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THREE:From the affairs of the royal family, we turn to a more important subject, the partition of Poland. Poland, lying contiguous to Russia, had for ages been in a condition calculated to attract the cupidity of ambitious neighbours. Its nobles usurped all authority. They kept the whole mass of the people in hopeless serfdom; they usurped the whole of the land; they elected their own king, and were too fond of power themselves to leave him more than a puppet in their hands. To make the condition of the country worse, it was violently divided on the subject of religion. One part of the nobles consisted of Roman Catholics, another of what were called Dissidents, made up of members of the Greek Church, and Protestants, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Arians. Although by what was called the Pacta Conventa the Dissidents had been admitted to an equality of rights, this was totally disregarded by the overbearing Roman Catholics; and in 1736 the Pacta Conventa was formally abolished. Every Dissident was, by this measure, for ever excluded from government, and from all interest in it.Their cannon was both inferior and worse served than that of the English; and when, at one o'clock, the duke began to play on their ranks with his artillery, he made dreadful havoc amongst them. Several times the Highlanders endeavoured to make one of their impetuous rushes, running forward with loud cries, brandishing their swords and firing their pistols; but the steady fire of the English cannon mowed them down and beat them off. Seeing, however, a more determined appearance of a rush, Colonel Belford began to charge with grape shot. This repelled them for a time; but at length, after an hour's cannonade, the Macintoshes succeeded in reaching the first line of the English. Firing their muskets, and then flinging them down, they burst, sword in hand, on Burrel's regiment, and cut their way through it. The second line, however, consisting of Sempill's regiment, received them with a murderous fire. Cumberland had ordered the first rank to kneel down, the second to lean forward, and the third to fire over their heads. By this means, such a terrible triple volley was given them as destroyed them almost en masse. Those left alive, however, with all their ancient fury, continued to hew at[107] Sempill's regiment; but Cumberland had ordered his men not to charge with their bayonets straight before them, but each to thrust at the man fronting his right-hand man. By this means his adversary's target covered him where he was open to the left, and his adversary's right was open to him. This new man?uvre greatly surprised the Highlanders, and made fearful havoc of them. From four to five hundred of them fell between the two lines of the English army. Whilst the Macintoshes were thus immolating themselves on the English bayonets, the Macdonalds on their left stood in sullen inaction, thus abandoning their duty and their unfortunate countrymen from resentment at their post of honour on the right having been denied them. At length, ashamed of their own conduct, they discharged their muskets, and drew their broadswords for a rush; but the Macintoshes were now flying, and the grape-shot and musket-shot came so thickly in their faces, that they, too, turned and gave way. Whilst Charles stood, watching the rout of his army to the right, he called frantically to those who fled wildly by to stand and renew the fight. At this moment Lord Elcho spurred up to him, and urged him to put himself at the head of the yet unbroken left, and make a desperate charge to retrieve the fortune of the day; but the officers around him declared that such a charge was hopeless, and could only lead the men to certain slaughter, and prevent the chance of collecting the scattered troops for a future effort. Though he did not attempt to resist the victorious enemy, which was now hopeless, he seems to have lingered, as if confounded, on the spot, till O'Sullivan and Sheridan, each seizing a rein of his bridle, forced him from the field.

THREE:

THREE:But we come now to a new phase in the Poor-Law system, rather a complete revolution, by which the flood-gates of pauperism were opened, and all those barriers that had restrained the increase of population were swept away. The old system had been somewhat relaxed in 1782 by Mr. Gilbert's Act, which, by incorporating parishes into unions, prevented grasping landlords and tenants from feeling that intense interest in the extinction of population and pauperism which they did when the sphere was limited to a single parish. But in the year 1795 the price of corn rising from 54s. to 74s., and wages continuing stationary, the distress of the poor was very great and many of the able-bodied were obliged to become claimants for parish relief. But instead of meeting this emergency by temporary expedients and extra grants suited to the occasion, the magistrates of Berks and some other southern counties issued tables showing the wages which they affirmed every labouring man ought to receive, not according to the value of his labour to his employer, but according to the variations in the number of his family and the price of bread; and they accompanied these tables with an order directing the parish officers to make up the deficit to the labourer, in the event of the wages paid him by his employer falling short of the tabulated allowance. This was the small beginning of a gigantic evil. The practice originating in a passing emergency grew into a custom, and ultimately assumed the force of an established right, which prevailed almost universally, and was productive of an amount of evil beyond anything that could have been conceived possible. The allowance scales issued from time to time were framed on the principle that every labourer should have a gallon loaf of standard wheaten bread weekly for every member of his family, and one over. The effect of this was, that a man with six children, who got 9s. a week wages, required nine gallon loaves, or 13s. 6d. a week, so that he had a pension of 4s. 6d. over his wages. Another man with a wife and five children, so idle and disorderly that no one would employ him, was entitled to eight gallon loaves for their maintenance, so that he had 12s. a week to support him. The increase of allowance according to the number of children acted as a direct bounty upon early marriage.