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Not the least agreeable feature was the probable addition to pocket-money, for in England it is the custom to "tip" school-boys, and we have ourselves come back joyous on a Sunday evening with six sovereigns chinking in our pockets. Alas, no one tips us now! Then there was the delight of comparing notes of the doings during the delightful preceding twenty-four hours.

"America ... became the great subject of consideration; ... and the minister who was charged with its government took the lead in public business." This minister was at first Charles Townshend, than whom no man in England, it was supposed, knew more of the transatlantic possessions. His scheme involved a standing army of 25,000 men in the provinces, to be supported by taxes to be raised there.

In more ways than one you forget what is meant by idiom. I have therefore thought it advisable to provide you with a catalogue of the real crimes of England; and I have selected them on a principle which cannot fail to interest and please you. On many occasions we have been very wrong indeed.

Cæsar, in his second descent on England, had six hundred vessels, transporting forty thousand men. During the civil wars he transported thirty-five thousand men to Greece. Antony came from Brundusium to join him with twenty thousand men, and passed through the fleet of Pompey, in which act he was as much favored by the lucky star of Cæsar as by the arrangements of his lieutenants.

Still more cordial was the rejoicing among the Dutch when they learned that the first minister of their Commonwealth had been raised to a throne. James had, during the last year of his reign, been even more hated in England by the Tories than by the Whigs; and not without cause; for to the Whigs he was only an enemy; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thankless friend.

Napoleon had found himself unable to land his army in England, but he had other means of striking. In 1806 he issued the famous Berlin Decree, declaring that no other country should trade with his greatest enemy. Dealers had been wont to come every year to London from Germany, France, and Russia, in order to purchase the fine skins which the Hudson's Bay Company could supply.

This announcement made it clear enough to everybody that the King was in a very weak condition, but there was naturally some difficulty about devising an entirely satisfactory method of dispensing him from the duty of appending his sign-manual to important documents. Not a very long time had passed away since the throne of England was nominally occupied by an insane sovereign.

And he thought with an inexpressible pang that he must give up Lord Steyne's dinner at Richmond, and must lose his rest and pass the night in an abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure, as he had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select society in England. And he must not only give up this but all other engagements for some time to come.

The changes recently made in the land laws of England and Scotland, and the activity of the advocates of further and more radical changes, have increased this hope. Progressive English statesmen have long looked with disfavor upon entails and settlements, and there have been a number of enactments providing for cutting off entails and increasing the power of limited owners.

His army was greatly reduced by sickness, he was very ill-supplied from England, and he received no loyal support from the Portuguese government.