world than a more literateur . Before Albuquerque or Wellington in the East , the followers of Wat T yler in England stipulated for the " right of buying and selling openly and freely in the towns and out of the towns . " They had the same notions of fred trade as Albuquerque , the Duke of Wellington , Ricardo , and Cpbaon . Suoh notions ( ire , in truth , the natural and inevitable consequence of man ' s eon " stitution , nnd are his natural guides'to welfare , but they are everywhere thwarted or perverted , and man is made miserable by fixed political principles or institutions , " founded in the interest , of parties , " and certain to be false and injurious , because they are always intended , like the Norman

      to . , one on " Adam Bede , " one on Tennyson ' s four "Idylls of the Bang , " one on the " Memoirs of George HI ., " and one on Marie Antoinette , are worth reading . Articles on the Acropolis of Athens , on Ichnology , and on a Syriac version of the Gospels , are learned but not amusing . In the biographical articles there are many pleasing anecdotes , and if the venerable ancestress of all the quarterlies would not assume the flirtation of youth , she would still be respectable . Bentley ' s Quarterly Review . No . 2 . — This new review evidently means mischief . There is , for instance , an article on Popular Preaching , in which the Rev . I . C . M . Bellew is " savagely slaughtered , " Mr . Spurgeon , exhibited in chains , and the Rev . J . J . West , the rector of Winchelsea , burned in effigy . We half suspect that more is meant than meets the ear in this tremendous and elaborate attack . The real objection of the writer , we suspect , is to " the foolishness of preaching" itself . He would have the minister content ninaself with reading the Prayer-book ; and we fear that he belongs to that sect in the

      Church that regards rather the priest than the preacher . We may note , also , a tolerably good article On the drama , which contains some timely reflections . The critic condemns burlesque altogether , and considers it highly disgraceful to the modern stage . " In such performances as travesties of Shakespeare , and in Mazeppa and Massaniello , " says the writer , the actor -himself is called on to degrade his own profession and to profane his own powers of humour and passion . Perhaps , however ( he continues ) , burlesque—on all occasions mischievous—was neVer more absurd than in the summer of 1856 : A great tragic actress , the

      greatest , perhaps whom the present generation will behoid , was at the moment rivalling in the Italian drama the performances of Mrs . Siddons , Miss O'Neil and Miss Fanny Kemble , in days gone by . A manager , than whom no one was better qualified to appreciate the genius of Madame Ristori , employs an actor of equal genius with himself to burlesque her impersonation of " Medea . " This was the tribute paid by Englishmen to consummate histrionic powers ! N " or was this outrage on good feeling and good taste— -we can afford it it no gentler name—perpetrated at a theatre where the spectators ore mostly rude mechanicals , and where illiterate appetites may be pardoned for relishing coarse fare . But it was deliberately committed at a theatre where refined and intellectual people congregate , and where the performances and the

      performers are worthy of such audience . All this is undeniably true . While inferior trash has been adapted from the French boards , and found actors on the English , " Medea" has only received the equivocal honours of burlesque ; and Ristori excited no emulator at the west-end theatres . It Vas reserved for Sadler ' s Wells , and the Standard in Shoreditoh , to produce an English version Of " Medea , " and engage Miss Edith Horaud for the impersonation , of the weird , heroine . There , indeed , the drama in question was received with especial enthusiasm , and the actress encouraged by repeated plaudits . Previously , at the more fashionable theatres , the proper thing to do was thought to be an attempt to throw the whole affair into ridiculous lights ; not by an honourable ambition , to compete with foreign talent , and show the world that the English stage had also a Ristori .

      Besides the papers we have noticed , there are elaborate articles on other subjects * viz : —Mcrell'e Modern German Philosophy , the Royal Acadomy and , the novels of the season , including " Adam Bede , " and " the Bertrams , " and " the Italian Campaign . " These are treated with various degrees of merit , but all meritoriously , and with . an effort to attain originality or novelty . There is life in the present number , and a promise of more , if laudable endeavour bo not slaokcncd . Wo wish Mr , Bontley success .

  • Citation
    • Leader (1850-1860), July 23, 1859, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_23071859/page/18/