Reign of George III. (continued.) page 7

Captain Phipps, afterwards lord Mulgrave, said that he knew that ten guard ships had been sinecures; and colonel Barre spoke in his usual unsparing style; exposed the inconsistency of our first introducing the Russian fleet into the Mediterranean, and then demanding fresh ships and sailors to prevent them doing mischief there. " We have done something," he said, "of very great moment. There is an event which has astonished the world! We have seen the frigates of Russia in the centre of the Archipelago. The assistance of England, the supplies of our dockyards, helped to carry them thither, and to effect their mighty purpose. Have you well weighed the nature of this good office? Have you considered it to the bottom? "

Barre said that, in gaining the friendship of the Czarina, they had made mortal enemies of the Ottoman Porte. In fact, the English government had been doing the work of weakening the Turkish empire for the advantage of Russia, for which we, in our day, have paid the penalty of the Crimean war. Barre also more than hinted at the conduct of Russia and Prussia - asserting that they were brooding over some mischievous design, which, in truth, was the dismemberment of Poland.

The feeble statesmen of these days did not perceive the tendency of events towards Russian and Prussian aggrandisement, and their destruction of the balance of power, for which we had spent so much life and money; they were helping on that catastrophe to the best of their abilities. They had been taken with a wonderful fancy for the friendship of Russia, and for security in the Baltic at her hands were ready to surrender security everywhere else. Russia was at war with Turkey - at war for the very purpose of seizing as much of her territory as possible; and we were ready to help her in the conquest of this very Crimea, which was so fatal to our fellow-countrymen, and so costly to our treasury in later years.

Catherine II. pursuing her war with the Turks, a scheme was laid before her paramour and great counsellor, Gregory Orloff, by one Papaz Ogli, from Larissa, formerly a companion in arms of his brother, Alexis Orloff, to excite an insurrection in Greece against Turkey. A fleet was fitted out, and put under the command of Alexis Orloff, to assist, by sea, the revolted Greeks on land. This fleet, which was, in reality, commanded by English officers - Elphinstone, Greig, Dugdale, and others - wintered in Port Mahon, and, in the spring of 1770, made for the Grecian coast. But the insurrection excited by Russia in Greece had failed. They had marched much too feeble an army thither to support it. The peasants of the neighbourhood of Mistra, the ancient Sparta, who were enrolled in two regiments, broke forth and committed great atrocities, avenging themselves of the long-endured barbarities of the Turks; but the Albanians marched down from their mountains in great numbers, overran the Peloponnesus, and cut down and massacred the Greeks in all their towns and villages. Patras and Tripolizza were especially the scenes of havoc and slaughter. In Tripolizza alone three thousand Greeks, of all ages and both sexes, were destroyed. The united host of Russians, Mainotes, and Montenegrins, were incapable of resisting them. The Albanians glutted their lust of murder and plunder on the unhappy Greeks without restraint. Whole districts of the Peloponnesus were reduced to deserts and strewn with corpses. The inhabitants who had not fallen had fled into the mountains; such was the condition of horror to which Russia had reduced Greece by her lawless ambition.

Her fleet, now conducted by our countrymen, kindly endeavouring to promote this ambition, which was to become their own scourge, on the 5th of July, 1770, came to action with that of the Turks off Scio. In the action, the ships of the two admirals, Capudan Pacha, and Spiritow, the Russian, blew up. The English admirals, Elphinstone and Greig, continued to fight. The Turks fled into the Bay of Tscheme, when Elphinstone blockaded it; and captains Dugdale and Mackenzie, in the darkness of the night, sailed up to the Turkish fleet with fire-ships, which spread their flames in spite of all attempts to extinguish them, and reduced the whole fleet to ashes. The spectacle was terrible; the successive explosions of their powder magazines were heard in Athens. The earth at Smyrna shook as with an earthquake. The Russian ships were tossed and daslied against each other as by a storm. The Turkish sailors escaped many of them by swimming to land, and by boats, and, in their rage, murdered all the Greeks they could meet with, and set their towns and villages on fire. Smyrna and Constantinople itself were in a fearful panic. Elphinstone had promised the czarina to break through the Dardanelles and attack the Turkish capital; but Alexis Orloff, who had shown the utmost imbecility in the war both on land and on sea, dared not attempt it. The English insisted, and led the way to the mouth of the Dardanelles, but the cowardly Russian would not follow, and the English officers quitted the fleet in disgust, and without receiving any reward for their signal services. When they were gone, Orloff ordered four pictures to be painted of the different phases of the destruction of the Turkish fleet, by Hackert, and then returned to St. Petersburg, where he was received with the highest honours, and named by the empress thenceforward, Orloff Tscliemekoff.

In order to divide and reduce Turkey, the Russians made an alliance with Ali Bey, the viceroy of Egypt, and engaged, in return for his refusal of all assistance to the Porte, to aid him in his designs on Syria. They besieged, in conjunction with him, Jaffa and Damietta, but with little effect. They then invested Lemnos, but were driven thence by the bold enterprise of Gazi Hassan, who was born in Persia, and sold as a slave to a Turk in Rodosto. For his successful assault on the Russians, and their utter rout, he was made lord high admiral. From that time the Russians could effect little against the Turks, except that they, in 1771, had managed to rend the Crimea from Turkey under pretence of acknowledging its independence. This was the last event of any importance in the war which was terminated in 1774, by the peace of Cainardgi, when the Crimea was pronounced an independent state.

Such were the lawless aggressions and sanguinary deeds of the Russian demi-savages, which the English Government, stoneblind to the future, had been aiding to the best of their ability; and now they saw enough of their mistake in bringing the Muscovites into the Mediterranean to make it necessary to increase their own fleet. The mischief, however, was not to end here. Europe expected to see Turkey at this time absorbed into Russia; but the jealousy of Austria and Prussia saved it; but they, at the same time, turned the greedy eye of the czarina on another prey - Poland, and the three powers becoming joint robbers of nations, soon after consummated their crime of the first partition of that country.

The domestic business of the session commencing with this year, was chiefly of an ecclesiastical character. Sir William Meredith presented a petition from two hundred and fifty of the established clergy, including many professors of civil law and physic, who prayed relief from subscription to the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England, without which no degree could be obtained at either of our great universities, and no student even could be admitted at Oxford. The subject had been warmly discussed in the newspapers and pamphlets, and in public meetings. Sir William contended that enforcement of these articles only propagated perjury; and the petition itself stood upon the right of all Englishmen to enjoy the benefits of these institutions, founded, many of them, by grants of kings and I queens for these subjects. It prayed for an acknowledgment of the scriptures as sufficient ground for admission and for the attainment of honours. Sir Roger Newdegate, owner of a name down to our time expressive of the strictest conservatism, opposed the petition, and was followed by Mr. Stanley, Mr. Fitzmorris, and Mr. Jenkinson, who contended that no attention should be paid to any such petitions, considering all the mischief which had been done to the church by fifth-monarchy men and other fanatics. Charles Fox was amongst these narrow spirits, and had, says Gibbon, " prepared himself for this holy war by passing twenty-two hours in the pious exercise of hazard, his devotion costing him only about five hundred pounds an hour - in all, eleven thousand pounds!"

But far more remarkable was it to see Burke ranged on his side, for Fox had not found sufficient reasons for turning patriot. Burke, in reply to the prayer, that acknowledgment of the sacred scriptures should be sufficient, asked " what were the scriptures to which they were content to subscribe? They do not think that a book becomes of divine authority because it is bound in blue morocco, and is printed by John Baskett and his assigns? The Bible is a vast collection of different treatises; a man who holds the divine authority of one, may consider the other as merely human. What is his canon? The Jewish; St. James's; or that of the thirty- nine articles? There are some who reject the Canticles; others, six of the epistles; the Apocalypse has been suspected even as heretical, and was doubted for many ages, and by many great men. As these narrow the canon, others have enlarged it by admitting St. Barnabas's, the apostolic constitutions, to say nothing of many other gospels. Therefore, to ascertain scripture, you must have one argument more, to define what that scripture is which you design to teach."

All this sounded very plausible, but was just so much sophistry, for the words "the authorised version" would have settled the whole matter as it regarded the universities, and the church might have been left to impose what doctrines it pleased on its clergy before admitting them to its pulpits. But the day was far off when such advantages as those of studying at the national universities on equal terms for all subjects could be obtained; when those who dared to dissent from the state church should be dignified with the same honours as those who held with it. The motion was rejected by two hundred and seventeen votes against seventy-one.

Mr. Henry Seymour, a few weeks after, moved for leave to bring in a bill, called afterwards the Church Nullum Tempus Bill, to secure the estates originally derived from the church for the exercise of any dormant claims of that body, which was also rejected.

In the midst of these debates, Dr. Nowell, chaplain to the house of commons, preached before it on the 30th of January, the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. As usual, his audience was very small, consisting only of the speaker and four members. Whether these five were awake or not would seem doubtful, for they carried a vote of thanks for the sermon, and another for printing it; and when the sermon came to be put into the hands of the members at large the consternation was tremendous. It was found to contain the most unmitigated doctrines of the Filmer and Sacheverel stamp, namely, of passive obedience, and the divine right of kings. Mr. Thomas Townshend, afterwards lord Sydney, rose in his place, and moved that the sermon should be burnt by the common hangman; but the house luckily remembered that thanks had been voted for it in its name, and got rid of the motion by moving the order of the day. This was carried, and another motion to expunge the vote of thanks from the journals of the house.

These debates called forth many remarks on the blessed martyr, Charles Stuart. Lord Folkstone said that part of the liturgy was composed by father Petre, the Jesuit confessor of James II., and alderman Sawbridge asked whether Dr. Nowell meant to recommend Charles I. as a model to the present king. Frederick Montagu moved the repeal of the act for the observance of the anniversary of king Charles's death; but this motion was zealously opposed by Sir Roger Newdegate, and rejected by a hundred and twenty-five votes to ninety-seven.

The dissenters, encouraged by expressions let fall by different members during the debates, and especially from those of the ministerial party, who were desirous of uniting them with the church, so far as to act in a body on any occasion against the Roman catholics, now procured the introduction of a motion for the abolition of the test and corporation acts. On the 3rd of April, Sir Henry Houghton, a member for the county of Lancaster, moved this, and Sir George Saville seconded it. The churchmen opposed' it on the ground that these acts were perfectly inert; that since the accession of the princes of Hanover no one had been interfered with on account of his religious views, and therefore there was no need to repeal these acts. Had this been true, the same argument made the repeal a matter of indifference to the church; but it was far from being true. Dissenters could have shown abundant proofs of their unjust and invidious operation, and the animus of the bishops, when the bill went into the upper house, was a convincing proof that they knew it. The bill passed the commons by an overwhelming majority, but was thrown out of the lords by an almost equal preponderance. Lords Camden, Shelburne, Chatham, and even Mansfield, supported it; but the archbishop of York, the bishops of London, Oxford, Peterborough, and Llandaff, and the lords Bruce and Gower, opposed it. On this occasion lord Chatham introduced the phrase, " the college of fishermen," for the apostles, in contradistinction to the college of cardinals, and gave that strikingly analytical description of the church of England, as popish in her liturgy, calvinistic in her creed, and arminian in her clergy.

In the month of March, before these religious debates were at an end, in consequence of remarks of lord North, Mr. Sullivan, the deputy-chairman of the India House, brought in a bill to regulate the affairs of the company, which was daily rising into greater importance. During the discussion, many disgraceful revelations were made of the tyrannies, extortions, and peculations of the company's servants, who were continually coming home loaded with wealth, and finding their way into the house of commons. A committee was appointed to inquire into the administration of the company; and it appeared, from a communication of lord George Germaine to colonel Barre, that ministers entertained an idea of buying up the violent opposition of that gentleman, by offering him the presidency of the board of control; but it came to nothing.