THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES AND THEIR FAMILY.

(From a Photograph by Messrs. Russell & Sons, London.)

THE
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
QUEEN VICTORIA.

BY
ROBERT WILSON.
——
Illustrated.
——
VOL. IV.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

OSBORNE, FROM THE SOLENT.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE ILLNESS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Effect of Prussian Victories on English Opinion—Sudden Changes of Popular Impulse—Demand for Army Reform—Opposition to the Princess Louise’s Dowry—Opening of Parliament—The Army Bill—Abolition of Purchase—Opposition of the Tory Party—Mr. Disraeli Throws Over his Followers—Obstructing the Purchase Bill—Mr. Cardwell’s Threat—Obstruction in the House of Lords—A Bold Use of the Queen’s Prerogative—The Wrath of the Peers—They Pass a Vote of Censure on the Government—The Ballot Bill—The Peers Reject the Ballot Bill—The University Tests Bill—The Trades Union Bill—Its Defects—The Case of Purchon v. Hartley—The Licensing Bill and its Effect on Parties—Local Government Reform—Mr. Lowe’s Disastrous Budget—The Match Tax—Ex luce lucellum—Withdrawal of the Budget—The Washington Treaty and the Queen—Lord Granville’s Feeble Foreign Policy—His Failure to Mediate Between France and Germany—Bismarck’s Contemptuous Treatment of English Despatches—Væ Victis!—The German Terms of Peace—Asking too Much and Taking too Little—Mr. Gladstone’s Embarrassments—Decaying Popularity of the Government—The Collier Affair—Effect of the Commune on English Opinion—Court Life in 1871—Marriage of the Princess Louise—The Queen Opens the Albert Hall—The Queen at St. Thomas’s Hospital—Prince Arthur’s Income—Public Protests and Irritating Discussions—The Queen’s Illness—Sudden Illness of the Prince of Wales—Growing Anxiety of the People—Alarming Prospects of a Regency—Between Life and Death—Panic in the Money Market—Hopeful Bulletins—Convalescence of the Prince—Public Sympathy with the Queen—Her Majesty’s Letter to the People.

The closing weeks of 1870 and the early days of 1871 were full of anxiety to the Queen. Despite its services to the country, the Cabinet was obviously losing ground. The Franco-Prussian War had brought about a great change in the minds of the people as to the kind of work they wanted their Government to do, and it was certain that Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues did not respond quickly to the new impulse which the fall of Imperialism in France, and the rise of the new German Empire had given to public opinion in England. When the Cabinet took office, retrenchment and reform at home, and isolation abroad, were objects which the nation desired the Government to pursue. The victories of Prussia certainly strengthened the hands of the Ministry in carrying out their education policy. But in every other department of public life the people began to expect from the Cabinet what the Cabinet was not, by its temperament, likely to give. Ministers, in their handling of the Army and Navy, for example, made economy the leading idea of their policy. The country, on the other hand, alarmed at the collapse of France, put efficiency before economy. Non-intervention in Foreign Affairs, which was the policy of the Ministry, and which had been the policy of the Tory Opposition, was discredited when Russia repudiated the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of Paris, and when it was discovered that somehow Lord Granville’s management of Foreign Affairs had left England with enemies, and not with allies, in the councils of the world. Forgetful of the stormy sea of foreign troubles through which Palmerston was perpetually steering the labouring vessel of State, the nation began to long for a Minister who could make England play a great part in the drama of Continental politics. Lord Granville’s “surrender” in the Black Sea Conference was admittedly dignified and adroit, but it did not on that account satisfy the country. Why had he not pressed for an equivalent right on the part of England and the Powers to pass the Dardanelles? That would, at all events, have made the Black Sea an European instead of a Russian lake, or rather a lake whose waters Russia shared with a weak and decaying Power like Turkey. Why did he not recast the Foreign Policy of England, and proceed to check Russia diplomatically by strengthening Austria in the Danube? If the irritation of the United States was paralysing England in Europe, why was no decided action taken to bring about an equitable settlement of the Alabama Claims? Why was the recognition of the new French Republic delayed, when it was known that even Von Bismarck deigned to treat with it for peace, and when its recognition would raise up for England a friendly feeling in France? All these and other questions were asked by men who were not partisans, and who were, on the whole, well disposed to Mr. Gladstone’s administration.

The only reform movement, indeed, that excited any popular enthusiasm at the beginning of 1871, was that which Mr. Trevelyan had started after he resigned his Civil Lordship of the Admiralty, because Mr. Forster’s Education Bill increased the grant to denominational schools. It was significant, too, that this movement was one for making the army more efficient by abolishing the system that permitted officers to buy their commissions and their promotion. It had been said that nothing could be done to render the army formidable, so long as the Commander-in-Chief was its absolute ruler. The result was that the Duke of Cambridge was made subordinate to the Secretary of State. Next it was said that nothing could be done to improve the army so long as it was pawned to its officers, who had acquired by purchase something like a vested right in maintaining the existing military system. Abolition of Purchase, therefore, in 1871, seemed to be the only point of contact between the nation and the Cabinet, who were supposed to favour Mr. Trevelyan’s agitation. The demand for increasing the army, when sanctioned by a Parliamentary vote, Mr. Cardwell evaded. When merely sanctioned by public opinion he either ignored it, or, as in the case of issuing breech-loading rifles to the Volunteers, yielded to it after resisting it for about eight months. The changes in the Cabinet due to Mr. Bright’s resignation further lessened confidence in the Government. Mr. Chichester Fortescue, in spite of his half-hearted Fenian amnesty, was on the whole a popular and active Irish Secretary. He, however, was appointed to succeed Mr. Bright at the Board of Trade, where he had to guide a department charged with interests of which he was utterly ignorant. Lord Hartington, on the other hand, whose transference to the War Office would have been gratifying to the country, was sent to the Irish Office, to the consternation of those Liberals who had been dissatisfied with the reactionary tone of his speeches on Irish affairs. The general desire for new War and Foreign Ministers was ignored.[1]

But perhaps the most extraordinary change in public sentiment in 1871 was that which marked public opinion in relation to the marriage of the Princess Louise. When it was announced, popular feeling was clearly in favour of the alliance. But towards the end of January, 1871, there was hardly a large borough in England, the member for which on addressing his constituents, was not asked menacingly if he meant to vote for a national dowry to the Princess. Too often, when the member said he intended to give such a vote, he was hissed by the meeting. Mr. Forster escaped a hostile demonstration by humorously parrying the question. He said he could not consent to fine the Princess for marrying a Scotsman. At Halifax Mr. Stansfeld was seriously embarrassed by the question. At Chelsea both members nearly forfeited the usual vote of confidence passed in them by their constituents. Mr. White at Brighton had to promise to vote against the dowry; at Birmingham Messrs. Dixon and Muntz could hardly get a hearing from their constituents when they defended it. The annoyance which the Queen suffered when she saw her daughter’s name rudely handled at angry mass

THE PRINCESS LOUISE.

(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry.)

meetings was unspeakable. This unexpected ebullition of public feeling was due to a belief among the electors that when Royalty formed matrimonial alliances with subjects it ought to accept the rule which prevails among persons of private station, and frankly recognise that it is the duty of the husband to support the wife. To demand a dowry of £40,000 and an income of £6,000 a year for the Princess Louise, it was argued, was preposterous. The lady, it was said, could not possibly need it, seeing that she was to marry a nobleman who was able to maintain his wife, and who, had he not married a princess, would have been expected to maintain her in the comfort befitting his inherited rank and social position. But common sense soon reasserted its sway over the nation. It was then speedily admitted that a great country lowered its dignity when it chaffered with the Sovereign over allowances which were necessary to sustain a becoming stateliness of life in the Royal Family.[2]

THE MARQUIS OF LORNE.

(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry.)

In the course of the discussions that were carried on as to the dowry of the Princess Louise many ill-natured allusions had been made to the Queen’s life of seclusion, and it had been broadly hinted that she was neglecting her public duties. It was unfortunate that steps were not taken by some person in authority to refute this calumny, for, if her Majesty shunned the nervous excitement of public ceremonials, it was for the purpose of husbanding her strength for the transaction of official business. Still, the people were kept in ignorance of that fact, and the result was that when the Queen proceeded in person to open Parliament on the 9th of February, 1871, she was for the first time in her life rather coldly received on the route from the Palace to Westminster. The Speech from the Throne dealt chiefly with Foreign Affairs, and it represented fairly the national feeling in favour of a policy of neutrality, tempered, however, with a strong desire to preserve the existence of France as “a principal and indispensable member of the great Commonwealth of Europe.” Two points in it were recognised as being in a special sense the expression of the Queen’s own views. These were (1), the cordial congratulation of Germany on having attained a position of “solidity and independence,” and (2), the carefully-guarded suggestion that Germany should be content with the cession of a mountain barrier beyond the Rhine on her new frontier, and not endanger the permanence of the peace, which must soon come by pressing for the cession of French fortresses, which, in German hands, must be a standing menace to France. Perhaps the most popular paragraph in the Speech was the one which indicated that the Governments of England and the United States, after much futile and bitter controversy, were at last agreed that the Alabama dispute should be settled by friendly arbitration before a mixed Commission. The instinct of the masses taught them that the “latent war,” as Mr. Hamilton Fish called it, between the two kindred peoples, explained why England had suddenly lost her influence in the councils of Europe. By its reference to Home Affairs, the Royal Speech, for the time, strengthened the popularity of the Ministry. It promised a Ballot Bill, a Bill for abolishing University Tests, for readjusting Local Taxation, for restricting the grants of Licences to Publicans, for reorganising Scottish Education, and for reforming the Army. When the Debate on the Address was taken, the House of Commons was obviously in a state of high nervous tension. It was half angry with Mr. Gladstone because he had not pursued a more spirited Foreign Policy, and because, by submitting to the abolition of the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of Paris, and assuming an isolated attitude towards France and Germany, he had made England the mere spectator of great events, the course of which she yearned to influence, if not to control. On the other hand, the House showed plainly that it was thankful that the country had been kept out of the embarrassments and entanglements of war. Indeed it was clear that, if Mr. Gladstone had pursued a more spirited policy at the risk of enforcing it by arms, he would have been hurled from power by the votes of the very men who now sneered at his policy because it was spiritless.

Mr. Disraeli’s tone was less patriotic than usual. He was careful to say nothing that would commit him and his party to any other policy than that of neutrality; but he was equally careful to encourage a belief that this policy had been adopted, not from prudence, but from cowardice. To use one of his own phrases, he “threatened Russia with a clouded cane;” though, as he knew well, the Black Sea dispute had by that time ended. He endangered the prospects of peaceful arbitration on the Alabama Claims, by his bitter allusions to the United States. He poured ridicule on the military feebleness of the country at a crisis when a patriotic statesman would have naturally preferred to remain silent on such a theme. But the effect of his attack was somewhat diminished by his attempt to show that military impotence was naturally associated with Liberal Governments. Everybody knew that all governments, Liberal or Tory, were equally responsible for the bad state of the army, and that they had all equally resisted the popular demand for reform, till it grew so loud that Mr. Cardwell was forced to yield to it.

The great measure of the Session was of course the Army Bill, which was introduced by Mr. Cardwell, on the 16th of February. It abolished the system by which rich men obtained by purchase commissions and promotion in the army, and provided £8,000,000 to buy all commissions, as they fell in, at their regulation and over-regulation value.[3] In future, commissions were to be awarded either to those who won them by open competition, or who had served as subalterns in the Militia, or to deserving non-commissioned officers. Mr. Cardwell also proposed to deprive Lords-Lieutenant of Counties of the power of granting commissions in the militia. He laid down the lines of a great scheme of army reorganisation which bound the auxiliary forces closer to the regular army, gave the country 300,000 trained men, divided locally into nine corps d’armée, for home defence, kept in hand a force of 100,000 men always available for service abroad, and raised the strength of the artillery from 180 to 336 guns. This, however, he did at the cost of £15,000,000 a year—a somewhat extravagant sum, seeing that 170,000 of the army of defence consisted of unpaid volunteers. The debate that followed was a rambling one. The Tory Party defended the Purchase system because good officers had come to the front by its means. Even a Radical like Mr. Charles Buxton was not ashamed to argue that promotion by selection on account of fitness, would sour the officers who were passed over with discontent. Lord Elcho, though he made a “palpable hit” in detecting the inadequacy of Mr. Cardwell’s scheme of National Defence, sedulously avoided justifying the sale of commissions in the army. He based his objection to the abolition of Purchase on the ground that it would involve “the most wicked, the most wanton, the most uncalled for waste of the public money.” Here we have depicted a vivid contrast between the House of Commons of the Second, and the House of the Third Reform Bill. In these latter days Lord Wemyss—who in 1871 was Lord Elcho—would hardly venture to obstruct any measure of reform because there was tacked on to it a scheme for compensating “vested interests” too generously. The Representatives of the People would now meet such an objection by simply cutting down the compensation. And Mr. Cardwell had an excellent opportunity for doing this ready to his hands. The money paid for commissions was far above the regulation price, and yet it was a statutory offence punishable by two years’ imprisonment to pay over-regulation prices. In fact, Parliament may be said to have betrayed the country in this transaction. Not only had it connived at the offence of paying over-regulation money, but it made its connivance a pretext for compensating the offenders for the loss of advantages they had gained by breaking the law.

Only two arguments worthy of the least attention were brought forward by the Opposition. The first was that abolition of Purchase would weaken the regimental system. For it was contended that promotion by selection for officers above the rank of captain—which was the substitute proposed for promotion by Purchase—involving, as it did, transfers from one regiment to another, must destroy the regimental home-life.[4] The second was, that it would tend to create a professional military caste, who might, as Mr. Bernal Osborne argued, prove dangerous to the liberties of the people. It was, however, felt that it was absurd to sacrifice the efficiency of the Army to its regimental home life, and that one of the strongest objections to the Purchase system was that it rendered the Army amateurish rather than professional. But in the long controversy that raged through the Session no argument told more effectively than Mr. Trevelyan’s citation of Havelock’s bitter complaint that “he was sick for years in waiting for promotion, that three sots and two fools had purchased over him, and that if he had not had a family to support he would not have served another hour.” Mr. Cardwell, too, left nothing to be said when he told the House of Commons that Army reformers were paralysed by Purchase. Every proposal for change was met by the argument that it affected the position of officers who had paid for that position. In fact, the British Army was literally held in pawn by its officers, and the nation had virtually no control over it whilst it was in that ignominious position. The debate, which seemed interminable, ended in an anti-climax that astonished the Tory Opposition. Mr. Disraeli threw over the advocates of Purchase, evidently dreading an appeal to the country, which might have resulted in a refusal to compensate officers for the over-regulation prices they had paid for their commissions in defiance of the statute. The Army Regulation Bill thus passed the Second Reading without a division. In Committee the Opposition resorted to obstructive tactics, and attempted to talk out the Bill by moving a series of dilatory and frivolous amendments. The clique of “the Colonels,” as they were called, in fact anticipated the Parnellites of a later date in inventing and developing

INVERARY CASTLE.

(From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co.)

this form of factious and illegitimate opposition. Mr. Cardwell so far succumbed that after weary weeks of strife he withdrew his reorganisation scheme, merely insisting on the Purchase clauses, and on the transference of control over the auxiliary forces from Lords-Lieutenant of Counties to the Queen. But the Opposition still threatened to obstruct the Bill, and it was not till Mr. Cardwell warned them that he could stop the payment of over-regulation money for commissions by enforcing the law, that the measure was allowed to pass. In the House of Lords the Bill was again obstructed, in spite of Lord Northbrook’s able argument that until Purchase was abolished the Government could not develop their scheme of Army reorganisation, which was to introduce into England the Prussian system without compulsory service. The Tory Peers did not actually venture to vote in favour of Purchase. But they passed a resolution declining to accept the responsibility of assenting to its abolition without further information. Mr. Gladstone met them with a bold stroke. By statute it was enacted that only such terms of Purchase could exist as her Majesty chose to permit by Royal Warrant. The Queen therefore, acting on Mr. Gladstone’s advice, cancelled her warrant permitting Purchase, and thus the opposition of the Peers was crushed by what Mr. Disraeli indignantly termed “the high-handed though not illegal” exercise of the Royal Prerogative.[5] The rage of the Tory Peers knew no bounds. And yet what could Mr. Gladstone have done? The Ministry might have resigned, but in that case the Tory Party, as mere advocates of Purchase, could not have commanded a majority of the House of Commons. New Peers might have been created, but to this obsolete and perilous method of coercing the Lords the Queen had a natural and justifiable antipathy. Parliament might have been dissolved, but then the appeal to the country would probably have raised the question whether it was desirable to continue the existence of an unreformed House of Lords side by side with a reformed House of Commons.[6] The only other course was to bow to the decision of the Peers, admitting that they must be permitted to quash a reform, which was passionately desired by the nation, and that they must be allowed to coerce the House of Commons, as in the days when they nominated a majority of its members. To have adopted either of these courses would have been fatal to the authority, perhaps even to the existence, of the Upper House. Thus the excuse of the Royal Prerogative, which removed the subject of contention between the two Houses, was really the means of saving the Lords from a disastrous conflict with the People. The Peers, however, carried a vote of censure on the Government, who ignored it, and then their Lordships passed the Army Regulation Bill without any alteration, nay even without dividing against the clauses transferring the patronage of the Militia from Lords-Lieutenant of Counties to the Crown.

The Session of 1871 was also made memorable by the struggle over the Ballot Bill, in the course of which nearly all the devices of factious obstruction were exhausted. The Ballot had become since 1832 the shibboleth of Radicalism.[7] Resistance to it had been accepted as the first duty of a Conservative. The arguments for the Ballot were (1), that by allowing men to vote in secret they were free from intimidation, and (2), that when votes were given in secret men were not likely to buy them, for they had no longer any means of knowing whether value was ever given for their money. On the other hand, the Tories argued (1), that to vote in secret was cowardly and unmanly; (2), that it was unconstitutional; and (3), that it weakened the sense of responsibility in the voter who had no longer the pressure of public opinion on him.[8] But though these arguments were elaborated at enormous length, they were felt by the average elector to be wiredrawn and academic. To him the practical object of any system of election was to get the voter to give effect to his own real opinion, and not the opinion of somebody else, in choosing a member. There could be nothing constitutional, or moral, or distinctively “English,” in a man who desired to be represented by A voting for B, either because his landlord or his employer or some of his neighbours intimidated or bribed him into doing so. Nor could his sense of duty be strengthened under a system which enabled him to cast the responsibility for a false vote on those who had coerced or bribed him into giving it. No doubt the prospect of getting rid of violent scenes and of the demonstrations of turbulent mobs round the polling-booths where men voted in public, induced many independent politicians, who were not insensible to the weight of some of the Conservative arguments, to accept the Ballot. Strictly speaking, when the question was lifted out of the mire of mere party controversy it came to this—whether Englishmen, in giving their votes, preferred the protection of secrecy, to the protection of a strong law punishing those who attempted to interfere with their independence. To set the law in motion against a rich man in England is a costly, and sometimes a dangerous, process. Hence the majority of Englishmen preferred the protection of secrecy.

Mr. Forster’s Ballot Bill was introduced on the 28th of February, and when the Second Reading had been passed after three nights’ dull debate in June, the Conservatives attempted to talk it out by reviving, on various frivolous pretexts, a discussion on the principle of the Bill in Committee.[9] After these tactics had been exhausted, the Opposition endeavoured to smother the Bill with dilatory amendments. The supporters of the Government, on the other hand, attempted to defeat the factious obstruction of their opponents by remaining silent during the debates. The obstructive party, after a long and tedious fight, were beaten, and the Bill passed through Committee, but shorn of the clauses which cast election expenses on the rates, and made all election expenses not included in the public returns, corrupt expenses.[10] When the Bill reached the House of Lords, the real motive which dictated the apparently futile and stupid obstruction of the Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons, was quickly revealed. The Lords rejected the Bill on the 18th of August, not merely because they disliked and dreaded it, but because it had come to them too late for proper consideration.[11]

MR. W. E. FORSTER.

(From a Photograph by Russell and Sons.)

Ministers were more successful with some other measures. In spite of much Conservative opposition they passed a Bill abolishing religious tests in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and throwing open all academic distinctions and privileges except Divinity Degrees and Clerical Fellowships to students of all creeds and faiths. Mr. Bruce passed a Trades Union Bill, which gave all registered Unions the legal status and legal protection of ordinary corporations.[12] The vague language of the old Act touching intimidation was swept away, and only such forms of coercion as were not only in themselves obviously brutal, but could also be clearly defined, were made punishable. A decision of the law courts, however, deprived the Unions of many of the benefits they had expected to gain under the Act.[13] Mr. Bruce’s Bill, regulating the licensing of public-houses, another large measure, was abandoned, but not till it had converted all the Radical and Liberal publicans and their clientèle into stern and uncompromising Tories. Mr. Goschen’s scheme for reforming Local Government and Taxation was far-reaching and comprehensive, but it alarmed the landlords, for it divided rates between owners and occupiers, and levied rates on game rents.[14]

But by far the most damaging failure of the Session was Mr. Lowe’s Budget. It was known that the large outlay on the Army, due to the abolition of Purchase and other causes, would leave a deficit of about £2,000,000 to be met by Mr. Lowe in the coming year’s accounts. How was he going to meet it? An elastic revenue and rigid economy in expenditure had left Mr. Lowe with a surplus of £396,681. But he had on the next year’s account an estimated deficit of £2,713,000,[15] which he proposed to meet by a tax on matches—“not on matrimonial engagements,” as he remarked,—by a readjustment of the Probate and Succession Duties, and by an increase of about one penny farthing in the £ of income-tax.[16] The Radicals attacked the Budget furiously, and Mr. Disraeli formed with them what Mr. Gladstone termed an “unprincipled coalition.” But the Tories and the Radicals objected to the Budget on entirely different grounds. Mr. White, member for Brighton, quoting Mr. Bright’s declaration that a Government which could not rule the country with £70,000,000 of revenue did not deserve public confidence, complained of the increase in the Army Estimates, and warned the House that if such enormous sums were spent on the protection of property, the people would elect a Parliament pledged to tax property to pay them. Mr. Disraeli, correctly gauging popular feeling, objected to the match tax, the proposal of which enraged the poor match-makers of the East End of London. He gave just expression to the feeling not only of his own Party, but of almost all the rich men on the Liberal benches, when he denounced any increase in the Succession Duties. The Government only escaped defeat by hinting that they would abandon the Match Tax. After some fencing, the whole Budget was reconstructed, the Succession Duties being also given up, and the additional supplies needed by the Government being met by a twopenny income-tax.[17] There could be no better illustration of the strength and weakness of the Gladstone Government than this Budget. Theoretically and logically, it was quite defensible. Purchase in the Army had existed for the convenience and advantage of the wealthy classes. It was, therefore, fair to increase the Succession Duties in order to pay the expense of abolishing it. The Match Tax again satisfied the ideal of public financiers, who all yearned for the discovery of an impost that should fall on an article which, though used by the masses, was yet not food, or one of those “luxuries” like tea, which can with difficulty be distinguished from necessaries. Moreover, as Professor Stanley Jevons proved, the Match Tax would have laid even on the very poor less than one-third of the burden which had been imposed by the shilling duty on corn, that Mr. Lowe had repealed in 1869.[18] Unfortunately, however, Mr. Lowe, in preparing his Budget, ignored the prejudices and foibles of the people. He imagined that if he could defend his proposals logically, they would be accepted with gratitude and unanimity.

In Foreign Affairs, the Government did not improve their position in 1871, and yet they achieved one success, for which they failed to obtain sufficient credit. In May, the Queen was gratified to learn that a basis for settling the outstanding dispute between the United States and Great Britain had been at last discovered. It had been her firm conviction that this quarrel had caused England to lose her traditional influence over the affairs of Europe. The first essential step towards regaining that influence, in her opinion, was taken when it was agreed to submit to a Joint Commission of eminent Englishmen and Americans in Washington the points at issue between the two nations.[19] The American Commissioners, when they met their English colleagues, refused to consider claims for damages due to the Fenian raids in Canada. Not ignoring the Confederate raids from Canada on Vermont, the English Commissioners, on their side, did not press this point. With great courage and frankness, the British Government, through their Commissioners, expressed their sincere regret that Confederate cruisers had escaped from British ports to prey on American commerce. But they did not admit that they were to blame for such an untoward occurrence, nor did they offer what Mr. Sumner had demanded, any apology for recognising the Southern States as belligerents. American claims against England, and English claims against America, “growing out of” the Civil War, it was agreed should be alike referred to a Commission of Arbitration,[20] and the English Commissioners admitting that some just rule for determining international liability in such cases should be laid down, accepted the principle that neutrals are to be held responsible for negligence in allowing warships to be equipped or built in their ports for use against a belligerent. The English Commissioners next agreed to let this principle be applied to the Alabama Claims, and though they were blamed for allowing these claims to be determined by an ex post facto rule, it was difficult for them to adopt any other course. The rule was one that was essential to the protection of British commerce from American privateers in the event of England being engaged in any Continental war. To adopt it as just and right for claims that might accrue in the future, rendered it hardly possible to reject it as unjust and wrong for outstanding claims that had accrued in the past. As to the Fishery dispute, citizens of the United States, it was agreed, were to have for ten years the right to fish on the Canadian coast, and Canadians were to have a similar right of fishing on the coasts of the United States down to the 39th parallel of latitude. As the British Commissioners insisted that the balance of advantage was here conceded to the United States, and that it therefore ought to be paid for by them, that point was by mutual agreement referred to another Commission for adjustment. The chronic controversy as to the San Juan boundary was to be referred to the Emperor of Germany. These arrangements as embodied in the Washington Treaty were subjected to some carping criticism in England. Lord Russell moved, in the House of Lords, that the Queen should be asked to refuse to ratify the instrument, and Lord Salisbury taunted the Government with sacrificing the position of England as a neutral power. But the tone of the debate showed that in their hearts the Conservatives and the old Whigs were thankful that the country had been so honourably extricated from an embarrassing diplomatic conflict, and their attack on the Treaty was like that made by Mr. Sumner and General Butler on the other side of the Atlantic, merely a Party sortie.[21] In a few weeks it was universally admitted that the object which the Government had in view had been attained. As if by magic, the feeling of the United States towards England changed from one of menacing exasperation, to one of growing sympathy and friendliness. For the first time in the course of eighty years the average American stump orator found he could not evoke a round of applause, by hotly-spiced denunciations of England and Englishmen.

BALMORAL CASTLE, FROM THE NORTH-WEST.

(From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen.)

But, speaking generally, the Foreign Policy of the Government discredited it. In the struggle between France and Germany the Cabinet preserved a cold

General Faure. General Wimpffen. Von Moltke. Von Bismarck.

AFTER SEDAN: DISCUSSING THE CAPITULATION (From the Picture by Georg Bleibtreu.)

neutrality, at a time when popular feeling would have supported it in protesting against the cession of Alsace and Lorraine to the conquering power. For this attitude, however, Lord Granville had a plausible excuse. Though the nation was sulky because an effective protest had not been made, it would not have tolerated any policy that might have led the country into war. Moreover, the Army had yet to be reorganised, and till that was done the voice of England was naturally of little account in the affairs of Europe. At the same time the meek and spiritless expression which Ministers habitually gave to their neutrality, irritated a proud and sensitive democracy who were every day taunted by Tory orators and writers with permitting themselves to be governed by a cowardly Cabinet. It seems just to say, even when one makes every allowance for the difficulties of their position, that in their handling of the diplomacy of the Franco-German War, Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville missed a great opportunity. After the collapse of France at Sedan had been followed by that long series of German victories which ended in the capitulation of Paris, and the Armistice Convention between M. Jules Favre and Count von Bismarck (28th January, 1871), Englishmen were all agreed on one point. To cede Alsace and Lorraine to Germany was, in their opinion, to create a French Poland, or Venetia on the Rhine, whose chronic discontent must permanently imperil the peace of the world. But when the English Government in February attempted to dissuade Germany from exacting terms that inevitably rendered revenge the first duty of every French patriot, England found herself isolated. None of the Powers were prepared to join her in reviewing the conditions of peace which Germany might impose, and the German Chancellor never even deigned to answer the English remonstrance. England, in fact, had moved in the matter too late.

As far back as the 17th of October, 1870, Sir Andrew Buchanan told Lord Granville that the Czar, in his private letters to King William of Prussia, had expressed a hope that no French territory would be annexed. On the 4th of November the Italian Minister informed Lord Granville that whilst Italy admitted that French fortresses must be surrendered to the Germans, yet she held that there should be no cession of territory. Sir A. Paget, writing from Florence, also conveyed to Lord Granville about the same time the views of Signor Visconti to the effect that “the Italian Government had several times expressed the opinion that a peace in which Germany would seek her guarantees by the dismantling of fortresses, &c., would afford better securities for its duration than one which would be likely to create a new question of nationalities.” Here there was a basis for a joint representation on the part of the European Powers—for Austria all through had only been held back through fear of Russia—both to France and Germany. France might have been warned that, in spite of M. Jules Favre’s formula,[22] she, as the defeated aggressor, had no right to object to her menacing strongholds being razed. Germany might have been reminded that, in the interests not of France but of Europe, it was her duty as a great and civilising Power not to demand a cession of territory, the recovery of which must be to France an object of ceaseless striving.

The Queen would gladly have used her personal influence with the German Emperor in urging on the Court of Berlin the policy and justice of this representation. Lord Granville’s subordinates had assured him that France, despite M. Favre’s heroics, would agree to anything if spared the surrender of territory. It is now known that even Bismarck himself was not desirous of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine against the will of their inhabitants.[23] The German generals had, however, claimed what they deemed a safe, military frontier, and though Von Bismarck induced them not to insist on the cession of Belfort, he could not repel their demand for Alsace, a third part of Lorraine, and Metz and Strasburg. The German Crown Prince was, moreover, understood to be opposed to any irritating and unnecessary annexation. Hence all the chances were in favour of success, if Lord Granville, acting with Russia and Italy, had approached Germany with a cordial and courteous appeal, to reject the advice of her military party, and moderate their demands in the interests of Europe.[24] But the golden opportunity of strengthening Von Bismarck’s hands was lost. Lord Granville not only refused to abandon his attitude of rigid neutrality, but he couched his policy in phrases so ostentatiously deferential to Germany, that they almost justified the half-contemptuous replies which Von Bismarck at this time sent to all despatches from the English Foreign Office, which he did not entirely ignore. In February, 1871, when Lord Granville at last plucked up heart to remonstrate with Germany, her victorious armies had made sacrifices that rendered his tardy protests impertinent. Italy and Russia had sense enough to recognise this fact. They therefore refused to join England when Lord Granville sent his remonstrance to Von Bismarck, who tossed it into his diplomatic waste-paper basket.[25]

It may be readily conceived, then, that, despite its public services, its invincible majority, and the failure of the Tory leaders to put before the country any policy of their own, signs of decay were already visible in the Government. Mr. Bruce had converted every publican into an enemy. The Dissenters had vowed vengeance against the Ministry, because Mr. Forster had increased the grant to denominational schools. The officers of the Army and the upper and upper-middle classes of society had resolved to punish Mr. Gladstone because he had allowed Mr. Cardwell to abolish Purchase. A few Radicals and many Whigs were also alarmed, because it had been abolished by Royal Prerogative, the use of which to coerce the Peers was resented by the aristocracy as an insult. The abolition of Purchase was to have been followed by an effective reorganisation of the Army. Hence the nation was profoundly disappointed to find the question of Army organisation made light of by Ministers during the recess. Mr. Cardwell’s project for autumn manœuvres on a large scale on the Berkshire Downs had to be abandoned, because his Control Department could not feed or supply his troops. When he substituted for this scheme a sham campaign in the neighbourhood of Aldershot, the Transport Service was found to be so bad that the Artillery had to be drawn upon to supply it with horses, carts, and drivers. The disaster to the Agincourt and the wreck of the Megæra, also gave colour to slanders against the Government which had issued from the Admiralty from the day that Mr. Childers began to reform its wasteful administration, and Mr. Goschen had continued his work.[26]

The Duke of Somerset, after the failure of the Berkshire campaign, had scoffed at the Government because they gave the nation “armies that could not march and ships that could not swim,” and the epigram was soon everywhere repeated. Mr. Gladstone’s appointment of Sir Robert Collier, the Attorney-General, to a seat on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council was denounced far and wide as a job perpetrated by a tricky evasion of the law.[27] The Prime Minister’s management of the House of Commons had also cost him many friends. As Mr. Disraeli once said, it was like that of a

METZ.

schoolmaster who was a little too fond of exhibiting the rod. Mr. Ayrton and Mr. Lowe during the Session even enhanced their reputation for irritating those who transacted business with them. But at every turn Mr. Gladstone was embarrassed by his Parliamentary majority. It had been elected to carry reforms which most of them individually dreaded. Their desire was therefore to discover, not pretexts for pushing the Ministry onward, but excuses which they could plausibly justify to their constituents for holding Ministers back. As for the working classes, they had imagined when Mr. Gladstone came to office “something would be done for them.” But nothing except the Trades Union Bill had been conceded to their demands, and even that measure was defaced by irritating provisions, inserted to please their masters. Mr. Disraeli’s strategy in these circumstances was artful, if not altogether admirable. He gently fomented every rising discontent. Without committing his Party to redress the wrongs of the discontented, he left on the country the impression that under his administration there would be less social friction than then existed, whilst there could not be much less social reform.

Other circumstances tended to strengthen Conservative feeling in England. Just as the triumph of democracy in the United States at the end of the Civil War gave a great impetus to English Liberalism, so did the march of events in France after the conclusion of peace produce a reaction in England against democracy. The French elections resulted in the return of the Assembly which met at Bordeaux on the 12th of February. Its majority consisted of Legitimists and Orleanists, and, since the Convocation of the Estates General in 1789, no French Parliament had ever met which contained so many men of high rank and good estate. It had no special mandate, but it very sensibly took in hand the task of making peace with Germany, and, having superseded the Government of National Defence, it elected M. Thiers as Chief of the Executive. He formed a Ministry which represented the best men of all parties. The new Government were confronted at the outset with an unexpected difficulty. The National Guard of Paris had been allowed to retain their arms, and they not only broke into revolt, but seized the capital and established in Paris the revolutionary Government of the Commune, General Cluseret, a revolutionary “soldier of fortune,” being appointed Minister of War. The idea of the revolt seems to have been to convert the ten great cities of France into autonomous States in federal alliance with the rest of the country, and the insurgents began by giving Paris a separate Government, Executive, Army, and Legislature. The Red Republicans imagined that by this device they could emancipate the artisans from the control of the peasants, who, under universal suffrage, were masters of France. The Commune was founded by honest fanatics, but it let loose the suppressed blackguardism of Paris, and before it was stamped out by the Army and the Government of Versailles, terrible atrocities not unworthy of the worst days of the “Terror” had been committed by the rabble whom it had armed, and was powerless to restrain. In England the excesses of the Commune were pointed to by Conservative writers and speakers as an apt illustration of the natural and logical tendencies of Radicalism.

The Queen’s domestic life during 1871 was not much disturbed by the petty demonstrations of Republican feeling which were in vogue at the beginning of the year. They did not influence either the Ministry or Parliament; and when, on the 13th of February, Mr. Gladstone proposed the vote for the Princess Louise’s dowry in the House of Commons, only three Members voted against it.[28] Mr. Disraeli, though he supported the proposal, gently tickled the sympathies of its opponents by suggesting that the system of voting Royal grants should be changed. His idea was to maintain the Crown by an estate of its own, ample enough to cover all its personal and family expenses, and that Parliament should not be called on to grant money to the Queen save for expenditure on public pageantry.

When it was announced that the Queen had fixed the 21st of March for the Princess Louise’s marriage, the High Church Party were indignant that the ceremony was to be performed in Lent. They argued that when Royalty set an example contrary to the teachings of the Church, the influence of the clergy was weakened over, what the Guardian newspaper called, “the large area of society which lies between the inner circle of the devout and the multitude of the unattached outside the consecrated ground.” No heed, however, was paid to these remonstrances, and the Royal wedding, when it took place at Windsor, completely diverted popular attention from the Communist Reign of Terror in Paris. The enthusiasm of the capital, it is true, was rather qualified. The West End tradesmen were sulky because of the withdrawal of the Queen from the gaieties of the London season; and the populace was annoyed because the marriage did not take place in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul’s. But the provinces were unusually lavish in their demonstrations of sympathy with the Sovereign, and with the wedded pair who had broken down the barrier of caste which had been so long maintained between the Royal Family and the nation.[29]

The town of Windsor was en fête for the occasion, the people crowding the Castle Green, and the Eton boys occupying the Castle Hill. The police and soldiery kept a passage open for the guests who came from London by special train, and who were conveyed in Royal carriages to St. George’s Chapel amid general cheering and joyous ringing of bells. The Ministers of State, Foreign Princes and Ambassadors, and other prominent persons, were gay in rich and glittering uniforms. Of the bridal party, the first to arrive was the Duke of Argyll, with his family. He wore the dress of a Highland chieftain, with philabeg, sporran, claymore, and jewelled dirk. A plaid of Campbell tartan was thrown across his shoulders, over which was also hung the Order of the Thistle. He was accompanied by the Duchess of Argyll, who shone in silver and white satin. The Lord Chancellor, in wig and gown, and Lord Halifax, in Ministerial uniform of blue and gold, walked up the central aisle and took their seats, along with members of the Cabinet and the Privy Council, in the stalls to the left of the altar. Then came the Princess Christian, in pink satin, trimmed with white lace, and some Indian potentates, radiant in auriferous scarlet. Lord Lorne, the bridegroom, next entered, arrayed in the uniform of the Argyllshire Regiment of Volunteer Artillery, of which he was Colonel, looking pale and nervous. He was supported by his groomsmen, Lord Percy and Lord Ronald Leveson-Gower. The Princess Beatrice arrived evidently in high spirits, and wearing a pink satin dress, her sunny hair flowing freely down her back. The Princess of Wales, who received an almost affectionate greeting, was the last of the Royal party to come. All the members of the Royal Family were then present, with the exception of Prince Alfred. As the procession advanced up the nave, the bride was supported on the right by the Queen, and on the left by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Princess, in her dress of white satin and veil of Honiton lace, was voted one of the most charming brides on whom the sun had shone. Eight bridesmaids followed, all daughters of dukes and earls, clad in white satin, decorated with red camellias. The Queen appeared in black satin, relieved by the broad blue ribbon of the Garter, and by a fall of white lace, which nearly reached to the ground. The service was read by the Bishop of London, the Queen giving away her daughter.[30] After the ceremony, the Queen took the bride in her arms, and kissed her heartily, while the Marquis of Lorne knelt and kissed the Queen’s hand. The Royal wedding breakfast was served in the magnificent oak-room of Windsor Castle, the company including the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Arthur, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince and Princess Teck, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, Prince and Princess Christian. Another breakfast for the general company was served in the Waterloo Gallery. When the newly-married pair left the Castle for Claremont, it was noticed that the bride wore a charming travelling costume of Campbell tartan. As they departed, their numerous relatives showered over them a quantity of white satin slippers, and, following an ancient Highland usage, a new broom was also thrown after them as they got into the carriage. The Oriental custom of flinging rice after a wedded couple, introduced into England by the family of Musurus Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador, had not then become the mode in the highest circles of Society.[31]

MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS LOUISE. (See p. 408.)

(After the Picture by Sydney P. Hall.)

OPENING OF THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL.

On the 29th of March, in the presence of a brilliant and fashionable crowd of upwards of 10,000 persons, the Queen opened the Royal Albert Hall at Kensington. The Members of the Provisional Committee met the Prince of Wales, their President, and, on the arrival of the Queen at half-past twelve o’clock, the Heir Apparent read the address to her Majesty, which could hardly be heard, because a provoking echo mimicked the tones of his voice whilst he described the completion of the Hall. The Queen having handed to the Prince a written answer, said, “I wish to express my great admiration of this beautiful Hall, and my earnest wishes for its complete success.” After a prayer from the Bishop of London, the Prince exclaimed, “The Queen declares this Hall to be now opened!” an announcement which was followed by a burst of cheering, the National Anthem, and the discharge of the Park guns. Then a concert was given, which included the performance of a cantata written expressly for the occasion by Sir Michael Costa.

On the 21st of June the Queen again appeared in London to open the new buildings of St. Thomas’s Hospital on the Albert Embankment, and her neatly-worded reply to the address which was presented to her on that occasion attracted considerable attention, because it was rumoured that it had been carefully written out by herself. It ran as follows:—

“I thank you for your loyal Address. I congratulate you on the completion of a work of so much importance to the suffering poor of the Metropolis. The necessity for abandoning the ancient site of your Hospital has been wisely turned to account by the erection of more spacious and commodious buildings in this central situation, and I rejoice that a position of appropriate beauty and dignity has been found for them on the noble roadway which now follows the course of this part of the Thames, of which they will henceforth be among the most conspicuous ornaments. It gives me pleasure to recognise in the plan of your buildings, so carefully adapted to check the growth of disease, ample and satisfactory evidence of your resolution to take advantage of the best suggestions of Science for the alleviation of suffering, and the complete and speedy cure of the sick and disabled. These great purposes are not least effectually promoted by an adequate supply of careful and well-trained nurses, and I do not forget that in this respect your Hospital is especially fortunate through the connection with it of the staff trained under the direction of the lady whose name will always remain associated with the care of the wounded and the sick. I thank you for the kind expressions you have used in regard to the marriage of my dear daughter.”

Early in summer it was bruited about that an application would be made to the House of Commons for a settlement on Prince Arthur. At first it was whispered that he was to be created Duke of Ulster, and that he was to live in Ireland, an eccentric tribute to the loyalty of the Orangemen, who when the Irish Church was disestablished threatened to “kick the Queen’s Crown into the Boyne.” The idea, however, was abandoned, and the agitation against the Princess Louise’s dowry now broke out anew, especially in Birmingham, in the form of a protest against the usual portion being voted to the Prince on the attainment of his majority. But Mr. Gladstone was not to be intimidated by the Republicans. On the 27th of July he brought down to the House of Commons a Royal Message requesting the customary allowance for a Prince of the Blood to be voted.[32] A few days afterwards the Royal Message was debated, Mr. Peter Taylor moving the rejection of the resolution voting £15,000 a year to the Prince, and Mr. Dixon moving its reduction from £15,000 to £10,000. Eleven members voted for Mr. Taylor, and Mr. Dixon found fifty-one supporters. The grant was easily carried, Mr. Gladstone basing his case on the implied contract made by Parliament to support the Royal Family when the Crown Lands were taken over by the State, and Mr. Disraeli arguing that the English workmen could easily afford to pay for their Monarchy because they were the richest class in the world. But Mr. Gladstone seemed a little nervous when Mr. Dixon indicated that he was forced to demand a reduction of the vote by his constituents, among whom Republicanism, he said, was spreading, because they considered it cheap. The Prime Minister accordingly took occasion to hint that it might be well to establish an arrangement which would render similar applications to Parliament unnecessary, and Mr. Disraeli, not to be outdone, made his bid for popularity by suggesting that the Crown should be allowed to charge Crown Lands for the Queen’s children, just as English nobles charged their estates with portions for their younger sons. Perhaps some of the acerbity of the Radical or Republican members was due to the meddlesomeness of the Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce, who prohibited a public meeting in Trafalgar Square which was fixed for the same evening on which the Royal Message was debated, in order to protest against the grant.[33] The Prince took the title of Duke of Connaught, and settled down to follow a useful career in the Army.

In September the country was greatly grieved to learn that the Queen had fallen seriously ill. Those who had been reproaching her for retiring from active life now began to suspect what was the truth, namely, that the Queen’s labours were not materially lessened by her withdrawal from the exciting functions of each London season. Her illness took the form of a sore throat, accompanied by glandular swellings under the arm, and the sympathetic sentiment of London was expressed by the Times, which mournfully regretted that the Sovereign had ever been pressed to overwork herself.

Gradually the prostration which this illness had caused passed away; but, unhappily, no sooner had her own health ceased to give the Queen cause for anxiety, than that of her eldest son broke down. Nothing could exceed the alarm of the country when it was announced on the 20th of November that the Heir to the Throne was smitten at Sandringham with typhoid fever—the very malady which had cut off his father in his prime. The disease, it was said, had probably been contracted when the Prince was visiting Lord Londesborough at Scarborough, and it was a significant coincidence, not only that Lord Chesterfield, who was staying there at the same time, had been attacked by and had quickly succumbed to the fever, but that six other guests of Lord Londesborough’s had complained of being unwell. On the other hand, it was pointed out that a groom at Sandringham, who had not quitted the place, was smitten at the same time as the Prince, and that it was therefore to bad sanitation at Sandringham that the mishap must be traced. Day by day the nation read the reassuring bulletins with growing anxiety,

THE PRINCE OF WALES’S ILLNESS: CROWD AT THE MANSION HOUSE READING THE BULLETINS.

relieved only by the knowledge, not only that the Queen herself had taken her place at the sufferer’s sick bed, and that the ever self-sacrificing Princess Louis of Hesse—a nurse of high technical skill—had installed herself in charge of the sick room. The Princess of Wales was herself suffering, doubtless from the same poison which had attacked her husband. Day by day the bulletins were eagerly scanned, not only in the newspapers, but by excited crowds at public places like the Mansion House and Marlborough House, where they were exhibited. After twenty-five days of suffering the Prince, who had shown signs of recovery, had a relapse, and then the worst was feared. The Prince it was thought must die, and the shock of the bereavement might be fatal to the Queen, whose health was already sadly impaired. Englishmen remembered for the first time that only two precarious lives—one of which was flickering between life and death—stood between the country and a Regency. But what might a Regency portend? It had been fatal to the Monarchy in France; within the memory of living men it had nearly proved fatal to the Monarchy in England. When it was announced on the 9th of December that all the members of the Royal Family had suddenly been summoned to Sandringham, securities in the Money Market, with the exception of Consols, fell from one to

THANKSGIVING DAY: THE PROCESSION AT LUDGATE HILL. (From the Picture by N. Chevalier.)

two per cent. Twice the physicians warned the Queen that the end was at hand, but at last, on the 14th of December—strangely enough the tenth anniversary of his father’s death—the Prince made a rally, and the bulletins again became more hopeful. Prayers had been offered up for his recovery in every church in the empire, and even the Republican societies had sent addresses of sympathy to the Sovereign. The heart of the people had gone forth to her and to the Princess of Wales in sincere and unrestrained sympathy, and as the year closed an official announcement was made which dispelled the gloom that had settled on all classes. It stated that, though Sir James Paget had not left Sandringham, the Prince was then (29th December) progressing favourably. This was followed by a letter from the Queen to the Home Secretary, in which she said:—“The Queen is very anxious to express her deep sense of the touching sympathy of the whole nation on the occasion of the alarming illness of her dear son the Prince of Wales. The universal feeling shown by her people during these painful, terrible days, and the sympathy evinced by them with herself and her beloved daughter the Princess of Wales, as well as the general joy at the improvement in the Prince of Wales’s state, have made a deep and lasting impression on her heart which can never be effaced. It was, indeed, nothing new to her, for the Queen had met with the same sympathy when, just ten years ago, a similar illness removed from her side the mainstay of her life—the best, wisest, and kindest of husbands. The Queen wishes to express at the same time, on the part of the Princess of Wales, her feelings of heartfelt gratitude, for she has been as deeply touched as the Queen by the great and universal manifestation of loyalty and sympathy. The Queen cannot conclude without expressing her hope that her faithful subjects will continue their prayers to God for the complete recovery of her dear son to health and strength.”

CHAPTER XVII.
THE “ALABAMA” CLAIMS.

Thanksgiving Day—The Procession—Behaviour of the Crowd—Scene in St. Paul’s—Decorations and Illuminations—Letter from Her Majesty—Attack on the Queen—John Brown—The Queen’s Speech—The Alabama Claims—The “Consequential Damages”—Living in a Blaze of Apology—Story of the “Indirect Claims”—The Arbitrators’ Award—Sir Alexander Cockburn’s Judgment—Passing of the Ballot Act—The Scottish Education Act—The Licensing Bill—Public Health Bill—Coal Mines Regulation Bill—The Army Bill—Admiralty Reforms—Ministerial Defeat on Local Taxation—Starting of the Home Government Association in Dublin—Assassination of Lord Mayo—Stanley’s Discovery of Livingstone—Dr. Livingstone’s Interview with the Queen—Her Majesty’s Gift to Mr. Stanley—Death of Dr. Norman Macleod—The Japanese Embassy—The Burmese Mission—Her Majesty at Holyrood Palace—Death of Her Half-Sister.

During the first weeks of 1872 the convalescence of the Heir Apparent seemed to obscure all other topics of political interest. The anti-monarchical agitation, which Sir Charles Dilke had fomented, not only by his votes in Parliament, but by his speeches in the country, suddenly subsided, showing that the sentiment of affectionate regard which had linked the Crown and the nation together in the past, was not to be destroyed by political factions who were trading on the temporary and local estrangement of the Queen from her subjects in the capital. Faction, indeed, was for the time silenced throughout the land, and the Queen soon saw that it was the universal desire of the nation that the recovery of the Prince, which had saved the country from much anxiety as to its future under a Regency, should be celebrated by a solemn public function. It was therefore announced in the middle of January that the Queen would proceed in State to St. Paul’s Cathedral on as early a day as could be fixed after the 20th of February, to return thanks for the recovery of her son. Ultimately Tuesday, the 27th of February, was fixed for the ceremony.

The day was clear and bright, though cold, and a wintry sun shone on the splendid pageant, for which elaborate preparations had been made many days before. The demand for tickets to view the spectacle was unprecedented. Carriages were hired at fabulous prices, and writing on the morning of the ceremony to his daughter-in-law, Lord Shaftesbury tells her that when he had ordered a brougham on the previous day at his job-master’s he was told “that every vehicle had been pre-engaged for weeks. Thoroughfares like St. James’s Street were impassable, because for two days before the event they were blocked by crowds who had come to see the preparations.”[34] In fact, as Bishop Wilberforce says in a passage in his Diary, London was “quite wild on Thanksgiving Day.”[35] By general desire the day was celebrated as a national holiday. As for the crowds in the streets along the line of route, they were said to number from a million to a million and a quarter of spectators, and the decorations far surpassed any similar display ever seen in London. The procession started from Buckingham Palace at five minutes past twelve o’clock, led by the carriages of the Speaker, the Lord Chancellor, and the Duke of Cambridge, and was composed of nine royal carriages, in the last of which the Queen was seen accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Her Majesty seemed to be in good health, and she looked supremely happy. The Prince was pale and rather haggard, but his bright and happy nature shone through a countenance radiant with gratitude, and he kept bowing all along the way to the multitudes who cheered him. The hearty reciprocal feeling between the Queen, the Prince, and the populace, which the shouts of such a vast crowd expressed, rendered the scene a magnificent demonstration of national loyalty to a popular Sovereign. At Temple Bar the Queen was met by the Lord Mayor and municipal dignitaries of the City of London, arrayed in their robes, and mounted on white horses. Having alighted, the Lord Mayor delivered to and received back from the Queen the City sword, according to the usual custom. But, contrary to precedent and to general expectation, the gates of Temple Bar were not closed against the Queen, so that it was unnecessary to present her with the

THANKSGIVING DAY: ST. PAUL’S ILLUMINATED.

keys. The Lord Mayor and his colleagues having re-mounted their steeds, preceded the Royal procession to St. Paul’s. Precisely at one o’clock the Queen entered the Cathedral through the pavilion erected upon the steps. Its approach was covered with crimson cloth, and it was ornamented with the royal arms and with the escutcheon of the Prince of Wales. On it there was the inscription “I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord.” Within the Cathedral the scene was imposing and impressive, for all that was exalted in station, high in official position, or eminent by reason of genius, talent, and public services was represented in the congregation of 13,000 persons. Representatives of the Court, the Princes of India, the Colonies, the Houses of Parliament, the Episcopate, the Judges, the Lords-Lieutenant, and the municipal authorities of the provincial towns, were especially prominent. The Queen was received at the Cathedral by the Bishop of

THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.

London and the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and by the officers of her household, who were already waiting for her. With the Prince of Wales on her right hand and the Princess of Wales on her left, the Queen, leaning on the Prince’s arm, walked up the nave in a procession which was marshalled by the Lancaster and Somerset Heralds. The special service began at one o’clock with the Te Deum, which was arranged by Mr. Goss for the occasion, and sung by a choir of two hundred and fifty voices. The voice of the Archbishop of Canterbury was inaudible, but the choral part of the ritual was listened to reverently. The words of special thanksgiving were:—“O Father of Mercies and God of all Comfort, we thank Thee that Thou hast heard the prayers of this nation in the day of our trial. We praise and magnify Thy glorious name for that Thou hast raised Thy servant, Albert Edward Prince of Wales, from the bed of sickness. Thou castest down and Thou liftest up, and health and strength are Thy gifts; we pray Thee to perfect the recovery of Thy servant, and to crown him day by day with more abundant blessings, both for body and soul, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Here there was a long pause, during which the dead silence of that vast hushed congregation was described by those present as being almost painful to the ear. Archbishop Tait having pronounced the benediction delivered a sermon which was striking for its brevity and its simple unadorned eloquence. He took for his text the words “Every one members one of another,” and illustrated in a few apt sentences the Divine origin of family life and of the State and of the Church, which, he said, was but the family and the State in relation to God. The illness of the Prince had given a fresh meaning to this conception. Hence “such a day,” observed the Archbishop in his concluding sentence, “makes us feel truly that we are all members one of another.” The religious ceremony ended at two o’clock, and the Royal procession returned to Buckingham Palace amid thunders of artillery from the guns of the Tower and the Park.

With one exception the decorations were successful. That exception—which was noted as curious at the time by the Queen—was at Ludgate Circus, where the triumphal arch, which ought to have been one of the grandest in the metropolis was, by reason of backward preparation, almost a failure. It was not till the procession was nearly within sight that the scaffoldings were taken down, and the scene of confusion as the distracted workmen removed the poles, delighted the mob amazingly.[36] Unfortunately in the hurry, so much damage was done to the gorgeous gold mouldings of the arch, that it presented the appearance of an ancient but freshly gilded ruin. As for the illuminations at night, they were not general—probably because many people did not regard a religious thanksgiving day as a fit occasion for illuminating. The centres of attraction were the dome and west front of St. Paul’s, the dome being picked out by a treble row of coloured ship’s lanterns. The cathedral itself stood out in lurid splendour when transient shafts of lime-light, and the fitful glow of the red light on the gilded ball fell on the building. Two days after the ceremony the following letter was published in the London Gazette:—

“Buckingham Palace, February 29, 1872.

“The Queen is anxious, as on a previous occasion, to express publicly her own personal very deep sense of the reception she and her dear children met with on Tuesday, February 27th, from millions of her subjects, on her way to and from St. Paul’s.

“Words are too weak for the Queen to say how very deeply touched and gratified she has been by the immense enthusiasm and affection exhibited towards her dear son and herself, from the highest down to the lowest, on the long progress through the Capital, and she would earnestly wish to convey her warmest and most heartfelt thanks to the whole nation for this great demonstration of loyalty.

“The Queen, as well as her son and her dear daughter-in-law, felt that the whole nation joined with them in thanking God for sparing the beloved Prince of Wales’s life.

“The remembrance of this day and of the remarkable order maintained throughout, will for ever be affectionately remembered by the Queen and her family.”

On the very day on which this letter was dated a strange attack was made on the Queen. When she returned from her afternoon drive in the Park, she passed along by Buckingham Palace wall, and drove to the gate at which she usually alighted. The carriage had hardly halted when a lad rushed to its left side, and bending forward presented a pistol at the Queen, while he flourished a petition in his hand. He then rushed round the carriage and threw himself into a similar attitude on the other side. The Queen remained calm and unmoved, and the boy’s pistol was taken from him, when it was discovered that it was unloaded. The petition was a poor scrawl, demanding the release of the Fenian prisoners, and the lad gave the name of Arthur O’Connor, and stated his age to be seventeen.[37]

When Parliament assembled in 1872 Mr. Gladstone found himself confronted by an Opposition which had been rendered almost insolently aggressive by their triumphs at the bye-elections. He found himself supported by a majority, each section of which had its special grievance against him. And if he looked beyond Parliament for support he might have seen that a subtle popular suspicion was growing up round his name which was fast neutralising the magic of his personality. It was said, alike by friends and foes, that an overweening love for personal power, and a passion for exercising personal authority over others, had become the guiding motives of his life, and the inspiring ideas of his policy. Had this been true, it is hardly likely that the Prime Minister would have identified himself with legislation which had set the vested interests, and the fanatical sectaries up in arms against him. But the important point was that, whether true or false, the calumny was believed, and the Queen, like many other careful observers, saw the Ministry growing weaker and weaker every day, whilst Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues were themselves under the delusion that every day increased their popularity. And yet, as if to justify the maxim that in politics it is the unexpected that happens, the year was not fruitful in crises or in sensational scenes. Mr. Disraeli held his followers in check, and the Session was a business-like one, which, when it ended, left the Government stronger than could have been anticipated.

The Parliamentary year was opened on the 6th of February, the Queen’s Speech being read by Commission. It promised a Ballot Bill, and Bills for organising Education in Scotland, for regulating Mines, and for improving the Licensing System. The passage in the Speech to which, however, all eyes turned was the one dealing with the Alabama Claims. On this subject the country had suddenly become profoundly agitated, and from an observation in Bishop Wilberforce’s Diary we gather that the Queen, shared the popular feeling of the hour.[38] After the nation had congratulated itself on discovering a diplomatic solution of its difficulties with the American Republic, it was amazed to find that the Americans were endeavouring to seize by chicane what they had failed to gain by diplomacy. When they forwarded the case which they meant to submit to Arbitration, it was discovered that they had included in it not only a claim for the actual damage done to American commerce by the Confederate cruisers, but also the claims for the indirect or “consequential damages” which Mr. Sumner had put forward, and which the British Commissioners understood were abandoned. The sum asked under this head would have covered half the cost of the whole Civil War. It was therefore the clear opinion of the Queen that England could not consent to go into Arbitration till this preposterous demand was withdrawn. Lord Granville, on the other hand, though he inclined to this opinion, was slow to reply to a demand which he was in honour bound to promptly repel. He was chiefly concerned about saving the Washington Treaty, and he therefore sent to the American Government a mild letter requesting the withdrawal of the “indirect claims” in terms so deferentially conciliatory, that had he been dealing with a less pacific Power his despatch would probably have been answered with the cynical

GENEVA.

brusquerie that marked Von Bismarck’s dealings with him. But the country was not as meek as the Minister. There was an outburst of popular anger against the Americans for the “sharp practice” which sullied their statement of claim, and Mr. Gladstone soon saw that to go into Arbitration before the demand for “consequential damages” was withdrawn would lead to his expulsion from office. His declarations in Parliament on the subject thenceforth showed that he meant to repudiate the American interpretation of the Treaty under which the “indirect claims” had been dragged into the American case, and he spoke with the high spirit of a statesman rejecting a humiliating demand for tribute greater than conquest itself could extort. The Opposition in both Houses, on the whole, gave the Government generous support in this emergency, though Mr. Disraeli—referring to the torrent of Ministerial oratory which had deluged the recess—could not refrain in his comment on the Queen’s Speech from deriding the Cabinet for having lately lived “in a blaze of apology.”

The story of the controversy on the “indirect claims” may here be told. The United States, in extremely conciliatory despatches, insisted on including these claims in their case. They argued that it was for the arbitrators at Geneva to say whether they were or were not admissible under the Treaty. They rested their contention on an ambiguous phrase which Lord Ripon and Sir Stafford Northcote had unfortunately permitted to pass unconnected into the Treaty. The first Article of that instrument described its object to be that of removing and adjusting “all complaints and claims,” &c., “growing out of acts committed by the said vessels, and generically known as the ‘Alabama’ Claims.” This certainly gave the Americans a plausible excuse for demanding “consequential” as well as direct damages. On the other side, the English Government argued that all the concessions made by the British Commissioners at Washington were made on the understanding that the “indirect claims” were not included in the Treaty; that in all their correspondence with the Washington Department of State no claims save direct claims were ever “generically” known as the Alabama Claims; and, lastly, that their interpretation was publicly expressed and well known to the United States Government, people, and Minister at the Court of St. James’s, and was never objected to by either of them. It would, however, have been easy to put the point beyond dispute when the Treaty was drawn up by specifically barring all indirect claims. When Lord Ripon and Sir Stafford. Northcote failed to do that they were guilty of negligence which, if brought home to the diplomatists of either Russia or Germany, would have procured for them, not rewards and honours, but punishment and degradation. Fortunately the dispute ended happily. Lord Granville for once acted with the firmness becoming the representative of a great nation. When the arbitrators met at Geneva, the representatives of England persistently refused to take part in the proceedings till the “indirect claims” were withdrawn. The arbitrators then adroitly extricated the agents of the Washington Government from a false position. They met and declared that, without reference to the scope of the Treaty or to the merits of the dispute as to its interpretation, which England refused to discuss before them, they were agreed that “indirect claims” could never, on general principles of international law, be a tenable ground for an award of damages in international disputes.

The Americans then withdrew the obnoxious part of their “case,” and the arbitrators awarded to the United States £3,229,000 damages against England for the depredations committed by three out of the ten Confederate cruisers which, it was alleged, the British Government had negligently permitted to escape from British ports. The American claim for naval expenses incurred in chasing these cruisers was, however, rejected, because the arbitrators held that it could not be practically distinguished from the general cost of the war. The Lord Chief Justice of England—one of the members of the Tribunal—concurred in the judgment as regards the Alabama. He differed from all his colleagues in regard to the Florida, and he and the Brazilian arbitrator differed from the majority as to the case of the Shenandoah.[39] The failure of the English Government to seize the Florida and Alabama, when they put into British ports after they had made their escape, was evidently the fact which bore most strongly against England in the opinion of the Geneva Tribunal. The American claims for damages in respect of the Georgia, Chickamauga, Nashville, Retribution, Sumter, and Tallahassee, were rejected. On the whole, public opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, though not quite satisfied with the verdict, allowed that there had been a fair fight and a fair trial. Lord Chief Justice Cockburn’s dissenting judgment, however, expressed the feeling of the English people, which was this. “Let us admit,” they said, “the ex post facto rule making neutrals liable for damages if they do not exercise ‘due diligence’—the ‘dueness of diligence’ to be always proportionate to the mischief the vessels might do—in preventing the escape of cruisers, and in re-capturing them when they get the chance. English officials were, however, not aware that, when these cruisers escaped and when on re-entering British ports they were not detained, international law demanded from them more ‘dueness’ of diligence than they had exercised or been taught to exercise. Hence it surely was wrong to give damages for their unconscious negligence, just as if their negligence had been conscious.” This argument, indeed, Sir Alexander Cockburn pressed to the point of cutting down to zero the claim for damages in respect of the Shenandoah and Florida.

One of the most important Government measures of the year was the Ballot Act. But the opposition to it was marked by no novelty of argument, and it need only be said about it here that it was passed, the Lords not venturing to reject it a second time.[40] The Scottish Education Bill, which also passed, established a School Board system of public instruction all over Scotland far in advance of that which England had been able to obtain. A Licensing Bill of a mildly regulative character was carried, the publicans grudgingly accepting it as a compromise, while the Temperance Party attacked it as miserably ineffective.[41] Mr. Stansfeld’s Public Health Bill, defining the authority which must in future be responsible for local sanitation, and embodying the principle that rates should be divided between the State and the locality was so adroitly managed by Mr. Stansfeld, that at last Mr. Disraeli supported the Government in carrying it. Another useful measure regulating the working of Coal Mines was carried in spite of many protests against interfering with private contracts between masters and servants, and many attempts on the part of the vested interests who were supported by the bulk of the Tory Party, to render the Bill inoperative. Among other things it prohibited the employment of women underground, and it made mine-owners responsible for the results of preventible mining accidents.

Mr. Cardwell’s Army Bill was received with unlocked for favour. It attempted to adapt the territorial system of Prussia to the exigencies of military service in England. The nine existing military divisions were subdivided into sixty-six military districts. In each of these a small army or brigade was formed, consisting of two battalions of Regulars, to which were linked the local Militia and Volunteers. One of the regular battalions was to be told off for foreign service, and its “waste” supplied by drafts from the territorial depôt. The main objection to the scheme urged by Conservative officers was that it destroyed the family life of the old regiments—that it even destroyed their identity by substituting local titles for the numbers which their prowess in war had in many cases made historic. According to this scheme the country would have an Army of 446,000 men, of whom 146,000 were available for service abroad. The evidence given before the Commission which reported on the wreck of the Megæra, concentrated attention on Admiralty Reform. On the whole, the country gave Mr. Childers credit for having brought order into that chaotic department. Before he came to power the various branches of the Admiralty had little or no connection with each other, and when a blunder was made by conflicting authority or contradictory orders, nobody could be made responsible. Mr. Childers set responsible officers at the head of each department, and made excellent arrangements for their mutual co-operation. But the weak point of his scheme was that he as First Lord was the real nexus which bound the whole organisation together. The system accordingly broke down when his health gave way, for Mr. Lushington, who was in a sense the Grand Vizier of the First Lord, was a civilian comparatively new to the department, and unable to act as an efficient substitute for Mr. Childers.[42] Mr. Goschen met the difficulty, not by appointing a naval expert as his second in command, but by casting responsibility for all orders on three officials—a Naval Secretary who was to be responsible for orders concerning the personnel, a Controller who was to be responsible for those relating to the matériel, and a Permanent Secretary who was to be responsible for those affecting finance and civil business. To secure unity of work the Board of Admiralty was to meet daily for consultation, and in the First Lord’s absence the supreme authority was to pass to the First Naval Lord of the Admiralty.

DR. NORMAN MACLEOD.

(From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry.)

In spite of a serious defeat on Sir Massey Lopes’ motion on the question of Local Taxation,[43] a narrow escape from defeat on the Collier scandal, and a clever mocking attack by Mr. Disraeli at Manchester in the spring on their sensational policy and their ambiguous utterances on the proposals of their extreme supporters, the Ministers were stronger in Parliament when the Session ended than when it began. Mr. Lowe’s Budget further helped the credit of the Government, for such was the elasticity of the revenue that it foreshadowed a surplus of £3,000,000, and enabled him to remit the twopenny Income Tax which he had imposed in 1871.[44] Ireland, however, was as usual a source of anxiety to the Cabinet. The Tories and Orangemen, indignant at the Disestablishment of the Church, had coalesced with the more moderate Repealers, and set on foot the Home Government Association,[45] from which the Home Rule Party under the leadership of Mr. Isaac Butt sprang. Whenever the Ballot Act was passed, Home Rule candidates began to carry the Irish bye-elections against the Ministerialists—in fact, it was apparent to shrewd observers that the destruction of the Liberal Party in Ireland was now only a matter of time. Earl Russell was probably of this opinion when, in August, he startled the town by publishing a letter in the Times virtually conceding the principle of Home Rule in order to lighten the burden of Imperial legislation with which Parliament was overweighted.[46]

As for the Opposition, their councils were divided. Lord Salisbury was averse from promising any programme. Mr. Disraeli seemed afraid to suggest one that went beyond sanitary reform. Yet the Tories had completely broken the absolute power of Mr. Gladstone in the country, and were still, as the Municipal Elections in November showed, a growing party. The causes which contributed to a reaction in their favour in 1871 were still at work. Mr. Gladstone’s opposition to Sir Massey Lopes’ motion on rating, and the sudden appearance of Trades Unionism among the agricultural labourers gave Conservatism hosts of fresh recruits, for the squires and the farmers naturally rallied to the Party whose leaders stood forth as champions of the threatened interests.

The attempt of O’Connor on the Queen’s life was not the only crime of the kind that darkened the year. On the 8th of February Lord Mayo, the Viceroy of India, was stabbed to death by a Mahommedan convict at Port Blair, the port of the penal settlement on the Andaman Islands, to which Lord Mayo was paying a visit of inspection. The assassin was a sullen, brooding fanatic who had been transported for killing a relative with whom he had a “blood feud.” The Queen was as much shocked as the country by the event, for by this time it was universally recognised that Lord Mayo was one of the most competent Viceroys who had ever ruled India. His intuitive insight into difficulties, his shrewd perception of character, his frank resoluteness of action, his clearness and decision of purpose, and his dignified and stately bearing rendered Lord Mayo an ideal viceroy. His great work consisted in cementing an alliance with the Afghan Ameer, in imposing an income-tax to rehabilitate the finances of India, and suppressing a rebellious movement among the Wahabee fanatics.

Early in May telegrams were received in London announcing that Dr. Livingstone, the African explorer, as to whose safety much anxiety had been felt, had been discovered by Mr. Stanley, a special correspondent on the staff of the New York Herald, who had been despatched by Mr. J. Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of that journal, to look for the missing traveller. The Queen received these tidings with the deepest gratification, not unmingled with regret that the honour of the discovery should pass to an American expedition. Her interest in Livingstone, and in his last efforts to discover the sources of the Nile, was well known—indeed, when in England the explorer had a private interview with her Majesty, of which an account is given in Mr. Blaikie’s “Personal Life of Dr. Livingstone.” “She [the Queen] sent for Livingstone,” writes Mr. Blaikie, “who attended her Majesty at the Palace without ceremony, in his black coat and blue trousers and his cap surrounded with a stripe of gold lace. This was his usual attire, and the cap had now become the appropriate distinction of one of her Majesty’s Consuls—an official position to which the traveller attaches great importance as giving him consequence in the eyes of natives and authority over the members of the expedition. The Queen conversed with him affably for half-an-hour on the subject of his travels. Dr. Livingstone told her Majesty that he would now be able to say to the natives that he had seen his chief, his not having done so before having been a constant subject of surprise to the children of the African wilderness. He mentioned to her Majesty also that the people were in the habit of inquiring whether his chief were wealthy, and when he answered them that she was very wealthy they would ask how many cows she had got, a question at which the Queen laughed very heartily.” Mr. Stanley had found Livingstone at Ujiji near Lake Tanganyika, and on his way back to Zanzibar he met the English Expedition, which had been despatched by the Royal Geographical Society, carrying succour to the explorer. As Livingstone’s orders were to refuse this tardy aid, the chiefs of the British Expedition had to return. Some people were at first sceptical as to the story told by Mr. Stanley, but doubts were set at rest on the 27th of August, when Lord Granville sent to Mr. Stanley a gold snuff-box set with diamonds as a gift from the Queen. Accompanying the present was the following letter:—

“I have great satisfaction in conveying to you, by command of the Queen, her Majesty’s high appreciation of the prudence and zeal which you have displayed in opening a communication with Dr. Livingstone, and relieving her Majesty from the anxiety which, in common with her subjects, she had felt in regard to the fate of that distinguished traveller. The Queen desires me to express her thanks for the service you have thus rendered, together with her Majesty’s congratulations on your having so successfully carried out the mission which you so fearlessly undertook. Her Majesty also desires me to request your acceptance of the memorial which accompanies this letter.”

THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE BURMESE EMBASSY.

In June the Queen had to mourn the loss of a highly trusted old family friend, Dr. Norman Macleod of Glasgow. He had been long ailing, and when at Balmoral, in May, the Queen at her last interview with him was so struck with his physical weakness that she insisted on his being seated whilst he was in her presence. Macleod’s influence as a courtier was built up partly on his ability as an eloquent pulpit orator, and his tact as a kindly, genial, shrewd, tolerant man of the world. He had genuine goodness of heart, and he had not only the supple diplomatic skill of the Celt, but the Celt’s inborn and honest love and reverence for rank and dignities. It was quite a mistake to suppose that his “flunkeyism” made him a persona grata at Court. On the contrary, he was in the unique position of being a Royal Chaplain on whom the Queen could not confer any favour or dignity. She could not give him a richer living in the Church than the one he had obtained without her patronage, and as a Presbyterian clergyman he could never be suspected of intriguing for hierarchical rank when he approached the Sovereign. His disinterestedness, too, was well known, for it was to Macleod’s credit that during his long connection with the Court, though he was frequently entrusted with missions concerning matters of delicate family business, he never even asked for a favour either for himself or any of his relatives. When the vague rumour of his death reached the Queen she addressed the following letter to Dr. Macleod’s brother:—

“Balmoral, June 17, 1872.

“The Queen hardly knows how to begin a letter to Mr. Donald Macleod, so deep and strong are her feelings on this most sad and most painful occasion, for words are all too weak to say what she feels, and what all must feel who ever knew his beloved, excellent, and highly-gifted brother, Dr. Norman Macleod.

“First of all to his family—his venerable, loved, and honoured mother, his wife and large family of children—the loss of the good man is irreparable and overwhelming! But it is an irreparable public loss, and the Queen feels this deeply. To herself, personally, the loss of dear Dr. Macleod is a very great one; he was so kind, and on all occasions showed her such warm sympathy, and in the early days of her great sorrow gave the Queen so much comfort whenever she saw him, that she always looked forward eagerly to those occasions when she saw him here; and she cannot realise the idea that in this world she is never to see his kind face and listen to those admirable discourses which did every one good, and to his charming conversation again.

“The Queen is gratified that she was able to see him this last time, and to have had some lengthened conversation with him, when he dwelt much on that future world to which he now belongs. He was sadly depressed and suffering, but still so near a termination of his career of intense usefulness and loving-kindness never struck her or any of us as likely, and the Queen was terribly shocked on learning the sad news. All her children, present and absent, deeply mourn his loss. The Queen would be very grateful for all the details which Mr. D. Macleod can give her of the last moments and illness of her dear friend.

“Pray say everything kind and sympathising to their venerable mother, to Mrs. N. Macleod and all the family, and she asks him to accept himself of her true heartfelt sympathy.”

The letter—one of the most remarkable ever written by a sovereign to and of a subject—is worth quoting, not only on account of its biographical interest, but as a model of sincerity, tenderness, and good taste exhibited in an order of composition usually disfigured by artificiality both of sentiment and style.

The lions of the London season of 1872 were two foreign embassies—one from Japan and one from Burma. The Japanese were Envoys from a great Asiatic monarch, and were nobles of the first rank specially chosen to represent their Sovereign. Their refined manner, shrewd observations, quick intelligence, and mastery over the English tongue, rendered them general favourites. The so-called “Ambassadors” from Burma came to England on a different footing, and some authorities on Eastern affairs complained that they received an amount of attention and hospitality far beyond their deserts or their importance. It was said that they were officials chosen because of their low rank for the purpose of publicly slighting England; that they were sent to this country in order to establish a precedent for ignoring the Indian Viceroy, and enabling the King of Burma to treat with the Queen of England as a Peer. The Indian Viceroys had certainly been averse from permitting the Burmese Court to form direct diplomatic relations with European Courts; but in the East, Missions of Compliment are sometimes sent from Sovereigns to each other, and such Missions do not necessarily engage in diplomatic business. In this case the Burmese King Mindohn, by far the ablest ruler of the Alompra dynasty, had accepted the arrangement by which the diplomatic relations of Burma and the British Empire were carried on through an agent of the Indian Viceroy at Mandalay.[47] Indeed, one of the chief diplomatic difficulties between the two Governments—the great “Shoe Question,” as it was called—was not one capable of direct discussion between the Courts of St. James’s and Mandalay.[48] As to the rank of the Burmese Envoy, misconceptions on that point arose because Englishmen failed to understand that in Burma there was no such thing as hereditary rank outside the royal family of Alompra, the hunter king. Rank was conferred solely by official position, and the head of the Burmese Mission was a high official of the first grade, who was really President of the Hloht or Council of State. Under King Theebaw, who succeeded Mindohn, he became better known as the Kin-Woon Mingyee, and represented the party of peace and order at Mandalay with great ability and honesty of purpose. The Queen was rather better informed as to the antecedents of these distinguished visitors, and accordingly on Friday, the 21st of June, she received them at Windsor Castle. They brought with them many costly presents to her Majesty, of which an exceptionally magnificent bracelet, made of seven pounds of solid gold, was much talked about at the time. They also delivered a letter from the King, which began, “From His Great, Glorious, and Most Excellent Majesty, King of the Rising Sun, who reigns over Burma, to Her Most Glorious and Excellent Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.” After her Majesty had received the presents, and made her acknowledgments through Major MacMahon, late Political Agent at Mandalay, the Embassy withdrew, and returned to London.

On the 1st of July the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Louise, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold visited the National Memorial erected in Hyde Park to the memory of the late Prince Consort. This was a strictly private visit, the monument being at the time incomplete.

Between the 15th and 20th of August the Queen broke her journey to Balmoral, and resided at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, for a few days. Though her visit was private, she was so gratified with the reception she everywhere received that she caused Viscount Halifax to address the following letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh:—

“Dear Lord Provost,—It is not the practice unless the Queen has visited any city or town in a public manner, to address any official communication to the chief magistrate or authority of the place. I am commanded, however, by her Majesty to convey to you in a less formal manner the expression of her Majesty’s gratification at the manner in which she was received by the people of Edinburgh in whatever part of this city and neighbourhood her Majesty appeared. Her Majesty has felt this the more because, as her Majesty’s visit was so strictly private, it was so evidently the expression of their national feeling of loyalty. Her Majesty was also very much pleased with the striking effect produced by lighting up the park and the old chapel.”

The death of the amiable and accomplished Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg on the 23rd of September plunged the Queen into deep despondency. The Princess was half-sister to her Majesty, and the tie that bound them together through life had been close and affectionate. “All sympathise with you,” wrote the Princess Louis to the Queen when she heard of her mother’s bereavement, “and feel what a loss to you darling aunt must be, how great the gap in your life, how painful the absence of that sympathy and love which united her life and yours so closely.”

CHAPTER XVIII.
GOVERNMENT UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

A Lull Before the Storm—Dissent in the Dumps—Disastrous Bye-Elections—The Queen’s Speech—The Irish University Bill—Defeat of the Government—Resignation of the Ministry—Mr. Disraeli’s Failure to Form a Cabinet—The Queen and the Crisis—Lord Derby as a Possible Premier—Mr. Gladstone Returns to Office—Power Passes to the House of Lords—Grave Administration Scandals—The Zanzibar Mail Contract—Misappropriation of the Post Office Savings Banks’ Balances—Mr. Gladstone Reconstructs his Ministry—The Financial Achievements of his Administration—The Queen and the Prince of Wales—Debts of the Heir Apparent—The Queen’s Scheme for Meeting the Prince’s Expenditure on her Behalf—The Queen and Foreign Decorations—Death of Napoleon III.—The Queen at the East End—The Blue-Coat Boys at Buckingham Palace—The Coming of the Shah—Astounding Rumours of his Progress through Europe—The Queen’s Reception of the Persian Monarch—How the Shah was Entertained—His Departure from England—Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh—Public Entry of the Duchess into London.

When the Session of 1873 opened, it is a curious fact that in London the universal complaint was that politics had become depressingly dull. But the lull really presaged a storm, in which the Government was wrecked. It was known that Mr. Gladstone intended to make the question of Irish University education the chief business of the Session, and it was admitted that next to this question the one of most consequence to the Government was that which was raised by the Dissenters, who demanded the extension of School Boards, and the establishment of compulsory education all over England, together with the repeal of the 25th clause of Mr. Forster’s Education Act. The bye-elections, which had been disastrous to the Ministry, showed that the Dissenters were in revolt, and that they “sulked in their tents,” instead of supporting Ministerial candidates. The Irish University Bill could not possibly be carried without Nonconformist support, and that could obviously not be hoped for if anything like “concurrent endowment” for the Roman Catholics defaced it. On the other hand, if the revenues of Trinity College were shared with Catholic scholars, Liberals like Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Vernon Harcourt would support Mr. Disraeli in opposing the measure. The Cabinet resolved to neutralise the expected secession of the small Fawcett-Harcourt group, by rendering their Bill acceptable to their powerful Nonconformist contingent, and Liberal tacticians were full of joyful anticipations when it leaked out that this plan was contemplated. As will be seen, one important contingency was never taken into consideration—the possible desertion of Mr. Gladstone’s Roman Catholic followers; and yet it was their desertion which wrecked the Bill and destroyed the Government.

QUEEN’S COLLEGE, CORK.

(From a Photograph by W. Lawrence, Dublin.)

The Queen’s speech was read to Parliament by Commission on the 6th of February, and it promised an Irish Education Bill, a Judicature Bill, a Land Transfer Bill, an Education Amendment Act, a Local Taxation Bill, and a Railway Regulation Bill. In the debate on the Address the Opposition leaders dwelt mainly on foreign questions, pressing the Government to say whether they were prepared to recommend the rules under which the Alabama case had been decided to the European Powers; and if so, whether they would recommend them as interpreted by the legal advisers of the Crown, or as interpreted by the majority of the arbitrators. Mr. Gladstone first said that the rules had been recommended for adoption by the Powers, but without any special construction being put on them. Then he had to correct himself before the debate closed, by explaining that he had made a mistake, for the rules had not yet been brought under the notice of Foreign Governments. This confession naturally forced the public to conclude that the Tories could not be far wrong when they declared that foreign affairs were neglected because Lord Granville was indolent and Mr. Gladstone neither knew nor cared anything about them.

PROFESSOR FAWCETT.

(From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company.)

On the 13th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced the Irish University Education Bill. It affiliated several other educational institutions besides Trinity College to the University of Dublin. Two of the Queen’s Colleges, established by Sir Robert Peel, were to be associated with the University, and the Queen’s University itself was to be abolished. Queen’s College at Galway was to be suppressed, because it had failed to attract students to its classrooms. The so-called Catholic University and several other Roman Catholic seminaries were also, in the same manner, to be attached to the Dublin University. The new University was to have an income of £50,000 a year, a fourth of which was taken from Trinity College, a fourth from the endowment for Queen’s University, three-eighths from the Irish Church surplus, whilst fees, it was expected, would make up the balance. It was to have professors for teaching in Dublin all academical subjects excepting history and mental philosophy, which were tabooed as too controversial for Ireland. Bursaries, Scholarships, and Fellowships were liberally endowed. Tests were to be abolished, the Theological Faculty of Trinity College was to be transferred—with an endowment—to the Disestablished Church, and the prohibited subjects, History and Philosophy, were not to be compulsory in examinations for degrees. The constituency of the University was to consist of all graduates of the affiliated colleges. The governing council of twenty-five was to be nominated in the Bill, after which, vacancies were to be filled up alternately by co-optation and Crown nomination. After ten years, however, equal numbers of the council were to be chosen, by the Crown, by co-optation, by the professors, and by the graduates. The Bill, according to the Bishop of Peterborough—by far the ablest Protestant ecclesiastic Ireland has produced in the Victorian period—“was as good as could be under the circumstances,” and “ought to have pleased all parties.”[49] Unfortunately it pleased nobody, and its weak point was obvious. It attempted to provide for separate denominational education in the affiliated colleges, and for mixed secular education in Trinity College and the University of Dublin, to which they were affiliated—the one system being as incompatible with the other as an acid with an alkali. As Mr. Gathorne-Hardy said, the exclusion of History and Philosophy rendered the new University a monster cui lumen ademptum. The proposal to make the Irish Viceroy its Chancellor recalled, he declared, the lines of Milton,

“Its shape,
If shape it can be called, which shape had none
Distinguishable in feature, joint, or limb—”

all the more that

“What seemed its head,
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.”

At first the Bill was very well received, and there was a general disposition to admit that, in view of the limiting conditions of the problem, it was impossible to find a solution less offensive to the Protestants, and more generous to the Catholics of Ireland. But in a few days it became apparent that the measure was doomed. Ministers had been led to believe by their colleague, Mr. Monsell, who was the spokesman of the Catholic clergy, that the compromise would be accepted by them. But the Catholic Bishops met in secret, and decided to oppose the Bill.[50] As the Catholics opposed it for giving them too little, the Protestants opposed it because it gave the Catholics too much. The apostles of culture opposed it because it cut History and Philosophy out of the University curriculum, and in doing so they furnished all discontented Liberals with a good non-political excuse for voting against the Government. The Bill was defeated on the 12th of March by a vote of 287 to 284, the votes of 36 Catholic Members and 9 Liberals[51] having turned the scale. To the very last moment the issue was uncertain, because it was known that if Mr. Gladstone had offered to abandon the teaching clauses of the Bill, he would have won over a sufficient number of Catholic votes to carry it.[52]

Mr. Gladstone’s defeat was followed by the resignation of his Ministry, and the crisis was a most embarrassing one for the Queen. Mr. Disraeli, when sent for by the Sovereign, attempted to form a Cabinet, but did not succeed, mainly because Mr. Gathorne-Hardy objected to the party holding office on sufferance. When Mr. Disraeli reported his failure to the Queen, she again consulted Mr. Gladstone, who, however, suggested that some other Conservative leader—obviously hinting at Lord Derby—might succeed where Mr. Disraeli had failed. But Lord Derby was at Nice when the crisis became acute; and though the Tory Party felt that he was in a special sense their natural leader at such a juncture,[53] they knew that it was decidedly inconvenient for the Prime Minister to be a member of the Upper House, and that he would refuse to enter into anything like rivalry with Mr. Disraeli. Yet a restful Ministry, competent in administration, under a cool-headed, sensible Conservative aristocrat, was what the majority of the people, alarmed by harassed “vested interests,” desired at the time. Be that as it may, Mr. Disraeli, when appealed to a second time by the Queen, refused to assist her out of the difficulty, and Mr. Gladstone was again summoned to the rescue. He returned to power with his Cabinet unchanged and disavowed any intention to dissolve Parliament. Mr. Disraeli’s refusal to take office had given the Queen infinite anxiety, and his defence of his conduct was lame and halting. He was, he said, in a minority; he had not a policy, and could not get one ready till he had been for some time in office, so that he might see what was to be done. He did not desire to experience the humiliation of governing the country under a régime of hostile resolutions. The Queen and the country were alike conscious of the flimsiness of these excuses. Mr. Disraeli never met the question—which, to the Queen, seemed unanswerable—Why did he paralyse the existing Administration, if he was not prepared to put another in its place?

QUEEN’S COLLEGE, GALWAY.

Mr. Disraeli in refusing to govern England himself whilst he prevented Mr. Gladstone from governing it, was pursuing a policy which was as unconstitutional as it was unpatriotic. When he said he could not take office because he must dissolve in May in any case, and that he could not dissolve because he had not a policy to go to the country with, and when he explained that till he had time to study the archives of the Foreign Office he could not tell what ought to be done with questions such as the Russian advance on Khiva, and the Three Rules of the Washington Treaty, men smiled cynically. They asked each other if Lord Palmerston in 1869 was afraid to take the place of the Tory Government because he wanted time to form an opinion on Lord Malmesbury’s policy towards the Italian war of Liberation. Yet Mr. Disraeli gave a truthful account of his motives. He had no policy. Hence when he dissolved Parliament, as he was bound to do after winding up the business of the Session, he must have gone to the country on a purely personal issue between himself and Mr. Gladstone. Doubtless at a time when the nation was getting wearied of restless statesmen, a contest of the sort would have been disastrous to Mr. Gladstone, but not when raised by Mr. Disraeli, who was notoriously even flightier than his antagonist. To have won a General Election on such an issue the Tories must have fought under Lord Derby’s banner. Mr. Disraeli, however, had no intention of giving way to Lord Derby, and his followers did not dare to put him aside, more especially as he had in view a clever scheme of strategy. His idea was to force Mr. Gladstone to dissolve on a positive programme, and then to defeat him by a running fire of destructive criticism. These tactics might bring the Tories back to office under his own leadership, absolutely uncommitted to any definite policy whatever.

When Mr. Gladstone resumed office it was soon seen that he had not only wrecked his party, but compromised the prestige of the House of Commons. His was admittedly a weakened and discredited Ministry. It had been one of Mr. Disraeli’s favourite theories that whenever a feeble Ministry attempted to govern England, power passed from Parliament to the Crown. At one time, no doubt, the theory seemed plausible enough, but the Session of 1873 completely upset it. No sooner had Mr. Gladstone returned to office than power passed from the Crown and the House of Commons to the House of Lords. The will of the Peers was supreme over all. They said or did what they pleased, and quashed Bill after Bill without the least regard to the sentiments of the Queen, the desire of the Commons, or the interests of the country. The Peers rejected the Bill improving Church organisation contemptuously, though it had passed the Commons without a division. By asserting obsolete privileges of appellate jurisdiction over Scotland and Ireland, they disfigured the Judicature Bill, which consolidated the law courts and constituted a high court of appeal. They destroyed Mr. Stansfeld’s useful Rating Bill almost without debate. They opened a way for the reintroduction of purchase in the army, rejected the Landlord and Tenant Bill without even seeing it, and quashed a Bill, promoted by Mr. Vernon Harcourt and supported by the Government, to protect working men against being imprisoned under the law of conspiracy for non-statutable offences committed in the course of a strike. And the curious thing was that from the day Mr. Gladstone returned to office to lead a moribund Ministry and a disorganised House of Commons, the people submitted without a murmur to the resolute and decisive despotism of the Peers. Thus it came to pass that when the Session ended the Ministry seemed to have sunk into a dismal swamp of humiliation—a humiliation which was intensified by administrative scandals and internal feuds. It was shown that Mr. Lowe, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, prepared plans of his own for public works, without consulting the Public Works Office. Mr. Ayrton, as head of that Department, in his place in the House of Commons, repudiated all responsibility for the votes of money for his department which were altered without his knowledge and consent by Mr. Lowe. There was a painful “scene” in the House of Commons at the end of July when these disclosures were made, and when Mr. Ward Hunt formally asked the Government if its Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Commissioner of Works were on speaking terms. Mr. Baxter created another scandal by suddenly resigning office as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, because Mr. Lowe had ignored him in the matter of the Zanzibar mail contract. Mr. Lowe was proved to have given the contract for carrying letters from the Cape to Zanzibar to the Union Steam Company for £26,000, whereas the British India Steam Company had offered to do the work for £16,000. Mr. Lowe declared he had never heard of the offer; yet Lord Kimberley, the Secretary for the Colonies, knew of it, and the tender was transmitted by the Indian Postmaster-General to Mr. Monsell, the British Postmaster-General, who passed it on to the Treasury. At the Treasury Mr. Lowe concealed the papers relating to the contract from Mr. Baxter, avowedly because he was known to be hostile to it. A Committee of the House investigated the scandal, and disallowed the contract. This affair was also accompanied by the final revelation of the truth as to what was known as the telegraph scandal.

In spring the working classes were profoundly disturbed by a rumour that the Government had seized the Savings Banks balances, and were building great extensions of telegraph lines with the money without consulting Parliament on the subject. The foundation for the story was a discovery made by the Auditor-General of Public Accounts. He reported that the Telegraph Department of the Post Office had for some time evaded the control of the House of Commons over its expenditure. Instead of submitting to the House estimates for proposed works, and asking for a vote on account, Mr. Scudamore, the Chief of the Department, a brilliant but too zealous official, took whatever money he wanted from the Post Office receipts, and spent it as he pleased on works of extension and improvement. He submitted no estimates in detail, but always asked the House of Commons for a sum for new works, which enabled him to replace the Post Office receipts which he had used. A large portion of the money thus spent was taken from the Savings Banks balances which everybody understood were always paid in for safety to the Commissioners of National Debt, who invested them in Consols. Though no money was missing, it shook public confidence in the Government to find its administrative power so feeble that it could not prevent its own servants from tampering with the Savings Banks Deposits, and further investigation aggravated the scandal. It was shown that Lord Hartington when Postmaster-General had, like Mr. Monsell, allowed Mr. Scudamore to manage the Telegraph Department without any supervision, and that the Treasury had so far condoned this gross and culpable negligence that when it did business with Mr. Scudamore it communicated with him directly, and not through either Lord Hartington or Mr. Monsell, who had meekly submitted to be treated as official “dummies.” It was shown that the Treasury knew of Mr. Scudamore’s irregularities in 1871, and condoned them; that in 1872 it knew of them again, and acted so feebly that even Mr. Lowe admitted he regretted his lack of firmness. It was utterly impossible to defend the conduct of Mr. Lowe, Lord Hartington, Mr. Monsell, and the Chief Commissioner of National Debt, for countenancing these grave irregularities, and the scandal was simply disastrous to the administrative prestige of the Ministry.

The Queen was alarmed at the dismal prospect of ruling England by means of a Cabinet so hopelessly discredited, and Mr. Gladstone was equally conscious of the gravity of the situation. Whenever Parliament was prorogued he tried to parry attacks on the administrative incapacity of his Cabinet by reconstructing it. To the great relief of the Queen, he himself took the Chancellorship of the Exchequer into his own hands, so that the public might have a guarantee that the era of chaos at the Treasury was closed.[54] Mr. Bruce was elevated to the Peerage as Lord Aberdare, and became President of the Council, Lord Ripon having retired for private reasons. Mr. Childers (also for private reasons) vacated the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Mr. Bright took his place and re-entered the Cabinet. Mr. Lowe was removed to the Home Office, and ere the year closed Mr. Adam became Chief Commissioner of Works, Mr. Ayrton taking the office of Judge-Advocate-General. Mr. Monsell also retired from the Postmaster-Generalship, and was succeeded by Dr. Lyon Playfair. The death of Sir William Bovill, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in November, elevated Sir J. D. Coleridge to the Bench. Mr. Henry James accordingly became Attorney-General, and, to the amazement of the Bar, he was succeeded as Solicitor-General by Mr. Vernon Harcourt, whose attacks on the Ministry had thus met with their reward.

Mr. Gladstone’s hope was to reinvigorate the Government with a little new blood, and rehabilitate it by means of his influence and reputation as a financial administrator and Mr. Bright’s personal popularity among the Nonconformists. Yet the financial work of the Government alone, when administrative

VIEWS IN WINDSOR: OLD MARKET STREET, AND THE TOWN HALL, FROM HIGH STREET.

blunders were detached from it, and relegated to their true place in political perspective, ought to have won for them the gratitude of the nation. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, who perpetually harassed the Ministry because of its growing expenditure—like many financial critics with an imperfect knowledge of book-keeping—failed to see that the apparent growth was not real because much of it was a mere matter of accounting.[55]

SANDRINGHAM HOUSE.

During their five years of power the Government had remitted £9,000,000 of taxation. They had reduced a chaotic Naval Administration to something resembling order, and not far removed from efficiency; and yet at the Admiralty there had been a saving of £1,500,000 on the Estimates of their predecessors. They had taken the Army out of pawn to its officers by abolishing Purchase, and had laid the basis for a compact military organisation; yet they had saved £2,300,000 a year at the War Office. The Army and Navy, though by no means efficient, were much more efficient than they had been when Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry came to power; and yet they were costing the country £4,000,000 less a year.[56] In spite of the great increase in Civil Service expenditure—much of which, like the Education Vote, being morally rather than financially reproductive, showed no “results” in figures on the credit side of the public ledger—there had been since 1857 a decrease in the drain on the taxes of about £1,500,000.[57] Mr. Lowe’s last Budget in 1873 did not discredit the Ministry. In spite of his reductions of taxation in the previous year, he had obtained £2,000,000 more than his estimated income. For the coming year (1873-4) he estimated a surplus of £4,746,000; but he could promise no great remission of taxation, for he had to pay the damages (£3,000,000) which had been awarded at Geneva to the United States Government. Still, he halved the sugar duties and took another penny off the Income Tax. With all his faults, he was accordingly entitled to claim credit for reducing the Income Tax to the lowest point it had ever touched (threepence in the £) since it had been imposed by Peel in 1842. And yet Mr. Lowe could not, even with such a Budget, refrain from expressing his thankfulness in an acrid gibe against the populace. Referring to the marvellous increase in the receipts from Customs and Excise, he said he had been able to produce a good Budget because the nation had drunk itself out of debt.

Apart from the political strife and Ministerial embarrassments which so severely taxed the nerves of the Queen, life at Court was not very eventful. Indeed, it centred chiefly round the Prince and Princess of Wales, who were discharging vicariously and with great popular acceptance most of the social duties of the Crown. This fact was recognised by the Queen herself in a curious indirect kind of way. The Prince of Wales, though very far from being a spendthrift, has never shrunk from incurring expenditure which, in his judgment, was necessary to maintain the dignity and prestige of the Crown in a manner worthy of the great nation whose Sovereignty is his heritage. But he has always refrained from appealing to Parliament for subsidies and subventions, either for himself or his family, other than those to which he is equitably and legally entitled by his official position in the State. This was all the more creditable to him, for two reasons. He was surrounded by companions, some of whom did not scruple to take advantage of his generosity. A considerable section of the public during the controversy that raged over the Princess Louise’s dowry had expressed a strong opinion in favour of limiting future Royal grants to an additional allowance to the Heir Apparent, for the purpose of meeting the unanticipated expenditure which he had incurred by taking the Queen’s place as the head of English Society. Sandringham, moreover, had not turned out a remunerative property, and the Prince was therefore under strong temptations to give a favouring ear to unwise counsels on this delicate subject. These, however, he put aside with manly common sense, and his affairs were arranged on a business-like basis, which would have met with the approval of his father, who was always of opinion that matters of the sort were best managed inside the family circle. The only public indication that was given of arrangements which must necessarily be spoken of with great reserve was afforded by Mr. Gladstone when, on the 21st of July, he introduced a Bill enabling the Queen to bequeath real property to the Prince of Wales, so that he could alienate it at will. The obvious advantage of such a measure was that it imparted a fresh elasticity to the financial resources of the Heir Apparent. For he had discovered a fact hitherto unrevealed in the history of his dynasty in England, namely, that though the Sovereign could bequeath to the Heir Apparent alienable personality, such as hard cash, land or real property so bequeathed, became, when vested in his person on ascending the Throne, the property of the State, and therefore inalienable. In fact, supposing the Queen had left Balmoral, an estate which she and her husband bought out of their private purse, to her eldest son, then, though it had been her own private property, it must become public property whenever the Prince of Wales became King. The state of the law on the subject was inequitable and inconvenient. For if the Queen wished to aid her eldest son in meeting expenses which he was every day incurring on her behalf, she had either to sell her private estates, endeared to her by a thousand tender family associations, or appeal to Parliament for a grant, a course which was as objectionable to her as to the Prince. On the other hand, if these private estates, when inherited by the Prince at her death, could be treated as private property, the Heir Apparent could easily obtain any additional subsidies he might need, by mortgaging his expectations. And yet the generous intentions of the Queen, and the honest purposes of the Prince which formed the motives for the Bill, were snappishly and churlishly misrepresented by several Radicals, and by at least one aristocratic Whig. Mr. George Anderson opposed the Bill because Sovereigns kept their wills secret. Sir Charles Dilke objected to it because he said it allowed the indefinite accumulation of private property in the hands of the Sovereign. His argument, in fact, came to this, that profligacy in the Monarch should be encouraged by the posthumous confiscation of his private estates. As for Mr. Bouverie, he asked what business the Sovereign had to possess large private means? The Bill, however, passed, and an incident which at one time threatened to be unpleasant for the Queen and her children was discreetly closed.

In March, the Queen’s refusal to permit the persons who represented England at the French Exhibition of 1867 to accept decorations, was made the subject of debate by Lord Houghton in the House of Lords. Her Majesty’s prejudice against introducing Foreign Orders and titles into England had often given offence to naturalised stockjobbers and pushing parvenus. She never even took kindly to the use of the title of “Baron” by the Rothschilds, though she tolerated it for reasons of an entirely exceptional nature. But if the Orders were admitted the titles must soon follow, and society might be inundated some day with Russian “Counts,” who, as the French say, had “a career behind them,” or with Austrian “Barons,” who had bought their honours out of the profits of financial gambling. The English Court, for this reason, has such strong opinions on the point that even English nobles, inheriting foreign titles, conceal them so successfully that few people ever suspect that the Duke of Wellington is a Portuguese prince, the head of the House of Hamilton a French duke, or Lord Denbigh a Prince of an uncrowned branch of the Imperial House of Hapsburg. It need not be said that Lord Houghton’s complaints were generally admitted to be frivolous, and that the Queen’s feeling that she must be the sole fountain of honour in England, was shared by the nation. If the services which an individual has rendered abroad have benefited England or mankind, or if it is possible to form a correct estimate of their value in England, the Queen held she must either reward them herself, or retain the right to permit the individual to receive a foreign decoration for them. There never has been any practical difficulty in dealing with such cases, and no self-respecting person has ever felt aggrieved because he was debarred from accepting Foreign Orders.[58]

On the 4th of January the Queen was grieved to hear of the death of the ex-Emperor of the French, at Chislehurst. Her tender sympathy was freely bestowed on the ex-Empress, who was prostrated by her misfortunes and her sorrow. Five years before, the death of this strange man, whose Imperial life seemed ever shadowed by the great crime of the coup d’état, would have convulsed Europe. Now the world seemed quite indifferent to it, and when politicians spoke of it, all they said was that by disorganising the Imperialist party in France, it lessened the labours of M. Thiers in founding the Third Republic. The English people, whom Napoleon III. had kept in feverish dread for two decades, and whose support and friendship he had rewarded with the perfidy of the Benedetti Treaty, did not pretend to mourn over his grave. They spoke of his character, which was a moral paradox, and his career, which was a political crime, without prejudice or ill-feeling. But as they thought of the horrors of the Crimean War, the wasted millions which Palmerston spent in fortifying the South Coast, and the final act of treachery which the German Government had revealed in July, 1870, there were some who considered that the Queen might have been less demonstrative in her manifestations of sorrow. But Her Majesty has never been free from the defects of her qualities. Quick to resent betrayal, her anger passes away as swiftly, when the betrayer broken by an avenging Destiny, and prostrate amid the wreck of his fortunes and his reputation, appeals to her sympathies. When Louis Philippe stood before her as a hunted fugitive, the Queen forgot the Spanish marriages. When Charles Louis Bonaparte fled for refuge to Chislehurst, she was too generous to remember his scheme for stealing Belgium.

THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO VICTORIA PARK.

When spring came round, “the great joyless city,” as Mr. Walter Besant calls the East End of London, was gladdened by the Queen, for on the 2nd of April her Majesty went there to visit Victoria Park. She was accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, and drove from Buckingham Palace to the park in an open carriage. Her route was along Pall Mall, Regent Street, Portland Place, Marylebone Road, and Euston Road to King’s Cross, up Pentonville Hill to the “Angel” at Islington, beyond which point along Upper Street, Essex Road, Ball’s Pond Road, through Dalston and Hackney, surging crowds of people lined both sides of the entire way. Streamers of gaudy bunting floated overhead from house to house across Islington Green. The Dalston and Hackney stations of the North London Railway, the Town Hall, and shops of Hackney were conspicuously decorated, and it was noticed that the Queen went among the poor of the East End without any military escort, a feat that few European Sovereigns would have dared to emulate. At the Town Hall she halted and received a bouquet, while the people sang the National Anthem. At the temporary entrance to Victoria Park a triple arch, of triumph had been erected, deep enough to resemble a long marquee in three compartments, open at both ends. It was handsomely fitted up in scarlet and gold, and here was stationed a guard of honour of the Fusiliers, while an escort of Life Guards was in waiting to conduct her Majesty round the park. Even the slums in this dismal quarter exhibited meagre decorations, eloquent alike of loyalty and indigence. A poor shoemaker, having nothing better to show, hung out his leather apron, on which the Queen saw with a thrill of interest that he had chalked up in flaming red letters, “Welcome as flowers in May. The Queen, God bless her.” The enthusiasm of the populace on this occasion was due to a curious idea that prevailed all over the East End. This visit, they said, was no ordinary one, because the Queen had come of her own free will to see the East End—a very different thing from the East End going westwards to see her. Hence a hurricane of cheers greeted the Queen wherever she went, and was more gladsome to her ears than the ornate language of the loyal addresses which she received. Her Majesty returned by Cambridge Heath Road, and when she came to Shoreditch the way was rendered almost impassable by an eager crowd. From Bishopsgate Street to the Bank she was hailed with passionate loyalty, which seemed to lose all restraint when on passing the Mansion House she rose in her carriage and smilingly bowed to the Lord Mayor, who stood in his State robes under the portico and saluted her. She then drove along the Embankment to the Palace, having charmed the sadder quarters of London with a visit which the people took to mean that they were not forgotten or ignored by their Queen.

On the 3rd of April, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the Duke of Cambridge, as President of Christ’s Hospital—the famous Blue-coat School—visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace to present the boys of the Mathematical School, who had come to exhibit their drawings and charts to her Majesty. A number of gentlemen connected with the Hospital had the honour of being presented by the Duke to the Queen when she entered the Drawing-room. Her Majesty then inspected, apparently with great interest, the maps and charts which were held before her by each boy separately.

The foreign curiosity of the London season in 1873 was the Shah of Persia. Soon after the Queen’s visit to the East End ceased to be discussed, the coming of the Shah was the favourite topic of talk. At the end of April his departure from Teheran amidst the blessings of an overawed crowd of 80,000 subjects was chronicled. On the 12th of May he was heard of, painfully navigating the waters of the Caspian in a Russian steamer, and wonderful tales of his progress were told. He had three wives, and nobody knew how many other ladies in his train holding brevet-matrimonial rank. Was he going to bring them to England? If so, could more than one of them be received, and in that case how were the rest to be disposed of? A cloud of despondency began to settle over the subordinates in the Lord Chamberlain’s department. Would it be possible, it was asked, to persuade the Queen to invite each of the Shah’s wives separately—one to Buckingham Palace, one to Windsor, and one to Osborne? Later on it was reported that not only was the Shah bringing his harem, but his Cabinet Ministers also. Was his visit likely to be free from danger? Might not people begin to cherish strange fancies, if the Shah thus gave them ocular proof that an ancient country could get on wonderfully well without a sovereign and without a government? Gradually astounding rumours of his wealth were sent round. He had brought only half a million sterling for pocket-money, because there had just been a famine in Persia; still the sum would meet the modest wants of his exalted position. Indeed, through a telegraphic blunder, the sum was first stated as £5,000,000. He was said to be covered with jewels and precious stones, and he wore a dagger which blazed with diamonds, so that one could only view it comfortably through ground glass. In June the officials of the Court were relieved from a supreme anxiety. Ere he got half-way over Europe the Shah had sent his harem back to Persia. As he approached England he was described as looking terribly bored, and his black velvet doublet, covered with diamonds, and ornamented with emerald epaulettes, was said by one irreverent journalist to give him the appearance of “a dark shrub under the early morning dew.” To the good English people he was a mighty Asiatic potentate, representing an ancient dynasty, and the popular cry was that he must be impressed with the power of England. Had they understood that his great grandfather was a petty chief, who at a time of revolution established a dynasty, and promptly began, with the aid of his relatives, to ruin Persia, and that their visitor himself ruled over a country with the population of Ireland and twice the area of Germany, they might have made themselves less ridiculous. Mr. Gladstone was even pestered on the subject, and had to turn the matter off with a smiling suggestion that it would be well to let the Shah fix his own programme, and not put him in chains when he landed on our shores. But in Court circles it was whispered with dread that it might be well to fetter the bedizened barbarian, for he had odd notions of etiquette, and had even rudely poked the august arm of the German Empress, when he wanted to call her attention at the theatre to something on the stage. On the 18th of June, however, the long-expected guest landed at Dover from Ostend. The cannon of the Channel fleet thundered forth a salute, and the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Arthur welcomed him as he stepped

BLUE-COAT BOYS AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

BLUE-COAT BOYS AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

THE SHAH OF PERSIA PRESENTING HIS SUITE TO THE QUEEN AT WINDSOR.

on the pier. His Majesty arrived at Charing Cross in the evening, and London forthwith went mad about him. It talked and thought about nothing else, much to the disgust of the Tory wirepullers, who saw with sorrow the scandal of the Zanzibar mail contract absolutely wasted on a frivolous metropolis. It may be recorded that when he appeared the Shah disappointed sightseers, who were looking out for the black velvet tunic powdered with diamonds, and ornamented with epaulettes of emeralds. His Majesty, in fact, was clad in a blue military frock-coat, faced with rows of brilliants and large rubies; his belt and the scabbard of his scimitar were likewise bright with jewels, and so was his cap.

The suite of apartments placed at the disposal of his Imperial Majesty in Buckingham Palace had been put in direct telegraphic communication with Teheran, and though it was expected he would be impressed by being able to talk to anybody in his capital without leaving his room, the arrangement seemed rather to bore him than otherwise. An infinite variety of entertainments was prepared for him, and the programme he had to work through seemed too extensive for human endurance during the last ten days of his visit. On the 20th of June the Queen, who was at Balmoral when he arrived, came to Windsor to receive the Persian monarch in State.

The preparations for the Shah’s public welcome were worthy of the Royal borough. As the train steamed into Windsor Station, the Princes and others in waiting to receive him welcomed him as he stepped out, arrayed in a State uniform flashing with gems. The Mayor and Recorder then read an Address, to which the Shah briefly replied, both the Address and reply being translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson. Accompanied by Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold he was driven to the Castle, where the Queen received him. The reception was held in the White Drawing Room, and the Shah conferred upon the Queen the Persian Order, and also the new Order which he had then, with a gallantry hardly to be expected of an Asiatic, just instituted for ladies. Luncheon was served in the Oak Room, after which the Queen accompanied her guest to the foot of the staircase on his leaving the Castle.

In the evening a splendid entertainment was given to his Majesty by the Lord Mayor at Guildhall, to which 3,000 persons were invited. At this banquet the Shah was placed on a daïs with the Princess of Wales, the Lord Mayor on his left hand, and the Czarevna, wife of the Czarewitch, on his right. The Shah wore a blue uniform with a belt of diamonds, and the ribbon and Star of the Garter, which had been conferred on him at Windsor in the afternoon. The scene at the ball which followed was unusually brilliant and picturesque. When the Shah had taken his seat the first quadrille was formed. He did not dance, but when the company had gone through four dances he joined the supper-party. About midnight his Majesty and the Royal Family left the scene. This magnificent entertainment was the first of many. The Shah was hurried in rapid succession to a Review of Artillery at Woolwich, and another of the Fleet at Spithead, to a State performance at the Italian Opera, to the International Exhibition, to a concert in the Royal Albert Hall, and to a Review in Windsor Park of 8,000 troops. At this Review what impressed him most were the batteries of Light Artillery, the physique and drill of the Highlanders, and the brilliant skirmishing of the Rifles. When the spectacle was over he presented his scimitar to the Duke of Cambridge. An odd sight was witnessed when the Shah visited the West India Dock and Greenwich on the 25th of June. He went in an open carriage from Buckingham Palace to the Tower Wharf, and embarked amidst a salvo of artillery. The river was filled with an extraordinary collection of ships, barges, boats, and vessels of every description. Crowds, cheering and shouting like crazy beings, swarmed on decks, rigging, wharves, roadways, and even on the roofs and crane stages of the warehouses. A striking effect was produced during this trip by the floating steam fire-engines of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which, closely lashed together, all at once saluted the Shah as he passed, by casting up many perpendicular jets of water to a great height in the air. On the evening of this day, by command of the Queen, a State ball was given at Buckingham Palace, at which the Persian Sovereign and the British Princes and Princesses were present. After a short visit to Liverpool, the Shah left England on the 5th of July, no abatement having taken place in the entertainments in his honour up to the last.

The Shah’s departure from London, and his embarkation for Cherbourg on board the French Government yacht Rapide, was the final act of these remarkable proceedings. He was accompanied to the Victoria Station by the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Arthur, the Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Christian, all in full uniform. The Shah having been made a Knight of the Garter during his visit to England, her Majesty presented him with the badge and collar set in diamonds. He in turn gave his photograph set in diamonds to the Queen and the Prince of Wales. To Earl Granville he offered his jewelled portrait, but that wily diplomatist, knowing what was meant, demurely said he could only accept the portrait if the precious stones were removed from it. London never had such a lion before or since, and the fuss made over him led many to imagine that his visit was of high political importance. It was certainly odd that the heir to the Russian throne, who must have been satiated with the Shah’s society in St. Petersburg, persisted in being seen everywhere in his train in London. Perhaps at his interview with Lord Granville he had asked for some promise of protection against Russian encroachment, and as it was impossible for Russia to conquer the Tekke Turcomans unless she could draw her supplies from the Golden Province of Khorassan, such a promise, if given and kept, would have effectually barred the march of the Cossack towards Herat. If these matters were talked of, events subsequently showed that no such promises had been made, and that Lord Granville, like his predecessors, firmly adhered to the fatal policy initiated by England in order to buy the aid of the Czar against Napoleon I.—the policy of abandoning Persia to Russian “influence.”

It was semi-officially announced in the middle of July that the Duke of Edinburgh had been betrothed (11th July) to the Grand Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, the only daughter of the Czar of Russia. The affair had been the subject of some difficult and delicate negotiations, not so much because there was some difference of religion between the bride and bridegroom, but because, being an only daughter, the parents of the Grand Duchess felt that parting with her would be a bitter heart-wrench. She was devoted to her father, as he was to her, and it was said that if he had given his crown to the English Prince he could not have testified more strongly his esteem for him than he had done by bestowing on him his daughter’s hand. “I hear,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse from Seeheim (9th July), to the Queen, “Affie [the Duke of Edinburgh] comes on Thursday night. Poor Marie is very happy, and so quiet.... How I feel for the parents, this only daughter (a character of Hingebung [perfect devotion] to those she loves)—the last child entirely at home, as the parents are so much away that the two youngest, on account of their studies, no longer travel about.”[59]

This alliance was unusually interesting, for the Duke of Edinburgh was practically within the Royal succession.[60] Nothing but an Act of Parliament barring him from the succession, such as men talked of passing against the hated Duke of Cumberland, who conspired with the loyal Orangemen of Ulster to oust the Queen from the throne, could prevent the Duke from succeeding to the Crown if the Prince of Wales and his children did not survive the Queen. There was a very general feeling that this marriage was worthy of the country. Apart from her great wealth, the only daughter of the Czar of All the Russias appeared to the average British elector to be a much more fitting mate for a Prince who stood very near the English throne, than an impecunious young lady from a minor Teutonic “dukery”—if we may venture to borrow a term which Lord Beaconsfield made classical. Thoughtful observers of public life were grateful to the Queen for establishing a precedent which enlarged the area of matrimonial selection for English Princes. Since the reign of George II. this had been so closely limited to Germany, that the Royal Family of England from generation to generation had been purely and exclusively German. There was, therefore, no popular outcry against a Parliamentary settlement for the Duke of Edinburgh. Mr. Gladstone, on the 29th

THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.

of July, carried a resolution in the House of Commons, giving the Duke of Edinburgh an annuity of £25,000 a year, and securing to the Grand Duchess Marie £6,000 a year of jointure in the event of her becoming a widow. The Minister was not met with any formidable opposition. When Mr. Holt and Mr. Newdegate began to attack the Grand Duchess’s religion, the House instantly flew into a passion and hooted them into silence. When the resolution was debated two days afterwards, Mr. Taylor, who objected to the vote on the ground that the bride was one of the richest heiresses in Europe, was literally effaced by Mr. Gladstone. Amid deafening cheers from all parts of the House, he asked Mr. Taylor if he dared to stand up before his own constituents and beg the Russian Czar to accept a poor English Prince for a son-in-law on the plea that his daughter had a large fortune? The grant was carried by a vote of 170 to 20.

THE DUCHESS OF EDINBURGH.

(From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey.)

The marriage itself was solemnised on the 23rd of January, 1874, at the Czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in accordance with the Greek and the Anglican rite. All that wealth and absolute power could do to invest the ceremony with Imperial pomp and splendour was done. Among those invited were members of the Holy Synod, and of the High Clergy of Russia; the members of the Council of the Empire, Senators, Ambassadors, and other members of the Corps Diplomatique, with the ladies of their families, general officers, officers of the Guard, of the Army and Navy. The great Russian ladies wore the national costume, while the nobles and gentlemen were in full uniform. The Queen of England was represented by Viscount Sydney and Lady Augusta Stanley. On their arrival at the church the Duke and Grand Duchess took their places in front of the altar, where were standing the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and the chief priests, attired in magnificent vestments. The Czar and Czarina were on the right of the altar, the Prince of Wales and the Russian Grand Dukes standing opposite. The most interesting portions of the ceremony were the handing of the rings to the bride and bridegroom, the crowning of the Royal couple, and the procession of the newly wedded pair, with the Metropolitan and clergy, Prince Arthur, and the Grand Dukes round the analogion or lectern, the bride and bridegroom carrying lighted candles in their left hands. On the conclusion of this part of the ceremony, the bride and bridegroom proceeded to the Salle d’Alexandre, where the Anglican ceremony was performed by Dean Stanley, the bride being given away by the Emperor, while Prince Arthur officiated as his brother’s groomsman. The Duke of Edinburgh and the Grand Duchess Marie used prayer books which had been sent to them by the Queen, and the Grand Duchess carried a bouquet of myrtle from the bush at Osborne, which had been so often laid under tribute for the marriages of the Queen’s children. The wedding-day was celebrated in the principal towns of Great Britain with much popular rejoicing.

The Queen deeply regretted her inability to be present at a ceremony so interesting to her, and, in some respects, momentous for her House. Nor was she the only member of the Royal circle who entertained the same feeling. Her daughter, the Princess Louis of Hesse, writing to her from Darmstadt on the 23rd of January, 1874, says, “On our dear Affie’s [Prince Alfred’s] birthday, a few tender words. It must seem so strange to you not to be near him. My thoughts are constantly with them all, and we have only the Times account, for no one writes here. They are all too busy, and, of course, all news comes to you. What has Augusta [Lady Augusta Stanley] written, and Vicky and Bertie? Any extracts or other newspaper accounts but what we see would be most welcome.... God bless and protect them, and may all turn out well.” Artless passages like these are worth quoting, if for no better reason than this, that they illustrate the strength of the sentiment of domesticity which has not only bound the Royal children to the Queen, but to each other, all through life. Even after the Queen had complied with her daughter’s request, and sent her some letters about the ceremony, the Princess recurs to the same theme, saying, “Dear Marie [the Duchess of Edinburgh] seems to make the same impression on all. How glad I am she is so quite what I thought and hoped. Such a wife must make Affie happy, and do him good, and be a great pleasure to yourself, which I always liked to think.” And again, a few days later, she writes to the Queen as follows:—“I have a little time before breakfast to thank you so much for the enclosures, also the Dean’s [Stanley’s] letter through Beatrice. We are most grateful for being allowed to hear these most interesting reports. It brings everything so much nearer. How pleasant it is to receive only satisfactory reports.”[61]

The Grand Duchess, when she came to her new home, brought her own weather with her. She was introduced by the Queen to London and the Londoners on the 12th of March, in the midst of a bleak and blinding snowstorm. That dense crowds of people should line the street, and stand for hours in the half-frozen slush, for an opportunity of bidding the Grand Duchess welcome to her new home, afforded an impressive testimony to the deep-seated loyalty of the capital. The Queen, the Grand Duchess, the Duke of Edinburgh, and other members of the Royal Family, left Windsor Castle at 11 o’clock in closed carriages for the railway station, under a brilliant escort of Scots Greys. The Royal train steamed to Paddington terminus, which was all ablaze with Russian and English colours. The people thronged the windows, balconies, the house-tops, and the pavements, and each side of the roadway, all along from Paddington to Buckingham Palace, and the Queen and the Royal couple showed their appreciation of the splendid reception which was given to them by braving the snowstorm in an open landau. The Queen, who was dressed in half-mourning, smilingly bowed in acknowledgment of the hearty cheering, and the Grand Duchess, who sat by her side, attired in a purple velvet mantle edged with fur, a pale blue silk dress and white bonnet, was evidently surprised at the warm greeting she received. The route was lined by the military and police. The streets were full of loyal but bedraggled decorations, and grimly festive with limp flags and illegible mottoes. Nothing could be more gracious than the smiling demeanour of the Queen and her new daughter-in-law, and nothing more pitiable than the obvious discomfort of the poor ladies-in-waiting, who sat palpably shivering in their carriages. At night the chief thoroughfares were brilliantly illuminated. “I hope,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to the Queen, “you were not the worse for all your exertions.... Such a warm reception must have touched Marie, and shown how the English cling to their Sovereign and her House.” Yet, after the first flush of excitement had passed away, the Russian Princess began to suffer from the common complaint of all Northern women—nostalgia, or home-sickness. “Marie must feel it very deeply,” writes the Princess Louis to the Queen (7th April), “for to leave so delicate and loving a mother must seem almost wrong. How strange this side of human nature always seems—leaving all you love most, know best, owe all debts of gratitude to, for the comparatively unknown! The lot of parents is indeed hard, and of such self-sacrifice.” This incident seems to have led to a curious correspondence between the Queen and her daughter, in which her Majesty apparently gave her some solemn warnings about the evil done by parents who bring up their daughters for the sole purpose of marrying them. “This,” observes the Princess Louis in her reply to her

MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.

(From the Picture by N. Chevalier.)

mother, “is said to be a too prominent feature in the modern English education of the higher classes.... I want to bring up the girls without seeking this as the sole object for the future—to feel that they can fill up their lives so well otherwise.... A marriage for the sake of marriage is surely the greatest mistake a woman can make.... I know what an absorbing feeling that of devotion to one’s parent is. When I was at home it filled my whole soul. It does still in a great degree, and heimweh [home-sickness] does not cease after so long an absence.”

CHAPTER XIX.
THE CONSERVATIVE REACTION.

Questions of the Recess—The Dissenters and the Education Act—Mr. Forster’s Compromise—The Nonconformist Revolt—Mr. Bright Essays Conciliation—Sudden Popularity of Mr. Lowe—His “Anti-puritanic Nature”—Mr. Chamberlain and the Dissidence of Dissent—Decline of the Liberal Party—Signs of Bye-elections—A Colonial Scandal—The Canadian Pacific Railway—Jobbing the Contract—Action of the Dominion Parliament—Expulsion of the Macdonald Ministry—The Ashanti War—How it Originated—A Short Campaign—The British in Coomassie—Treaty with King Koffee—The Opposition and the War—Skilful Tactics—Discontent among the Radical Ranks—Illness of Mr. Gladstone—A Sick-bed Resolution—Appeal to the Country—Mr. Gladstone’s Address—Mr. Disraeli’s Manifesto—Liberal Defeat—Incidents of the Election—“Villadom” to the Front—Mr. Gladstone’s Resignation—Mr. Disraeli’s Working Majority—The Conservative Cabinet—The Surplus of £6,000,000—What will Sir Stafford do with it?—Dissensions among the Liberal Chiefs—Mr. Gladstone and the Leadership—The Queen’s Speech—Mr. Disraeli and the Fallen Minister—The Dangers of Hustings Oratory—Mr. Ward Hunt’s “Paper Fleet”—The Last of the Historic Surpluses—How Sir S. Northcote Disposed of it—The Hour but not the Man—Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill—The Public Worship Regulation Bill—A Curiously Composed Opposition—Mr. Disraeli on Lord Salisbury—The Scottish Patronage Bill—Academic Debates on Home Rule—The Endowed Schools Bill—Mr. Stansfeld’s Rating Bill—Bill for Consolidating the Factory Acts—End of the Session—The Successes and Failures of the Ministry—Prince Bismarck’s Contest with the Roman Catholic Church—Arrest of Count Harry Arnim—Mr. Disraeli’s Apology to Prince Bismarck—Mr. Gladstone’s Desultory Leadership—“Vaticanism”—Deterioration in Society—An Unopposed Royal Grant—Visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Birmingham—Withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court—A Dispute over Precedence—Visit of the Czar to England—Review of the Ashanti War Soldiers and Sailors—The Queen on Cruelty to Animals—Sir Theodore Martin’s Biography of the Prince Consort—The Queen tells the Story of its Authorship.

Two questions disturbed the recess of 1873-74—would Mr. Gladstone attempt to conciliate the Dissenters, and would Mr. Bright, at their bidding, denounce the Education Act which had been recently passed by a Government of which he was a leading and authoritative member?

The great grievance of the Dissenters was, that the 25th Clause of the Education Act sanctioned the payment of denominational school-fees for pauper children out of the school-rate. The Dissenters argued that it was as wicked to make them pay rates for Anglican teaching in a school, as it was to make them pay tithes for it in a church. Their opposition was mainly led and organised by Mr. Chamberlain and the Birmingham Secularists, who had so effectually made war on the Liberal Party at bye-elections, that even Mr. Forster deemed it prudent to conciliate them early in 1873. He offered them a compromise in his Education Amendment Act, which passed before Parliament rose. This Act repealed the 25th Clause, which ordered the payment out of the school rate of fees for pauper children in denominational schools. Instead of that it compelled Boards of Guardians to pay the fees to the indigent parent, leaving it to him to select a school for his child. He might choose a denominational school if he preferred it, only it must be an efficient school under Government inspection. This compromise had, however, been rejected by Mr. Chamberlain, who also complained bitterly that Mr. Forster refused to make the formation of School Boards compulsory in every parish. Nor was the bitterness of the Nonconformists assuaged by an indiscreet speech which Mr. Gladstone had made during the recess at Hawarden, in which he advised the people of that parish to be content with their Church Schools, and not to elect a School Board. The attempts which were made to explain away this speech were not successful, and so when Mr. Bright came before his constituents at Birmingham, he found the Dissenters in open revolt. He therefore deemed it prudent to condemn the Education Act, and oppose Mr. Forster’s Education policy. As he had joined a Cabinet in which Mr. Forster held high rank, Mr. Bright’s utterances on the subject did the Government more harm than good. The Dissenters put no faith in them, because, they said, amidst all the Ministerial changes that had occurred, Mr. Forster was still at the Education Office. Independent supporters of the Ministry were, on the other hand, surprised to find a statesman of Mr. Bright’s reputation condemning on high moral principles an Act which he had himself helped to pass only a year before. Mr. Bright’s unfortunate position was further aggravated by the defence which was put forward on his behalf. It was contended that he had no responsibility for Mr. Forster’s Education Act. All he had seen was the draft of the Bill, and of that he had, as a Cabinet Minister, formed a favourable impression. But his illness had withdrawn him from active work, and when the measure was passing through the House of Commons evil changes, it was argued, were made in it, and for these Mr. Bright could not be blamed. Unfortunately it was written in the inexorable chronicles of Hansard that the only changes made in the Bill were all in favour of the Dissenters. Mr. Bright was accordingly too clearly responsible for the original measure, which was infinitely more odious to the Nonconformists than the one that was finally passed, and which he now disowned and denounced on account of its injustice.

Curiously enough, it was Mr. Lowe who was most successful in winning popularity for the Ministry during the recess. The police found in him a zealous defender. The working-classes heard with pleased surprise a rumour to the effect that he had drafted a Bill conceding the demand of Trade Unionists for a reform of the Labour Laws. His manner of receiving deputations had suddenly become bland and suave. When, for example, the representatives of the Licensed Victuallers went to complain to him of the Licensing Laws, he was so sympathetic that the leader of the deputation sent a graphic account of the interview to the Press. He explained how he and his colleagues had waited on the new Home Secretary in fear and trembling, but how delighted they were to find that “the great scholar and debater cheered the meeting with many sunny glimpses of his own Anti-puritanic nature.”

Still, in spite of Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe, the Liberal cause was waning among the electors. Every day Mr. Chamberlain was driving deeper and deeper into the heart of the Liberal Party the wedge of Dissenting dissension, that ultimately split its electoral organisation in twain. On the whole, the bye-elections favoured the Conservatives. But Mr. Henry James, the new Attorney-General, carried Taunton, and Captain Hayter, owing to an imprudent letter which Mr. Disraeli wrote in support of the Tory candidate, was successful at Bath.[62]

A Colonial scandal and a Colonial war also attracted much attention during the recess, and though the scandal did not affect the Ministry, the war somewhat chilled the sympathies of many of their strongest supporters.

The story of the scandal was as follows:—The Canadian Government had decided to construct a Pacific Railway that would bridge the wildernesses by which Nature had separated those Provinces, which were united by the British North American Act. The project was deemed so hopeless as a commercial undertaking that the money to carry it on could not be raised. But during the negotiations which ended in the Treaty of Washington, Canada, at the instance of the British Commissioners, made certain concessions, in return for which the British Government undertook to guarantee a loan for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The money was then raised without delay, and Sir Hugh Allen, the richest capitalist in Canada, formed a syndicate, who applied for and obtained the contract for constructing the railway from the Government of Sir John Macdonald, which then held office in the Dominion. It was soon alleged that Sir John Macdonald and his colleagues in the Canadian Cabinet had been bribed to “job” away the contract into Sir Hugh Allen’s hands. The Canadian House of Commons believed in the charge, insisted on an investigation, and appointed a Committee of Inquiry. Vigorous efforts were made to hush up the scandal, and by means of the veto of the Crown the Committee was paralysed. An Act authorising it to examine witnesses on oath was passed by the Dominion Parliament, but was vetoed by the Crown on technical grounds. The Members of the Opposition, however, defeated this attempt to stifle effective inquiry, by refusing to serve on what they declared would be a sham tribunal, and public opinion was so incensed that the Government were compelled to appoint to the vacant seats in the Committee persons of high judicial position. When under examination by the Commissioners Sir Hugh Allen admitted that he paid Sir John Macdonald £36,000 in order to secure the election of candidates pledged to support his Ministry in the Canadian Parliament. Sir John Macdonald and his colleagues admitted that they received this money, and that they had used it to carry seats in the Province of Ontario for their faction. After the money was paid the contract was given to Sir Hugh Allen. But in this transaction Sir John Macdonald denied that there was any taint of bribery. Like his celebrated countryman, Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, he said, “Dinna ca’t breebery. It ’s juist geenerosity on the ae haun’, an’ grawtitude on the ither.” In Canada and England a different view was taken of the matter. The Macdonald Ministry was driven from office amidst public execration, and even Lord Dufferin the Governor-General, and the Colonial Office did not escape censure, when it became clear that they were at least privy to the matter.

COOMASSIE.

The Colonial war broke out on the West Coast of Africa. In consideration of being permitted to annex as much of Sumatra as they could subdue, the Dutch had handed over to England their possessions on the West Coast of

KING KOFFEE’S PALACE, COOMASSIE.

Africa. The English Government soon became involved in a dispute with the King of the Ashantis over a subvention which the Dutch had always paid him. The Ashantis attacked the English settlements near Elmina, but were beaten off by a small party of English troops. When the cool season came it was decided to send Sir Garnet Wolseley with an expedition strong enough to march to Coomassie, the Ashanti capital, and, if need be, lay the country waste. Sir Garnet arrived before his troops, and engaged with success in several unimportant skirmishes. The main army left England in December, and on the 5th of February, 1874, it entered Coomassie in triumph. The place was so unhealthy that it had to be evacuated almost immediately. But ere the troops left a Treaty was signed by which King Koffee renounced his claim to sovereignty over the tribes who had been transferred from the Dutch to the British Protectorate. The management of the expedition was not perfect. But it at all events showed that the administrative departments of the Army had improved somewhat since the Crimean War, and that whilst the English private soldier had lost none of his superb fighting qualities, he was now led by officers possessed of a considerable degree of professional skill. And yet the Ashanti War failed to arrest the decay of public confidence in the Government. With masterly tact the Tory leaders put forward Lord Derby to deprecate wasteful military enterprises and extensions of territory in pestilential climes, whilst Sir Stafford Northcote attacked the Ministry fiercely in September for engaging in such a war without consulting the House of Commons. The effect of this criticism was soon manifest. The sympathies of a large section of the Radicals and of the entire Peace Party were alienated from the Ministry, who now found the arguments they had used to embarrass Mr. Disraeli during the Abyssinian War, turned against themselves. Mr. Bright, in joining a Cabinet which waged a costly war on some wretched African savages without the consent of Parliament, sacrificed the last remnant of authority which his inconsistent attitude to the Education Act had left him. Nor did he regain this authority by writing a letter early in January, in which he expressed an opinion that all difficulties with Ashanti might be settled by arbitration. As the country was actually at war with King Koffee, Mr. Bright’s suggestion was taken to mean that England should, by an act of surrender, pave the way for arbitration between herself and the Ashantis. This could not possibly be the opinion of the Government which was vigorously prosecuting the war, and it was clear that on this subject, as on the Education question, there was chaos in the Cabinet. In these circumstances the question came to be would Ministers dissolve, or would they meet Parliament and attempt to regain popularity through the work of a reconstructed Cabinet, whose latest and most influential recruit never spoke in public without showing that, when he did not abandon his principles, he was at variance with his colleagues? Various rumours were current as to a conflict of opinion on the subject between Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues and the Queen. Ultimately it was decided that there should be no dissolution before spring.

Worn with anxiety, irritated by the failure of his plans for recovering popularity through a reconstruction of his Cabinet, sick in body and mind, the Prime Minister in January fell seriously ill. A fortnight before the opening of the Session he paralysed his Party with amazement by deciding to dissolve Parliament. Seldom has so momentous a decision been arrived at in circumstances so strange and so peculiar. Writing to Lord Salisbury on the 26th of January, 1874, Mr. Hayward says: “Alderson (whom I saw yesterday) thought it unlikely that you would be brought back earlier than you intended by the Dissolution, which has come on every one by surprise. The thought first struck Gladstone as he lay rolled up in blankets to perspire away his cold, was mentioned as a thought to daughter and private secretary, then rapidly ripened into a resolution and submitted to the Cabinet. The secret was wonderfully well kept by everybody. The Liberals are delighted, and the Disraelites puzzled and amazed.”[63]

Parliament was dissolved on the 20th of January, and it was reckoned that the new House of Commons would be elected by St. Valentine’s Day. Mr. Gladstone’s Address to the electors of Greenwich set forth at great length the reasons for his sudden appeal to the country. But Mr. Forster gave the best and briefest explanation, when he told his constituents at Bradford that the Dissolution was due to the petty defeats and humiliations which the Government had suffered since Mr. Disraeli’s refusal to relieve them of the cares of office, and to a desire that the electors should decide whether Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone should have the spending of the enormous surplus of £6,000,000 at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Gladstone in his declarations of policy referred to the Ashanti War as a warning against “equivocal and entangling engagements.” He complained that the House of Commons was overburdened with work, and, with an eye to the Irish vote, he approved of delegating some of its business to “local and subordinate authorities” under the “unquestioned control” of Parliament. He held out no hopes of effecting any great changes in the Education Act, but he promised a measure of University Reform, supported the extension of Household Franchise to the Counties, and pledged himself to abolish the Income Tax. His meagre references to Foreign Affairs seemed to show that Mr. Bright had forced the Cabinet to accept the unpopular policy of selfish and self-contained isolation, which virtually ignored the higher international duties of England as one of the brotherhood of European nations.

Mr. Disraeli’s manifesto was not at first sight captivating. Instead of attacking Mr. Gladstone’s proposal to abolish the Income Tax as an attempt to secure a Party majority by taking a plébiscite on a Budget which had not yet come before Parliament, Mr. Disraeli fell in gladly with the idea. The abolition of the Income Tax was apparently to him what emigration was to Mr. Micawber when he had it suggested to him for the first time—the dream of his youth, the ambition of his manhood, and the solace of his declining years. The Tory chief also over-elaborated his complaints that Mr. Gladstone had imperilled freedom of navigation in the Straits of Malacca by recognising the right of the Dutch to conquer the Acheenese if they could. Nor was he apparently successful in attacking the Government for entering on the Ashanti War without waiting to ask Parliament for leave to repel Ashanti assaults on our forts. But when he demanded “more energy” in Foreign Affairs than Mr. Gladstone had exhibited, and when he said that measures could be devised to improve the condition of the people without incessant “harassing legislation,” he cut the Government to the quick.

The elections ended in a signal disaster to the Liberal Party. Nobody was ready for the fray. Everybody was irritated at being taken unawares. The influences and the “interests” that had caused the decay of Mr. Gladstone’s Administration have been already described. It will be enough to say here that they smote it with defeat at the polls. The attempt to neutralise these influences by promising to spend the surplus in abolishing the Income Tax and readjusting local taxation completely failed. The working classes were not eager to take off a tax which they did not pay. The majority of the Income Tax payers argued that Mr. Disraeli’s manifesto showed that he was prepared to give them whatever relief was possible. Independent electors felt that it was desirable to censure a project which might establish a precedent for including the Budget in an electoral manifesto,[64] and throwing the financial system of the country into the crucible of a General Election.[65] The City of London decisively abandoned Liberalism. The counties were swept by Tory candidates. The working classes refused to support candidates of their own order, save in Stafford and Morpeth, where the miners returned Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Burt to Parliament. Men of high capacity, unless their names were known to newspaper readers, were ruthlessly rejected. The electors preferred either candidates of loudly-advertised eminence, rich local magnates, or young men of family—especially if they had titles. Only two tenant-farmers were chosen—Mr. Clare Read, a moderate Conservative, and Mr. McCombie, a moderate Liberal. The “professors” and academic politicians went down helplessly in the mêlée—even Mr. Fawcett failing to hold his seat at Brighton, though shortly after Parliament met he was returned by Hackney, where a vacancy accidentally occurred. The Home counties, where “villadom”—to use Lord Rosebery’s term—reigns supreme, went over to Conservatism, and the success of the Tories in the largest cities was amazing. The middling-sized towns, and, generally speaking, the electors north of the Humber, were pretty faithful to Liberalism. But in Ireland the Liberal Party almost ceased to exist—the Irish electors preferring to return either Home Rulers or Tories. Roughly speaking, Mr. Disraeli could count on a steady working majority of fifty, even reckoning the Irish Home Rulers as Liberals.

LORD SALISBURY.

(From a Photograph by Bassano, Old Bond Street, W.)

Mr. Gladstone tendered his resignation at once when the results of the Elections were known, and Mr. Disraeli on being sent for formed a Cabinet, in which the offices were distributed as follows:—First Lord of the Treasury, Mr. Disraeli; Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns; Lord President of the Council, Duke of Richmond; Lord Privy Seal, Lord Malmesbury; Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby; Secretary for India, Lord Salisbury; Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon; Home Secretary, Mr. R. A. Cross; War Secretary, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy; First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Ward Hunt; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Northcote; Postmaster-General, Lord John Manners. The minor offices were distributed either among administrators and men of business, or young men of high birth and promising abilities, who were thus put in training for the duties of leadership in the future.[66]

Ministers and ex-Ministers soon had their troubles thick upon them. The “interests” were impatient for satisfaction, and there was an ugly rush after the surplus. Deputations of Income Tax repealers, Local Taxation Leaguers, clergymen demanding subsidies to Consular chaplains, brewers demanding the repeal of their licence, Malt Tax repealers, Sugar Duty repealers, clerical supporters of voluntary schools, who, according to Lord Sandon, virtually asked for the suspension of payment by results, waited on Sir Stafford Northcote to claim their share of Mr. Gladstone’s surplus. Other Ministers, too, were pestered by the various “interests” who had worked for the Tory Party at the General Election on the understanding that Mr. Gladstone’s “harassing” legislation would be undone if Mr. Disraeli came back to power. The new Government were sufficiently courageous to resist this pressure. Indeed, they were generous enough to retract much of the hostile criticism which in the heat of electioneering contests had been hurled against Mr. Gladstone’s Administration. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, was not only shattered, but practically leaderless. Its chiefs, it was said, were fighting among themselves. Stories flew about to the effect that Mr. Lowe declared he would never again follow Mr. Gladstone, that Sir William Harcourt was convinced he must lead the Party himself if it was to be saved from extinction, and that Sir Henry James vowed that he would never permit Mr. Gladstone to sit as his colleague in any future Liberal Cabinet. Naturally Mr. Gladstone retired from the duties of leadership, but pressure was put upon him to resume them. He consented, but only on the understanding that his service was to be temporary, and that he should not be expected to be in regular attendance in the House of Commons. His advanced age, his broken health, and his need of rest, were the reasons which he gave publicly for his action. His real motive, however, he confided to Mr. Hayward, who, in a letter to Lady Emily Peel (27th of February, 1874), says, “I had a long talk with Gladstone yesterday. He thinks the Party in too heterogeneous a state for regular leadership, that it must be let alone to shake itself into consistency. He will attend till Easter, and then quit the field for a time. He does not talk of permanent abdication.”[67] Mr. Gladstone, it would seem, at this time considered his functions as a leader ended after he had shattered his Party. Not till it had been reorganised by somebody else, or had reorganised itself, did he apparently deem it worthy of his guidance.

On the 19th of March the Queen’s Speech was read to both Houses of Parliament. It referred joyfully to the termination of the war with the Ashantis, the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, but mournfully to the famine which was then devastating Bengal. It promised a Land Transfer Bill, the extension of the Judicature Act fusing law and equity to Ireland and Scotland, a Bill to remedy the grievances of the publicans, a Bill dealing with Friendly Societies, and a Royal Commission on the Labour Laws.[68] In the debate on the Address several Peers took occasion to make sport of the great Minister who had fallen from power. But the Commons were spared this exhibition of political vulgarity, mainly because Mr. Disraeli snubbed most mercilessly the first of his followers who attempted to indulge in it.

When Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, who moved the Address, taunted Mr. Gladstone with his defeat, Mr. Disraeli assured the House that Sir William had, contrary to custom, spoken without consulting him as to what he should say—in fact, without consulting anybody. As for the silence of the Liberal Members on the results of the Dissolution, “I admire,” said Mr. Disraeli, “their taste and feeling. If I had been a follower of a Parliamentary chief as eminent as the Right Honourable gentleman, even if I thought he had erred, I should have been disposed rather to exhibit sympathy than to offer criticism; I should remember the great victories he had fought and won. I should remember his illustrious career; its continuous success and splendour; not its accidental or even disastrous mistakes.” Mr. Gladstone’s frank and candid statement was a model of dignified simplicity well worthy of Mr. Disraeli’s chivalrous admiration. The defeated Minister simply said that his policy of fiscal reorganisation in his judgment could not be carried save by a Government possessing the full confidence of the country. The bye-elections—notably the Liberal defeat at Stroud—during the recess rendered it doubtful if his Administration possessed this confidence. His appeal to the country confirmed that doubt. Nay, the verdict of the electors so emphatically declared their desire to entrust power to the Tory Party, that he felt it his duty to make way for Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues as soon as possible, and to afford them every reasonable facility for giving effect to the will of the people. [69]

These chivalrous courtesies foretold a dull Session. Nor did the statements of Ministers seem promising to the “young bloods” of the Tory Party, who held it as an axiom that they were badly led if their leaders did not show them plenty of “sport.” What did Lord Derby mean, for example, by telling the House of Lords that Lord Granville had left the Foreign Affairs of the country in the most satisfactory condition? Had they not all assured their constituents that he had brought England to such a depth of degradation that there were now none so poor as do her reverence? What did Mr. Disraeli mean in moving the Vote of Thanks to the Ashanti troops by praising Mr. Cardwell for the preparations he made for bringing the war to a speedy and victorious conclusion? Had they not all declared on the hustings that the conduct of the war was a model of mismanagement? Moreover, was it necessary for Lord Salisbury to exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy on Lord Northbrook for his energy in dealing with the Indian Famine? and was Mr. Hardy true to his followers and supporters when, on moving the Army Estimates (30th March), he contradicted every one of the charges that had been made against Mr. Cardwell, who had been accused of stopping Volunteering, exhausting stores, wrecking fortifications, and failing to arm the troops?[70] One passing gleam of hope shot across the horizon when Mr. Ward Hunt in his speech on the Naval Estimates stood by the wild and whirling rhetoric of Opposition criticism. He declared that the Fleet was inefficient, and warned the House he might need a Supplementary Estimate. Whilst he, at least, remained at the Admiralty he would not tolerate a “fleet on paper” or “dummy ships.” But alas! even Mr. Ward Hunt’s alarmist statement vanished in a peal of laughter when it was discovered that all he asked for to convert his “paper fleet” into a real one was £100,000! Cynical critics soon reassured a scared populace. The best proof that the Services had not been starved or rendered inefficient by Mr. Gladstone’s Administration was afforded by Sir Stafford Northcote, who made no secret of his intention to distribute the surplus of £6,000,000 which every one regarded with hungry eyes.

The eventful day for the division of the spoil came on the 16th of

REVIEW IN WINDSOR GREAT PARK OF THE TROOPS FROM THE ASHANTI WAR: THE MARCH PAST BEFORE THE QUEEN.

April, when Sir Stafford Northcote made his statement. In spite of Mr. Lowe’s remission of taxes, his payment of the Alabama Claims, his disbursement of £800,000 on the Ashanti War, the year 1873-74 ended with a surplus in hand of £1,000,000. On the basis of existing taxation Sir Stafford Northcote for the coming year estimated his revenue at £77,995,000, to which he added £500,000 from interest on Government advances for agricultural improvements heretofore added to Exchequer balances and never reckoned in the revenue. His expenditure was taken at £72,503,000, so that he had the magnificent surplus of £6,000,000 to play with. Never did a Finance Minister use a great opportunity more tamely. With such a sum at his disposal he might have re-cast the fiscal system of England and won a reputation rivalling that of Peel. But Northcote had not the heart to climb ambition’s ladder. He pleaded lack of time as an excuse for attempting no great stroke of financial policy, and he frittered away his six millions as follows:—He gave £240,000 in aid of the support of pauper lunatics; £600,000 in aid of the Police rate; £170,000 in increased local rates on Government property, and this sum of £1,010,000 was to be raised in succeeding years by further payments for pauper lunatics to £1,250,000 as an Imperial subvention to local taxation.[71] He devoted £2,000,000 to the remission of the Sugar Duties; he took a penny off the Income Tax, which absorbed £1,540,000, and he remitted the House Duties, which cost him £480,000. The half-million of interest on loans which he had included in revenue Sir Stafford Northcote used to create terminable annuities, which would in eleven years extinguish £7,000,000 of National Debt. The fault of the Budget was that nothing historic was done with a surplus such as rarely occurs in the history of a nation. Even if Sir Stafford Northcote felt unequal to the task of re-casting the whole financial system, and giving relief to the poorer taxpayers, he could easily have earned for his Government the enduring gratitude of the nation. He might, for example, have created terminable annuities to pay off twenty or thirty millions of National Debt before 1890.

Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill was introduced early in May, when the publicans, who had worked hard to put the Government in power, expected Mr. Austin Bruce’s restrictions on the hours of opening public-houses to be swept away. Mr. Cross, however, found that the magistrates and police, and more respectable inhabitants of every town and parish, were of opinion that these restrictions had done good. He was, therefore, forced to disappoint his clients. He left the Sunday hours untouched. On week-days he fixed the hours for closing at half-past twelve in London, half-past eleven in populous places, and eleven in rural districts.[72] He cancelled the permission given by Mr. Bruce to fifty-four houses to remain open till one in the morning, in order to provide refreshments for playgoers and theatrical people. Inasmuch as the Government were at the mercy of the publican vote in a great many constituencies, the Bill was most creditable to Mr. Cross. It was, in truth, a Bill not in extension but in further restriction of the hours of opening, and in passing it he risked giving offence to Ministerialists who had won their seats under a pledge that the existing restrictions would be relaxed.[73]

Quite unexpectedly the Ministry plunged into the stormy sea of ecclesiastical legislation, and as was hinted at broadly, not without encouragement from the Queen. This much might also have been inferred from two facts. The churchmen who had most strongly influenced the Court in matters of ecclesiastical government were Dr. Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Norman Macleod, Minister of the Barony Parish in Glasgow. The Bill dealing with the English Church represented the ideas of Tait. That dealing with the Kirk of Scotland embodied the policy of Macleod. Indeed, pressure of an unusual character must have been applied to the Prime Minister to support the former measure, which he knew only too well must provoke dissensions in his Cabinet. It was on the 20th of April that Dr. Tait introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill in the House of Lords, and the best and briefest description of it was that which was subsequently given by Mr. Disraeli, who said, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, that it was a Bill “to put down Ritualism.” At first Ministers did not give it warm support, in fact, Lord Salisbury opposed it vigorously. After it had passed through the House of Lords the fiction that it was a private Member’s Bill was still kept up, the Second Reading being moved in the House of Commons by Mr. Russell Gurney. Mr. Hall, the new Tory member for Oxford, moved an amendment to Mr. Gurney’s motion, and Mr. Gladstone opposed the measure as an attack on congregational liberties, which had been consecrated by usage. The three great divisions of the Established Church, the Evangelical, Broad, and High Church Parties, had each been allowed a large scope of liberty. Why single out the last for an invidious assault? Mr. Gladstone, however, did not deny that some Ritualistic practices were offensive, and he moved six resolutions which would sufficiently protect congregations from priestly extravagances, and yet leave the clergy ample freedom in ordering their church service. These resolutions disintegrated both parties in the State. Sir William Harcourt led a Liberal revolt against Mr. Gladstone. The Secretary for War (Mr. Gathorne-Hardy) replied hotly to Sir William Harcourt’s ultra-Erastian harangue. Mr. Disraeli here cast in his lot with the supporters of the Bill; which, despite the opposition of Mr. Hardy, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Lord John Manners, accordingly became in a few days a Cabinet measure. In the House of Lords matters grew still more serious. When the House of Commons sent the Bill back to the Peers, one of Mr. Gladstone’s defeated amendments was speedily inserted in it, and Lord Salisbury “utterly repudiated the bugbear of a majority in the House of Commons.” A few days afterwards Mr. Disraeli replied with caustic humour to the taunts of Lord Salisbury, whom he ridiculed as “a great master,” so he called him, “of gibes, and flouts, and sneers.” Still, the Commons accepted the Lords’ Amendments, which were for the most part in favour of individual freedom, and so the Bill passed. But Mr. Disraeli paid a great price for his complaisance to the Court and its confidential ecclesiastical adviser. The High Church Party, who had ever marched in the van of his supporters, became disaffected, and in every future electoral contest those of them who did not fall sulking to the rear went over to the enemy. Mr. Disraeli’s tactical blunder in identifying his Cabinet with the Public Worship Regulation Bill of 1874 was notoriously one of the causes of the collapse of the Tory Party in the General Election of 1880. His other adventure into the perilous region of ecclesiastical legislation was not so disastrous to his Party as to the institution it was his desire to protect and strengthen. In 1869 Dr. Macleod had headed a deputation which waited on Mr. Gladstone, asking him to abolish lay Patronage in the Scottish State Church. Mr. Gladstone asked if Macleod and his colleagues had considered what view was likely to be taken of the proposal by the other Presbyterian churches of Scotland, “regard being had to their origin.” This phrase struck the deputation dumb. It was as if Mr. Gladstone had asked whether they thought it right that the clergy of the Free Church, who sacrificed their endowments in 1843 because the Party whom the deputation represented successfully prevented the abolition of lay Patronage, should be ignored now, when this very Party proposed that the price they agreed to pay for the enjoyment of their benefices should no longer be exacted. The project, according to Dr. Macleod, excited no great enthusiasm in Scotland,[74] but the Courts of the Scottish Established Church supported it strongly. In 1874 Mr. Disraeli, yielding to pressure, which it was admittedly difficult to resist, permitted Lord Advocate Gordon to introduce his Scottish Patronage Bill. It abolished the rights of lay patrons, and vested presentations to livings in the hands of the congregations of the Established Church of Scotland. When the patron was a private individual he was compensated, but when the patronage to a benefice was held by

THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH (DR. MAGEE) ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF LORDS.

a Corporation it was confiscated without compensation. The idea of the Government was that Presbyterians outside the Established Church were deterred from joining it by the existence of lay Patronage. When this was abolished it was supposed that they would immediately go over to the State Church, whose services they could command gratuitously, and leave their own pastors, whose stipends they had to pay out of their own pockets, to starve. Mr. Disraeli did not understand that lay Patronage, by bringing the Church courts and civil courts into collision, was merely the occasion and not the cause of the Disruption, and that what separated the Free Churchmen from the State Church was a difference of opinion on the relative position of Church and State, as wide as that which separated Dr. Pusey from an Erastian like Sir William Harcourt. But the Patronage Bill was passed in spite of Mr. Gladstone’s opposition, though, like the Public Worship Regulation Bill, it failed in its object. The congregations of the non-established Presbyterian churches refused to justify Mr. Disraeli’s cynical estimate of their character, and therefore did not desert their pastors. The powerful Free Kirk of Scotland, representing the principle that the Church should be established and endowed but left free from State control, had been debarred from joining in the Disestablishment movement. It now, however, cast in its lot with those Presbyterian dissenters who clamoured for Disestablishment in Scotland, which thus for the first time came within the range of practical politics. Perhaps, if Mr. Disraeli had insisted on the rights of patrons being transferred to all parishioners his policy might have been more successful. But by transferring these rights to the congregations in actual attendance at established churches, he gave the Free Churchmen a pretext for arguing that he had sectarianised the national ecclesiastical endowments, and that, therefore, the State Church could no longer be defended on principle. These endowments were not sectarianised, but secularised, when controlled by private patrons and civil courts, for patron and judge could alike be regarded in theory as legal trustees for the nation. They were bad trustees according to the Free Churchmen, but then they represented the nation officially, and did not, like their successors, the congregations of the parish churches, constitute a sect.

Academic debates on Parliamentary Reform and Home Rule varied the monotony of ecclesiastical controversy which Ministers seemed to take a morbid delight in stirring up. Their next achievement in this direction led to a defeat. Lord Sandon unexpectedly introduced in July an Endowed Schools Bill, which virtually undid the work of 1869. It restored the ascendency of the Church of England in Grammar Schools, and substituted the authority of the Charity Commissioners for that of the Endowed Schools Commission. The Bill would probably have done much to conciliate the clergy who had been offended by the Public Worship Regulation Act, but, on the other hand, it closed the ranks of the Opposition, and recalled the Dissenters to the Liberal colours. The result was that, after fierce controversy in both Houses, Mr. Disraeli professed himself satisfied with the appointment of the Charity Commission to superintend the working of Mr. Forster’s Act, and postponed the contentious clauses till the following year. They were never heard of again. Mr. Stansfeld’s Rating Bill, which the Lords had rejected in the previous Session, was adopted by the Ministry and passed. Mr. Mundella’s Bill for consolidating the Factory Acts, which had been shelved in 1873, was adopted by Mr. Cross and carried.

The popular verdict on the Ministry, when the Session closed on the 8th of August, was, that as administrators they had done nothing brilliant, and as legislators they were timidly reactionary, when they did not adopt the ideas and measures of their predecessors. The Premier, perhaps, suffered most in reputation. It was impossible to admire the strategy that brought into prominence Church questions which divided his Cabinet, and were uninteresting to the populace, or which, like the Endowed Schools Bill, when they were of great popular interest, were dealt with in an offensively reactionary spirit. On the other hand, the success with which the famine in Bengal and Behar was arrested, and indeed the whole tone of the administration at the India Office, greatly increased Lord Salisbury’s prestige. Lord Carnarvon’s management of the Colonies was sympathetic and popular. Foreign affairs had been conducted by Lord Derby with admirable prudence. This was aptly illustrated by his skill in avoiding entangling engagements committing England to approve of changes in international law which would have greatly extended the powers of invading armies in an enemy’s country. These changes were proposed at a Conference at Brussels, which had been promoted by Russia and Germany ostensibly to mitigate the evils of modern warfare.

Only one cloud shadowed the Foreign policy of the Cabinet during this uneventful year. The contest between Prince Bismarck and the Roman Catholic Church was raging in Germany, and the personal rivalry of the German Chancellor and Count Harry Arnim—who had been German Ambassador at Paris—had ended in the arrest of the latter on the charge of embezzling State documents. This arrest had been effected after Count Harry Arnim’s house had been ransacked by the police, and the Continent rang with the scandal. Mr. Disraeli, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, on the 9th of November, congratulated the country on the Conservatism of the British working classes, who, he said, enjoyed so many liberties that they were naturally loyal to the institutions under which their freedom was safeguarded. “They are not,” said he, “afraid of political arrests or domiciliary visits.” The Queen was somewhat pained at an utterance which the German Government regarded as an impertinent interference with its domestic affairs, but a few days afterwards the wrath of Prince Bismarck was appeased by an official explanation in the Times to the effect that Mr. Disraeli had not meant to refer to the affairs of Germany, or to the arbitrary conduct of the Berlin police. In this unfortunate speech Mr. Disraeli, however, struck a popular note when he referred to the extension of the Empire by the annexation of the Fiji islands, in terms that foreshadowed a policy of Colonial expansion.

As for the Opposition, it remained in a state of disorganisation, under Mr. Gladstone’s desultory leadership. Its prospects were not improved by his publication of two pamphlets, in which he attacked what he called “Vaticanism,” and attempted to prove that good Catholics, who were mostly Liberals, must be incapable of reasoning, if they were not traitors. That was the sum and substance of his amazing tirades against the extravagant pretensions of the Papacy under Pius IX.

During the year the Queen seldom appeared in public, which was, perhaps, one reason why a marked deterioration in the moral tone of society was discernible. A curious languor crept over the upper classes. They were consumed with a quenchless thirst for amusement, and the genius who could have invented a new pleasure would have had the world at his feet. Frivolity seemed to prey like a cancer on the vitality of the nation. When the Prince of Wales gave a State Fancy Ball in July, the Times actually devoted three columns of space to an elaborate description of the dresses. Sport became a serious business to all classes of society, and even grave and earnest men of affairs like Mr. Gladstone wasted their lives in the laborious idleness of ecclesiastical controversies. The more vigorous youth of the aristocracy now began to make their “grand tour,” not as did their ancestors to study foreign affairs and institutions, but merely to kill big game. Fashionable life became so costly that rents had to be exacted with unusual rigour, and the strikes among the agricultural labourers that mitigated the advantages of a good harvest, were accordingly spoken of in West End drawing-rooms as if they had revived the horrors of the Jacquerie. Though prices had begun to fall, the mercantile classes vied with the aristocracy in the ostentatious extravagance of their personal expenditure, and in the City the old and substantial Princes of Commerce were pushed aside by gamblers who termed themselves “financial agents,” and who had suddenly grown rich by “placing” Foreign Loans and floating fabulously successful Joint-Stock Companies. The pace of life was too rapid even for the Prince of Wales, whose financial embarrassments during a dull autumn formed the subject of some discussion. It was publicly stated that he had incurred liabilities to the extent of £600,000, and that the Queen, disgusted with Mr. Gladstone’s refusal to apply to Parliament for money to discharge them, had paid them herself. From what has already been said on this delicate subject it is hardly necessary to point out here that this statement was not quite accurate. It was true that the debts of the Heir Apparent amounted to one-third of his income, but it was equally true that on the 1st of October his Controller’s audit showed that he had a balance to his credit sufficient to meet them. At the same time there could be no doubt that the Prince’s expenditure far exceeded his resources, for sums varying from £10,000 to £20,000, taken from the great fund accumulated for him by the Prince Consort’s thrifty administration of the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, were sacrificed every year to prevent his debts from becoming unmanageable.[75]

His brothers were more fortunately situated. Prince Arthur, who had been created, in May, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of Sussex,[76] was able to devote himself quietly to his military studies, and lead a life of dignified simplicity. “Many thanks,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to the Queen (May 4th, 1874), “for your last dear letter, written on dear Arthur’s birthday, of which, though late, I wrote you joy. Such a good, steady, excellent boy as he is! What a comfort it must be to you never to have had any cause of uneasiness or annoyance in his conduct! He is so much respected, which for one so young is doubly praiseworthy. From St. Petersburg, as from Vienna, we heard the same account of the steady line he

ALEXANDER II., CZAR OF RUSSIA.

holds to, in spite of all chaffing, &c., from others, which shows character.”[77] Prince Leopold was equally fortunate; indeed, his delicate health would of itself have compelled him to shun the exhausting gaieties of London seasons, when Society was worn out with ennui every year ere the rosebuds burst into bloom. When Parliament voted him an income of £15,000 a year, Mr. Disraeli described Prince Leopold as an invalid student of “no common order,” and to the Queen it was an increasing source of delight to watch in her youngest son the growth of the same pensive nature, the same studious habits, and the same refined and cultured tastes which, in the Prince Consort, Mr. Disraeli averred somewhat effusively, “gave a new impulse to our civilisation.”

With the exception of the grant to the Duke of Edinburgh on his marriage, this was the only Royal grant voted by Parliament which was not made a matter of controversy. But it must be noted that in 1874 the spirit of Republicanism in the country was almost dead. Mr. Chamberlain, by his writings and speeches, made an ineffectual effort to keep it alive, but even he had to bow his austere knee to the popular idols of the time, who were undoubtedly the Prince and Princess of Wales. As if to throw out a jaunty challenge to the enemies of the Monarchy, the Prince and Princess paid a visit to Birmingham in November, where it was the duty of Mr. Chamberlain as Mayor to receive them, and where they met with a welcome from the populace, the significance of which he was quick to recognise. Mr. Chamberlain, who had not been expected to make pleasant speeches to his guests, behaved to them with the tact of an astute if not an accomplished courtier. His undisguised appreciation of the Prince’s visit to his mansion, and of the Princess’s delight in his conservatories, famed for their priceless exotics, recalled the devotion of the Lady Margaret Bellenden in “Old Mortality,” when Charles II. accepted the hospitalities of her castle.

One marked feature of the London season in 1874 was the sudden withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court ceremonials. An attempt was made to account for this by explaining that as her Royal and Imperial Highness was expecting to become a mother she deemed her retirement from Society necessary.[78] According to statements current at the time, however, her absence was due not exactly to a dispute, but to a difficulty about her precedence, which must have considerably embarrassed the Queen. As the daughter of a powerful Emperor, the Duchess of Edinburgh not unnaturally thought that she had a right to take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who was but the daughter of a petty king. An Imperial Highness should, in her opinion, take precedence of a Royal Highness. On the other hand, it was intolerable to the English people that even by implication should the inferiority of the English Monarchy to that of any Imperial House in Europe be recognised—in fact, the kings of England had never admitted that any of the Continental Emperors had a title to precedence over them. The country, therefore, heard with interest a report that the Russian Czar was about to come to England, not merely to visit his daughter, but if possible to settle with the Queen the question of precedence that had disturbed her family. Her Majesty was understood to be willing to assent to any arrangement which did not confer on the wife of her second son, the right to take precedence over the wife of the Heir Apparent, and so matters stood when the Czar arrived at Dover on the 13th of May. He was received with the utmost cordiality by the Queen in person at Windsor. The first effect of his visit was to replace the Duchess of Edinburgh in the Court Circular among the ladies of the Royal Family next to the Princess of Wales, and to cause her to be described as “Her Royal and Imperial Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh (Grand Duchess of Russia).”[79] The Czar was well received by the people, among whom he was popular as the Liberator of the Serfs, and after a dreary week of sightseeing and State banquets, he left England on the 22nd of May.

On the 30th of March the Queen proceeded to Windsor Great Park to review the troops who had been engaged in the Ashanti War. The force, 2,000 in number, went through their evolutions in gallant style, and her Majesty with her own hands awarded the Victoria Cross to Lord Gifford for personal bravery in the campaign. On the 13th of April the Queen also inspected the sailors and marines of the Royal Navy who had fought in the Ashanti War. The review took place at Gosport, and many of the officers were, by the Queen’s desire, personally presented to her.

The controversy then raging over Vivisection seemed to have interested her Majesty greatly, for at the Jubilee meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals there was read a letter written by Sir Thomas Biddulph by the Queen’s instructions, which ran as follows:—

“My Dear Lord,—The Queen has commanded me to address you, as President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, on the occasion of the assembly in this country of the foreign delegates connected with your association and of the Jubilee of the Society, to request you to give expression publicly to her Majesty’s warm interest in the success of the efforts which are being made at home and abroad for the purpose of diminishing the cruelties practised on dumb animals. The Queen hears and reads with horror of the sufferings which the brute creation often undergo from the thoughtlessness of the ignorant, and she fears also sometimes from experiments in the pursuit of science. For the removal of the former the Queen trusts much to the progress of education, and in regard to the pursuit of science, she hopes that the entire advantage of those anæsthetic discoveries, from which man has derived so much benefit himself in the alleviation of suffering, may be fully extended to the lower animals. Her Majesty rejoices that the Society awakens the interest of the young by the presentation of prizes for essays connected with the subject, and hears with gratification that her son and daughter-in-law have shown their interest by distributing the prizes. Her Majesty begs to announce a donation of £100 to the funds of the Society.”

On the 23rd of November her Majesty was present, with the Empress of Russia, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and other members of the Royal Family, at the christening of the infant son of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh—Prince Alfred of Edinburgh; and on the 3rd of December she received a deputation from France to present her with an Address of thanks for services rendered by Englishmen to the sick and wounded in the war of 1870-71. The Address was contained in four large volumes, which were placed on a table for the purpose of being shown to her Majesty. M. d’Agiout and Comte Serrurier explained the nature of their contents. Having accepted the volumes, the Queen said to the deputation in French, “I accept with pleasure the volumes which you have presented, and which will be carefully preserved by me as records of the interesting historical events which they commemorate. They are beautiful as works of art, but their chief value in my eyes is that they form a permanent memorial of the gratitude of the French people for services freely and spontaneously rendered to them by Englishmen acting under a simple impulse of humanity. Your recognition of those services cannot fail to be appreciated by my subjects, and it will increase the friendly and cordial feeling which I am happy to believe exists between the two nations.” The volumes were placed in the British Museum.

THE ALBERT MEMORIAL CHAPEL, WINDSOR.

(From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co.)

On the 3rd of December her Majesty at Windsor personally presented several seamen and marines with the medals which they had won for conspicuous gallantry in the Ashanti War. A few days after this ceremony the attention of the country was absorbed in the first volume of the biography of the Prince Consort, which had been compiled with sedulous care, delicate tact, and refined feeling by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Theodore Martin. The verdict of the public was one of immediate and unreserved approval. They were delighted with Mr. Martin’s idyllic picture of Prince Albert’s domestic life, and of the tender companionship in which he and the Queen lived lovingly together. Glimpses, too, of the Queen’s own strength of character and of her shrewd judgment in politics, such as, for example, her letters and memoranda on the affair of the Spanish marriages, and her keenly-etched portrait of the Czar Nicholas after his visit in 1844, suggested very plainly that the Sovereign was not exactly a cipher in the State. If in some of its lines Mr. Martin’s portrait recalled memories of William III., it reminded the people that, like William III., the Prince, though unable from his intellectual detachment to inspire the people with love, won their confidence and respect through his unpretending, but unswerving fidelity to the interests of his adopted country. But the frankness and absence of reserve with which the book was written displeased a few of the Queen’s foreign relatives; indeed, this feature of the biography had been commented on by some who thought it was derogatory to the dignity of the Royal Caste. The Princess Louis of Hesse, if she did not share this opinion, felt it her duty to convey it to the Queen. In a letter to her mother at the beginning of 1875, the Princess says, “It is touching and fine in you to allow the world to have so much insight into your private life, and allow others to have what has been only your property, and our inheritance.... For the frivolous higher classes how valuable this book will be if read with real attention, as a record of a life spent in the highest aims, with the noblest conception of duty as a leading star.” To this letter the Queen replied from Osborne, 12th of January, 1875:—“If,” she wrote, “you will reflect a few minutes, you will see how I owed it to beloved papa to let his noble character be known and understood, as it now is, and that to wait longer when those who knew him best—his own wife, and a few (very few there are) remaining friends—were all gone, or too old and too far removed from that time, to be able to present a really true picture of his most ideal and remarkable character, would have been really wrong. He must be known for his own sake, for the good of England and of his family, and of the world at large. Countless people write to say what good it does and will do. And it is already thirteen years since he left us! Then you must also remember that endless false and untrue things have been said about us, public and private, and that in these days people will write and will know; therefore the only way to counteract this is to let the real full truth be known, and as much be told as can be told with prudence and discretion, and then no harm, but good, will be done. Nothing will help me more than that my people should know what I have lost!... The ‘Early Years’ volume was begun for private circulation only, and then General Grey and many of papa’s friends and advisers begged me to have it published. This was done. The work was most popular, and greatly liked. General Grey could not go on with it, and asked me to ask Sir A. Helps to continue it; and he said that he could not, but recommended Mr. Theodore Martin as one of the most eminent writers of the day, and hoped I could prevail on him to undertake this great national work. I did succeed, and he has taken seven years to prepare the whole, supplied by me with every letter and extract; and a deal of time it took, but I felt it would be a national sacred work.”

CHAPTER XX.
EMPRESS OF INDIA.

Mr. Disraeli recognises Intellect—Lord Hartington Liberal Leader—The Queen’s Speech—Lord Hartington’s “Grotesque Reminiscences”—Mr. Cross’s Labour Bills—The Artisans’ Dwellings Act—Mr. Plimsoll and the “Ship-knackers”—Lord Hartington’s First “Hit”—The Plimsoll Agitation—Surrender of the Cabinet—“Strangers” in the House—The Budget—Rise of Mr. Biggar—First Appearance of Mr. Parnell—The Fugitive Slave Circular—The Sinking of the Yacht Mistletoe—The Loss of the Vanguard—Purchase of the Suez Canal Shares—The Prince of Wales’s Visit to India—Resignation of Lord Northbrook—Appointment of Lord Lytton as Viceroy of India—Outbreak of the Eastern Question—The Andrassy Note—The Berlin Memorandum—Murder of French and German Consuls at Salonica—Lord Derby Rejects the Berlin Memorandum—Servia Declares War on Turkey—The Bulgarian Revolt Quenched in Blood—The Sultan Dethroned—Opening of Parliament—“Sea-sick of the Silver Streak”—Debates on the Eastern Question—Development of Obstruction by Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell—The Royal Titles Bill—Lord Shaftesbury and the Queen—The Queen at Whitechapel—A Doleful Budget—Mr. Disraeli becomes Earl of Beaconsfield—The Prince Consort’s Memorial at Edinburgh—Mr. Gladstone and the Eastern Question—The Servian War—The Constantinople Conference—The Tories Manufacture Failure for Lord Salisbury—Death of Lady Augusta Stanley—Proclamation of the Queen as Empress at Delhi.

The year 1875 opened less gloomily for the Ministry than for the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had sanctioned the despatch of a Polar Expedition, and in a curious letter, since published by Mr. Froude, he had tendered Mr. Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Bath on the ground that “a Government should recognise Intellect.”[80] He had also offered Mr. Tennyson—“if not a great poet, a real one,” to use his own phrase—a baronetcy. Both offers had been refused, but the scientific and literary classes—potent agencies for influencing public opinion—sang loud the praises of a Ministry that was so obviously in sympathy with them. As for the Opposition, Mr. Gladstone’s definite refusal to lead them any longer, compelled them to elect a successor, whereupon an infinite amount of dissension, heartburning, and jealousy was stirred up in their ranks. Mr. Goschen, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. W. E. Forster were the candidates who had most partisans, and the last was undoubtedly the one on whom the public choice would have fallen, if the public had been permitted to arbitrate between the rivals. The Nonconformists, however, had not yet forgiven Mr. Forster, and Mr. Bright put him out of the field by using his powerful influence in favour of Lord Hartington, who was finally selected. According to one of the ablest of Liberal political critics, Lord Hartington “succeeded in making the whole party content, if not enthusiastic, with their choice.”[81] Lord Hartington had, in the course of the Session, virtually nothing to do, and, like the Peers in Mr. Gilbert’s opera, he “did it very well.” The Queen’s Speech outlined a temperately progressive policy, and when the Opposition leader taunted Ministers with failing to carry out the scheme of reaction to which they stood pledged on the hustings and in the Conservative Press, Mr. Disraeli, with demure gaiety, protested against his “grotesque reminiscences.” Lord Hartington, he complained, sought out “the most violent speeches made by the most uninfluential persons in the most obscure places, and the most absurd articles appearing in the dullest and most uninfluential newspapers,” and took these as the opinions of “the great Conservative Party.”[82] The opinions of the Conservative Ministry, he added, were now expressed from the front Ministerial Bench, and for these alone did he hold himself responsible.

Mr. Cross was the popular Minister of the Session. His Artisans’ Dwellings Bill embodied a resolution which Mr. U. Kay-Shuttleworth and Sir Sidney Waterlow had induced Mr. Gladstone’s Government to accept, and though in practice it proved disastrous to local ratepayers, it was taken as a kindly recognition of claims which Liberal Cabinets had too often ignored.[83] Mr. Cross was much more successful with his Labour Bills, drafts of which, it was said, had been prepared by Mr. Lowe. The Home Secretary had framed his Bills to conciliate Tory members who had eloquently denounced Trades Unions during the General Election. But in Committee he accepted amendments which removed from the law every trace of the evil spirit that punished breach of contract by a workman, not as a civil offence, but as a crime. Though he fought hard against the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, he finally surrendered to Mr. Lowe, and not only accepted his definition of “molestation” or “picketing,” but further agreed to his proposal to make that offence punishable when committed by anybody—be he master or servant. The growth of a Conservative spirit among the Trades Unions dates from the passing of Mr. Cross’s Employers and Workmen Bill, and his Conspiracy Bill. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s Regimental Exchanges Bill was a reactionary concession to “the Colonels,” for it gave rich officers facilities for bribing poor ones to relieve them from arduous foreign service. Lord Cairns, however, did much more harm to the Government by withdrawing his Judicature Bill under the menaces of a secret Junta of Peers, headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, who had resolved to restore to the House of Lords its Appellate Jurisdiction. Whilst independent Peers protested against this course as a slight to the Upper House, the country considered that it indicated a deplorable want of courage. For when Lord Cairns’ new Bill, postponing till the 1st of November, 1886, the provisions of Lord Selborne’s Act (1873),[84] and establishing an Intermediate Court of Appeal as a kind of judicial makeshift, came before the House of Commons, Sir John Holker, with indiscreet frankness, explained why the Government had dropped their own measure. The Peers, he said, meant to retain their jurisdiction in spite of the House of Commons, and it was, therefore, futile to resist them. This admission that the Cabinet, which ought to be responsible only to the Queen and to Parliament, was really controlled by a small caucus of Peers, whose very names were kept secret, was one which Government could now-a-days survive. The Bill, however, passed before the Session closed.

MR. PLIMSOLL ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.