The two rival Ministers of England became every day more embittered against each other; and Bolingbroke grew more daring in his advances towards the Pretender, and towards measures only befitting a Stuart's reign. In order to please the High Church, whilst he was taking the surest measures to ruin it by introducing a popish prince, he consulted with Atterbury, and they agreed to bring in a Bill which should prevent Dissenters from educating their own children. This measure was sure to please the Hanoverian Tories, who were as averse from the Dissenters as the Whigs. Thus it would conciliate them and obtain their support at the[19] very moment that the chief authors of it were planning the ruin of their party. This Bill was called the Schism Bill, and enjoined that no person in Great Britain should keep any school, or act as tutor, who had not first subscribed the declaration to conform to the Church of England, and obtained a licence of the diocesan. Upon failure of so doing, the party might be committed to prison without bail; and no such licence was to be granted before the party produced a certificate of his having received the Sacrament according to the communion of the English Church within the last year, and of his having also subscribed the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy.
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What?The English having deposed Suraja Dowlah, the nabob of Bengal, and set up their tool, the traitor Meer Jaffier, who had actually sold his master, the nabob, to them, the unfortunate Nabob was soon assassinated by the son of Meer Jaffier. But Meer Jaffier, freed thus from the fear of the restoration of the Nabob, soon began to cabal against his patrons, the English. Clive was absent, and the government conducted by Mr. Henry Vansittart, a man of little ability in his course of policy. All discipline ceased to exist amongst the English; their only thought was of enriching themselves by any possible means. Meer Jaffier was not blind to this. He saw how hateful the English were making themselves in the country, and was becoming as traitorous to them as he had been to his own master. Early, therefore, in the autumn of 1760, Vansittart and Colonel Caillaud marched to Cossimbazar, a suburb of Moorshedabad, where Meer Jaffier lived, at the head of a few hundred troops, and offered certain terms to him. Meer Jaffier appeared to shuffle in his answer; and, without more ceremony, the English surrounded his palace at the dead of night, and compelled him to resign, but allowed him to retire to Fort William, under the protection of the British flag; and they then set up in his stead Meer Cossim, his son-in-law.This was the state of things when, on the 17th of August, 1792, the French deposed Louis, and prepared for his death. Lord Gower was thereupon recalled, on the plain ground that, being accredited alone to the king, and there being no longer a king, his office was at an end; he was, however, ordered to take a respectful leave, and to assure the Government that Britain still desired to maintain peaceful relations. Yet at this very time London was swarming with paid emissaries of the French Government, whose business was to draw over the people to French notions of republican liberty. Nay, more, Lebrun, the Foreign Minister, took no pains to conceal the assurance of the French that Ireland would revolt and that France would secure it. On the 18th of November a great dinner was given at White's Hotel in Paris, at which Lord Edward Fitzgerald and other Irish Republicans, Thomas Paine, Santerre, and a host of like characters, English, Irish, French, and others, toasted the approaching National Convention of Great Britain and Ireland, and amid wild acclamations drank the sentiment, "May revolutions never be made by halves!" The very next day, the 19th, the National Convention issued its decree, declaring war against all thrones and proclaiming the enfranchisement of all peoples. This was immediately followed by Jacobinised deputations of Englishmen, thanking the Convention for this proclamation; and the President, in reply, said, "Citizens of the world! Royalty in Europe is utterly destroyed, or on the point of perishing on the ruins of feudality; and the Rights of Man, placed by the side of thrones, are a devouring fire which will consume them all. Worthy Republicans! Congratulate yourselves on the festival which you have celebrated in honour of the French Revolutionthe prelude to the festival of nations!"
