H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.

(From a Photograph by Mr. A. Bassano, London.)

THE
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
QUEEN VICTORIA.

BY
ROBERT WILSON.
——
Illustrated.
——
VOL. II.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE WESTERN SUBURBS OF VICTORIA, VANCOUVER ISLAND.

CHAPTER XXI.
COLONIAL HOME RULE AND FINANCIAL REFORM.

Mr. Roebuck and Emigration—Self-Government and the Colonies—Unsympathetic Whig Policy—Radicals and the Colonial Office—The Peelites and Hudson’s Bay Company—Financial Reform—Mr. Cobden at Variance with Mr. Bright—Combined Agitators—The Demand for Retrenchment—Trade and the Flag—Tories and Taxes—A reductio ad absurdum—A Raid on a Surplus—International Arbitration—Parliamentary Reform—Parliament and the Jews—The Tories oppose the Alteration of the Parliamentary Oath—Episcopal Prejudice—Tory Obstructionists—An Ordnance Department Scandal—Mr. Delane’s Attacks on Lord Palmerston in the Times—The Queen Remonstrates against Lord Palmerston’s Recklessness—An Anti-Palmerstonian Cabal—Lady Palmerston’s Intrigues—Lord Brougham Betrays the Cabal—Palmerston’s Victory—Rome and France—The Second War—The Disaster of Chillianwalla—Indignation of the Country—Lord Gough’s Recall—Napier to the Rescue—The East India Directors Oppose Napier’s Appointment—The Convict War at the Cape—Boycotting the Governor.

Another notable event in the Colonial history of 1849 was the introduction by Mr. Roebuck, on the 14th of May, of a Bill for the better government of the Colonies. The debate on this measure brought vividly before the minds of thoughtful men the folly upon which our step-motherly treatment of the Colonies was based. “Emigration by itself,” exclaimed Mr. Roebuck, “is misery;” and yet the idea of colonisation which prevailed at the Colonial Office was simply to transport as many people as possible to distant wilds, utterly regardless of their ultimate fate. Why should we not introduce something like system, asked Mr. Roebuck, into our Colonial policy, and recognise the fact that it was now not tribute, but trade that we might expect to get from them? His proposal was to have one plan for settling a colony, another for organising it when settled, and a third for groups of colonies in confederation or union. His panacea for all Colonial ills was to get rid of “red tape” at the Colonial Office and to give the Colonies Home Rule. The difficulties, said Mr. Hawes, as representing Lord Grey and the Colonial Office, in the way of granting Home Rule to North-American Colonies would be insuperable; besides, England had far too many Colonies already, so that it was of little use to bring forward schemes for settling new ones! Whigs like Lord John Russell condemned a policy which tended to substitute a fixed Parliamentary rule for the discretion of a responsible Minister, and contended that physical impediments rendered the union of Canada into one Dominion impossible. Mr. Gladstone, however, warmly supported Mr. Roebuck’s policy. Even then the leaven of the Home Ruler was working in his mind. Mr. Roebuck was beaten by 116 to 73. But this did not put a stop to these Colonial debates.

On the 26th of June Sir William Molesworth moved an Address to the Queen begging for a Commission to inquire into the Administration of the Colonies, more especially with a view to lessen the cost of their government, and to give free scope to individual enterprise in colonising. He startled the House by quoting figures which showed that, in fifteen years, “a series of remarkable events in the Colonies” had cost England the modest sum of eighty millions sterling. It could not have cost more to settle 4,000,000 able and energetic emigrants in Australia alone; and yet in the whole Colonial Empire in 1849, it appears there were not more than 1,000,000 persons of British or Irish descent. Charles Buller some years before had condemned the Colonial Office for its arbitrary character, its indifference to local feeling, and its ignorance of local wants, its procrastination and vacillation, its secrecy and irresponsibility, its servitude to parties and cliques, its injustice, and its disorder. In this debate Lord Grey’s Administration was held to aptly illustrate all these vices; and yet Lord Grey had become Colonial Minister because he stood pledged to cure them. Lord Grey’s idea of Colonial government seemed to be either to rule the Colony with a high hand from London, or, if it had some semblance of representative institutions, to govern it by means of a violent Party minority in the popular Chamber, co-operating with a majority of the Council nominated by the Crown. Self-government for Colonies that were fit for it, and intelligent government for those that were not, were Sir William Molesworth’s remedies. A strong plea for reducing the extravagant outlay on official salaries and useless military expenditure was pressed; and protests against convict emigration, which, together with our misgovernment, drove honest English Colonists to the United States, were entered. Mr. Hume and Mr. Gladstone, on behalf of the Radicals and Peelites, gave a general support to the motion; but the indefatigable Mr. Hawes came smilingly to the defence of Lord Grey with his stereotyped “Non possumus,” and Lord John Russell declared that the scope of the reference to the Commission was too vast and wide for practical purposes. His novel argument was that to attempt to define the limits of Imperial and local questions must end in bitter disputes between the Colonies and the mother country. Undeterred by the failure of the Radicals to force a rational Colonial policy on the Whigs, the Peelites next took up the matter, and on the 19th of June Lord Lincoln moved an Address to the Crown expressing the opinion that the Hudson’s Bay Company, to which Vancouver Island had been granted by Royal Charter, was ill-adapted for ruling or developing the resources of a colony founded on principles of political and commercial freedom, and generally challenging the validity of the grant. One would have thought that it needed little argument to demonstrate the unwisdom of founding a colony to be ruled by an absentee proprietary, earning its revenues by a trading monopoly. The history of the United States was full of examples of this species of folly, and both Lord Lincoln and Mr. Hume argued their case with the greatest ability. But they spoke to no purpose, for just as Mr. Hume was warming to his work the House was counted out! In these days, when the air is full of schemes for Imperial Federation, and Home Rule, it is interesting to note how, in 1849, the battle of Colonial Reform was fought by a combination of Conservative Peelites and “stalwart” Radicals, against the Whigs, who were jealously opposed to all extensions of Colonial autonomy.

After Colonial policy, and not long after it in point of interest, came Finance. The erratic schemes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the preceding year, together with the distress which afflicted the country, had made everybody dissatisfied with the financial policy of the Government. The Protectionists were always at hand to suggest that the pressure of taxation was due to Free Trade. The Free Traders were never weary of retorting that it was due to extravagant expenditure, and could be remedied by retrenchment. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright thus felt that their mission in life did not end with the Repeal of the Corn Laws. If they were to keep the ground they had taken, it seemed to them they must start an agitation to reduce public expenditure. Mr. Bright rather favoured the notion of agitating for an extension of the Franchise, on the supposition that, if more taxpayers had votes, Government, in deference to their prejudices, would be chary of augmenting public burdens. Ultimately, however, they agreed to combine the two agitations,[1] and work with each other as before. The popular feeling in favour of economy was first manifested by the formation of Financial Reform Associations in the large towns—that of Liverpool being especially energetic—and they were soon busy discussing a practical plan, which emanated from the fertile brain of Cobden, for the remission of the Malt Tax and other public burdens. Cobden’s scheme was simply to effect retrenchment by going back to the scale of expenditure that was deemed adequate in 1835, and in this way he proposed to reduce taxation by about £10,000,000 sterling. Quite a flutter of excitement ran through the

ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.

House of Commons when, on the 26th of February, he brought his plan under its notice. He contended that military expenditure had caused the increase of £10,000,000, which he desired to reduce. Therefore he moved that the expenditure under this head be diminished with all practicable speed. The insular position of England was itself a sure defence against her enemies.

JOHN BRIGHT (1857).

Provided she did not interfere recklessly with foreign nations, she had less to fear in 1849 than in 1835. Why, then, should the military and naval expenditure of 1835 be exceeded? Vast sums of money, too, were spent on the Colonies. Here also a reduction might be effected, for the English taxpayer got no more food from the Colonies than the foreign one did. At this period it was evident that Mr. Cobden had not put to the test the sound maxim that “trade follows the flag.” The answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was that in 1835, to the expenditure of which Mr. Cobden wanted to revert, no adequate provision had been made for the true wants of the country; and that, since then, many things had happened to increase expenditure unavoidably. The introduction of steam into the Navy was an illustration of these changes. Moreover, the Government had reduced expenditure by about a million and a half sterling—and that was surely a pledge of their earnestness as financial reformers.

The Tories put Mr. Herries forward to attack both parties. He blamed Ministers for encouraging the financial reformers, and denounced Mr. Cobden for the violence of his speeches out of doors on the subject. The policy of the Tories was to demand that expenditure should not be lessened, whilst there was ground for anxiety as to foreign affairs. One of their arguments was an odd one. It was that, as the revenue was still maintained in spite of the repeal of vast sums of taxation, there was no ground for pretending that retrenchment was necessary because the people felt that taxation was pressing hard on them. They did not seem to see that this was either an argument in favour of raising revenue without imposing any taxes at all—which was a reductio ad absurdum—or an argument to show that reductions of taxation still left Government with enough money in hand to defend the interests of the country, which was virtually an admission that Mr. Cobden’s plan, if tried, could do no harm. The Free Traders made a bid for the rural vote by arguing that, if the landed interest wanted the relief which the Protectionists promised them, they ought to vote for the reduction in expenditure, which would enable Parliament to grant that relief. Mr. Cobden’s first scheme of Financial Reform was rejected by a vote of 275 to 78. But this did not allay the uneasiness of the public, who began to fret over the extraordinary delay that took place in the production of the Budget. It was not till the 29th of June that Sir Charles Wood made his financial statement to the House. It was not a cheering one. The expenditure, which was £53,287,110, had exceeded the Ministerial estimate by £1,219,379, and it exceeded the revenue of the year by £269,378. Of course, by excluding unexpected outlays on Irish distress, Canadian emigration, &c., a more favourable state of accounts could be shown; but, as the excluded money had been spent, there was really no reason for ignoring it. For the coming year his estimated expenditure, he said, would be £52,157,696, and his estimated receipts would yield, he hoped, a surplus over that of £94,304. Sir Charles Wood’s strongest points were that every effort would be made to keep current expenditure within current income, and that instead of using small surpluses to remit small sums of taxation, they would be kept as the nucleus of large surpluses, for the reduction of large amounts of taxation. The Radicals and Financial Reformers were not satisfied with Sir Charles Wood’s long list of objectionable taxes that had been removed. In spite of all that, expenditure increased—and what was worse, there was a steady increase in permanent burdens on the revenue, in the shape of charges for the Public Debt. Mr. Hume demanded that Excise be done away with, and that the example of Sir James Graham, who reduced the expenses of the Admiralty by £1,200,000, be followed. Mr. Milner Gibson attacked the paper duty, the newspaper stamp duty, and the tax on advertisements, as taxes on knowledge; and he cited the petition of the Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh, who declared that the paper duty had stopped the continuance of a work for the humbler classes which they were bringing out, and of which there had been a sale of 80,000 copies. Everybody wanted some special duty repealed, either that on hops, bricks, soap, beer, malt, tea, or timber. The Budget was felt to be unsatisfactory, for, as Mr. Cobden said, it made the two ends barely meet. At the close of the Session (20th of July) Mr. Herries supplemented this discussion by starting another question—that of raising some portion of the supplies of the State by a fixed duty on corn. The Protectionists argued that Sir Charles Wood’s estimates were too sanguine, and that more taxes must be imposed on the people, unless a small duty were put on foreign corn. This was not to be a protective duty, but one merely for revenue purposes, and as such surely it was justifiable. It would be only a tax on food in name; in fact, the defence of the proposal was like the Irish vagrant’s apology for the existence of her baby—“Please, sir, it’s only a very little one.” Of course the Free Traders sprang upon Mr. Herries with great glee. The Tories were going round the country promising the farmers Protection. But when they came to the House of Commons all they ventured to ask for was a small fixed duty on corn, which was to be levied not for protective but for revenue purposes. The position was an awkward one for Mr. Herries. Either his small fixed duty did or did not raise the price of corn. If it did, he was deceiving the House of Commons. If it did not, he was deceiving his clients among the farmers. His move was obviously one for putting heart into a desponding faction.

It has been said that Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright had come to the conclusion that, side by side with the agitation for retrenchment, there should be pressed forward that for Parliamentary Reform. Accordingly, Mr. Hume introduced his motion for Parliamentary Reform in the House of Commons on the 4th of June, demanding Household Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Triennial Parliaments, and something approaching to equal electoral districts. The opposition of the Whigs, who argued that reform was unnecessary because many good measures had been passed by Parliament, and that to extend the franchise would endanger the Monarchy, induced the House to reject the motion by a vote of 268 to 82.

But a topic far more interesting to the Queen, whose speciality is Foreign Policy, was brought under the notice of the House of Commons by Mr. Cobden a few days after Mr. Hume’s motion was disposed of. He suggested a plan whereby wars might cease, and civilised nations might compose their quarrels by Arbitration. On the 12th of June Cobden moved an Address to the Crown, praying that Foreign Powers might be invited to concur in treaties binding them to accept Arbitration in settling their disputes with each other. The Government did not openly resist the motion. They got rid of it by putting up Lord Palmerston to move the “previous question;” but the tone of the debate showed that, though the House was dubious about the practicability of Mr. Cobden’s plan, it had been profoundly impressed with his reasoning.

ROYAL PALACE, NAPLES.

The Whigs, embarrassed by the refusal of Jewish Members to take the Parliamentary Oath, next introduced a Bill expunging from the form of the oath the words “on the true faith of a Christian.” The only bitter opponents of the measure were the Tories, for most of the Peelites, like Mr. Gladstone, supported it. The Commons passed the measure readily enough; but in the House of Lords the hostility of the Episcopal Bench was fatal to it. Another measure was sacrificed to the ecclesiasticism which was then prevalent in Parliament. That was the Bill to legalise marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister, which Mr. Stuart Wortley introduced on the 3rd of May, and the most vehement opponents of which were Mr. Goulburn, Mr. Gladstone, and Sir R. Inglis. Mr. Wortley carried the Second Reading without much difficulty; but when Mr. Goulburn threatened to use the forms of the House to obstruct the further progress of the measure, it was withdrawn.

Foreign affairs originated some acrimonious debates in both Houses during the Session. On the 6th of March a question was put by Lord Stanley to

LADY PALMERSTON.

Lord Lansdowne asking if it were true that a Government contractor had been allowed to withdraw arms from a Government store, and supply them to the insurgents in Sicily. Lord Lansdowne could not deny that the allegation was true; and the incident not only caused a great deal of excitement in the country, but it was one that gave much pain to the Queen, who naturally saw in it the reckless hand of Lord Palmerston. The secret history of the affair was this: Mr. Delane, the editor of the Times, happened to meet a Mr. Hood—an Army contractor—accidentally. In conversation Mr. Hood incidently mentioned to Mr. Delane that when certain Sicilian agents applied to him for stores, he explained that he had none on hand, having supplied all he possessed to the Government. But he observed that if he could persuade the Government to let him have these back, he would hand them over to the Sicilian insurrectionary agents, replacing the Government stores in due time. The contractor applied to the Ordnance Department, stating that his application had a political, as well as a commercial, object. The Department, therefore, referred the matter to Lord Palmerston, who sanctioned the transaction. The Times immediately published this story, and its attacks on Lord Palmerston for having insulted Austria, and connived at insurrection in Sicily, annoyed the Queen so seriously that Lord John Russell compelled Lord Palmerston to apologise to the King of Naples, for whom he cherished a supreme contempt. But when the scandal grew clamant, Mr. Bankes opened up an attack in the House of Commons on Lord Palmerston. He, however, mixed up with it a great deal of general criticism on the policy of the Government in Italy, and gave Lord Palmerston an opportunity of winning an easy victory by posing as a friend of freedom, and a martyr to the doctrine of nationalities. Lord Palmerston, writes Mr. Greville, delivered, in reply to his antagonist, “a slashing, impudent speech, full of sarcasm, jokes, and claptrap, the whole eminently successful. He quizzed Bankes unmercifully, he expressed ultra-Liberal sentiments to please the Radicals, and he gathered shouts, laughter, and applause as he dashed and rattled along.”

On the 22nd of March Lord Aberdeen headed another abortive attack on the Foreign Policy of the Government. He complained that whereas Lord Palmerston had been active in menacing Austria if she meddled with Sardinia, he had spoken smooth things to Sardinia—never going further than warning her that if she broke existing treaties, she would be doing a dangerous thing. Aberdeen’s attack was regarded as a semi-official expression of the ideas of the Sovereign on Lord Palmerston’s policy; and it came to this, that Palmerston had made England an object of aversion in every capital in Europe, by interfering between Governments and their subjects, in a manner which brought on him the animosity of both. He had been arrogant to the despots, and, whilst he had encouraged the rebels, he had tamely abandoned them, whenever it became irksome to defend them. In this debate the Foreign Office was convicted of having suppressed an important despatch relating to Austro-Sardinian affairs in the papers laid before Parliament. The truth is that the Cabinet did not know what was and what was not included in the papers that Lord Palmerston chose to publish; and Lord Palmerston sometimes did not even give his colleagues enough information to enable them to answer questions. One example of this is worth recording, because it directly affected the Queen. In May, Lord Lansdowne, in reply to a question of Lord Beaumont, told the House of Lords that “no communication whatever had been made by the Austrian Government to ours relative to their intervention in Italy.” But Collosedo, the Austrian Minister, had five days before that gone to Lord Palmerston and communicated to him, by order of the Austrian Government, their objects in interfering in Italy. Palmerston kept his colleagues in utter ignorance of this interview; and when the truth leaked out, Lord Lansdowne had to set himself right the best way he could. As for Palmerston, when he was challenged with deceiving his colleagues, and suppressing the fact that this Austrian communication had been made to him, he replied impudently that “he had quite forgotten it.” His needlessly violent anti-Austrian policy, coupled with delinquencies of this kind, was intensely annoying to the Queen. Writing under the date of June 3rd, Mr. Greville, in his Journal, says, “The Duke of Bedford told me a few days ago that the Queen had been again remonstrating about Palmerston more strongly than ever. This was in reference to the suppressed Austrian despatch which made such a noise. She then sent for Lord John Russell, and told him she could not stand it any longer, and he must make some arrangements to get rid of Lord Palmerston. This communication was just as fruitless as all her preceding ones. I don’t know what Lord John said—he certainly did not pacify her; but, as usual, there it ended. But the consequences of her not being able to get any satisfaction from her Minister have been that she has poured her feelings and her wrongs into the more sympathetic ears of her late Ministers, and I believe that the Queen has told Peel everything—all her own feelings and wishes, and all that passes on the subject.”

In these circumstances an anti-Palmerstonian cabal was naturally formed. Lord Aberdeen, a devoted friend of the Queen, attempted to organise a movement for driving Palmerston from office; but the great obstacle was Peel. Nothing could induce him to upset the Ministry which was pledged to procure a fair trial for Free Trade. The Court Party, however, suggested that, if censured, Palmerston might resign and his colleagues stay in; or that they might all resign, and then, when it was shown that no other Government could be formed, and that the Peelites could render the formation of another Ministry impossible, Lord John Russell and his colleagues might come back to power, without Lord Palmerston. The scheme failed; but, as Mr. Greville says, the curious thing to note about it is “the carte du pays it exhibits,” and the remarkable and most improper position which Palmerston occupied vis-à-vis the Queen and his own colleagues. “I know not,” writes Mr. Greville, “where to look for a parallel to such a mass of anomalies—the Queen turning from her own Prime Minister to confide in the one who was supplanted by him; a Minister talking over quietly and confidentially with an outsider by what circumstances and what agency his colleague, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, might be excluded from the Government; the Queen abhorring her Minister, and unable to rid herself of him; John Russell, fascinated and subjugated by the ascendency of Palmerston, submitting to everything from him, and supporting him right and wrong, the others not concealing from those they are in the habit of confiding in their disapprobation of the conduct and policy of their colleague, while they are all the time supporting the latter and excusing the former, and putting themselves under the obligation of identifying themselves with his proceedings, and standing or falling with them.”[2]

SIR CHARLES NAPIER.

Ultimately, however, a confederacy was formed between Lords Aberdeen, Stanley, and Brougham to oust Lord Palmerston during the last days of the Session, and the Queen, like every other prudent politician in the country, who had been alarmed by Palmerston’s restlessness, rejoiced in the prospect of getting rid of him. Unfortunately, the only Peer of the three who was in earnest in this business was Lord Aberdeen; and yet, when the 20th of July, the day for the attack, drew nigh, it was certain that the Government would be defeated. Palmerston then played his trump card. Lady Palmerston wrote a letter to Brougham, who was to lead the attack, conveying to him some mysterious threat, and he promptly betrayed his associates. “He made a miserable speech,” writes Mr. Greville, “which enraged his colleagues and all the opponents of the Government, who swore

THE BATTLE OF GUJERAT.

(and it was true) that he had sold them.” Brougham’s speech, however, contained one good point which deserved to live. It was in it that he condemned the interference, not only of our regular diplomatic body in the affairs of the Mediterranean Powers, but also the interference of “that mongrel sort of monster—half nautical, half political—diplomatic vice-admirals, speculative ship-captains, observers of rebellion, and sympathisers therewith.” The Government were in a minority in the House, but they contrived to get a majority of twelve by proxies, in obtaining which Lady Palmerston had displayed marvellous address. Thus was the great game of faction played at the expense of the people in the early years of the Queen’s reign. Not that the people cared much about the matter, for it was only those who were behind the scenes who could fairly appreciate what Lord Palmerston’s spirited policy really meant. It was Radical, but it was reckless; and not only the Queen, but every well-informed statesman—including Liberals like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright—simply lived in daily terror, lest the Foreign Secretary might suddenly involve the country in a wanton and purposeless European war.

Another important debate was raised by Lord Beaumont, on the 14th of May, on French intervention in Rome. The States of the Church had long been preparing for a revolt against Papal misgovernment. Pius IX. therefore determined to modify the policy of his predecessors, and a hapless scheme for satisfying the democracy, by appointing lay councillors to work with or check a priestly government was tried—the Pope refusing to bate one jot or tittle of his temporal authority. The lay councillors could only meet and debate. They could not initiate reforms. No sooner had this constitution been granted than the revolution swept over Italy, and the Romans demanded the same concessions as had been extorted by the Neapolitans. Concessions were given with the intention that they should be withdrawn. Rossi—once French ambassador at Rome—was made Prime Minister, and to extricate the country from financial embarrassment, he proposed to mortgage the property of the Church. He was, however, assassinated when entering the Capitol; and then the Cardinals began to retract the concessions which had been made to Liberalism. The people rose, insisting that the Pope should protect the Constitution, and assuring him of their fidelity. He then fled to Gaeta. Attempts to reconcile the Pontiff and his people failed. The Roman Republic was proclaimed, and peace established, when suddenly France interfered to restore his Holiness. It was to prevent France from having a pretext for interfering in Italy that Lord Minto’s mission was undertaken, and thus another failure had to be debited to Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. Naturally Lords Aberdeen and Brougham taunted the Government with the failure of the Minto mission. But taunts were powerless to extort from Ministers a statement of their relation to the French expedition. In the House of Commons, however, those who objected to French interference with the Roman people succeeded in obtaining from Lord Palmerston an expression of disapproval of the course which France had taken; but that was all.

Far and away the most important foreign debate of the Session was that which Mr. Osborne raised on the Austro-Hungarian question in July. Hungary had been crushed by the aid which Russia, unrebuked or unrestrained by the shadow of a protest from Palmerston, had given her Austrian masters; and the Liberal Party, always jealous of Austria as the representative of Absolutist ideas, were wrathful accordingly. But the discussion had no practical result. It was merely marked by a declaration from Lord Palmerston, which came too late to be useful, to the effect that the heart and soul of the country were enlisted on the side of Hungary.

For Englishmen no debate was graver than the one on the state of the nation, which Mr. Disraeli raised at the end of the Session. He attributed the distress in the country to Free Trade, and he attacked every branch of Ministerial policy. But the weak point of his brilliant harangue was that it meant nothing, for not only was he unable to take over the Government himself, but he had no practical proposal to make, save his insinuated suggestion to restore Protection. Sir Robert Peel’s speech, however, carried the House in favour of the Government. It was a complete vindication of his fiscal policy, and its conclusion was memorable, because in it he traced our immunity from revolutionary excesses to his abandonment of taxes on food in 1846.

Early in the year the Queen was disturbed by evil tidings from India. Hard fighting was reported from the banks of the Chenab. The Sikhs, it was true, were in retreat; but our victory was a barren one, as we captured neither prisoners, guns, nor standards, and sacrificed two of our Generals (Cureton and Havelock), who fell at the head of their regiments. In losing Cureton, her Majesty lost the finest cavalry officer in her service. The fact was that, though we had conquered, we had not subdued the Sikhs at the end of our first war with them. In April, 1848, a Sikh chief murdered two British officers at Multan. This was followed by a general outbreak, which was met on the whole successfully by the desperate efforts of Lieutenant Edwardes and a mere handful of men. Multan was besieged in June, 1848; but 5,000 of our Sikh auxiliaries deserted to the enemy, and our army had to retreat. We had not enough troops in the Punjab to control the rising, and our auxiliaries under the Maharajah were not trustworthy. On the other hand, the rebel chief Shere Sing, at the beginning of 1849, had 40,000 men under his orders, and once again British supremacy in India was trembling in the balance. On the 5th of March, however, still worse news came to London. Lord Gough, with inconceivable recklessness, had, on the 14th of January, attacked the enemy in a strong position at Chillianwalla with a small British force worn out by fatigue. The conditions of the combat ensured disaster. Our troops, it is true, took the Sikh positions, but during

THE BRITISH TROOPS ENTERING MULTAN.

the night had to abandon them. The loss of life on our side was enormous, and Lord Gough, though he fought like a hero in the thickest of the mêlée, was not to be found at a critical moment to give orders. The news of this disaster was received with universal indignation. The Government attempted to allay public feeling by appointing Sir William Gomm to succeed Lord Gough; but as Sir William was believed to be equally incompetent, a demand for Sir Charles Napier’s appointment became clamant. “We dined,” writes Lord Malmesbury, in his Diary on the 4th of March, “with the Colchesters, and were introduced to Sir Charles Napier. He is a little

SIR HARRY SMITH.

man, with grey hair brushed back from his face, with an immense hooked, pointed nose, small eyes, and wears spectacles, very like the conventional face of a Jew. He is appointed to retrieve our affairs in India, and when the Duke of Wellington named him to the post he at first hesitated, until the Duke told him if he did not go he would go himself.”[3] Why did Napier hesitate? Because, it seems, the Directors of the East India Company not only objected to his appointment, but threatened to prevent him from having a seat on the Council, an insult which Napier could hardly brook. “You have no idea of the difficulties I have had in dealing with these men,” said Sir John Cam Hobhouse, then President of the Indian Board of Control, to Mr. Greville. “I have brought the Government, the Duke of Wellington, and the Queen all to bear upon them, and all in vain.” Mr. Greville advised Hobhouse to bring another power—that of the House of Commons—to bear on the Company. In other words, he advised the Government to go down boldly and inform Parliament that they had appointed Napier, and if the Directors of the Company refused to pay his salary as a Member of Council, to ask the House to vote it. The Cabinet appointed Napier, and the Directors acquiesced, fearing to face the responsibility of thwarting the Government in doing what the Queen and the country desired.

But before Gough could be recalled, he redeemed the disaster of Chillianwalla at Gujerat. The news of this successful battle, which was fought on the 21st of February, reached the Queen on the 1st of April. It meant that the crisis in India was over, and it lifted from her mind the burden of a supreme anxiety. Multan, too, had fallen, and finally the East India Company, admitting at last that it was impossible to protect their frontier from attack, annexed the Punjab on the 29th of March, 1849, thus closing the history of the Sikhs as an independent nation. England had found in them the most fearless and formidable of enemies. Since the annexation of their country, they have been the staunchest and the most loyal of the Queen’s Indian subjects.

One serious colonial dispute must be noticed, for it led to an early experiment in “boycotting.” Lord Grey, on the 4th of September, 1848, by an Order in Council, had turned the Cape of Good Hope into a convict settlement. The colonists resented this act with the hottest indignation. Angry meetings were held at Cape Town; and the Governor, Sir Harry Smith, was violently blamed because he refused to take on himself the responsibility of suspending the “injurious and degrading measure.” When the first convict ship, the Neptune, arrived in Simon’s Bay on the 19th of September, the church bells in Cape Town were tolled in half-minute time. The Municipality demanded that the vessel be sent back. The populace, in mass meetings, adopted what they called “the Pledge”—an obligation to “drop connection with any person who may assist convicted felons.” In fact, the process which in Ireland has recently been termed “boycotting” was resorted to, and supplies were refused to the army, navy, and all Government establishments. The law was impotent in face of such opposition, and very soon the Governor, Sir Harry Smith, was compelled to bake his own bread even in his own house. The colonists finally triumphed. The Order in Council was withdrawn, so far as it referred to the Cape, and the Neptune left, without having landed a single convict. The episode is one of the earliest instances on record of the successful application of “boycotting” to defeat an unpopular policy.

CHAPTER XXII.
FAMILY CARES AND ROYAL DUTIES.

Education of the Prince of Wales—Selection of Mr. Birch as Tutor—The Queen’s Jealousy of her Parental Authority—Her Letter to Melbourne on the Management of her Nursery—Her Ideas on Education—Prince Albert’s Plans for the Education of the Prince of Wales—Stockmar’s Advice—The Visit to Ireland—The Queen at Waterford—“Rebel Cork” en fête—The Visit to Dublin—Viceregal Festivities—The Visit to the National Model Schools—Shiel’s Speech—The Queen and the Duke of Leinster—Farewell at Kingstown—The Queen Dips the Royal Ensign—Loyal Ulster—The Visit to the Linen Hall—Lord Clarendon on the Queen’s Visit—A Cruise on the Clyde—Home in Balmoral—The Queen’s “Bothie”—The Queen’s University of Ireland—First Plans for the Great Exhibition—Opening of the London Coal Exchange—The Queen’s Barge—Death of Queen Adelaide.

In April, 1849, Prince Albert is found writing a letter to the Dowager Duchess of Gotha announcing a very important event in the Queen’s family. “The children,” he says, “grow more than well. Bertie (the Prince of Wales) will be given over in a few weeks into the hands of a tutor, whom we have found in a Mr. Birch, a young, good-looking, amiable man.” Mr. Birch, subsequently Rector of Prestwich, near Manchester, was eminently qualified for the grave and delicate duty for which the Queen selected him. He had taken high honours at Cambridge, and had been not only Captain of the School, but had also served as an under-master at Eton. Yet Mr. Birch can hardly be credited with the Scheme of Education adopted in the Royal Family. That had been arranged by the Queen herself, in consultation with her consort and Baron Stockmar. Her fixed idea was that the heart as well as the head must be trained, and that not only must the education of her children be truly moral, but it must be essentially English. She resolved to discover the kind of tutor whom she could trust, and then, having found him, to trust him implicitly.

The Queen, it may here be said, has ever set an example to women of exalted rank and station by reason of the undeviating support she has given to those who undertook the education of her children. But in doing this her Majesty has been most jealous in asserting her parental rights, and punctilious in recognising the high responsibilities which they involve. As far back as 1842, in a very pretty letter to Lord Melbourne, she asked him for advice about the reorganisation of her nursery, and a question came up as to the choice of the lady who should superintend it. The Queen, accepting the fact that her public duties prevented her from personally managing the education of her family as completely as she might have wished, fully admitted that it was necessary to appoint a lady of high rank and culture for that purpose. But then arose the difficulty of satisfying her Majesty’s desire to retain in her own hands the completest headship of her family. A governess of high rank really competent to do the work as the Queen meant that it should be done

VICTORIA CASTLE, KILLINEY—BRAY HEAD IN THE DISTANCE.

might choose to consider herself as an official responsible to the country first, and to the parents of the Royal children afterwards. Against such an idea the Queen most resolutely set her face. “I feel,” her Majesty writes, on behalf of herself and her husband, that “she (the Royal governess) ought to be responsible only to us, and we to the country and nation.”[4] It was in pursuance of this idea that her Majesty made great sacrifices to keep her children as closely as possible in contact with her. Many curious memoranda from her pen exist, and through them all there runs the same thought—simplicity and domesticity must be the leading characteristics of the training of the Royal family. For example, whenever it was possible, the Queen insisted on retaining in her own hands the religious education of her family, and it is now known that she did this from a dread lest their minds might at the most plastic period of life receive a sectarian bias. High Anglicanism was then militant, and many intrigues were set on foot by its professors to effect a lodgment in the Palace. The education of the Princess Royal, afterwards Princess Imperial of Germany, was almost entirely supervised and directed by the Queen herself, and with results much appreciated in Germany, where, through her tact, culture, high character, and strong common sense, her Imperial Highness has won for herself a position of unique political and social influence. The education of the Prince of Wales, however, now came more directly under the hands of Prince Albert; and one point of the highest importance to decide was whether it should be conservative or

ROYAL VISIT TO IRELAND: THE QUEEN LEAVING KINGSTOWN.

liberal in its character. Prince Albert decided that it must be liberal in this sense, that it should prepare the Heir Apparent for taking his position in a changeful state of society, whose institutions were, to a great extent, in a transition stage. Every effort was to be made to prevent him from getting into his mind a notion that existing institutions were sacrosanct, and that resistance to all change was a sacred and patriotic duty. The history of George III. had evidently not been studied in vain. “The proper duty of Sovereigns in this country,” wrote Stockmar to Prince Albert, “is not to take the lead in change, but to act as a balance-wheel on the movements of the social body.” Above all, it was determined that the education of the young Prince must be at bottom English, and not foreign. Furnished with these principles to guide him, and with general instructions to make the basis of the young Prince’s training as broad and comprehensive as possible—to make it scientific as well as classical—Mr. Birch essayed his arduous task, aided not a little by shrewd advice from Bishop Wilberforce and Sir James Clark, the Queen’s favourite physician.

The sweetest days of summer were clouded for the Queen in 1849 by painful memories of the shock she received on the 19th of May. On that day an Irishman named Hamilton, with a morbid craving for notoriety, tried to shoot her when she was driving with her children in her carriage down Constitution Hill. Her Majesty, with great tact, engaged the attention of her little ones by conversation, and with a sign directed her coachman to drive on as if nothing had happened, so that her husband, who was riding in advance, knew nothing of the affair—not even of the attempt of the mob to “lynch” Hamilton. His pistol was loaded with blank cartridge, but in spite of that he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation.

It has been said that Ireland, exhausted by the abortive rebellion of 1848, had been settling down into sullen tranquillity. There were many signs visible of a better feeling towards the Government in the country. The Queen accordingly suggested that it might be well to take advantage of the improving condition of things, and pay a Royal visit to Ireland. Her Majesty, however, primarily desired that the Irish people should benefit, and not be burdened, by the presence of Royalty. She therefore expressed a wish that the visit should not be made in such a form as to put the country, which had suffered so much from distress, to any great expense. Prince Albert, ever practical, suggested that in that case the best way of carrying out the Queen’s idea was to make this visit a simple yachting cruise. The Queen, he said, might call at the ports of Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin, and Belfast on her annual journey to the North of Scotland, and perchance touch at Glasgow, thereby compensating it for the loss of the Royal visit in 1847. Lord Clarendon fully endorsed the views of the Queen and her husband in a letter to Lord John Russell. “Everything,” he wrote, “tends to secure for the Queen an enthusiastic reception, and the one drawback, which is the general distress of all classes, has its advantage, for it will enable the Queen to do what is kind and considerate to those who are suffering.”

On the 27th of June the official intimation that the Queen was to visit Ireland was received by the Irish people with every manifestation of delight. If there were some who, rebels at heart, sympathised little with the tone of popular feeling, they concealed their aversion. The sex of the Sovereign indeed ensured her a courteous reception, from a nation proud of its gallantry, and justly renowned for the warmth of its hospitality. It was then finally decided that the visit should be made when Parliament rose. On the 27th of August the Queen, Prince Albert, and their four eldest children accordingly embarked for Ireland. “It is done!” writes the amiable and somewhat effusive Lady Lyttelton, who watched the squadron from the windows of Osborne, till it faded from her eyes. “England’s fate is afloat ... and we are left lamenting.” There was, however, no serious cause for anxiety. When the Royal squadron steamed into the Cove of Cork, in the golden light of a summer sunset, the air was soon gleaming with rockets, and bonfires, kindled by the excitable and kindly peasantry, blazed on every height in welcome of their Queen. The next morning, the 3rd of August, brought a happy omen. The day was dull and grey, but no sooner did the Queen set her foot on land at the Cove—since called Queenstown in honour of the event—than a sudden sunburst lit up the scene with dazzling radiance. The Royal party in the Fairy steamed up “the pleasant waters of the river Lee,” and all along the route crowds of loyal people lined the banks, cheering the Queen and her family as she passed along. In Cork itself—“rebel Cork”—there was no sign of disaffection. Nothing could be warmer or more cordial than the welcome accorded to her Majesty, who was touched by the hearty gaiety and good humour of her excitable hosts. A true kindly Celtic welcome, such as any Sovereign might have envied, made her experiences of Cork sunny memories for many long years afterwards. The extreme beauty of the women seems, however, to have produced an equally deep impression on her Majesty, who refers to this point in her diary of the visit.

On the 4th of August the Royal party proceeded to Waterford, which they reached in the afternoon. Curiously enough, one of the ships in their squadron of escort had actually been stationed there two years previously, to overawe the rebellious people. Now all these dark and bitter memories seemed to have passed away. Waterford vied with Cork in its loyal demonstration, and the feeling of regret was universal that the Royal party did not land and go through the town. Prince Albert and his two sons, however, steamed up to the city from the anchorage opposite Duncannon fort, ten miles from the town. Next came the visit to Dublin—never to be forgotten in the annals of the Irish capital.

It was on the 5th of August, as the sun was going down, that the Royal squadron reached Kingstown—threading its way with some difficulty through the craft, gay with joyful bunting, that crowded the sea. The Queen was greatly struck by the picturesque appearance of the place, and when she and the Prince landed next morning, amidst a salute from the men-of-war in the harbour, her reception was a revelation even to those who had anticipated that she would be lovingly greeted. Never was there such cheering—especially from the ladies, whose hearts were captivated by the Royal children. If, said one old lady, the Queen would only consent to call one of the young princes Patrick, all Ireland would die for her. The Royal party soon arrived at the Viceregal Lodge, in the Phœnix Park, and the routefrom Sandymount Station was again lined by crowds of enthusiastic and loyal sightseers. It was noted that even the poorest houses were gay with flowers. “It was a most wonderful and striking spectacle,” says the Queen, in her notes of her visit—“such masses of human beings, so enthusiastic, so excited, and yet perfect order maintained.” All that was worth seeing in Dublin was seen, and the people were charmed with the simple, gracious bearing of her Majesty, and the ease and freedom with which she went among them. A memorable visit was made by the Queen to the National Model Schools, where she and the Prince were introduced by Archbishop Whateley to the venerable Archbishop Murray, a picturesque and patriarchal Catholic prelate, whose saintly life and generous liberal ideas had previously attracted the attention of Prince Albert. His Grace had indeed risked much by protecting these schools against the attacks of some of the bigots of his church, and the Queen was powerfully impressed with the excellence of the system of instruction given at them. Speaking of this interesting episode in the House of Commons, Richard Lalor Shiel—the last of the great Irish rhetoricians—said, “Amongst the most remarkable incidents that occurred when the Queen was in Ireland was her visit to the schools of the National Board of Education, which took place (by accident, of course) before she visited the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. It was a fine spectacle to see the consort, so worthy of her, attended by the representatives of the Presbyterian Church, by the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, and by the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin—with those venerable ecclesiastics at her side, differing in creed, but united by the common brotherhood of Christianity in the performance of one of the noblest duties which their common Christianity prescribed; it was a fine thing to see the Sovereign of a great empire surrounded by groups of those little children who gazed on her with affectionate amazement, while she returned their looks with fondness almost maternal; and, better than all, it was noble and thrilling, indeed, to see the emotions by which that great lady was moved when her heart beat with a high and holy aspiration that she might live to see the benefits of education carried out in their full and perfect development.” There was a levée, of course, at which four thousand persons attended to pay their respects to their Sovereign. There was a brilliant review of the troops in the Phœnix Park, followed by visits to the Royal Irish Academy, the College of Surgeons, and the Royal Dublin Society, at whose cattle-shows Prince Albert was a frequent competitor. His speech, in reply to an Address from the Society, attracted much attention at the time, on account of his sound advice on the economic condition of Ireland, and the grateful thanks which he gave to the Irish people for their marks of warm attachment to the Queen and her family. The Prince was one of the first rural economists to impress on the chiefs of the Society the necessity for anticipating impending changes in agriculture. He advised them to stimulate to the utmost stock-breeding in Ireland.

VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO THE LINEN HALL, BELFAST.

A visit paid by the Queen to Carton appears to have made a strong impression on her. Carton is the seat of the Duke of Leinster, and his delicate attentions to her and her family, and his skill in planning a pleasant excursion for them, elicits from her pen the remark in her “Diary” that his Grace was “one of the kindest and best of men.” The Royal leave-taking at Kingstown was quite an affecting ceremony. The crowd at the pier was denser than it had ever been within living memory, and its shouts rent the air. When the Queen heard how her kind hosts were bidding her Godspeed, she immediately climbed up on the paddle-box and stood waving her handkerchief in token of her appreciation of their loyalty. She directed the ship’s engines to be slowed, so that the vessel might glide slowly past the pier. By a felicitous inspiration she ordered the Royal Standard to be dipped three times, in honour of the people on the shore, and as a mark of her grateful appreciation of their affection.

Loyal Ulster was next visited, and, as might have been expected, the reception of the Queen in this busy hive of industry was exceptionally effusive, even for Ireland. Belfast was en fête when the Royal visitors landed, and old folk still speak of the scene on the quay as marking a red letter day in their lives. Bunting was streaming everywhere in the air. Dense crowds cheering and shouting, and waving hats and handkerchiefs, occupied every coign of vantage, and though the Queen had only four hours to spend in the city, she contrived, under competent guidance, to see many of the more interesting places and institutions which illustrate the strong character of the mixed race whose energy, ability, pertinacity, and industry have made Ulster, with her unkindly soil and climate, the richest province in Ireland. Ulster commands the bulk of the linen trade of the world, and, naturally, the institutions and factories connected with that industry arrested the Queen’s attention during her flying visit to the commercial capital of Ireland. An alarming gale detained her the next day in Belfast Lough, but after it blew over the Royal party steamed away to the Scottish shore.

The Royal visit to Ireland had two good results. It brought home to the minds of the Irish people the fact that their country, and their interests, were of great personal concern to the Queen and her husband. It demonstrated to the rest of the United Kingdom the fact that the personal attachment of the Irish people to the Monarchy was as strong as could be desired, and that if they were rebels at heart it was not the Queen, but the Viceregal Bureaucracy in Dublin Castle, who had soured their blood. Everybody who had observed the effect of the Queen’s progress through Ireland was charmed with the success of the expedition. “I saw Lord Lansdowne last night,” writes Mr. Greville in his Journal (14th August), “just returned from Ireland, having had an escape on the railroad, for the train ran off the rails. He said nothing could surpass the success of the Queen’s visit in every respect; every circumstance favourable, no drawbacks or mistakes, all persons and parties pleased, much owing to the tact of Lord Clarendon, and the care he had bestowed on all the arrangements and details, which made it all go off so admirably. The Queen herself was delighted, and appears to have played her part uncommonly well. Clarendon, of course, was overjoyed at the complete success of what was his own plan,[5] and satisfied with the graciousness and attention of the Court to him. In the beginning, and while the details were in preparation, he was considerably disgusted at the petty difficulties that were made, but he is satisfied now. Lord Lansdowne says the departure was quite affecting, and he could not see it without being moved; and he thinks beyond doubt that this visit will produce permanent good effects in Ireland.”[6] Clarendon himself was evidently more than delighted with the effect of the Royal visit. He informed Sir George Grey that he believed “there was not an Irishman in Dublin who did not consider that the Queen had paid him a personal compliment by mounting the paddle-box of her steamer as she was leaving, and ordering the Royal Standard to be dipped in acknowledgment of the affectionate adieus which came from the crowds on the shore.”[7] But the odd thing was that the members of the seditious clubs who had threatened to create disturbances when the Queen’s visit was first mooted, caught the prevailing contagion of loyalty, and professed to be among the most affectionate of her subjects. Still, Clarendon was far too astute a statesman to imagine that a Royal visit would smooth away all the difficulties of his position and administration as Viceroy. It could not, as he acknowledges in another letter to Sir George Grey, “remove evils which are the growth of ages.” At the same time, it indirectly helped the country by bringing some money into it. Royalty can always beneficially direct the expenditure of Fashion, and after the Queen had by her example shown that there was no danger to be dreaded in visiting Ireland, rich English tourists began to go over there holiday-making, greatly to the advantage of the people. But when all this was apparent to the Queen’s advisers, it seems strange that they did not then deem it their duty to devise a plan for strengthening the golden link of the Crown between England and Ireland. If one brief Royal visit produced such an excellent effect, why did they not propose another? If it were impossible to provide for the residence for the Queen regularly during a portion of the year in Ireland, it might have been possible for the Royal Family to arrange that in their annual visit to Balmoral they should cruise northwards along the Irish coast, and gladden some of the Irish towns and provinces with their presence.

Ugly weather followed the Royal squadron from Belfast Lough to the Clyde, but a singularly brilliant reception at Glasgow compensated the Queen for any discomforts she may have endured on the voyage. The visit to “the second city of the Empire,” as its inhabitants love to call it, was all too brief, for the Festival of St. Grouse had been celebrated two days before, and Prince Albert was eagerly desirous of pressing on to the moors. On the evening of the 14th of August—the day of the reception at Glasgow—he wrote to Stockmar a hurried note, deploring the “vile passage” on the 12th from Belfast to Loch Ryan, and saying how much he had been impressed by their procession, through five to six hundred thousand human beings all cheering wildly in the streets of Glasgow.

CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR.

On the 15th of August they were at Balmoral, the Queen recording in her “Diary” that it seemed like a dream to her after all the excitement of their tour to be in “our dear Highland home again.” For a brief time her Majesty was able to enjoy a real holiday. She was not much worried by politics—which have been, after all, the chief business of her life. The seclusion, and the dry, bracing air of Balmoral, acted like tonics on her mind and spirits. In a letter which he wrote to Stockmar on his thirtieth birthday, which was gaily celebrated in the family circle at Balmoral, Prince Albert said, “Victoria is happy and cheerful, and enjoys a love and homage in this country, of which in the summer’s tour we have received the most striking proofs. The children are well and grow apace. The Highlands are glorious, and the game abundant.” One of the pleasantest of surprises was prepared for the Queen a fortnight after her arrival. It was an excursion to a small mountain cabin, or “bothie” as the Highlanders call it, to which she had taken a fancy at Alt-na-Giuthasach. In “Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” the Queen gives the following description of her expedition:—“We arrived at our little ‘bothie’ at two o’clock, and were amazed at the transformation. There are two huts, and to the one in which we live a wooden addition has been made. We have a charming little dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room, all en suite; and there is a little room where Caroline Dawson (the Maid of Honour) sleeps, one for her maid, and a little pantry. In the other house, which is only a few yards

AT BALMORAL: A MORNING CALL.

distant, is the kitchen, where the people generally sit, a small room where the servants dine, and another, which is a sort of store-room, and a loft above in which the men sleep. Margaret French (my maid), Caroline’s maid, Löhlein[8] (Albert’s valet), a cook, Shackle[9] (a footman), and Macdonald are the only people with us in the house, old John Gordon and his wife excepted. Our rooms are delightfully papered, the ceilings as well as walls, and very nicely furnished. We lunched as soon as we arrived, and at three walked down (about twenty minutes’ walk) to the loch called ‘Muich’; which some say means ‘darkness’ or ‘sorrow.’ Here we found a large boat, into which we all got, and Macdonald, Duncan, Grant, and Coutts rowed; old John Gordon and two others going in another boat with the net.”

But neither the Queen nor Prince Albert was of a mind that their Irish visit should be a fruitless one, and soon their busy brains were brooding over schemes for Ireland which marked their interest in her affairs. The “Godless” Colleges, which had been founded by Sir Robert Peel, were to be opened in October. They were three in number—one in Belfast, one in Cork, and one in Galway, and their education was to be secular and untheological. But each College gave facilities for conducting the spiritual training of the students under “Deans” appointed by the various sects and churches. The Queen and her husband had many conversations with men of light and leading of all parties in Ireland, as to the organisation of these Colleges, and the Prince, as a practical educationist, soon hit the blot in it. Who was to confer the degrees? Were the Colleges to do so? Or were they to be united by the common federating bond of a University, whose officials should guide the examinations, and form the policy that would best advance, not the interests of one College, but the interests of all? Her Majesty and the Prince, when they were in Ireland, came to the conclusion that unless the Colleges were affiliated under a University, they would soon degenerate into sectarian seminaries. But, before taking active steps in the matter, they laid their opinions before Sir Robert Peel. He at once concurred in the Prince’s views; and Lord Clarendon, who had at first felt doubtful about their soundness, ultimately accepted them also. Thus it came to pass that the Queen’s Colleges were federated under the Queen’s University of Ireland, and that a general desire was manifested that Prince Albert should be the first Chancellor. This office he declined to accept, mainly in the interest of the Queen. The Colleges and the University, he feared, might one day become the battle-grounds of faction, and it would then be very distressing for her Majesty to find her husband entangled in the political blood-feuds of Ireland. Subsequent events proved that these anticipations were correct. Lord Clarendon ultimately accepted the Chancellorship of the Queen’s University of Ireland.

At this time, as has been stated, the present Castle at Balmoral was not built. Balmoral, in fact, was simply the modest family residence of a Highland laird, and by no means well fitted for the establishment of the Court. However, the business of the Court and the State could not be neglected on that account, and Ministers and officials showed great zeal and consideration in assisting her Majesty to the utmost of their power in transacting it in such a remote corner of her Empire. In Mr. Greville’s Journal we have a curious entry (15th September) bearing on this point, and illustrating the holiday life of the Queen in the Highlands at that time. “On Monday, the 3rd,” writes Mr. Greville, “on returning from Hillingdon, I found a summons from John Russell to be at Balmoral on Wednesday, the 5th, at half-past two, for a Council, to order a prayer for relief against the cholera.... I started on Wednesday morning at half-past six, and arrived at Balmoral exactly at half-past two. It is a beautiful road from Perth to Balmoral, particularly from Blairgowrie to the Spittal of Glenshee, and thence to Braemar. Much as I dislike Courts and all that appertains to them, I am glad to have made this expedition, and to have seen the Queen and Prince in their Highland retreat, where they certainly appear to great advantage. The place is very pretty; the house very small. They live there without any state whatever; they live not merely like private gentlefolks, but like very small gentlefolks—small house, small rooms, small establishment. There are no soldiers, and the whole guard of the Sovereign and Royal Family is a single policeman, who walks about the grounds to keep off impertinent intruders or improper characters. Their attendants consisted of Lady Douro and Miss Dawson, Lady and Maid of Honour; George Anson and Gordon; Birch, the Prince of Wales’s tutor; and Miss Hildyard, the governess of the children. They live with the greatest simplicity and ease. The Prince shoots every morning, returns to luncheon, and then they walk and drive. The Queen is running in and out of the house all day long, and often goes about alone, walks into cottages, and sits and chats with the old women. I never before was in society with the Prince or had any conversation with him. On Thursday morning John Russell and I were sitting together after breakfast, when he came in and sat down with us, and we conversed for about three-quarters of an hour. I was greatly struck with him. I saw at once (what I had always heard) that he is very intelligent and highly cultivated; and, moreover, that he has a thoughtful mind, and thinks of subjects worth thinking about. He seemed very much at his ease, very gay, pleasant, and without the least stiffness or air of dignity. After luncheon we went to the Highland gathering at Braemar—the Queen, the Prince, four children, and two ladies in one pony-carriage, John Russell, Mr. Birch, Miss Hildyard, and I in another; Anson and Gordon on the box; one groom, no more. The gathering was at the old castle at Braemar, and a pretty sight enough. We returned as we came, and then everybody strolled about till dinner. We were only nine people, and it was all very easy and really agreeable—the Queen in very good humour, and talkative; the Prince still more so, and talking very well; no form, and everybody seemed at their ease. In the evening we withdrew to the only room there is besides the dining-room, which serves for billiards, library (hardly any books in it), and drawing-room. The Queen and Prince and her ladies, and Gordon, soon went back to the dining-room, where they had a Highland dancing-master, who gave them lessons in reels. We (John Russell and I) were not admitted to this exercise, so we played at billiards. In process of time they came back, when there was a little talk, and soon after they went to bed.”[10]

THE ROYAL BARGE.

OPENING OF THE LONDON COAL EXCHANGE—ARRIVAL OF THE ROYAL PROCESSION AT THE CUSTOM-HOUSE QUAY. (See p. 418.)

Shortly before the holiday at Balmoral ended, the Queen and Prince Albert were a little mortified to find that one of their projects, or rather one of the Prince’s projects, was going awry. This was the preliminary movement which was intended to lead up to the organisation of a great International Industrial Exhibition. The idea of holding such an exhibition had occurred to the Prince in July, 1849. It seems to have been suggested to him by the great Frankfort Fairs of the sixteenth century. His Royal Highness had also noticed that one or two small pioneer exhibitions held by the Society of Arts, had produced good effects in improving the quality of English products. He argued that an exhibition on an international scale would produce still greater effects, not only on our manufactures, but on those of the world. It would be a tournament of Peace, in which the Captains of Industry would be the competitors in the lists.

On the 30th of July, 1849, the Prince held a conference at Buckingham Palace with four confidential persons—Mr. Henry Cole, Mr. Francis Fuller, Mr. Scott Russell, and Mr. Thomas Cubitt, and they resolved to hold the exhibition if possible, not in the quadrangle of Somerset House, as the Government had suggested, but in Hyde Park itself. They also arranged to take steps to test the feeling of the industrial districts on the subject before going further. But in all this preliminary work of “sounding” influential persons, the Prince had given peremptory orders that his name should not be publicly mentioned. Unfortunately, Mr. Cole, with Hibernian effusiveness, had been tempted to disobey these orders at a meeting in Dublin, much to the annoyance of the Queen and her husband. “Praising me at meetings,” wrote his Royal Highness to Colonel Phipps, “looks as if I were to be advertised and used as a means of drawing a full house, &c.”—and if there was anything which was unspeakably offensive to the Queen, it was the use of her or her husband’s name for purposes of puffery.

A few days after this disagreeable little episode (27th September) the Queen and her family left Balmoral for Osborne. They broke their journey at Howick, where they spent a night with Lord Grey, and in a few days after that they received tidings which filled their hearts with the utmost sorrow. The ever-faithful Anson, the Prince’s first Secretary, died, and the Queen’s household was filled with the deepest regret. The Queen herself wrote a touching letter to King Leopold, which shows how her heart bled for the widow of her most zealous servant; and Lady Lyttelton, writing on the 9th of November, says: “Every face shows how much has been felt; the Prince and Queen in floods of tears, and quite shut up.” All through the record of the Queen’s life, indeed, we find evidence of the cordial relations which bound her to those who served her. Their zeal indeed has been great, but it has been more than equalled by her sympathetic appreciation of it.

Colonel Phipps succeeded Mr. Anson as Privy Purse, and Colonel (afterwards General) Grey as the Prince’s Secretary.

When the gloom of winter began to spread over London, the loyal citizens were sadly distressed to learn that a projected Royal visit to the city would be robbed of more than half its éclat. The Queen had promised to come and open the New Coal Exchange on the 30th of October. But alas, her Majesty had sickened with the chicken-pox, and the ceremony was performed by Prince Albert alone. Yet the Londoners were not without compensation. This visit to the City was memorable because of the first public appearance in a pageant of State, of the Prince of Wales, and the Princess Royal. The spectacle revived picturesque memories of “the spacious times of Great Elizabeth,” for the Royal party proceeded to London by the silent highway of the river. Twenty-seven brawny watermen rowed the Queen’s Barge from Westminster Stairs to the City, and, strange to say, for once the fog and murky atmosphere of London in early winter cleared away, and the ceremony took place in the sunshine, under a sky of Italian brilliancy. The crowds covered every possible corner where human beings could cluster. The long lines of shipping on each bank of the Pool were bright with bunting, and black with swarming sightseers. The cheering was overpowering when the fair-haired young Prince was seen in the barge, and both the Royal children, though they went through the ordeal quietly and prettily, were obviously a little frightened and nervous. “The Prince,” wrote Lady Lyttelton to Mrs. Gladstone, “was perfect in taste and manner, putting the Prince of Wales forward without affectation, and very dignified and kind himself.” The procession on the water was gorgeous in the extreme. State liveries were blazing everywhere. Civic costumes of feudal times kindled many ancient memories; and the Lord Mayor’s barge, which led the way, was a miracle of garish splendour. Lady Lyttelton says that what struck her most was not only the cheering, but the affectionate expression on the faces of the people when they craned forward to get a glimpse of the little Prince and Princess. But of one civic speaker and his speech in the Rotunda her ladyship says it “was most pompous; and he is ridiculous in voice and manner. And his immense size, and cloak, and wig, and great voice addressing the Prince of Wales about his being the ‘pledge and promise of a long race of kings,’ looked quite absurd. Poor Princey did not seem at all to guess what he meant.” The Queen was rather sad-hearted at missing this first public reception of her children, which was the occasion of such an outburst of popular enthusiasm, loyal huzzas, and joy-bells ringing all over London town, not to mention thunderous salutations from the Tower guns—“enough,” says Lady Lyttelton, “to drive one mad.”

On the 2nd of December the Royal home was turned into a house of mourning. On that day the good Dowager-Queen Adelaide passed away from among the small but appreciative circle of friends and relatives who admired and loved her. The Queen’s grief was deep and sincere. “Though we daily expected this sad event,” writes her Majesty to King Leopold, “yet it came so suddenly when it did come, as if she had never been ill, and I can hardly realise the truth now.... She was truly motherly in her kindness to us and our children, and it always made her happy to be with us and to see us!”[11]

Queen Adelaide, it may be here noted, was one of the earliest of funeral reformers. Struck by the wastefulness and the bad taste of funereal pageants, she left what the Queen calls “the most affecting directions” for her burial, ordering that it should be conducted with the utmost simplicity and privacy—the only exceptional arrangement being that she desired her coffin to be borne by seamen, in homage to the memory of her husband, William IV., the Sailor-King. A simple-hearted, kindly, Christian lady, whose hands were ever swift in doing good—such is a brief abstract of the life and character of the Dowager-Queen Adelaide.

THE CHAMBER OF REPRESENTATIVES, BRUSSELS.

CHAPTER XXIII.
CLOUDS IN THE EAST AND ELSEWHERE.

Political Wreckage—Force triumphs over Opinion—The State of France—Election of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte as Prince-President—The Sad Plight of Italy—Palmerston’s Anti-Austrian Policy—Defeat of Piedmont—The Fall of Venice—Fall of the Roman Republic—A Cromwellian Struggle in Prussia—The Queen’s Partisanship—Her Prussian Sympathies—The Hungarian Refugees in Turkey—A Diplomatic Conflict with Russia—Opening of Parliament—Mr. Disraeli and Local Taxation—Parliamentary Reform—The Jonahs of the Cabinet—The Dispute with Greece—Don Pacifico’s case—Coercion of Greece—Lord Palmerston meekly accepts an Insult from Russia—French Intervention—A Diplomatic Conflict in France—Recall of the French Ambassador—False Statements in Parliament—The Queen’s Indignation—The Don Pacifico Debate—The Civis Romanus sum Doctrine—Palmerston’s Victory—The West African Slave Trade.

When the year 1850 opened the counter-revolution had been accomplished. Much political and social wreckage disfigured the Continent, but the tempest which had produced it was over. What remained was an uneasy after-swell agitating the restless ocean of discontent. Force had, in fact, triumphed over opinion, and Europe was at last tranquil.

In France, after Louis Philippe fell, the country was left a prey to four factions or parties. One demanded an absolute monarchy; another demanded a parliamentary monarchy; a third demanded a military empire, based on universal suffrage; a fourth demanded a republic. The partisans of the republic triumphed in the first instance. But it fell, a victim to the voracity of its own children. The Government of Lamartine was poetic and Utopian,

LOUIS KOSSUTH (1850).

and its experiment of creating national workshops in which the workers were to be paid by the State, was not only fantastic but fatal. The State found it had no work to give. It found it had no money to spend in wages; and the artisans of the national establishments were accordingly advised to join the army. This disastrous adventure in Socialism was followed by another insurrection in Paris—in which, by the way, the Archbishop of Paris and thousands of less eminent persons were slain. What Prince Bismarck would call the “psychological moment” for the interposition of a clever adventurer with a suggestion of compromise had manifestly arrived. Accordingly, the advent of Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte was hailed with a sense of relief by all parties—wearied to despair by the futile conflicts of factions. Although M. Grévy vainly endeavoured by a motion in the Chamber to procure the proscription of the Prince, his Highness was elected President of the Republic on the 10th of December, 1848, by five and a half million out of seven and a half million votes. He took the oath to preserve the Republic, without compunction. But when the year 1850 opened, he was busily plotting for its destruction, and manufacturing failure for its institutions.

The plight of Italy was a sad one. Austria had successfully met the attempt to seize her Italian provinces. She had crushed Piedmont so completely that, in 1849, there was danger lest she might be tempted to invade that State, and thus provoke the interference of Republican France. Lord Palmerston accordingly endeavoured to mediate between Austria and Piedmont. The idea of mediation was chimerical, for Austria, having made heavy sacrifices to hold her Cisalpine territories, and having succeeded in doing so by force, could hardly be expected to accept with equanimity Lord Palmerston’s favourite dogma, that the Italian provinces of Austria were to her not a source of strength, but of weakness. Austria repudiated all proposals for a conference of mediation, unless they were limited to discuss what Piedmont owed her as an indemnity, and the guarantees which could be given against Piedmontese turbulence. Diplomacy had well-nigh exhausted its resources in endeavouring to bring Austria to submit the points at issue to a Congress at Brussels, when the whole situation was suddenly changed. Joseph Mazzini and his school, convinced that Austria was checked by France and England, overthrew the Governments of Florence and Rome, which were under Austrian tutelage. Revolution headed by a monarch had failed. Its victory, argued Mazzini, under Republican leadership, would be a signal triumph for the Republican idea. The success of Mazzini and his followers led to the formation of a violent anti-Austrian Ministry in Piedmont.

But again Austria triumphed. Piedmont was crushed at Novara on the 23rd of March, 1849. Venice was on the eve of surrender, and when the Pope, who had fled to Gaeta, appealed to the Catholic Powers for aid, Austria was thus quite free to help him. The prospect of Austria bringing Central as well as North Italy under her sway alarmed France, and accordingly the Republican Government in Paris sent an army under Oudinot, which suppressed the Republican Government at Rome. The Grand Duke of Tuscany was restored, the revolution in the Sicilies quenched in blood, and the dream of Italian independence dissipated. Nor was this the only triumph of Absolutism under Austria. The revolution in Hungary was suppressed, but not till Russia came to the assistance of Austria.

In Prussia, too, the monarchy, after a Cromwellian struggle with a factious Parliament, had completely restored its authority, and to Prussia the smaller German States now began to turn for leadership in consolidating themselves into a German Empire. Unhappily the King of Prussia failed to respond to this feeling when Austria was struggling with the revolution in Italy. At the beginning of 1850 he accordingly found the feeling in favour of unifying Germany opposed by three great Powers—France, Russia, and Austria, the last, indeed, claiming, on behalf of the Archduke John, to be the executive head and heir of the defunct German Confederation of 1815. By the Constitution of Kremsir, Austria had consolidated her possessions—German, Magyar, Sclavonic, and Italian—into one federal State, and, in a sense, she had thereby withdrawn from the German Confederation. Her policy of obstructing consolidation in disintegrated Germany was therefore alike ungenerous and unjust.

Through this maze of difficulty the Queen and Prince Albert steered a clear course. They were both partisans—one might say strong and zealous partisans—of Teutonic consolidation under Prussia. Austria, they held, had played for her own hand, and, by adopting Schwarzenberg’s policy of consolidating her dominions in purely Austrian interests, she had abandoned her claim to guide the destinies of the smaller German States, in purely German interests. But, however strongly the Queen felt on this point, her influence was used to moderate the extravagant anti-Austrian antipathies of Lord Palmerston, and it largely contributed to keep the country out of war. At last, however, a cloud rose in the East which threatened us with calamity.

When Austria, by summoning to her aid the armed hordes of Russia, stamped out the movement for Hungarian independence, several Hungarian and Polish patriots—Kossuth, Ban, and others—fled to Turkey. Austria and Russia demanded their extradition. The Sultan refused to surrender the refugees, and De Titoff and Stürmer, Russian and Austrian ambassadors, suspended diplomatic relations with the Porte. The Sultan appealed to Britain and France against this outrageous violation of the unity of nations. Britain remonstrated in firm but courteous language, and Austria and Russia both withdrew their demands, but not before the British fleet had moved within the forbidden limits of the Dardanelles, in anticipation of a refusal. Lord Palmerston’s apology for thus violating the treaty of 1841 was that the fleet had been driven into forbidden waters by “stress of weather.” As there was notoriously no “stress of weather,” this explanation merely irritated the Czar, and planted in his heart the germ of that fierce hatred of England, which culminated in the Crimean War.

Parliament was opened on the 31st of January, 1850, by Commission, and, as had been anticipated, the Protectionists made, not an attack, but rather a reconnoissance in force against the Government. During the recess they had gone through the country painting the darkest pictures of the condition of England. According to their speeches, one would have imagined that another famine had smitten the nation; and for all this pessimism there was but one justification. No doubt everybody who depended on the soil for a livelihood was suffering from distress. Prices had fallen, and farmers had not taken kindly to the new order of things. But the masses of the people, especially in industrial centres, were enjoying greater comfort than ever. The revenue was showing signs of buoyancy; the foreign trade of the

THE WHITE DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.

country had increased, and pauperism had diminished. All these cheering facts were concealed from the public by the Conservative agitators, who concentrated attention on one point—the admitted and deplorable distress of the landed interest. The real desire of the Tory party at this time was to turn out the Government and restore Protection. The Duke of Richmond’s indiscreet speech on the Address in the House of Lords proves that. But, conscious of the difficulty of suddenly upsetting the fiscal system which was based on Free Trade, they concealed their real purpose. Mr. Disraeli therefore supported a Protectionist amendment to the Address in reply to the Queen’s Speech, on the ground that the landed interests were entitled to a certain amount of relief from public burdens, in compensation for the loss of Protection. On the 19th of February, Mr. Disraeli had to show his hand. He then moved for a committee to revise the Poor Law so as to mitigate distress among the agricultural class. This debate is worth noticing, because it may be said to have definitely originated the perennial movement for local taxation reform, which is always an object of enthusiasm to what may be called the country party, when out of office. Mr. Disraeli’s idea was to transfer from local rates to the Imperial Treasury (1), Poor Law establishment charges; (2), rates which had nothing to do with the relief of the poor, and were only raised by

THE PIRÆUS, ATHENS.

Poor Law machinery as a matter of convenience—such as rates for registration of births, deaths, and marriages, for getting up jury lists, and the like; and (3), the rate for supporting the casual poor. His case was not decided on its merits. Members did not look to what was in the motion, but to what was behind it, namely, the restoration of Protection, or an increase in Income Tax to provide funds for the relief of local burdens. Sir James Graham’s frank admission, as a landlord, that relief in the rate would be swallowed by an increase in the rents, and that it was the landlord and not the tenant who would profit, determined many, who did not deny the abstract justice of Mr. Disraeli’s contention, to vote against him. The sensational incident in the debate was the speech of Mr. Gladstone, who supported Mr. Disraeli against his own leaders. In fact, he replied to Sir James Graham. Despite the support of Peel, the Government, instead of having a majority of forty, as they expected, were saved from defeat only by a majority of twenty. From that day till now a clever debater, by a skilful motion in favour of relief of local taxation, has always been able to weaken the majority of the strongest of Ministries. Local taxation is the vulnerable point of Governments, and it is the one subject with which they all seem afraid to deal in a bold and comprehensive spirit. All they do is to denounce the evil in Opposition, and palliate its existence when in Power.

The agitation for Parliamentary Reform had increased. Some of the Peelites, notably Sir J. Graham, had warned Lord John Russell that they were in favour of an extension of the franchise, and Lord John himself had abandoned the doctrine of finality. Mr. Hume, therefore, brought forward his annual motion on the 28th of February, hinting plainly that he would have no objection to extend its scope so as to include female franchise, and the substitution of an elective for a hereditary House of Lords. It was quite certain that Lord John Russell was by this time of opinion that some safe concessions might be made to the Radicals. Several of his colleagues, however—e.g., Mr. Labouchere—were of a different opinion, and it is accordingly right to say that those who denounced Lord John’s “apostasy,” when he opposed Mr. Hume, were somewhat unfair. Had the Prime Minister produced a Reform Bill this Session, every question which it might be possible to deal with would have been put aside. But as he was not likely to carry his own colleagues with him in advocating reform, not only would this sacrifice have been made in vain, but a Government which, in the existing state of parties, was indispensable to the nation, would have fallen. Mr. Hume was beaten by a vote of 242 against 96, though the Prime Minister’s argument against him was rather a plea for delay, than a defiant “Non possumus.”

Writing on the 10th of February, Mr. Greville says in his Journal, “The brightness of the Ministerial prospect was very soon clouded over, and last week their disasters began. There was first of all the Greek affair, and then the case of the Ceylon witnesses—matters affecting Lord Palmerston and Lord Grey”—the Jonahs of the Cabinet. “The Greek case,” continues Mr. Greville, “will probably be settled, thanks to French mediation, but it was a bad and discreditable affair, and has done more harm to Palmerston than any of his greater enormities. The other Ministers are extremely annoyed at it, and at the sensation it has produced.” The Greek case was briefly this: Mr. Finlay, a British subject in Athens, alleged that King Otho had enclosed a bit of his land in the Royal Garden, and demanded compensation. The King offered him the same compensation that had been accepted as fair by other owners of enclosed land in Mr. Finlay’s position. This Mr. Finlay refused, and he demanded £1,500 for the land which, it was admitted, he had bought for £10. Don Pacifico, a Portuguese Jew from Gibraltar, sought damages for the pillage of his house by the Athenian mob. He claimed £31,534. The value of his furniture was shown to be £2,181. The balance was supposed to represent the value of documents proving that he had a claim on the Portuguese Government for £27,000. Mr. Finlay and Don Pacifico had not raised their claims in the ordinary law courts, and to the amazement of everybody, Lord Palmerston proposed to employ the mailed might of England to collect their bad debts. He peremptorily ordered the Greek Government to pay these exaggerated claims, on pain of inflicting on Greece a blockade and reprisals within twenty-four hours. On the 18th of January, Admiral Parker, with the Mediterranean Fleet, blockaded the Piræus—for, contrary to Lord Palmerston’s expectations, Greece refused to comply with his demands. The Greek Government appealed for protection to France and Russia—whose Governments being with that of Britain joint guarantors for the independence of Greece, were justly annoyed that their good offices had not been invoked by Lord Palmerston. Count Nesselrode, burning to avenge the defeat of the Czar over the question of the Hungarian refugees in Turkey, sent a remonstrance to Lord Palmerston, which was couched in the language of bitter contempt and studied insolence. The French Government, on the other hand, pretending that our agent in Athens had blundered, courteously offered to extricate Lord Palmerston from his difficulties by using the influence of France, to compose the dispute with Greece. On the 12th of February Lord Palmerston ordered the British Envoy to inform Admiral Parker that he must suspend coercive operations. It was not till the 2nd of March that these instructions arrived, and in the interval the Admiral had been vigorously coercing the Greeks. France was naturally irritated at this untoward incident, all the more that Lord Palmerston’s explanation of the delay was deemed unsatisfactory. Ultimately, the matter was settled on Greece agreeing to pay Mr. Wyse, the British Minister, £8,500 to be distributed by him as he thought just among the claimants—the value of Don Pacifico’s lost vouchers against the Portuguese Government to be determined by arbitration.

This compromise, however, was made by negotiation in London. A French steamer conveyed the purport of it to Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy at Athens, on the 24th of April. He, however, said that he had no instructions from his Government to countermand his original orders, which were to renew coercion if the French Envoy at Athens could not induce the Greeks to submit. Coercion was therefore again applied, and the Greek Government on the 27th submitted to Mr. Wyse’s demands. These were more onerous in some respects than the terms agreed on by the London Convention, and Lord Palmerston persisted in adhering to the Athenian arrangement. M. Gros at Athens, finding he could not persuade Mr. Wyse to act on the London Convention, had on the 21st of April officially intimated that his action as mediator was ended. This, argued Lord Palmerston coolly, left the British Envoy—in the absence of instructions from England—free to renew coercion, and to enter into the Athenian arrangement. Palmerston, in other words, claimed the right to take advantage of his own delay, in notifying to Mr. Wyse the result of the London Convention, to refuse to act on the finding of that Convention. It is but fair to say that the Queen was quite as indignant as the Government of France, at Lord Palmerston’s rude and provocative conduct. Lord John Russell intimated to her the fact that the French Government had met the affront with which Lord Palmerston had rewarded their efforts to extricate him from the effect of his own blunder, by recalling M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Her Majesty promptly directed her husband, who acted as her confidential secretary, to send the Prime Minister one of those curt, cutting notes, which invariably indicate her displeasure.

“My dear Lord John,—Both the Queen and myself are exceedingly sorry at the news your letter contained. We are not surprised, however, that Lord Palmerston’s mode of doing business should not be borne by the susceptible French Government with the same good humour and forbearance as by his colleagues.

“Ever yours truly,
“Albert.

“Buckingham Palace, 15th May, 1850.”[12]

The view which the Queen took was the fair and common-sense one, namely, that we should act on the London Convention. The Convention of London which we made with France gave us certain terms. By an accident, for which Palmerston was responsible, Mr. Wyse at Athens had extorted better ones for us at Athens. It was not high policy, but sharp practice; it was not in the spirit of enlightened diplomacy, but in the spirit of the meanest attorneydom, that any claim to benefit by the “accident” which had given better terms to us at Athens than at London, was pressed by Lord Palmerston.

But the Queen’s troubles did not end here. Her birthday was celebrated on the 15th of May, and the absence of the French and Russian Ambassadors from the usual Foreign Office dinner on that occasion, naturally roused suspicion. It was not known that the French representative had been recalled, and that France and England were in open diplomatic conflict. What was the meaning of the absence of these ambassadors? asked Society at the great rout at Devonshire House on the night of the 19th. Questions to this effect were put to Ministers in both Houses. Lord Lansdowne said that the departure of M. Drouyn de Lhuys was purely accidental; and Lord Palmerston had the effrontery to declare, in reply to Mr. Milner Gibson, that M. de Lhuys had merely gone to Paris as a medium of communication between the two Governments. But the Times reported in due course that General de la Hitte, Minister of War, had intimated from the tribune of the French Assembly that, because Lord Palmerston’s explanations in regard to points at issue between the two Governments were not such as France had a right to expect, “the President had ordered General de la Hitte to recall their Ambassador from London.” Nothing could exceed the mortification of the Queen when she was informed of the almost simultaneous publication of these contradictory official statements. Her detestation of equivocal and shuffling Ministerial explanations has long passed into a proverb. Her Majesty’s theory, in fact, is that the Minister is for the time the trustee of the honour of the Crown, and that, especially in foreign countries, where the relation between the British Sovereign and her Ministers is ill understood, the Crown is held personally responsible for what the Minister says, in all matters affecting

GRAND ENTRANCE, WESTMINSTER PALACE.

the external relations of the kingdom. In plain English, the Queen has always held that if a Minister tells a lie in Parliament, nine people out of ten on the Continent will suspect that she has ordered or induced him to tell it. Hence her indignation on reading Lord Palmerston’s reply to Mr. Milner Gibson’s question was tinged with a feeling of personal humiliation and shame. Public opinion was similarly excited when the newspapers were studied, and fuller questions were immediately put to Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell. They gave evasive and prevaricating answers, attempting to explain away the French Ambassador’s letter of recall, much to the disgust of all parties in Parliament. The tide of anger rose higher every day that the scandal was discussed. Lord John Russell told his brother, the Duke of Bedford, that Ministers must defend Palmerston on this occasion, but, after the dispute came to an end, he would have Palmerston dismissed from the Foreign Office. “He is,” writes Mr. Greville on the 19th of May, “to see the Queen on Tuesday, who will of course be boiling over with indignation;” for by this time Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador, had warned Lord John that he, too, must ask to be relieved from his post, as “it was impossible for him to stay here to be on bad terms with Palmerston.”

The question has often been asked, Why did English statesmen get up in both Houses of Parliament and tell a series of falsehoods which they knew must be discovered in forty-eight hours by official refutation from France? The fact is, Lord Palmerston had deceived his colleagues. He assured them that M. de Lhuys had taken back to Paris explanations so conciliatory, that his letter of recall would be quietly cancelled. Assured by Palmerston that he had made the cancelling of the recall a certainty, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell assumed that the letter of recall was suppressed, and they both answered as if it never had existed. On the 25th of May, Mr. Greville writes:—“The morning before yesterday the Duke of Bedford came here again. He had seen Lord John since, and heard what passed with the Queen. She was full of this affair, and again urged all her objections to Lord Palmerston. This time she found Lord John better disposed than heretofore, and he is certainly revolving in his mind how the thing can be done. He does not by any means contemplate going out himself, or breaking up the Government. What he looks to is this, that the Queen should take the initiative, and urge Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. She is quite ready to do this as soon as she is assured of her wishes being attended to.”[13]

Lord John Russell screwed up his courage to the point of contemplating the removal of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office to some other department of State, he himself undertaking the duties of Foreign Secretary along with those of the Premiership. Such a combination is never a wise one. Even in recent times, when Lord Salisbury attempted to unite in his own person the two offices, the strain was found to be greater than his strength could bear; and in the case of Lord John, whose health was at this time capricious and precarious, it was perhaps as well that at the eleventh hour he shrank from proposing the change to Lord Palmerston. Lord John has been accused of lack of courage in connection with this affair. The truth is, that a perverted chivalry prompted him to stand by Lord Palmerston. The Greek affair was hardly defensible. But it was bruited about that the Opposition, under cover of condemning Lord Palmerston in that special case, meant to direct a severe attack on the foreign policy of the Government as a whole. Lord Palmerston’s colleagues had, however, permitted themselves not only to be identified with that policy, but had thought fit to defend every blunder he had made in carrying it out. Lord John Russell, then, cannot be blamed for considering that to desert the Foreign Secretary on the Greek Question, would have been tantamount to making him the scapegoat of the Cabinet. Hence, in spite of the Queen’s strong feeling in the matter, it was agreed that Palmerston should not be “thrown over.”

After much fencing between the leaders of the two parties, the first of the attacks, which led to a series of debates almost unparalleled in our history as displays of sustained Parliamentary eloquence, was made in the House of Lords on the 17th of June. Lord Stanley moved a vote of censure on the Ministry for their coercive measures in Greece, affirming, however, the general proposition that it was the right and duty of the Government to secure to British subjects in foreign States, the full protection of the laws of those States. The scene was a memorable one. The House was crowded in every part, and the conflict began with an amusing farce. The Peeress’s Gallery was crammed to overflowing, and when Lady Melbourne and Lady Newport, under Lord Brougham’s escort, went to their places, they found them filled, and were ignominiously turned away. Brougham, however, espied Bunsen, the Prussian Minister, in the gallery, and requested him to retire to his proper seat in the Ambassadors’ quarter, but he refused. Then Brougham went down to his own place, and avenged himself on Bunsen by calling the attention of their lordships to the fact that there was “a stranger in the Peeress’s Gallery,” adding, “if he does not come down, I shall move your lordships to enforce the order of the House. It is the more intolerable as he has a place assigned to him in another part, and he is now keeping the room of two Peeresses.” As Bunsen was notoriously a fat, overgrown man, Brougham’s malicious personality was received with shouts of laughter. But it had no effect on the stolid Prussian, who kept his seat till Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, made him retire.[14]

The issue before the House was simple enough. (1), Lord Palmerston had agreed with M. Drouyn de Lhuys that if the terms which M. Gros, the French Envoy at Athens, proposed on behalf of Greece were rejected by Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy, coercion should not be again applied without special orders from Britain. But if M. Gros threw up his office of mediator because the Greeks declined to let him offer fair terms, then of course Mr. Wyse was to

MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR ALEXANDER) COCKBURN.

resort to coercion without further instructions. (2), M. Drouyn de Lhuys and Lord Palmerston in London agreed on a settlement, the terms of which were less onerous than those demanded by Mr. Wyse. (3), Though this was informally communicated by the French to Mr. Wyse, he rejected the terms which M. Gros offered on behalf of Greece, contending that he had no instructions from Lord Palmerston as to the adoption of any other course. (4), M. Gros then dropped the negotiations. Mr. Wyse, again arguing that he was without instructions, ordered coercion to be applied, upon which the Greek Government yielded. The pith of the dispute centred in one point. Did Palmerston or did he not send Mr. Wyse instructions as to the arrangement made in London with M. Drouyn de Lhuys? The French said that their Envoy abandoned negotiations because Mr. Wyse was unreasonable. Lord Palmerston contended that Mr. Wyse was of opinion that M. Gros had dropped mediation because the

CAPE TOWN.

Greeks were unreasonable, and that therefore, in terms of the arrangement made in London, Mr. Wyse was justified in resorting to coercion without further instructions. Mr. Wyse may have been mistaken in supposing that M. Gros retired from the negotiations in the circumstances which, according to the London Convention, would have justified a resort to coercion without further reference to Lord Palmerston. If that were the case, the Government had a good defence; for it would have been unfair to censure them for Mr. Wyse’s blunder. But was it the case? How could Mr. Wyse have blundered in interpreting the conditions of the London Convention, if no instructions in accordance with that Convention had been sent to him? The complaint was that the Foreign Secretary had neglected to send these instructions, and a close and careful examination of Palmerston’s own Blue-book, fails to bring to light the slightest proof that they ever were sent. Therefore it was clear (1), that England had broken a binding diplomatic compact with France, and (2), that this breach of faith had enabled Mr. Wyse at Athens to extort by force from a small, weak Power more onerous terms than the English Government had agreed with France to accept in London. The House of Lords took this view of the matter, and when the debate ended, in the grey dawn of a summer’s morning, it was found on division that there was a majority of 37 against the Government.

Some members of the Cabinet were for resignation. Many friends of the Government thought that Palmerston should personally offer the Queen his resignation, begging her not to accept that of his colleagues if they tendered theirs. But the Foreign Secretary made no offer to resign, and at first the Cabinet resolved to take no more notice of the vote of censure in the Upper House. Ultimately, they found that they must notice it, and as their Foreign Policy as a whole was impugned, they decided not to abandon the Foreign Secretary. On the 20th of June, Lord John Russell explained why he would not resign. He gave two reasons—one good and the other bad,—the first being one of which the Queen approved. It was that a change of Government, in consequence of a resolution of the House of Lords, would be unconstitutional, because, in his opinion, it might be dangerous even to the House of Lords to lay upon it the responsibility of controlling her Majesty’s Executive. Two precedents, one a hundred years old, and one taken from 1833, when the Peers, on the motion of the Duke of Wellington, censured Lord Grey’s Foreign Policy in Portugal, were ingeniously cited by Lord John Russell in support of this constitutional doctrine. But his second reason was characteristically Palmerstonian. He said that the House of Lords had laid it down, that it was the duty of the British Government to see that British subjects in Foreign States got full protection from the laws of those States. That was a limitation of duty which Lord John Russell refused to recognise, because, said he, a Foreign State might make bad laws, and it would be the duty of England to prevent her subjects from being injured by those laws. No principle is more clearly established in international law than this—that a Sovereign State has an absolute right to dictate the terms on which any alien shall abide on its soil.[15] If the alien does not like the law of the Foreign State, he has no business to call on his own countrymen to defend him by force of arms in refusing to obey it, seeing that it was not at their request or in their interest, but of his own free will, and in pursuit of his own fortune, he went to live or traffic abroad. In fact, to lay it down that England might levy war on any country, whose laws Englishmen residing in that country considered inequitable, was tantamount to proclaiming her hostis humani generis. Yet such was the doctrine which the House of Commons, in spite of the protests of the Tories, of Radicals like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and Peelites like Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, cheerfully accepted from the Whigs at this period. The only thing that can be said in its defence is that it is a doctrine which the House has never dared to apply to a stronger Power than Greece—never to a Power like Russia, which deports English Jews, nor like Germany, which deports English residents, personally obnoxious to Prince Bismarck, in the most arbitrary manner. It is doubtful if it would even dare to apply it to an autonomous colony like Victoria, had her Government refused, as was threatened, to permit the Irish informer, James Carey, to reside within her frontier.

Having decided to defy the House of Lords, the Government hit on an ingenious plan for neutralising the vote of censure. They put up Mr. Roebuck on the 21st of June to move a vote of confidence in them not touching the Greek dispute, but approving generally of their Foreign Policy as one likely “to preserve untarnished the honour and dignity of this country.” The debate, which lasted five days, was a veritable tournament of Titans. On both sides speeches were made that touch the highest point to which Parliamentary eloquence can reach. Mr. Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, delivered an oration by which, at one bound, he leapt into the first rank of British orators. Peel delivered the last speech he was fated to make in the great assembly, on which for years he had played with the easy mastery of a musician on his favourite instrument. Palmerston himself spoke for four hours and a quarter with more than his usual dash and intrepidity, and with surprising moderation and good taste—basing his case virtually on the application of the civis Romanus sum doctrine to British Foreign Policy. This was the point in it which Mr. Gladstone demolished in a passionate protest, that may be said to have become classical. But in the end the Government triumphed by a majority of 46! Yet, on the face of the facts, they had absolutely no case. Why, then, were they victorious? For many reasons. In the then divided state of parties, the Government was felt to be the only possible Government. Palmerston, by adroitly spreading the report that the attack on

MR. GLADSTONE (1855).

him was really fomented by the agents of the despotic Powers, whose policy he had persistently opposed, won strong support from the Radicals. The Whigs felt that as the Foreign Policy of the Government as a whole was attacked, they were bound to defend the Ministry, quite irrespective of Palmerston’s possibly objectionable method of carrying out that policy. Moreover, it was undoubtedly a weak point in the tactics of the Opposition, that they did not venture to submit in the House of Commons, the motion of censure which they had carried in the House of Lords. But though Lord Palmerston’s triumph was complete, the Queen continued to be dissatisfied

WINDSOR CASTLE: VIEW FROM THE QUADRANGLE.

with his reckless manner of managing the Foreign Office. Pressure was put on him by the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon to take another department, which, however, he refused to do. For the time—confident in his popularity—he was able to hold his position, but ere a year had elapsed her Majesty’s warnings were fulfilled, and Lord John was simply compelled to force him to retire.[16] It must be here told how this whole controversy ended. Before the debate closed, it was announced that we had accepted, with some trifling modifications in detail, the French proposals made on behalf of Greece. The demands of the claimants in support of whom we had been brought to the brink of war with France, were finally assessed at £10,000—about one-thirtieth part of the sum they originally asked!

No other question of Foreign Policy agitated the House of Commons in 1850, save Mr. Hutt’s proposal to withdraw the British war-ships engaged in suppressing the West African slave trade. The cost of the squadron had made its maintenance unpopular even with Liberals, and when Lord John Russell threatened to stake the existence of his Ministry on it, the Queen was distressed to learn that there was every prospect of his being defeated, at a time when a change of Government would have produced the utmost confusion. A meeting of the Liberal Party was convened by the Prime Minister at Downing Street, and pressure, which they hardly dared to resist, induced the malcontents to support the Government. Mr. Hutt’s motion was lost, many Ministerialists, however, complaining bitterly that the Prime Minister had concussed them into voting against their convictions.

CHAPTER XXIV.
SOME EPOCH-MARKING LEGISLATION.

The Colonies and Party Government—The Movement for Autonomy—Lord John Russell’s Colonial Bill—Tory Opposition to Colonial Federation—Mr. Adderley’s Plan—Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme for Colonial Church Courts—The Colonial Bills Mangled in the House of Lords—More English Doles for Ireland—An Irish Reform Bill—Lord John Russell Proposes to Abolish the Lord Lieutenancy—The Queen’s Irish Policy—Her offer to Establish a Royal Residence in Ireland—The Bungled Budget—The Demand for Retrenchment—The Tories Insist on a Reduction of Official Salaries—Lord John Russell’s Commission on Establishments—The Queen and the Church—The Ecclesiastical Appeals Bill—The “Gorham Case”—Death of Peel—The Queen’s Sorrow—A Nation in Mourning—Peel’s Character and Career—The Queen’s Alarm about Prince Albert’s Health—The Queen at Work—The Queen’s Reading-Lamp.

Far more interesting, however, was the Colonial legislation of the Government in 1850, which indeed might be termed epoch-marking. The Queen had at the opening of the Session indicated in her Speech from the Throne that a measure extending Constitutional government to the Colonies would be introduced. It was known that she was personally of opinion that the Colonies were giving promise of a growth so rapid, that it would be impossible for any length of time to hold them in the leading-strings of the Colonial Office. The incessant attacks which had been made on Lord Grey in Parliament and in the Press merely served to confirm the Queen in this opinion. It was, therefore, with great satisfaction that she discovered that men of light and leading on both sides of the House of Commons were so far agreed on the subject, that it was deemed practicable by Lord John Russell to minimise the friction between the Colonies and the Colonial Office, by conceding to the Colonists large powers of representative self-government. Lord John Russell explained the scheme which embodied these ideas on the 8th of February. To the Cape Colony he granted two Chambers. The first was representative, and elected under a property qualification. The second, or Legislative Council, was to be elected by persons with a higher property qualification, who had been named by the Crown or municipal bodies for magisterial and municipal offices as individuals of weight and influence. For Australia he proposed a system under which there should be only one Legislative Council, two-thirds elected by the people, and one-third named by the Governor, on the pattern of the system adopted by New South Wales, but with power to the Colonists to change to the bi-cameral or two-Chamber system if they preferred it. Provision was made for constituting, on petition of any two Colonies, a Federal Assembly representing all the Colonial Legislatures, to frame a common tariff, or initiate a common policy for dealing with waste lands. It was in introducing this great scheme that Lord John Russell said that, whilst reserving questions of military defence, the central idea of his Colonial policy was this: political freedom can be best promoted in the Colonies by acting on the general rule, that while the Imperial Government must be their representative in all foreign relations, it will interfere in their domestic affairs no further than may be manifestly necessary to prevent a conflict in the State itself.

By finally and formally establishing this principle, the Government of the Queen did all that was humanly possible to repair the wrong done to England and the English people by her grandfather, George III., who flung away, not a crown, as did James II., but a virgin continent, to gratify an absolutist prejudice.

The Bill passed the House of Commons, though the scheme was open to objection. Had it not been open to objection, it would have been a perfect Bill, “that faultless monster,” to adapt Pope’s line, “which the world ne’er saw.” On the whole, however, it was wonderfully well received. Its opponents objected mainly to the adoption of the uni-cameral instead of the bi-cameral system, namely, that of governing by one instead of by two Legislative Assemblies. Why, it was asked, should Australia be limited to one Legislative Assembly when the Cape was permitted to have two? Another objection was to the introduction of a Federative Assembly, which was opposed bitterly as a novelty even by Tory politicians like Mr. Disraeli, who in after-years strongly advocated Imperial Federation. Another more valid objection urged by Radicals like Sir W. Molesworth, was that the scheme gave the Colonial Office too much power. There was good sense in his contention, supported by Tories like Mr. Adderley (afterwards Lord Norton), that the Colonial Parliament should not only be vested with all legislative powers which were not Imperial, but that this should be done by mentioning the powers that were Imperial, and leaving everything not mentioned in that category, to be considered as Colonial. This point gave rise to an able and thoughtful debate on the report of the Bill after it emerged from

VIEW IN PHŒNIX PARK, DUBLIN.

Committee, in which it may be interesting to state that Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech in support of the Tory-Radical opposition, which may be said to contain the germs of the principle on which his Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886 was based. On the other hand, to Mr. Gladstone must be credited the oddest and most ridiculous of all the amendments to the measure. His ecclesiasticism induced him to propose that in every Colony the Church of England be authorised to form a synod independent of the Imperial or Colonial Government, and empowered to make laws binding on Anglican Colonists. The idea of empowering the Anglican Church courts in our free Colonies to make regulations, quite independently of the Crown or the Colony, which were to be not only binding in foro conscientiæ, but were also to have the force of law, in Royal and Colonial courts, was not only mediæval, but monstrous. Yet it was only rejected by 187 to 182. Perhaps this accounted for what was by far the most trenchant speech made in opposition to the Bill, that of the Bishop of Oxford in the House of Lords, though even he did not venture to reject the measure, his proposal being merely to refer

MR. HORSMAN.

it to a Committee. It was a speech that would have defeated the Government, but for Lord Grey’s conciliatory offer to go on with the Bill even if the House struck out the clause enabling Colonial Legislatures to alter their constitution, and the clause enabling the Colonists to form a Federative Assembly. This won for the Government a majority of 13. As the clause sanctioning a Federative Assembly was carried in the Lords, against the bitter opposition of the Tories, only by a majority of one, it was eventually abandoned. They further marred the Bill by conferring exceptional political privileges on wealthy squatters, and by prohibiting any Legislative Chamber from eliminating its non-elective element. The interesting thing to notice is how the Tory Party of the day completely stamped out the germ of that Imperial policy of Colonial confederation which Lord John Russell and Lord Grey so wisely strove to plant. As “amended” by the Lords, the Bill passed into law, much to the satisfaction of the Queen, who, when she sanctioned the measure, felt sure that a vigilant personal superintendence of the details of Colonial, as well as foreign affairs, would not thereafter be added to the already arduous duties and anxieties of the Sovereign.

Ireland, as usual, was this Session the object or victim of an eleemosynary financial policy. She had hanging over her, in the shape of relief loans made during ten years, an unliquidated debt of £4,483,000. Besides that, some of the Poor Law Unions were so burdened with debt contracted for local purposes—frequently purposes of jobbery—that they needed help. Lord John Russell therefore proposed to consolidate the unliquidated local debts since 1839, and, subject to existing conditions of interest, extend the period of repayment to forty years. For the immediate relief of bankrupt and semi-bankrupt Unions he proposed another advance from the Treasury of £300,000. The justification for these loans, which were sanctioned, was that the Irish landowners could not pay the interest on the local debt, in addition to the existing poor-rates.

Ireland having been decimated by famine and emigration, it was considered that it would not be unsafe to lower her elective franchise to one of £8 of annual rateable value, more especially as such a proposal tended to conciliate, without concession, the Radical agitators for Parliamentary reform in England. It did not, however, conciliate Mr. Hume, who caustically reminded Sir William Somerville, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, when he introduced the Irish Franchise Bill, that it put the franchise on a narrower basis than that of Cape Colony, and contended that Irishmen should at least be treated as generously as Hottentots. The Bill enacted that instead of each voter being compelled to claim registration, local authorities should make up lists of voters, subject to the usual objections—in other words, that the rate-book should be a self-acting register. The Tories failed in their attack on the Bill in the House of Commons; but in the Lords they succeeded in raising the qualification to £15, and in altering the registration clause so that new voters must each claim to be registered before they were put on the voters’ roll. The two Houses ultimately accepted a compromise. The Government agreed to increase the qualification from £8 to £12, and the Tories agreed to abandon their alteration of the registration clauses.

On the 18th of May, Lord John Russell brought in a memorable Bill to abolish the office of Lord-Lieutenant—an office the maintenance of which has undoubtedly given an Imperial sanction to the Separatist principle in Ireland. The idea of the Whigs was that the Lord-Lieutenant was an anachronism. The Minister representing Ireland in the House of Commons, though popularly called Secretary for Ireland, is really and legally only Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. Sometimes he sits in the Cabinet when the Lord-Lieutenant does not, and then he is his master’s superior. The Lord-Lieutenant, argued Lord John, had all the responsibility, but never the freedom of action of a Minister of the Crown, and the abolition of his office would facilitate that blending of the Irish and Imperial administrations, which would go far to destroy the Separatist feeling in Ireland. The Queen was very much inclined to favour this step, and for a curious reason. Her Irish tour had impressed her with the fact that her social influence in Ireland might be turned to good account in winning the hearts of a chivalrous and generous people, thereby converting the golden link of the Crown into a healing institution of conciliation. But it was somewhat embarrassing to all parties for the Sovereign to reside regularly in a country, in which the official head of the State was her own Viceroy. Were the Viceroyalty abolished, the Queen promised Lord John Russell that she would from time to time visit Ireland in State, and keep up the Viceregal Lodge in Phœnix Park as a Royal Palace. As for the business of Ireland, it would, according to Lord John, be best carried on by a fourth Secretary of State. The Tories opposed the Bill, because they contended that Lord Clarendon’s success in governing Ireland proved that the Viceroyalty was useful, and because the creation of a fourth Secretary of State was objectionable, for it would necessitate an expensive administrative establishment, and perchance lead to conflicts of authority between the Irish Secretary and the Home Secretary. The Irish members were divided in opinion. Some supported and some opposed the Bill, because it might tend to stimulate Nationalism. Others supported and opposed it for precisely the opposite reason. A third section, as to whose sincerity there could be no doubt, opposed it because it would spoil the trade of Dublin. The general feeling of the country was expressed by Peel, who said he was willing that the experiment should be made, though he said so with hesitancy, but he was also desirous, if it were possible, to see the Irish Administration merged in the Home Office, and not conducted by a fourth Secretary of State.[17] The measure was read a second time by a vote of 295 to 70, but introduced as it was when the country was in a fever of excitement over Lord Palmerston’s foreign quarrels, the country took little interest in it, and it was not pressed further.

Lord Clarendon having in October, 1849, dismissed from the Commission of the Peers, Lord Roden and other Orange magistrates who had been privy to a fray at Dolly’s Brae in the preceding July, their case was brought before the House of Lords this Session by Lord Stanley, on the 12th of July. Stanley delivered a bitter attack on Lord Clarendon, but when he made it clear that he did not propose to do anything more than move for papers and correspondence relating to the affair, it was obvious that he had forced on a debate merely to gratify his Orange supporters. Lord Clarendon defended himself successfully, and convinced everybody that he had simply done his duty as an impartial administrator.

The financial condition of the country was so favourable that Sir C.

THE FUNERAL OF SIR ROBERT PEEL: THE TENANTRY ASSEMBLING AT THE LODGE, DRAYTON MANOR.

Wood, in his Budget Speech of 15th March, said there was a surplus at his disposal of £2,225,000. His estimates for the coming year, on the basis of existing taxation and anticipated expenditure, led him to expect a surplus of £1,500,000. Therefore, there was room for some remission of taxes. The first charge on a surplus, he held ought to be for the reduction of the National Debt—and for that purpose he set aside half his hoped-for surplus. As to the rest, he proposed to exhaust it: first, in reducing the Stamp Duties on the Transfer of Land, and on mortgages under £1,000, and in converting the Stamp Duty on leases into a uniform one of ½ per cent.; and secondly, in ameliorating the lot of the badly-housed labouring classes by repealing the tax on bricks. Though the Budget was ridiculed by the economists, Sir C. Wood’s proposals were agreed to, with the exception of the alteration in the Stamp Duties. It was argued successfully that though the new scale of Stamp Duties would reduce the revenue derived from small sums, they would increase, out of all proportion to this reduction, the revenue from large sums, so that under the pretext of reducing, Sir Charles Wood was actually increasing his revenue. Never was there such haggling and bungling. Nobody seemed to understand a scheme which was complex in detail, and explained by a Minister who was indistinct in his articulation and confused in exposition. Sir Charles Wood had more than once to withdraw his proposals, and substitute others, but finally he accepted a reduction of ½ instead of 1 per cent. on legal conveyances, and 1/8 instead of ½ per cent. on mortgages. The result showed that his opponents were right, and that he was utterly wrong in his calculations of the effect his reductions would have on the revenue of the year.

THE FUNERAL OF SIR ROBERT PEEL: THE CEREMONY IN DRAYTON BASSETT CHURCH.

The demand for retrenchment which had been originally raised by the Radicals, was now emphasised by the Protectionists. Following the example of some of their party in the Colonies, they saw in an attack on the cost of establishments, a means of annoying a Free Trade Government, and perchance of relieving the rural taxpayers, who undoubtedly were suffering by the loss of Protection. Mr. Henley accordingly first appeared with a motion to reduce official salaries. Whereupon Lord John Russell intervened with a motion for a Select Committee to inquire into the subject. Mr. Disraeli opposed to this an amendment to the effect that the House had enough information, and that the Government ought not to shirk the responsibility of initiating, without delay, every practicable reduction in the cost of establishments. His party followed him faithfully, though some, like John Wilson Croker, condemned his tactics and his speech as “Jacobinical.”[18] Mr. Hume also supported him, but Mr. Bright thought that if a Committee recommended reductions, they would be more patiently borne by the victims than if they were enforced by the Government. Mr. Horsman outdid Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Hume, for he demanded that ecclesiastical establishments should also come within the purview of the Committee: Lord John, however, carried his motion. Mr. Cobden then brought forward resolutions in favour of a general reduction of expenditure, contending that it would be possible to save £10,000,000 by cutting down expenditure to the standard of 1835. The Radical financial reformers declared that their object was to reduce taxation that pressed on Labour and impeded production, and that the best way of doing that was to curtail expenditure on the Army and Navy, which were in excess of the strength necessary for National Defence, provided the Foreign Office pursued a policy of non-intervention. Whigs and Tories united in defeating Mr. Cobden. Mr. Henry Drummond next, on behalf of the Protectionist Tories, moved that adequate means be adopted to reduce taxation, and thereby increase the wage-fund of the country. His plan was to cut down all official salaries, and revise all burdens that checked the growth of raw produce. The motion was disposed of by carrying the “previous question,” because, though some Radicals like Mr. Hume and Mr. Bright voted for it, most people saw in it a Protectionist “trap.” Lord Duncan very nearly on a subsequent occasion repealed the Window Tax,[19] but Mr. Milner Gibson failed in his attack on the Paper Duty, as did Mr. Cayley in his effort to repeal the Malt Tax.

After much determined opposition from the Tories, with whom Mr. Gladstone acted on this occasion, the Government succeeded in carrying the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of the Universities—a proposal which had the warm support of the Queen and Prince Albert, in consequence of which some foolish people went about saying that there was a conspiracy on foot to Germanise the academic system of England.

The Bishop of London’s Ecclesiastical Appeals Bill, which was introduced into the House of Lords on the 3rd of June, touched on matters regarding which the Queen has always been sensitive—the relation of the Church to the prerogative of the Crown. The principle of the Bill was that ecclesiastical appeals should be tried, not before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as representing the Queen, but before an assemblage of Bishops, whose decision should be binding, not merely on the Judicial Committee, but on the Queen also. This, of course, destroyed her supremacy over the Established Church of England, a prerogative of the Crown which has always been tenaciously guarded. The Bill was rejected. And here it may be well to record what it was that led to its introduction. It was introduced to tranquillise the High Churchmen and Tractarians, who were smarting over the decision of the famous “Gorham case.”

Mr. Gorham had been presented by the Crown to the benefice of Bramford Speke in August, 1847. When the Bishop examined him, he found that he was an extreme Low Churchman, and that he denied that spiritual regeneration was conferred by the sacrament of Baptism; also that his views on other matters, such as predestination and election, were those of the narrowest Presbyterian Calvinists. The Bishop of Exeter refused to institute Mr. Gorham, and, after much litigation, the case was appealed by him from the Court of Arches to the Judicial Committee, who decided that Mr. Gorham’s views were not incompatible with the Thirty-nine Articles. The Judicial Committee on this occasion consisted of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. Associated with them were the Master of the Rolls (Lord Langdale), the Lord Chief Justice (Lord Campbell), Mr. Baron Parke, Vice-Chancellor, Sir J. Knight Bruce, Dr. Lushington, and the Right Hon. Pemberton Leigh. The complaint of the Churchmen was that the ruling of a Bishop and an ecclesiastical court on a disputed point of doctrine was not only considered, but actually reversed by a secular tribunal the large majority of whose members were laymen, and the clerical members of which could not vote, but merely gave their opinion to the lay members who formed the Judicial Committee. Churchmen passionately resented these proceedings, and the excitement they raised was fierce and uncontrollable. The Gorham Appeal Case was the badge of the Church’s servitude to the State. The Bishop of London’s Bill was an attempt to remove that badge by constituting a purely ecclesiastical tribunal to try all ecclesiastical appeals, thereby avoiding the necessity for submitting them to lay judges.

When the Queen prorogued Parliament the shadow of mourning was over both Houses. Sir Robert Peel had died suddenly on the 2nd of July. Returning on horseback from a visit to Buckingham Palace on the 29th of June, he met Miss Ellice, one of Lady Dover’s daughters, on Constitution Hill. As he bowed to her, his horse shied at the Green Park railings, and threw him. His fifth rib was broken, and its jagged end pierced the lung with a mortal wound. He lingered in great agony for three days, and it is hardly possible to describe the extraordinary sensation his accident and illness produced throughout the country. Party animosities vanished, and the nation with one voice joined the Queen in the expressions of sorrow which came from her when she said, “The country mourns over him as over a father.”[20]

Peel’s character will, for this generation, be an enigma. Look at one aspect of it, and it seems as the character of a patriot of the pure Roman type, who flourished in the days “when none were for a Party, and all were for the State.” Look at another aspect of it, and it seems as if it were permeated by the conscious insincerity of the unscrupulous political intriguer, whose stock-in-trade was Party principle, which he bought and sold for power in the Parliamentary market. One thing is clear. His abandonment of Protection could not possibly have been due to a love of office. He knew too well when he determined to repeal the Corn Laws, that he doomed himself to political ostracism. Two things seem to account for Peel’s difficulties with his partisans. He saw clearly, but he did not see far. He used his influence as a political leader to become a Minister, but the Minister of the Queen, and not the Minister of his Party. Long before Catholic Emancipation triumphed he ought to have seen that its triumph was inevitable, and the same may be said of the repeal of the Corn Laws. When he suddenly awoke to the fact that in the one case war, and in the other famine was impending, he reversed his policy, but he had to change front so quickly that he had not time to “educate his Party.” On both occasions he had to choose between his Party and the nation. On neither did he shrink from making his choice as a patriot, even at the cost of his reputation as a far-seeing statesman, or a faithful Party leader. Mr. Disraeli said he was not the greatest statesman, but the greatest Member of Parliament England ever produced. That was a just estimate of his magical power of mastering and managing the House of Commons. But it did no justice to his genius for administration, his vast and accurate knowledge of affairs, and latterly the serene judicial temper of mind, in which he dealt with the most agitating and perplexing political problems. Coldness, secretiveness, and egotism were the only flaws in a character, which otherwise almost realised the loftiest ideal of British patriotism.

At the beginning of 1850 the Queen became grievously alarmed about the health of Prince Albert. The toil and anxieties of politics during the years of revolution and counter-revolution had sadly worn his nervous system. In addition to his work as confidential private secretary to the Queen, his own occupations, which have been noticed from time to time in these pages, had grown more numerous and varied each year. As Mr. Gladstone once observed of Mr. Ayrton, “he was a cormorant for work.” As Sir Theodore Martin says, “Ministers and diplomatists found him at every interview possessed of an encyclopædic range of information, extending even to the minutest details.” The Court at this time was a rich treasure-store of information regarding the inner history of Courts and Embassies on the Continent, on which our diplomatists were grateful to draw for aid and suggestions, when appointed to difficult and delicate missions. “But to the claims of politics,” writes Sir Theodore Martin, “had to be added those which science, art, and questions of social improvement were constantly forcing upon the Prince’s attention.... He was habitually an early riser. Even in winter he would be up by seven, and dispose of a great deal of work before breakfast, by the light of the green German lamp, the original of which he had brought over with him, and which has since become so familiar an object in our English homes.[21] The Queen shared his early habits; but before her Majesty joined him in the sitting-room, where their writing-tables stood always side by side, much had, as a rule, been prepared for her consideration—much done to lighten the pressure of those labours, both of head and hands, which are inseparable from the discharge of the Sovereign’s duties.”[22] These labours ultimately produced insomnia or sleeplessness, and at the beginning of the year the Queen, writing from Windsor to Baron Stockmar, alludes to a suggestion from their doctor that his Royal Highness should take a trip to Brussels, and adds:—“For the sake of his health, which, I assure you, is the cause of my shaken nerves, I could quite bear this sacrifice. He must be set right before we go to London, or God knows how ill he may get.”

MEETING OF THE LADIES’ COMMITTEE AT STAFFORD HOUSE IN AID OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION.

The Queen’s affectionate desires could not be gratified. The business of organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 proved more engrossing than had been anticipated, not merely because the idea at the bottom of it was her husband’s, but because he was found to be the only man in England who thoroughly understood the scheme. As Lord Granville, in a letter to Prince Albert’s secretary, remarked, his Royal Highness seemed to be almost the only person who had considered the subject as a whole and in details. “The whole thing,” said Lord Granville, “would fall to pieces if he left it to itself.”

On the 21st of February a brilliant meeting in support of the undertaking was held at Willis’s Rooms, which was attended by the diplomatic representatives of the leading nations. This was followed up by a grand banquet at the Mansion House, which was attended by the great dignitaries of State, the Foreign Ambassadors, the Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition, and the heads of the county and municipal magistracy. After the Royal Commission had been appointed, the questions of site, space, and finance were those which pressed for settlement, and without doubt the last gave the Queen the utmost anxiety. The public, she saw, must be induced to support the scheme, and meetings be organised for the purpose of making its advantages known. Prince Albert’s speech at this banquet, however, struck the key-note of all the subsequent advocacy which the Exhibition received. The age, said he, was advancing towards the realisation of a unity of mankind, to be attained as the result and product, and not by the destruction, of national characteristics. Science, by abridging distance, was increasing the communicability of ideas. The principle of the division of labour was gradually being applied everywhere, giving rise to specialism, but specialism practised in publicity, and under the stimulus of competition and capital. Thus was Man winning new powers in fulfilling his mission in the world—the discovery of Natural Laws and the conquest of Nature by compliance with them. The central idea of this Exhibition of 1851 was to give a true test, and a living picture of the point at which civilised Man had arrived in carrying out his mission, and to serve as a base of operations for further efforts which might carry Humanity upwards and onwards to a larger and loftier stage. Such, in a brief paraphrase, were the views of Prince Albert, and they ran through the country amidst a chorus of approval. The whole nation responded to the appeal of his Royal Highness, despite the metaphysics and mysticism which slightly tinged it, and the delight of the Queen was correspondingly great. We can easily understand that King Leopold was at first under the impression that a speech of such stately but restrained eloquence, rich in thought and fruitful in suggestion, must have been read. The Queen, however, informed him that he was mistaken. It was, she says, prepared most carefully and laboriously, and then written down; after which it was spoken freely and fluently without reference to the manuscript. “This,” says the Queen, in her letter to the King of the Belgians, “he does so well that no one believes he is ever nervous, which he is.” On the 23rd of February a meeting of ladies was held at Stafford House, under the presidency of the Duchess of Sutherland, with the object of inviting the women of England to assist in promoting the success of the Exhibition, and a very influential committee was formed for this purpose.

When Easter arrived the Queen’s anxiety grew greater as she saw the Prince showing signs of increasing fatigue. At last, yielding to her importunity, he agreed to leave London and take a brief holiday at Windsor. But his idea of a holiday was peculiar. It was to devise a system of draining Osborne, and utilising the sewage, &c., of the estate.

Age and infirmity had now begun to tell sadly on the Duke of Wellington, and he had become anxious as to the future of the army. Whilst he was alive and strong, as he said, he could hold the Commandership-in-chief. But his position was entirely exceptional for a subject, and in theory at least the office ought to be vested in the Sovereign, or some one very near the Throne. Englishmen have ever been a little jealous of permitting this post to be occupied by a subject. The favour it confers on him, and the influence which—if he has a magic personality—he may wield, might, if wedded to ambition, lead to untoward changes. But the fact that the Sovereign was a woman rendered it impossible to vest the Commandership-in-chief in the Crown. The Duke, therefore, to the surprise of the Queen, who apparently had never thought about the matter, suddenly proposed that arrangements should be made for installing Prince Albert as his successor. It says much for the sagacity and good sense of the Queen and Prince that neither of them liked the proposal—although it was one which would have presented an irresistible temptation to most young men. The Prince pleaded want of military experience. The Duke replied that his plan was to appoint under the Prince, as Chief of the Staff, the general who had most experience in the army. But this did not seem to weigh much with the Queen. Probably she knew her husband’s nature better than the Duke, and was perfectly well aware that he would never permit himself to hold office as an ornamental “dummy.” The revolution he wrought in Cambridge after he became Chancellor of the University gives us an indication of what must have happened in the army had he consented to become the Duke’s successor. It would be wrong to say that the Queen paid much heed to the objection on the score of inexperience. Like the Duke, she fully believed that her husband’s extraordinary power of work, and pertinacity of resolution, would soon fit him for the post. But, on the other hand, it was quite clear that the work would absorb all his time. In short, as the Prince would be certain to insist on doing the duty of the office to the fullest extent, and on his own responsibility, it was equally certain that if he became Commander-in-chief, he must abandon all his other occupations—even the chemical researches on the utilisation of sewage, in his pursuance of which he imagined at the time that he had within his grasp a discovery that would immortalise him as a benefactor of humanity. Moreover, how was the Queen to replace him as her private secretary? So much assiduous service could not be expected from any other holder of that office as Prince Albert cheerfully gave, and it was furthermore an office the duties of which, at a time when the Sovereign was beginning to wield an ever-increasing consultative and moderating influence on public affairs, were necessarily augmenting. Then the Queen also urged that as she believed the Prince was undertaking too much work already, she could not approve of his burdening himself with more. To sum up the views of the Queen and her husband on this difficult and delicate affair: many able generals could do the duty of Commander-in-chief as well, if not better, than the Prince. Nobody, however, in the kingdom could possibly do the work he was then doing for the Queen as well as he did it, and so the flattering proposal was put aside. Had it been accepted, and had the Prince overhauled the Horse Guards as he did the University of Cambridge, perhaps the terrible and shameful disasters of the Crimea might have been avoided. On the other hand, it may be doubted if even his patient resolution would have enabled him to reform in so short a time the military administration which collapsed in 1854. In that case, the Court would have been blamed, and blamed unjustly, for the departmental catastrophes that still invest the Crimea with bitter memories for British soldiers.

CAMBRIDGE HOUSE, PICCADILLY (1854).

On the 1st of May the Duke of Connaught was born. His birthday was coincident with that of the Duke of Wellington, and he had as his sponsors two of the most illustrious soldiers of Europe—the great Duke himself, and Prince William of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany. The ceremony of baptism took place on the 22nd of June, when the Prince was christened Arthur William Patrick Albert, the Duke and the Prince of Prussia both being present.

THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ARTHUR.

(After Winterhalter, 1850.)

As spring gave place to summer, the shadow of death fell on the Royal Family. We have seen how genuine and profound was the Queen’s sorrow over the death of Peel. But closely following that sad event came the serious illness of the Duke of Cambridge, a kind-hearted Prince, noted for his bonhomie and for the profusion of his charities. The Queen was assiduous in her attentions to her uncle, whom she dearly loved, and one of her visits to his sick bed accidentally exposed her to a cowardly outrage. When she was leaving Cambridge House, sad-eyed and sorrowful, a man suddenly stepped forward and struck at her face with a cane. Her bonnet protected her somewhat, but her forehead was cruelly bruised by the assault. “The perpetrator is a dandy,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar, “whom you must have often seen in the park, where he makes himself conspicuous.” He was one Robert Pate, formerly a lieutenant in the army. After being tried for his offence on the 11th of July, he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. No motive could be assigned for the outrage, and the jury refused to accept Pate’s plea of insanity.

PATE’S ASSAULT ON THE QUEEN.

The Duke of Cambridge, it may here be said, died on the 8th of July.

Meantime, as if to add to the Queen’s private griefs, an extraordinary attack was made in the press upon Prince Albert and the Exhibition Commissioners. The building was to be in Hyde Park, and this invasion of one of the pleasure-grounds of “the people” was resented. The truth is that a rich and selfish clique of families dwelling in the neighbourhood objected to a great public show, likely to attract multitudes of sightseers, coming between the wind and their nobility, and they represented “the people” for the occasion. The extent to which they were sensitive as to the rights of the populace may be indicated by one suggestion which they made. It was that the Exhibition be transported as a nuisance to the Isle of Dogs, where “the people” dwell in teeming masses. At last an attack was organised on the Exhibition Commissioners in Parliament, and the Queen, knowing well that if it were successful, the project must be abandoned, was sorely grieved at the folly and prejudice which inspired the opposition. The Times was very bitter. Even Mr. Punch, notorious for his sentimental devotion to the Queen, proved himself a sad recreant on this occasion, and Leech made fun of the Prince, because the public were a little niggardly with their subscriptions,[23] which fell far short of £100,000, which was the lowest estimate tendered for the building. But though the attempt of “a little knot of selfish persons,” as the Queen calls them in a letter in which she implores Stockmar to come and comfort her and her husband in their troubles, to drive the Exhibition out of Hyde Park failed, and their attacks in Parliament collapsed, the Prince was still “plagued about the Exhibition,” and the old symptoms of insomnia reappeared, greatly to the alarm of her Majesty. At last a way out of all their difficulties was opened up. It was proposed to establish a guarantee fund to meet any deficit that might be incurred, and on the 12th of June it was started by a subscription of £50,000 from Messrs. Peto, the contractors. In a few days the subscriptions sufficed to solve the financial problem. Ultimately, to the surprise of those who had scoffed at the Prince’s sanguine anticipations, not only were the guarantors freed from all responsibility, but when the Exhibition accounts were closed, the Commissioners found themselves with a balance of a quarter of a million in hand. The work was accordingly begun without further delay.

But no sooner had one source of vexation vanished than another was opened. In August the Queen, mortified at further displays of wayward recklessness on Lord Palmerston’s part, and failing to inspire the Prime Minister with enough courage to rebuke him, at last determined to take the matter in hand herself. Although Palmerston was then at the height of his popularity, owing to the triumph of his civis Romanum sum doctrine in the Don Pacifico debate, her Majesty penned a Memorandum to Lord John Russell, which has become historic. It is dated the 16th of August, and was written at Osborne. In it she accepts Lord Palmerston’s disavowal of an intention to offer her any disrespect by his past neglect, but, to prevent fresh mistakes, she deems it as well to say that in future she requires—

“(1) That he (the Foreign Secretary) will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she has given her Royal sanction. (2) Having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as failure in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her Constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken based on that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time, and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off.” Lord John Russell sent this Memorandum to Palmerston, who lightly pleaded pressure of business in palliation of his past faults, but promised to behave better in time to come. Had he been a man of high spirit or sensitive feelings, he would have resigned when the Queen’s Memorandum was sent to him. High spirit, however, was not to be expected from the Minister that sent a British fleet to coerce Greece, though he dared not utter a word of protest against the Russian invasion of Hungary,[24] or who, whilst he could be swift to resent an impertinence from a decrepit Power like Spain, accepted with the utmost meekness a rebuke from Russia in reference to the Greek affair, couched in the language of deliberate insult. On the contrary, whilst his friends gave out that he was manfully fighting the battle of the people against the Sovereign and the foreign Prince, who was “the power behind the Throne,” Palmerston was abasing himself before both. He implored Prince Albert to intercede for him with the Queen in order that she might grant him an interview. The Prince, in a Memorandum dated 17th of August, 1850, writes:—

“After the Council for the Speech from the Throne for the Prorogation of Parliament on the 14th I saw Lord Palmerston, as he had desired it. He was very much agitated, shook, and had tears in his eyes, so as to quite move me, who never under any circumstances had known him otherwise than with a bland smile on his face.” It was not the condemnation of his policy, he told Prince Albert, that affected him most closely. The “accusation that he had been wanting in his respect to the Queen, whom he had every reason to respect as his Sovereign, and as a woman whose virtues he admired, and to whom he was bound by every tie of duty and gratitude, was an imputation on his honour as a gentleman, and if he could have made himself guilty of it, he was almost no longer fit to be tolerated in society.”[25] The “almost” is

LORD JOHN RUSSELL (1850).

characteristically Palmerstonian. Her Majesty, according to Prince Albert, did not impute any intentional want of regard to Lord Palmerston; but her complaint was that he never submitted any question to her “intact,” that is to say, he always contrived to commit the Government before the Queen could express an opinion. As her opinion had of late been at variance with Lord Palmerston’s, this mode of doing business was to her objectionable. Her Majesty had always been frank with her Ministers, and when overruled, she had accepted loyally their decision. “She knew,” said the Prince, “that they were going to battle together, and that she was going to receive the blows which were aimed at the Government; and that she had these last years received several such as no Sovereign of England had before been obliged to put up with, and which had been most painful to her.” She did not wish to trouble her Ministers about details. But when principles were settled at their conferences, she thought she too should be consulted and advised. Palmerston’s excuse was the old one—want of time; but he said he was willing to come to the Palace at any moment to Prince Albert, and give any explanations that might be wanted either to the Queen or her husband.

If the Prince’s account be correct, the Minister seems to have conducted himself throughout this interview with hysterical servility, which may, however, have been simulated. As for his penitence, it was short-lived. In September he had another quarrel with the Queen over the wording of a despatch, in which he had foolishly gone out of his way to impugn the honour of England. This despatch rose out of the Haynau incident. The Austrian General Haynau had come to England on a visit, and the Radicals stirred up public feeling against him on account of his brutality in crushing the Hungarian insurrection, more especially for his cowardly conduct in stripping women, and flogging them publicly. When he went to visit the Brewery of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, the workmen in the place recognised him. They turned out en masse, assaulted, hustled, and insulted “the Austrian butcher,” till he fled in terror from the premises, and took refuge in a little public-house, from which the police smuggled him away. Naturally, Lord Palmerston expressed his regret to the Austrian Ambassador; but it was also necessary to send a formal Note on the subject to the Austrian Government. This Note was a model of Palmerstonian maladroitness. In the first place, it contained an uncalled-for imputation on the English people, because it admitted that they were so incapable of courtesy and self-control that no foreigner was safe in England who happened to be unpopular. Secondly, it implied that Haynau had been imprudent in visiting England at all. The Queen, whose views were shared by the Prime Minister, objected to both of these statements—one as derogatory to the honour of England, the other as needlessly offensive to Austria. But, on her objecting, she discovered that it was impossible to alter the Note, which had been sent to the Austrian Ambassador before the draft had been submitted to her. The Queen, however, insisted on the withdrawal of the Note, and so did Lord John Russell. Palmerston first of all tried to browbeat the Prime Minister by threatening to resign. But when Lord John informed him (16th of October) that the threat was futile, Palmerston submissively withdrew the Note, and substituted for it another drawn up in accordance with the Queen’s views.

Another serious conflict of opinion between the Queen and Lord Palmerston at this period arose out of the dispute between Denmark and the German States as to the settlement of Schleswig-Holstein. The German population of these Duchies had revolted against the petty tyranny of the Danes, and it was notorious that they were supported secretly by Prussia. The rebellion was suppressed; and though almost all the Liberals of Europe were in favour of letting the Duchies be incorporated in Germany, the Governments of the various Powers took the contrary view. The Austro-Prussian Convention at Olmütz, of 29th November, restoring peace and stipulating for the disarmament of the Duchies, left the matter uncertain; but Austria was obviously for thwarting, whilst Prussia was for gratifying, the aspirations of the German or national party in the Duchies. All through this controversy the Queen was anti-Austrian, and strongly in favour of letting the Schleswig-Hoisteiners have their own way. Palmerston, and in this he was powerfully supported by the Tories, was violently pro-Austrian, and used the influence of England as far as possible to prevent the Duchies gravitating to Germany. For the moment he was successful. But subsequent events, as all the world knows, justified the wiser and more liberal views of the Queen.

On the 26th of August, 1850, Louis Philippe died; in fact, the sad news of his death greeted the Queen and her husband a few days after their return from a brief visit to the King of the Belgians at Ostend, and marred the celebration of Prince Albert’s thirty-first birthday at Osborne.

On the 27th of August the Royal Family migrated northwards. The Queen and Prince Albert opened the great railway bridges at Newcastle and Berwick, and then went on to Edinburgh, where they stayed at Holyrood Palace.

The reception of the Queen in the “grey metropolis of the North” was picturesque as well as enthusiastic. The Royal Company of Archers in their quaint old costume, headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, claimed their historic right of acting as the Queen’s body-guard, and they surrounded her carriage as it drove through swarming crowds from the railway station to the Palace, in which no Queen of Scotland had set foot since Mary Stuart crossed its threshold, never to return to it again. Immediately after her arrival, the Queen and her family began to explore the Palace and its ruined precincts, and she records her delight in her Diary at discovering in the crumbling Abbey the tomb “of Flora Macdonald’s mother,” not the Flora Macdonald who assisted the Young Pretender to escape, but a lady of the Clanranald family, who was then serving as a Maid of Honour. Next morning the Queen and “the children” drove round the park, and climbed Arthur’s Seat, and the Prince proceeded to lay the foundation-stone of the National Gallery of Arts, whilst the rest of the day was spent in sightseeing. At half-past eight on the following morning her Majesty started for Balmoral, which she reached in the afternoon. Here, as Prince Albert says in one of his letters to Stockmar, they tried to strengthen their hearts amid the stillness and solemnity of the mountains,[26] and truly they had much need of rest. The harassing conflicts with Lord Palmerston, the deaths of Peel, Louis Philippe, Queen Adelaide, the Duke of Cambridge, and the faithful Anson, and the news that the Queen of the Belgians was dying, contributed to produce in the Queen great depression of spirits.

The sport on the hills delighted the Prince. The primitive life and guileless character of the people vastly interested the Queen, who has left on record her account of several curious excursions she made, and of the gathering of clansmen at Braemar, which she witnessed. Writing on the 12th of September, 1850, her Majesty says in her “Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “We lunched early, and then went at half-past two o’clock, with the children and all our party, except Lady Douro, to the Gathering at the Castle of Braemar, as we did last year. The Duffs, Farquharsons, the Leeds’s, and those staying with them, and Captain Forbes and forty of his men who had come over from Strath Don, were there. Some of our people were there also. There were the usual games of ‘putting the stone,’ ‘throwing the hammer’ and ‘caber,’ and racing up the hill of Craig Cheunnich, which was accomplished in less than six minutes and a half; and we were all much pleased to see our gillie Duncan,[27] who is an active, good-looking young man, win. He was far before the others the whole way. It is a fearful exertion. Mr. Farquharson brought him up to me afterwards. Eighteen or nineteen started, and it looked very pretty to see them run off in their different coloured kilts, with their white shirts (the jackets or doublets they take off for all the games), and scramble up through the wood, emerging gradually at the edge of it, and climbing the hill.

“After this we went into the Castle, and saw some dancing; the prettiest was a reel by Mr. Farquharson’s children and some other children, and the ‘Ghillie Callum,’ beautifully danced by John Athole Farquharson, the fourth son. The twelve children were all there, including the baby, who is two years old.

“Mama, Charles, and Ernest joined us at Braemar. Mama enjoys it all very much; it is her first visit to Scotland. We left after the dancing.”

The Court returned to Windsor late in the autumn, and one of the first dismal communications made to her Majesty was that of the death of the Queen of the Belgians on the 11th of October. “Victoria is greatly distressed,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar. “Her aunt was her only confidante and friend. Sex, age, culture, feeling, rank—in all these they were so much on a par, that a relation of unconstrained friendship naturally grew up between them.” This friendship, it may be added, survived even the treachery of Queen Louise’s father, Louis Philippe, in the matter of the Spanish marriages.

The end of the year 1850 was marked by another amazing epidemic of bigotry on the part of the people and the Government, which was very distressing to the serene and evenly balanced minds of the Queen and her husband. This was known as the “Papal Aggression movement,” and it is in these days difficult to understand how a sensible nation could have been swept into its vortex.

On the 24th of September the Pope issued a Brief re-establishing the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. In other words, he substituted Bishops and Archbishops deriving their titles from their sees, for the Vicars Apostolic who govern Romish missions in heathen lands. He partitioned England into sees, very much as the Wesleyans had mapped it into circuits and districts. The act was purely one of ecclesiastical administration, and of no concern to any body but the small Roman Catholic community in England. But prominent leaders of the Church began to talk about it in extravagant terms, as if it constituted the spiritual annexation of England to Rome, and as if it were a formal assertion of the authority of the Pope over that of the Queen. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Dr. Nicholas Wiseman, and Father (now Cardinal) Newman, were particularly indiscreet in their references to the Papal Brief. Dr. Wiseman, for example, issued a pompous Pastoral “Given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome,” on the 7th of October, boasting that “Catholic England had been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished.”

Dr. Ullathorne, the Bishop of Birmingham, was one of those prelates who had the sense and tact to see what mischief would spring from Cardinal Wiseman’s folly, and he did his best to explain the real meaning of the Papal Brief. But his voice was like that of one crying in the wilderness. Did not Father Newman, preaching at Dr. Ullathorne’s enthronisation, say that “the people of England, who for so many years have been separated from the see of Rome, are about, of their own free will, to be added to the Holy Church”? Was it not clear, despite the reasonable explanations of Dr. Ullathorne and others, that what the Papists really meant was that the Reformation was now reversed, and that England was reconquered for Rome? Outraged Protestantism, arguing in this fashion, without distinction of party or sect, accordingly rose in its wrath, and hurled angry defiance at the Pope. The bigots, taking advantage of this outburst of popular passion, demanded that the law should step in and punish the insolent priesthood, who thus challenged the prerogatives of the Crown.

On the 4th of November, Lord John Russell addressed to the Bishop of Durham a letter, almost equalling Cardinal Wiseman’s in its folly. The Prime Minister, in fact, gave expression to the worst phase of contemporary excitement, and fully endorsed the ridiculous notion that a prelate, who had but recently been restored to, and even then was kept on, his throne in Rome by foreign bayonets, had established his supremacy over England, in a manner inconsistent with the authority of the Queen. This Durham letter further stimulated the frenzy of intolerance into which England plunged. Meetings were held everywhere protesting against Papal aggression, and transmitting loyal addresses to the Queen. Guy Fawkes’ Day was celebrated with more

THE ROYAL APARTMENTS, HOLYROOD PALACE.

1, Throne Room; 2, Breakfast Parlour; 3, Evening Drawing-room; 4, Grand Staircase; 5, Morning Drawing-room.

than usual zeal, and in most towns effigies of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were paraded through hooting crowds, and burnt in bonfires amidst the derision of the populace. The Universities and the Corporation of London in December sent deputations in great state to Windsor to present addresses to the Queen, protesting against insidious attacks on the authority, prerogatives, and exclusive jurisdiction of the Crown. The Queen’s replies to these addresses were spirited but calm, and absolutely free from intolerance. “I would never have consented,” she tells her “aunt Gloucester” in a letter written after the deputations had been received, “to say anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sincerely Protestant as I always have been and always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves Protestants, while they are in fact quite the contrary,[28] I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at the public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many good and innocent Roman Catholics.”[29]

On the last day of December, 1850, the Queen was gratified to hear that one of her husband’s cherished designs had been carried out. The building for the International Exhibition had risen from the ground in Hyde Park with the magical rapidity of a fairy palace. The design which had been chosen was that of a French artist, and Londoners had looked on with amazement at the erection of the great central dome of crystal, which dwarfed even that of St. Paul’s into insignificance. The plan for carrying out the design was suggested by Mr. Paxton, chief superintendent of the Duke of Devonshire’s gardens, and it was but an expansion of the grand conservatory which he had built for his Grace at Chatsworth. Iron and glass were the materials used for its construction. The cast-iron columns and girders were all alike—four columns and four girders being placed in relative positions forming a square of 24 feet, which could be raised to any height, or expanded laterally in any required direction, merely by joining other columns and girders to them. The building, therefore, grew up in multiples of twenty-four, and it could be taken to pieces just as readily as if it had been a doll’s house, and put up on any other site in exactly the same form. As a matter of fact, after the Exhibition was held in 1851, this wonderful Palace of Crystal was removed to Sydenham, where it has long been one of the raree-shows of London. The building covered 18 acres of ground, and gave an exhibiting surface of 21 acres; in truth, it was, within ten feet, twice the width of St. Paul’s, and four times as long. The contractors, Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., accepted the order for the work on the 26th of July, and though there was not a single bar of iron or pane of glass prepared at that date, they handed the completed building over to the Commissioners, ready for painting and fitting, on the last day of the year.

CHAPTER XXV.
FALL OF THE WHIG CABINET.

Debates on “No Popery”—Mutiny of the Irish Brigade—Defeat of Lord John Russell—Lord Stanley “sent for”—Timid Tories—Lord Stanley’s Interviews with the Queen—A Statesman’s “Domestic Duties”—Is Coalition Possible?—The Queen’s Mistake—The Duke of Wellington’s Advice—Return of the Whigs to Office—The Queen’s Aversions—The “No Popery” Bill Reduced to a Nullity—Another Bungled Budget—The Income Tax Controversy—The Pillar of Free Trade—The Window Tax and the House Duty—The Radicals and the Slave Trade—King “Bomba” and Mr. Gladstone—Cobden on General Disarmament—Palmerston in a Millennial Mood—The Whig-Peelite Intrigue—The Queen and the Kossuth Demonstrations—Another Quarrel with Palmerston—A Merry Council of State.

On the 4th of February, 1851, Parliament assembled with the din of the agitation over Papal aggression ringing in its ears. Men talked of nothing save the legislation that might be necessary to check the encroachments of Rome. But it was not supposed that the course of the Government would be other than smooth, for not only was the Prime Minister in full accord with the popular feeling against Papal aggression, but the great International Exhibition dwarfed public interest in purely party questions. We shall see how these anticipations were falsified by events, and how the Whig Government was hurried to its doom. One of the politicians behind the scenes, who forecast the fall of the Cabinet more accurately than the public, was Mr. Cobden. “I expect,” he writes on the 19th of February in one of his letters, “that this ‘No Popery’ cry will prove fatal to the Ministry. It is generally thought that the Government will be in a minority on some important question, probably the Income Tax, in less than a fortnight. The Irish Catholic members are determined to do everything to turn out Lord John. Indeed, Ireland is in such a state of exasperation with the Whigs, that no Irish member having a Catholic constituency will have a chance of being elected again unless he votes through thick and thin to upset the Ministry.”[30]

The Address to the Queen was carried in both Houses. The Queen’s Speech promised a measure for resisting the assumption that a foreign Power had a right to confer ecclesiastical titles in England; and some forthcoming Chancery reforms, and reforms in the registration of titles, were also promised. The Protectionists harped on their old string—agricultural distress. The Radicals complained that the Government gave them no hope of cutting down taxation, and grumbled because no reference was made to Parliamentary reform. But they fought rather shy of the proposed legislation against Papal aggression; yet speaking generally, the “No Popery” cry was popular in both Houses of Parliament.

ST. STEPHEN’S CRYPT, WESTMINSTER PALACE.

On the 7th of February, Lord John Russell moved for leave to introduce his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which prevented the assumption of such titles “in respect of places in the United Kingdom,” and he was met by a scathing attack from Mr. Roebuck, who condemned the measure as retrograde and reactionary. The feebleness of the Bill was in comic contrast with the fierce agitation which had produced it, and with the extravagant terms of the Premier’s speech, which might have led one to suppose the Penal Laws were being re-enacted. As Mr. Roebuck said, if Dr. Wiseman called himself Archbishop, instead of Archbishop of Westminster, the Bill could not even touch him. For four nights did the debate drag on, till ultimately leave to introduce the measure was carried by a majority of 332. The Irish members, had they been sixty Quakers instead of sixty Catholics, could dictate terms to any Ministry in a keen party fight, and as they were determined to punish Lord John Russell for his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, it was obvious that on some other question where a close division was expected the Government would be beaten by the votes of their Irish supporters. It was an ominous sign that they were saved from defeat only by a majority of

MR. LOCKE KING.

sixteen on Mr. Disraeli’s motion for the relief of agricultural distress. But the fatal blow came when Mr. Locke King, on the 20th of February, brought forward his motion for leave to introduce a Bill for equalising the town and county franchise, by reducing the latter to the limit of £10 yearly value. Although Lord John Russell promised to bring in a measure for improving representation, he resisted Mr. King’s motion. It was then carried against him by a vote of 100 against 52. “The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” writes Mr. Cobden to his friend Mr. J. Parker, “is the real cause of the upset of the Whig coach, or rather of the coachman leaping from the box to escape an upset. This measure cannot be persevered in by any Government so far as Ireland is concerned, for no Government can exist if fifty Irish members are pledged to vote against them under all circumstances when they are in danger. A dissolution would give at least fifty members to do that work, and they would be all watched as they are now by their constituents. This mode of fighting by means of adverse votes in the House is far more difficult to deal with by our aristocratic rulers than was the plan of O’Connell, when he called his monster meetings. They could be stopped by a proclamation or put down by soldiers, but neither of these modes will avail in the House. What folly,” adds Mr. Cobden, as if he had even then foreseen the success of Parnellism in our day, “it was to give a real representation to the Irish counties, and to think of still maintaining the old persecuting ascendency.”[31] On the 22nd of February, Lord John, as Mr. Cobden says, “leaped from the box,” for on that day he and his colleagues resigned.

The Queen sent for Lord Stanley, who frankly told her that he could not undertake to form a Ministry. He, however, said he would try to form one if Lord John Russell failed to reconstruct his defeated Cabinet. Lord Stanley’s motive for refusing office is to be found in the fact that there was a serious division of opinion among his followers, on the one question that was vital to their existence as a party. Some of the ablest of them, led by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, objected to any proposal to tax foreign corn, and yet if the Protectionists refused to do that, their locus standi in the country was gone. Her Majesty next appealed to Lord John Russell to form a coalition with the Peelites. This project proved to be hopeless. The Peelites were bitterly opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and though Lord John offered to attenuate it to the verge of absolute nullity, they could not sanction it in any shape or form. Moreover, Sir James Graham was afraid that if he joined a Whig Ministry he might quarrel with Lord Palmerston, and Lord Grey was equally afraid that he might quarrel with Sir James Graham. The Peelite leaders also thought that before a Coalition Government could be organised with any chance of success, it must be preceded by co-operation in opposition, between the two parties to it, and hence they wished Lord Stanley to form a Ministry which, from its Protectionist policy, must needs have but a brief existence. This abortive attempt to form an alliance between the Whigs and the Peelites is memorable, because it was the first step that led them both on the path which brought them to the celebrated and fateful Coalition of 1852.

On the 26th of February, the Queen accordingly sent for Lord Stanley again, and he, with a somewhat rueful countenance, pledged himself to try and form a Cabinet. Again he failed, and for reasons which are given by Lord Malmesbury in his diary under the date of the 28th of February. “We met,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “at Lord Stanley’s in St. James’s Square, and have failed in forming a Government. He had previously requested me to take the Colonial Office, which I consider a great compliment, as it is one of the hardest worked of places. Those assembled were Mr. Disraeli, Sir John Pakington, Mr. Walpole, Lord Hardwicke, Mr. Henley, Mr. Herries, Lord John Manners, and Lord Eglinton. Everything went smoothly, each willingly accepting the respective post to which Lord Stanley appointed him, excepting Mr. Henley, who made such difficulties about himself, and submitted so many upon various subjects, that Lord Stanley threw up the game, to the great disappointment and disgust of most of the others present. Mr. Henley seemed quite overpowered by the responsibility he was asked to undertake as President of the Board of Trade, and is evidently a most nervous man. Mr. Disraeli did not conceal his anger at his want of courage and interest in the matter.... In the House of Lords, Lord Stanley announced his failure, and did not conceal it as being caused by the want of experience in public business which he found existed in his party. This is possibly the case, but what really caused the break up of the conference was the timid conduct of Mr. Henley and Mr. Herries.[32] Mr. Herries,” adds Lord Malmesbury, “at this conference, looked like an old doctor who had just killed a patient, and Mr. Henley like the undertaker who was to bury him.” Lord Stanley gave a half-sarcastic turn to his announcement in the House of Lords of the various motives which had led his friends to refuse office. There was a titter when he said that one gentleman had declined to serve because he was pressed with domestic duties, which gave occasion for one of Lord Stanley’s brightest jokes. Lady Jocelyn ironically asked Stanley who it was who was so anxious about his domestic duties. “It is not Jocelyn,” was the cutting reply.[33] An attempted combination with the Peelites had broken down, though Mr. Gladstone was offered a high post in the Cabinet, and the Queen then summoned the Duke of Wellington for his advice.

Matters were at an absolute deadlock. There were three questions in the public mind—Protection versus Free Trade, Parliamentary Reform, and Papal Aggression. As Prince Albert put it in a memorandum which he drew up for the Duke’s consideration, on the first question Peelites, Radicals, and Whigs were united, and formed a solid working majority. On the second question they were also united against the Protectionists. But on the third question the Whigs and Protectionists were united against the Peelites and the Radicals reinforced by the Irish party. Any policy that could unite Peelites, Whigs, Radicals, and Irish would therefore furnish a majority capable of keeping in office a Cabinet that could carry on the Queen’s Government. But the Peelites, the Irish, and the Radicals were just as determined that there should be no anti-Papal legislation, as the Whigs and Protectionists were determined on demanding it. Why not, in such circumstances, leave Papal aggression an open question, in a Coalition Ministry of Whigs, Peelites, and Radicals, allowing Lord John Russell to go on with an attenuated Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and Sir James Graham to oppose it? This suggestion

THE GREEN DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.

obviously sprang from the opinion which the Queen had held strongly ever since the year 1846, that the country would never get an efficient Government till a Coalition Ministry was formed. It was, however, quite impracticable. The Queen made no allowance for the ease with which a Cabinet loses prestige in the atmosphere of passion which pervades the House of Commons, where the fact that a Cabinet is even suspected of being divided destroys its moral authority. Neither the Duke of Wellington nor Lord Lansdowne, who was also consulted, could advise the Queen to put forward this project. The Duke, in fact, advised her to send for Lord John Russell once again. This was accordingly done. “The last act of the drama fell out last night,” writes Mr. Greville on the 4th of March, “as everybody foresaw it would and must.” Lord John returned to office with his Ministry unchanged, which, says Mr. Greville, “was better than trying some trifling patching-up, or some shuffling of the same pack, and it makes a future reconstruction more easy.” On the same night Lord Granville dined at the Palace. “The Queen and Prince Albert,” writes Mr. Greville, “both talked to him a great deal of what has been passing, and very openly. She is satisfied with herself, as well she may be, and hardly with anybody else;

SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS.

not dissatisfied personally with Stanley, of whom she spoke in terms indicative of liking him. She thinks Lord John Russell and his Cabinet might have done more than they did to obtain Graham and the Peelites, and might have made the Papal question more of an open question; but Granville says that it is evident she is heart and soul with the Peelites, so strong is the influence of Sir Robert, and they are very stout and determined about Free Trade. The Queen and Prince think this resuscitated concern very shaky, and that it will not last. Her favourite aversions are, first and foremost, Palmerston, and Disraeli next. It is very likely that this latter antipathy (which no doubt Stanley discovered) contributed to his reluctance to form a Government. Such is the feeling about him in their minds.” Mr. Disraeli, aware of their antipathy, had, indeed, offered to efface himself or to accept any office, no matter how humble, that would not bring him into personal communication with the Sovereign, in order to facilitate the return of his party to power. It may be here convenient to note that the Queen, though entertaining strong personal opinions about the capacity of her Ministers, has been ever prompt to change them when they gave her good reasons for doing so. Her antipathy to Peel in 1839 was notorious. Yet when Peel became Prime Minister he completely won her confidence. Her antipathy to Palmerston ceased after he left the Foreign Office and became Prime Minister, and the same may be said of her aversion to Mr. Disraeli, who, as Lord Beaconsfield, received from the Crown a tribute of homage and favour rarely accorded to any subject.

The reinstatement of the Whigs pleased nobody. However, a dissolution was dreaded, and all parties were therefore forced to tolerate them. But they were, as a Government, utterly discredited, and their final fall was imminent. On their return to office, the Government produced a new edition of their Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It consisted simply in a declaration that the assumption of such titles was illegal. What may be termed the stringent penal clauses were cut out, and in this form the measure was received with universal displeasure, mingled with contempt. The bigots complained that the measure was rendered futile. The Radicals complained that it was a concession to the bigots. As for the Irish members, they opposed what was left of it, simply to compel the Government to drain the chalice of mortification to the lees. So ingeniously was the Bill obstructed that it was not read a third time till a month after its introduction. The House of Lords passed it after debating the second reading for two nights. Its opponents predicted it would be a dead letter, and events verified their prophecies. As Sir George Cornewall Lewis said, “Neither the assumption of the territorial title nor the prohibition to assume it was of the least practical importance.”[34]

The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1851 may be briefly told. The obstruction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill left little time for legislation. Sir Charles Wood, as usual, bungled the Budget. He had a comfortable surplus of £2,521,000. His estimates were careful and judicious, and showed on the basis of existing taxation an anticipated surplus of £1,892,000. It was in disposing of this sum that Sir Charles plunged into a sea of difficulties. He said it would not enable him to abolish the Income Tax, the retention of which, during the early days of Free Trade, he recommended as necessary for the stability of the fiscal system. Hence he proposed to spend his estimated surplus in (1), reducing debt by about £1,000,000; (2), in commuting a tax “which bore on the health and morals of the lower classes,” namely, the Window Tax, into a house duty; (3), in reducing the duty on foreign and colonial coffee to a uniform rate of threepence in the pound; (4), in reducing the timber duty by fifty per cent.; (5), and by transferring to the State a certain proportion of the local charge for maintaining pauper lunatics. On the 17th of February, in Committee of Ways and Means, Sir Charles accordingly moved that the Income Tax and Stamp Duties in Ireland be renewed for a limited period. The manner in which the Budget was received clearly showed that it would be unpopular. The Tories attacked it because the Income Tax was to be retained, and the transfer of the charge for pauper lunatics they ridiculed as a mockery of relief to the distressed rural ratepayers. Mr. Hume complained that there was no attempt made to reduce military expenditure by asking the Colonies to bear the cost of their own defence. The representatives of the large towns protested violently against commuting the Window Tax into a house duty. The controversy was, however, cut short by Lord John Russell’s resignation after his defeat on Mr. Locke King’s resolution, to which reference has already been made.

On the 5th of April Sir Charles Wood, after his usual manner, brought forward a new Budget. He proposed now to levy a uniform duty of ninepence on the annual value of houses, and sixpence on shops, without reference to the number of their windows. This would in nearly all cases impose a smaller burden on houses than the Window Tax, the capricious and unequal incidence of which had made it intensely unpopular—the greatest relief being given to the houses which had more windows than were proportionate to their annual value. The loss from the Window Tax and the reduction of the duty on coffee left a surplus of £924,000 for emergencies, and Sir Charles Wood was still deaf to the demand for the abolition of the Income Tax. The Tories contended that the tax had been granted to meet a deficit. There was now no deficit, therefore the tax ought to be removed. The Whigs admitted these facts, but denied the conclusion drawn from them. The tax, they argued, ought not to be removed, because a new reason had risen for its continuance, namely, that the Income Tax enabled the Government to minimise the loss to the revenue which might be entailed by the abandonment of protective duties. This, in fact, is the clue to all the tangled Income Tax controversies of the time. The Income Tax was in truth the keystone of Peel’s Free Trade policy. The Tories, therefore, spared no pains to strike it out of the fabric of fiscal legislation which he and the Whigs had built up. Yet the injustice and frauds perpetrated under the Income Tax were admitted on all sides; and finally an effort was made by Mr. Hume to limit the renewal of the tax to one year, and refer the whole question of its assessment and incidence to a Select Committee. Mr. Hume’s motion was carried against the Government by a vote of 244 to 230. But the fatal objection to it, as Mr. Sidney Herbert pointed out, was that, unless the Government had the Income Tax secured to them for three years, they could not make permanent

THE CAFFRE WAR: NATIVES ATTACKING A CONVOY.

reductions in the duties on coffee and timber. It was absurd to dream of entering on a policy which involved further remission of taxation, so long as £5,000,000 of the revenue—for that was what the Income Tax brought in—depended on an annual vote of the House. Then the concordia discors of the majority was made manifest. As everybody had voted with Mr. Hume from different motives, it was impossible to get competent men to serve on the Committee. That difficulty, however, was after much trouble overcome, and the Government made the best of the situation. They accepted defeat; Lord John Russell, however, stipulating that, whatever might be done, the national credit must be maintained. In other words, he accepted the proposal on the ground that, though the motion granting the Income Tax for one year only was carried, there was no serious intention of refusing to renew the tax if necessary; and that it would be necessary was, of course, certain, unless the £5,500,000 derived from it were replaced by protective duties. This was not a very logical position, and Mr. Disraeli seized the opening which it gave him. Hume’s victory, technically speaking, implied that the financial arrangements of the country were in a provisional state.

GROUP OF DYAKS.

Why, then, asked Mr. Disraeli, sacrifice any revenue at all till something like permanence had been imparted to these arrangements? On the 30th of July he brought forward a futile motion to this effect in a grandiose speech, and was supported by Mr. Gladstone, whose antipathy to the Government was fast becoming uncontrollable. Yet Mr. Gladstone’s argument was sound enough. To surrender the Window Tax for one like the hated House Duty, which rested on a narrow basis and was vitiated by special anomalies of inequality and injustice of incidence, that had secured its abolition in 1834, was surely bad finance. And what was gained? Six-sevenths of the house property of the country were exempted from taxation—house property being a fair enough subject for taxation, provided it be assessed on fair general principles. Nothing could be more precarious than the position of the Income Tax; yet but for it the surplus in hand, which Sir Charles Wood was flinging away, would not exist. Mr. Disraeli, however, in spite of Mr. Gladstone’s support, lost his motion. His inconsistency in voting for Mr. Cayley’s proposal, on the 8th of May, to abolish the Malt Tax, which yielded £5,000,000 of revenue, and in protesting, on the 30th of June, against the sacrifice of £1,600,000 of surplus, as ruinous to public credit, was, of course, disastrous to his pleading.

In the debates on Colonial Policy the Government were more successful than could have been anticipated. Mr. Baillie’s motion censuring Lord Torrington’s maladministration of the affairs of Ceylon was defeated by a large majority, which, says Mr. Greville, set the Cabinet, smarting from various reverses at the time, “on their legs again.”