Jamaica,
and the government of the island imported bloodhounds from Cuba to track
the fugitive insurgents. Great indignation was expressed in parliament
at this measure, and it was asserted that the dogs tore the natives in
pieces. Dundas explained that the home government was not responsible
for the importation of the dogs, and promised that if they were used for
such a horrid purpose the practice should be stopped. In 1796 a large
force was sent to the West Indies under Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral
Christian. St. Lucia was retaken and the British power re-established in
the Antilles. The French, however, retained Guadaloupe, and privateers
both from that island and Cuba did much damage to the West India trade.
England gained largely by the alliance between Holland and France, for
it threw the Dutch colonies open to attack. Their rich settlements in
Ceylon, Malacca, and on the Malabar coast; the Cape (September, 1795);
Demarara, Essequibo, and the Moluccas (1796) were taken without
difficulty.

England's naval power was already forwarding the increase of her trade,
and the total loss of commerce with France, Holland, and the Belgian
Netherlands was more than counterbalanced by its increase with Germany,
Russia, and the United States. With the United States some serious
difficulties with respect to neutral rights were happily settled in 1794
by a treaty which was negotiated on their part by Jay, and finally
ratified in 1796. Yet the year 1795 was one of great distress among the
poor. Two bad harvests in succession raised the average price of wheat,
which in 1792 had been 43s., to 75s. 2d. Bread riots broke out in
Sussex, in Birmingham, Nottingham, Coventry, and other places. Bills
were passed with the object of husbanding the supply of wheat; liberal
bounties were granted on importation, and the members of parliament
entered into an agreement to curtail the use of wheaten flour in their
own households. A bill for the regulation of wages, introduced by
Whitbread, the brewer, and advocated by Fox, was opposed by Pitt and was
rejected. Starving men are quick to believe assertions that their
sufferings are caused by ill-government, and the corresponding society,
encouraged by the failure of the prosecutions in 1794, was active in
spreading political discontent. At a large meeting held in St. George's
Fields on July 29, an address to the king was voted and resolutions were
passed demanding annual parliaments, universal