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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



HISTORIC SKETCHES. XXVI. 



THE DAGGEE SCENE IN THE HOUSE OP COMMONS. 

 ON the 28th of December, 1792, the English House of Commons 

 was occupied by a very grave subject, and the foremost men of 

 the day took part in the debate. The subject under considera- 

 tion was whether or not aliens that is to say, persons not sub- 

 jects of the King of England should not be subjected to some 

 regulations, such as giving security for good behaviour, while 

 I resident within the realm. Among those who took part in the 

 1 debate were Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Erskine, Lord Sheffield, Grey, 

 and Burke, and the contest among them ran high. 



The Government had thought fit to bring in a bill for the 

 ! regulation of aliens, to the intent it might be known who was 

 and who was not in the country, and they justified their measure 

 by an appeal to the existing state of public affairs. Mr. Fox, 

 who was at the time leader of the Opposition, vehemently 

 denounced the bill as utterly unnecessary, and quite unworthy 

 of the Government. A few nights before, in the course of a 

 debate on the influence of the French constitution, and more 

 especially on a proposal of his own that the king should be 

 requested to send a minister to Paris to negotiate with the 

 French Provisional Government, he had used the most violent 

 and inflammatory language, and had asserted that the country, 

 a .o far from being in the unsettled condition described by the 

 ministers, was perfectly quiet, perfectly loyal, and that there 

 did not exist any warrant, in fact, for the exceptional legislation 

 demanded by the Government. His proposal had been, indeed, 

 rejected, but the same spirit which induced him to make it con- 

 tinued to animate him, and on the Alien Bill he spoke with his 

 wonted warmth, eloquence, and bitterness. The year before he 

 had not of his own will, certainly publicly broken a friendship 

 with Burke which had lasted for a quarter of a century ; Mr. 

 Burke having on that occasion said in the House of Commons, 

 Adverting to the effect which his altered opinions upon the current 

 of French affairs would have upon his private friendships, 

 alluding more especially to his friendship with Fox, " I know 

 the value of my line of conduct ; I have, indeed, made a great 

 sacrifice. I have done my duty, though I have lost my friend. 

 There is something in the detested French constitution that 

 onvenoms everything it touches." 



Attempts were made to heal the mortal wound which the 

 friendship of these two men had received, but to no purpose ; 

 the breach was irreparable, and on the Alien Bill, therefore, 

 Burke and Fox were widely opposed. On the 28th of December, 

 1792, Burke, who did not rise till late in the evening, spoke long 

 and eloquently on the question. He said that the ministers of a 

 monarchy could not, and ought not, to have their hands tied 

 behind them while the emissaries of republicanism, regicide, and 

 atheism poured into the country with the intention to destroy it, 

 and were yet, through the weakness of the law, to be beyond 

 -control. From discussing the principles he went on to describe 

 the practice of those whom he called " emissaries of republi- 

 canism, regicide, and atheism," and whom he accused of trying 

 to spread their doctrine of liberty, fraternity, and equality by 

 the sword. Information had come to him that 3,000 daggers 

 had been ordered from Birmingham by the friends of liberty, 

 fraternity, and equality ; and in order to make a deep impres- 

 sion on the house, he had resorted to the somewhat theatrical 

 expedient of hiding a dagger under his waistcoat. 



At the proper moment, when the attention of the house was 

 concentrated on him, and when his actions, whatever they might 

 be, were certain of being reported, he put his hand inside his 

 waistcoat and drew forth the dagger, which he flung before him 

 on the floor of the house. " This," said he, pointing to the 

 dagger, " is what you are to gain by an alliance with France ; 

 wherever their principles are introduced, their practice must 

 follow. You must equally proscribe their tenets and their 

 persons from our shores ;" and he ended an impassioned address 

 by begging the house to strengthen the hands, not of the 

 ministry, not of the Opposition, but of the country, by passing 

 the Aliens' Bill. 



Happily for us, the times have passod away when such an 

 exhibition, so theatrical, so sensational, would be tolerated in 

 the House of Commons ; happily, too, there has not, since 1792, 

 been a recurrence of those circumstances which then made 

 exceptional legislation of the kind mentioned desirable. But 

 manners and customs were different then, and it would be wrong 



to judge of Mr. Burke's conduct by the light of tho conduct of 

 a great political leader at the present time. The circumstances, 

 too, were different to anything within our experience. Let us 

 consider them a little, and see whether the famous " dagger 

 scene " was so much out of place after all. 



In 1789 the French Revolution broke out that is to say, in 

 that year the French people, tired of the load of tyranny and 

 legalised selfishness which had been imposed upon them for cen- 

 turies, and moved by the exhortations of men who gave them- 

 selves out as, and believed themselves to be, the friends of man- 

 kind, rose in their wild strength, and, ignorant of the goal where 

 true liberty and true national happiness were to be found, 

 goaded on by the fierce spirits who ever come to the surface, 

 coming and going like bubbles in time of great public dis- 

 turbance, maddened by long years of suffering and oppression, 

 conscious only of strength, unconscious how to use it, impelled 

 forwards by the very fact that their existence depended on pro- 

 gress, seeing that the interests and principles of all then existing 

 governments were directly opposed to them this great people 

 woke up to the conviction they were alive, and they exhibited an 

 amount of vitality and energy that truly took the nations by 

 surprise. 



In order to give an accurate idea of the causes which led to 

 the Revolution, it would be necessary to go back through the 

 history of France for a period of two hundred years. We have 

 not space to do this even in a cursory examination, but we may 

 mention some of the principal matters which proved intolerably 

 burdensome to the French people. The many obligations of 

 the feudal system (general notice was taken of these in Historic 

 Sketches, I.) were more offensively enforced, and therefore 

 more keenly felt, in France than in any other European country, 

 and there, too, they were exacted till a date far beyond that at 

 which they had been quite abandoned elsewhere. This of itself 

 was evil enough to rouse the indignation of the classes beneath ; 

 but added to it was the injury done by a system of government 

 of which the fundamental principle was feudalism ; that is to 

 say, a principle which had regard solely to the interests of the 

 few, who were to be supported in power and sustained in inso- 

 lence at the expense of the many. And this system of govern- 

 ment was carried very far. At one time the nobles were the 

 exponents of it, each ruling absolutely and tyrannically on his 

 separate estate, grinding all he could out of his villeins, as they 

 were called, and caring nothing for their individual welfare. 

 Against this oppression the peasantry lodged a practical and 

 brutal protest at the time of the Jacquerie,* in 1358, when the 

 hour of trial and humiliation had come upon the nobles of 

 France through the hands of the Black Prince. When the 

 English armies overran the country, and the French had been 

 beaten with a dreadful slaughter, the French peasants rose 

 upon their native oppressors, and slew them root and branch, 

 often murdering, in their ignorance and blind fury, those who 

 were really their benefactors, and being guilty of the crime of 

 killing women and children. Only by the aid of the Black 

 Prince and his knights was this formidable insurrection of one 

 class against another suppressed, and the lower classes would 

 have been relegated indefinitely to their former bondage, but for 

 the desire of the French kings a desire which could not be 

 gratified without the help of the people " to deliver the Crown 

 from wardship," or to free it from the restraints imposed upon 

 it by the power of the great nobles. 



As a consequence of this coalition, temporary though it was, 

 between the Crown and the people, some slight benefit accrued 

 to the latter; but when the object for which the Crown had/ 

 striven had been attained, the people found out by experience 

 that it was unwise to put their trust in princes. Once more 

 they were handed over, or, what had the same effect, were left 

 to, the tender mercies of the cruel, and they had to bear the 

 kingly tyranny as well. They had to live the lives of slaves 

 on the estates of the landed proprietors, rising early and late 

 taking rest, 



" Barred from delight by Fate's untimely hand, 

 By wealthless lot, or pitiless command," 



condemned to ignorance lest they should learn to know their 

 strength, and crushed under the weight of laws in the making of 



* The Jacquerie was so called from the name Jacques Bonhomme, 

 which was the generic name given to French peasants, as John Bull ia 

 the generic name descriptive of Englishmen. 



