CHAPTER X

.

THE DEATH OF PALMERSTON.

Opening of Parliament--Lord Russell and the American Government--Catholicism and Conservatism--Mr. Disraeli angles for the Irish Vote--Palmerston on Tenant Right--Another Panic in Piccadilly--Death of Cobden--Failure of the “Manchester School”--A Prosperity Budget and a Round Surplus--End of the American War--Moderation of the Victors--Assassination of President Lincoln--Reorganising the South--Conflict between President Johnson and the Republican Party--The Mexican Empire and the United States--The Danish Question--The Convention of Gastein--Bismarck’s Interview with the Duke of Augustenburg--The Mystery of Biarritz--Lord Chancellor Westbury’s Fall--Death and Character of Palmerston--The New Ministry--Mr. Gladstone Leader of the Commons--The Rinderpest--The Fenian Conspiracy--The Queen’s Letter on Railway Accidents--Laxity of Administration in the Queen’s Household--Birth of Prince George of Wales--Majority of Prince Alfred--The Queen at Gotha--The Betrothal of the Princess Helena--The Last Illness and Death of King Leopold of Belgium--His Character and Career--Suppressing a Rebellion with a Carpet-Bag.

Brighter prospects dawned on the year 1865 than could have been anticipated. England was at peace with all the world, and in spite of Lord Palmerston’s irritation against the German Powers, it was certain that the country would not permit him to engage actively in Continental broils. The Civil War in America, so disastrous to Lancashire, was drawing to a close; and though a dubious and desultory conflict with the Maoris in New Zealand was going on, the scene of strife was far away, and the struggle but slightly affected the course of business. Trade was sound and healthy, and the cotton famine had almost disappeared. Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet still held its ground, and though its aged chief had begun to show signs of physical decay, his high spirits and indefatigable energy gave no indication that the end of his career was at hand. Two of the four or five great ladies of fashion who had for forty years exercised a far-reaching, though unseen, influence on political life--Lady Tankerville and Lady Willoughby d’Eresby--had died in January, within a few days of each other. Lady Palmerston was thus left as almost the sole representative of those _grandes dames_ of politics who were the flower and crown of the old order of society, soon destined to perish under the touch of democratic reform. Parliament was opened by Commission on the 7th of February. The Speech from the Throne, which was read by the Lord Chancellor, referred to the Treaty of Peace between the Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and the King of Denmark, and declared that no renewed disturbance of the peace of Europe was to be apprehended. It regretted the conflict with some of the native tribes in New Zealand, and rejoiced at the tranquillity of our Indian dominions. It spoke with confidence of the condition of Ireland. The Message from the Throne further promised the introduction of Bills for the amendment of the laws relating to patents for inventions, and for conferring on the county courts an equitable jurisdiction in actions involving small amounts. A Bill for inquiring into English public schools was promised, and her Majesty directed that a commission should be issued to inquire into endowed and other schools in England. Lord Derby, though he bore traces of suffering from repeated attacks of gout, was able to speak with fluency and power, but the debates on the Address, it must be admitted, were not interesting, nor did they evoke any material opposition. Discussions took place upon the condition of the Irish peasantry, emigration, the tenure of land, tenant right, and the Established Church. The approaching triumph of the Northern States in the American Civil War was plainly foreshadowed by the increasing civility of Lord Russell’s references to the Federal Government. In a discussion on our foreign relations, he vindicated the neutral policy which his Administration had pursued towards both belligerents, but towards the conqueror his neutrality was now obviously benevolent. He pointed out how Confederate agents were continually employed either in building vessels in this country, or in buying merchant ships which might afterwards be sent to France and other places that they might be fitted out as armed cruisers against the commerce of the United States, and this he now discovered gave rise to the “natural irritation” of the United States against England. The Americans, he said, saw a number of ships, which had come in some way or another from English ports or English rivers, afterwards equipped as men-of-war for the purpose of destroying their sea-borne commerce. It was to be expected that they should wax angry with us in consequence. Still, Lord Russell urged that the Government had done everything in their power to prevent this country from being made the basis of warlike operations against the Federal Government.

In those days Mr. Pope Hennessy was one of the most active and aggressive members of the Irish Party. He had been advanced in public life by the social influence of Cardinal Wiseman, and had attached himself to the Tories as one of Mr. Disraeli’s partisans. His object was to revive, if possible, those Nationalist ideas which Mr. Disraeli had promulgated when bidding for the Irish vote in 1844. Mr. Disraeli’s object in cultivating his enthusiasm was to use him as an agent in cementing “the natural alliance between Catholicism and Conservatism,” which at the time he was most anxious to promote. Early in the Session, then, a lively discussion was initiated by Mr. Hennessy on Irish affairs, obviously with the intention of eliciting from the Ministry declarations that would tend to render Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet unpopular in Ireland. Mr. Hennessy’s motion was “that this House observes with regret the decline of the population of Ireland, and will readily support her Majesty’s Government in any well-devised measure to stimulate the profitable employment of the people; and that an address to the Crown be prepared, founded on the foregoing resolution.” The resolution was supported by a number of speakers, both Irish

[Illustration: MIDHURST, SUSSEX: BIRTHPLACE OF COBDEN.]

and English, among whom were prominent Conservatives, like Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Robert Cecil, and prominent Whigs like Sir Patrick O’Brien and Mr. Monsell. It was opposed on the part of the Government by Mr. Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, and Sir George Grey. Sir Stafford Northcote, in speaking on the motion, indicated very plainly that his leaders had already begun to angle for the Irish vote. Ireland, said he, had been crippled by English legislation, and Parliament “ought to approach this question with a feeling of tenderness,” and a desire to see how far it was possible to remedy that grievance. Lord Palmerston concluded the debate with a speech which has been rendered historic by one of its phrases. He said, “Until by some means there can be provided in Ireland the same remuneration for labour and the same inducements to remain which are afforded by other countries, you cannot, by any laws which you can devise, prevent the people from seeking elsewhere a better condition of things than exists in their own country. We are told that tenant right and a great many other things will do it. None of these things will have the slightest effect. _As to tenant right, I may be allowed to say that I think it is equivalent to landlord’s wrong._” In 1865 the idea that there was, and ever had been since the conquest of Ireland, a dual ownership in Irish soil--an ownership which naturally and equitably follows from the relations of an unimproving landlord to an improving tenant, had not yet dawned on the English mind.

One of the results of what Lord Russell called the “natural irritation” of the American people against England was a feeling of much uneasiness as to the safety of Canada. Confederate agents had attempted to make raids on Northern territory from Canadian soil. Threats of reprisals had proceeded from the organs of public opinion in the United States, and something approaching a panic was created in England, when the Federal Government gave formal notice that it was their intention to terminate the Convention under which England and the United States had mutually agreed not to fit out ships of war on the great lakes. It was also suggested that the American Government would soon “denounce” in similar fashion the Treaty of Commerce between the United States and Canada. In the House of Commons the Government was closely questioned on all these complications by Sir J. Walsh, who declared that the steps taken by the Federal Government were tantamount to a declaration of war. Palmerston tried to soothe these fears, and Earl Russell in the Upper House lavished conciliatory flattery on the United States, complimenting them on the patience with which they had endured the unsympathetic demeanour of England--the most unendurable element in which had been the tone of superfine insolence that marked his own despatches.[229] Yet all this time there was perfect tranquillity on the Canadian frontier. The Canadians did not seem to dread an American attack. The American Government, under Mr. Lincoln, in spite of the Irish War Party, was almost fanatically pacific. The truth was, as Mr. Bright said, that English anxiety as to the safety of Canada was due to a feeling “in our heart of hearts that we had not behaved generously to our neighbours; a twitching of the conscience that tended to make cowards of us at this

## particular juncture.” As usual the people had to pay for this panic in

Piccadilly. The Government demanded a vote of £200,000 for the defences of the Canadian frontier, of which Lord Hartington, on behalf of the War Office, proposed to spend £20,000 in fortifying Quebec. As against the United States the frontier of Canada was of course practically indefensible. There was, therefore, reason in the contention of independent critics that such an expenditure might be regarded by the Americans as a provoking menace, rather than as a rational precaution.

By a sad coincidence, whilst these discussions were going on, the hand of death was being laid on the statesman who was of all men most competent to represent those who doubted the possibility of defending Canada. Richard Cobden, who declared that it would be just as possible for the United States to sustain Yorkshire in a war with England, as for England to enable Canada to contend against the United States, was sickening with his last illness. On the 2nd of April he died, and with him passed away the purest, most generous, and most chivalrous paladin of English Liberalism in the House of Commons. Men of all parties joined in doing homage to his memory. Mr. Disraeli vied with Mr. Bright in passing an eulogium on his public services. The Emperor of the French sent a letter of condolence to his widow. In the United States he was mourned by the American people as if he had been one of their own citizens. Mr. Bright said in the House, “I little knew how I loved him till I lost him,” and it indeed seemed as if this feeling were universal throughout England. Cobden’s disinterested honesty, the charm of his sweet and sympathetic nature, the fascination of his earnest, persuasive and transparently lucid eloquence, his buoyant courage, and his genuine devotion to the English people, all contributed to build up the fabric of his reputation and his popularity. His mission in life had been to beat down the power of the territorial aristocracy, which, in his youth, ruled England in the interest of a few rival groups of great families. In their place he imagined he could put a new order of merchant princes and Captains of Industry--an order of liberal-minded and highly-cultured men whose fortunes were bound up with the interest of Labour, and whose public spirit and civil capacity might recall the era of the Medici in Italy, and of the De Witts in the Low Countries. The leading ideas of the “Manchester School,” which he was credited with founding, have long since ceased to influence the English mind, though some of them have had enough vitality to survive the caprice of circumstances and the course of time. Cobden’s errors sprang from the fact that he believed that political power was to be finally centred in and wielded by the middle-classes. For example, it was for their interests to narrow as much as possible the Imperial responsibilities of England. Therefore, whilst he advocated Colonial autonomy it was not with a view to facilitate Imperial Federation, but to prepare the colonies for an independent existence, which should at once free us from the expense of defending them, and enrich us by the profits of their trade. On the other hand, the working classes regard the colonies as a heritage to be jealously preserved for their order, and the success of Federalism in the United States has induced them to dream of making a similar experiment within the British Empire. Obviously nothing could be more completely at variance with Cobden’s doctrines than these ideas. His scheme of policy was in fact faulty, because it was based on enriching a plutocracy, which, however, has not used its wealth for the purposes he had in view. It has, on the contrary, spent its resources in imitating and reproducing the worst qualities of the old feudal nobility, whose power Cobden desired to destroy. As the result of his policy, and the triumph of that part of it which accumulated wealth in the hands of the manufacturing classes, the country had a House of Commons in 1865, which was as much opposed to Reform as the House of Lords in 1832. For Cobden the irony of fate could hardly have been more cruel.

The financial statement of the year was preceded by motions in the House of Commons, for the purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary pledge for the remission of certain duties, which were considered a blot on the fiscal system. One was the Malt Tax, for the repeal or modification of which a desultory agitation had been promoted by the Tories for some years in the agricultural districts. The other motion was in favour of a further reduction of the duties on Fire Insurance. Though the Anti-Malt Tax agitators were beaten, the opponents of the Fire Insurance duties prevailed against the Government. The public had been informed by the Royal Speech that the receipts of the revenue had come up to the estimates; but this information rather understated the fact. The prosperity of the finances, in truth, had exceeded the most sanguine calculations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Remissions of taxation were consequently looked for, and speculation was busy with conjectures as to the quarter in which reductions would be proposed. The 27th of April was appointed for the financial statement, and on that day Mr. Gladstone presented his accounts and his plans. He had raised a larger revenue than had ever been raised in England by taxation at any period, whether of peace or war. In 1864-65 the actual expenditure had been £66,462,000, being £611,000 less than the estimate. Comparing the expenditure of the year with the revenue, he found that there was an apparent surplus of £3,231,000. The estimated revenue had been £66,128,000, whereas the actual revenue was £70,313,000. It had been expected that there would be a total loss on the year of £3,080,000, whereas there had been altogether a gain of £147,000. This showed how the prosperity of the country was advancing by leaps and bounds. Coming to the estimate of the income and expenditure of the ensuing year, Mr. Gladstone said he had to provide for an expenditure of £66,139,000, while he estimated the revenue at £70,170,000. This showed, on the basis of existing taxation, a surplus of £4,031,000. That surplus, he stated, he would dispose of as follows:--He proposed to equalise the stamp duty on scrip certificates and receipts in the case of English and Foreign transactions. The stamp on agreements for letting houses would be reduced to a penny. The tax on appraisements would be graduated, so that property amounting to £5 would not pay 2s. 6d. but

[Illustration: GENERAL ROBERT LEE.]

3d., and so on upwards. The stamp duty on charter parties would be reduced to 6d. There were also to be alterations in regard to Marine Insurance stamps, and stamps on insurances against accidental death, personal injury, and damages to plate-glass. He refused to reduce the Malt Tax, but he proposed to lower the Tea Duty by a remission of 6d. per lb. As to the Income Tax, he admitted that Ministers should do all they could for its reduction. It was, at present, at the lowest point, practically, at which it ever stood. It had never been lower than 6d. in the pound, but still he proposed to remove one-third of it, thus reducing it to 4d. The final loss to the Exchequer by this reduction of 2d. would be £2,600,000, of which about £1,650,000 would fall upon the current year. Dealing with the Fire Insurance duty, he pointed out that it was desirable it should be reduced to a uniform rate of 1s. 6d., and to this would be added the substitution of a penny stamp in lieu of the 1s. duty on insurance policies. The relief given by the proposed reductions would be:--On tea, £2,300,000, on Income Tax, £2,600,000, and on Fire Insurance Duty, £520,000, making a total of £5,420,000, of which £3,778,000 would fall on this year. Deducting this latter sum from the estimated surplus, £4,031,000, there would be still a surplus of £253,000 on the accounts of the coming year.

It was on the 2nd of June that Lord Russell in the House of Lords declared the Civil War in America at an end, and refused Confederate vessels any further rights of harbour in English ports. It has been shown how General Sherman’s devastating march through Georgia exposed the real weakness of the South. At the end of 1864 Hood’s army was pining away in Alabama or Tennessee, and Beauregard, with 20,000 men, alone stood between Sherman’s legions, flushed with victory, and the harassed and outnumbered army of Lee. On Christmas Day the Confederates repelled an attack by Butler on Wilmington, but on the 14th of January, 1865, when operations were renewed by General Terry and Admiral Porter, the key of the position was easily taken, and the Confederates were deprived of their only free and practicable outlet to the sea. On the 17th of February Charleston was evacuated. Sherman had already set forth on his march to the north--Beauregard retreating rapidly before him. And yet, though they thus had victory within their grasp, the leaders of the North made one last effort to conciliate the South. “Although no authorised version of the negotiations has ever been given to the public,” says Mr. Sterne, “it was conceded that, with the single exception of slavery and submission to the authority of the Union on the part of the South, every condition that the Southern States could ask would be submitted to by the North, including the adoption of the Southern debt and the reimbursement to the Southern slave-holders for slaves lost.”[230] In a moment of insanity the Southern Government rejected these generous terms, and so the war went on. Sherman’s movement to the north enabled Grant to press Lee with effect. He forced him back to Petersburg and Richmond. On the 1st of April both towns were captured, and Lee was not only pursued but overtaken and beaten in his last fight. “General,” wrote Grant to his fallen foe on the 7th of April, “the result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate States Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.” The capitulation was arranged on terms which were extremely generous to the vanquished. No prisoners were taken. The officers were paroled, and the troops were all permitted to return home on condition of submitting to the Federal Government. Within a few days Johnston surrendered to Sherman on the same terms, and on the 18th of April the war was at an end.

The victors astonished the world by their moderation. Not a single rebel, save the governor of a military prison, who was convicted of behaving with revolting brutality to Federal prisoners in the South, perished on the scaffold. Even the few prominent civilians who were arrested and imprisoned were soon released. The best men, both in the Northern and Southern States, vied with each other in promoting a policy based on conciliation for the future and oblivion for the past. Mr. Lincoln, who had been re-elected President in the autumn of 1864, began his second term of office on the 4th of March, 1865. On the evening of the 14th of April he visited Ford’s Theatre at Washington with Mrs. Lincoln and another lady and gentleman, and about half-past ten, during a pause in the performance, he was shot by one Wilkes Booth, who suddenly entered the President’s box and discharged a pistol at his head. Booth then leaped on the stage flourishing a dagger, and exclaiming “_Sic semper tyrannis!_” escaped from the theatre. Mr. Lincoln never recovered consciousness, and he died on the morning of the 15th.

From every part of the world expressions of sympathy were conveyed to Mrs. Lincoln and the American people, who had been thus cruelly deprived of the sagacious and upright statesman whose civic courage and unquenchable patriotism had saved the Union. The Queen, who had always admired Mr. Lincoln’s character and career, sent an autograph letter to Mrs. Lincoln, expressing, with simple and womanly tenderness, her sympathy for the President’s family.[231] Addresses on the assassination of the President were presented by both Houses of Parliament to the Crown, and the Queen in reply to these wrote: “I entirely participate in the sentiments you have expressed in your address to me on the subject of the assassination of the President of the United States. I have given directions to my Minister at Washington to make known to the Government of that country the feelings which you entertain in common with myself and my whole people with regard to this deplorable event.” The miscreants who had conspired against Lincoln’s life had also intended to assassinate his chief Ministers, and one of them inflicted severe wounds on Mr. Seward and his son, from which, however, they both recovered.

Mr. Lincoln was succeeded by the Vice-President, Mr. Andrew Johnson, who, in the first moments of excitement which followed Lincoln’s murder, charged Mr. Jefferson Davis and the leaders of the South, with being Booth’s accomplices. These charges, however, were not generally credited, because it was clear that the life of Lincoln, whose policy was notoriously one of clemency and moderation, was quite as precious to the conquered States, as to their conquerors. But undoubtedly the angry passions which Booth’s crime had stimulated, increased the difficulty of reorganising the territory now held by the Federal troops. To admit the Southern States to the Union with their old rights of sovereignty and autonomy as if nothing had happened was impossible. The negroes, though free, were unenfranchised, and therefore at the mercy of their old masters. But the negroes had bled and suffered for the Union during the war, and they could not be abandoned now. Moreover, Lincoln’s proclamation abolishing slavery gave them an implied promise of protection from subsequent oppression. But then the American Constitution contained no provision for dealing with the difficulty which the war had created. To enfranchise with a stroke of the pen a vast ignorant servile population, which had been demoralised by slavery, was fraught with the utmost peril, not only to American democracy, but to American civilisation. Again, the States themselves had always determined the conditions of enfranchisement. As sovereign communities they had the clearest right to organise their own internal administration free from all interference from the Federal authorities, who had no power over them, save that of seeing that they adopted a republican form of government. The first step taken was to organise the Freedman’s Bureau with agents all over the South with the object of protecting the negroes from injustice and oppression. But President Johnson had spent his life in the Slave State of Tennessee, and he had many sympathies with the slave-owners. Taking his stand on the letter of the Constitution, he refused to sanction those methods of reconstruction which Congress adopted, and sent military governors to rule the conquered States, until their permanent government was organised. The fourteenth amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery in the United States was carried in June. But the President vetoed the Freedman’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill, his veto being overridden by the majority in Congress, in which, however, the Southern States were not yet represented. In a word, the President was soon in open conflict with the Republican majority that had carried the country through the long and bloody war.

[Illustration: BIARRITZ.]

This conflict[232] was eagerly canvassed in all its stages by Englishmen of all classes, who seemed at this time to take a keener interest in the fascinating problems of American politics than in their own domestic affairs. But perhaps nothing appealed more strongly to the imagination of the people than the ease with which the American people disbanded their armies, and absorbed a million unpensioned officers and soldiers at the very moment of victory into the mass of the peaceful civil population. The calmness, courage, and good sense with which the Americans set aside the menaces of the war party against England, and applied themselves to pay off the six hundred millions sterling of their war debt, further commanded the admiration of the world. Not even in Mexico could the United States be persuaded to interfere. Their Government simply refused to recognise that of the Emperor Maximilian, and accredited a minister to the President of the Mexican Republic, who still waged a desultory struggle with the Imperial Government and its French allies. As France, however, had now thought it prudent to announce the withdrawal of her troops from Mexico, the United States could afford to wait for the inevitable issue.

The Danish Question, in which the Queen had so deeply interested herself during the previous year, was easily settled--for a time. Austria and Prussia agreed to share the spoils of war, and the Duchies were divided between them. This arrangement, formulated by the Convention of Gastein, in August, averted war between the allies. As for the views of the minor States and the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg, they were brusquely put aside. The Duke had made the fatal mistake of pretending to regard the services of Prussia in liberating the Duchies as uncalled for. He even hinted that his cause would otherwise have been much better managed by the Diet. When he came to Berlin to press his claims at the Prussian Court, he had an interview with Von Bismarck in the King’s billiard-room, which ought to have warned him of what was coming.

“At first,” said Bismarck once, “I wanted from him no more than what the minor Princes conceded in 1866. But he would not yield an inch (thank Heaven! thought I to myself, and thanks to the wisdom of his legal advisers).... At first I called him ‘Highness,’ and was altogether polite. But when he began to make objections about Kiel Harbour, which we wanted, and would listen to none of our military demands, I put on a different face. I now titled him ‘Translucency,’ and told him at last, quite coolly, that we could easily wring the neck of the chicken we ourselves had hatched.”[233]

The French Government described the Treaty of Gastein as an act of political “highway robbery and attorneyism.” Lord Russell condemned it as a mere expression of brute force, and the Fleets of France and England met and made a foolish demonstration at Cherbourg, by way of giving point to their diplomatic denunciations of the Convention. It was merely a temporary arrangement, which gave Prussia time to secure herself against France before she attempted to expel Austria from North Germany. At a mysterious interview between Napoleon and Bismarck at Biarritz, in October, it was supposed that, in return for vague promises to assist French schemes in Italy and Belgium, the Prussian Minister--now Count Von Bismarck--had obtained an equally vague pledge of benevolent neutrality from France.[234]

The last days of the moribund Parliament were enlivened by a grave personal scandal. Lord Chancellor Westbury was accused of having improperly and corruptly administered the patronage of his high office, and two cases were cited against him. One was that of Mr. Leonard Edmunds, who, though he had heavy defalcations in his accounts, was allowed to retire on a pension from the Clerkships of Patents and of the House of Lords, in favour of Westbury’s son. The other case rested on certain appointments which Westbury had made to offices, and on grants of retiring pensions in the Leeds Court of Bankruptcy. It was alleged that the Lord Chancellor, in making these appointments, had been influenced by family considerations detrimental to the public service. After receiving the Report of a Select Committee, the House of Commons censured Lord Westbury, who immediately resigned his office.[235] His Lordship, when he went to hand over the Great Seal to the Queen, had a somewhat painful interview with her Majesty. In his Diary, under date the 7th of July, Bishop Wilberforce writes:--“Going in to the Queen met Westbury coming out; his fallen look moved my compassion. Later I met him on the broad staircase looking quite down, as he wandered alone down to town. But Delane [the editor of the _Times_] told me that going up to London in the train he was quite uproarious in his jollity, professing such delight at being free from office, going to enjoy himself, foreign travel,” &c.

Parliament died of old age. It had exhausted its allotted septennial span, and was prorogued and dissolved on the 6th of July. The General Election created little stir or excitement in the country, because no appeal was made by either party to the constituencies on any vital question. The election of Mr. John Stuart Mill for Westminster roused some popular interest. The defeat of Mr. Gladstone at Oxford University was due to the votes of the non-resident graduates among the country clergy; and there was a stroke of unconscious irony in the success of the Opposition at Tiverton, where they managed to give Lord Palmerston a Tory as a colleague. The Liberals claimed to have carried 367 seats, and the Tories 290. But all speculation as to what course the new Parliament might adopt was cut short by the death of Lord Palmerston on the 18th of October. He was within two days of completing his eighty-first year, and, as his biographer says, “the half-opened cabinet-box on his table, and the unfinished letter on his desk, testified that he was at his post to the last.”[236] He had sat in sixteen Parliaments, and had been chosen to sit in a seventeenth. He had been a member of every Administration that had ruled England since 1807, save those of Sir Robert Peel and Lord Derby, and the voice of the nation rightly decreed for him the funeral honours of Westminster Abbey. It will always be a mystery why Palmerston succeeded in establishing, towards the end of his life, a personal dictatorship over the England which was governed by the £10 householder. In home politics he took hardly any interest. One day, for example, at Balmoral, when the Queen asked him for some information about a serious strike in the North of England, he replied that he had none; but “Madam,” said he, “I hear that the Russians have crossed the Pruth.” He was an aristocrat to the core, and his ideas of England’s mission in the world, and of her interests in the political forces and conflicts that shaped the destinies of nations, were those, not of a man of business or of affairs, but of a happy-hearted, reckless, pugnacious public-school-boy. To coolness, courage, and tenacity of purpose, he, however, added a dexterity in action that rendered him a successful as well as

“A daring pilot in extremity.”

In one of his letters to Sir Stratford Canning he reveals the secret of much of his power when he says, “I believe weakness and irresolution are on the whole the worst faults that statesmen can have. A man of energy may make a wrong decision but, like a strong horse that carries you rashly into a quagmire, he brings you by his sturdiness out on the other side.” Looking back on his career, it is hard to find one single stroke of his policy that can be justified by history, with the exception of the support he generously gave to the cause of Italian unity. The cornerstone of his policy in his last administrations was the Anglo-French alliance, and its worthlessness was attested not only by the enormous military expenditure which Palmerston himself extorted from the people to ward off a French invasion, but by the fact that the alliance itself always broke down to the disadvantage of England, whenever a strain was put upon it. His sympathy with democracy abroad brought him no credit, for it was insincere. It was displayed mainly in order to keep the Radical party quiet when the people began to demand reforms at home. His most wonderful practical achievement was that of reconciling both Tories and Radicals to the political supremacy of the extremely moderate Liberals--the Liberals who had been rendered Conservatives by the prosperity which Free Trade had conferred upon them. His cleverness in selecting serviceable subordinates, his personal loyalty to them, his geniality and cheerfulness, his singular gift of managing the House of Commons, all contributed to consolidate his influence in the country. His power over the House of Commons was probably greater than Peel’s. He knew, as if by instinct, in any emergency the kind of argument that was sure to tell on that Assembly. He ruled it through its foibles, its prejudices, and its impulses. He could adapt his style to every passing mood of its fickle temper, and alike in jest and earnest he was always on the level of its standard of good taste and fine feeling.

Lord Palmerston’s funeral took place in Westminster Abbey, accompanied by every mark of respect and honour. The arrangements made for filling up the vacancies in the Cabinet which were caused by his death were simple. Earl Russell was called upon by the Queen to assume the post of Premier. The Earl of Clarendon, then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Chichester Fortescue was made Secretary for Ireland in place of Sir Robert Peel, who had always warned his colleagues he would join the Tories after Palmerston’s death. The office of Under-Secretary for the Colonies was conferred upon Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P. for Bradford. Mr. Heath resigned the Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade, in which he was succeeded by Mr. Goschen. The important position of Leader of the Government in the House of Commons devolved upon Mr. Gladstone, who had found a seat in Lancashire. His financial genius had vastly added to the _prestige_ of Lord Palmerston’s Ministry, and his commanding intellect and fascinating oratorical power had long before marked him out for the leadership.

[Illustration: THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, DUBLIN (1865).]

Two evil incidents marred the latter portion of the year. These were the outbreak of the cattle disease which became known as “rinderpest,” in England and Scotland, and the development of the Fenian conspiracy in Ireland. Down to the middle of December 5,000 cases of “rinderpest” had occurred, and most of them had ended fatally. The plague, it is true, was disappearing in some districts, but in others its ravages were increasing, and a Royal Commission recommended that all movement of cattle in the country should be stopped for a time. Local authorities in many cases suspended fairs and markets.

The history of Ireland after the resignation of Lord Aberdeen was summed up in the administration of Coercion Acts that were rendered necessary by outrages which a peasantry infuriated by land clearances and rack-rents perpetrated. For a time the policy of eviction and emigration went on unresisted. In 1854 the rebels of ’48 were amnestied, but when they came back they found that Irishmen regarded them rather as reactionaries than rebels. As had always been the case in Ireland, the pendulum of public opinion had now swung over from Anti-Unionism to Separatism. The failure of ’48, the triumph of the evicting landlords, the progressive poverty of the people, the treachery of leaders like Sadlier and Keogh, who were bought up by the Whigs, disgusted Irishmen with Parliamentary agitation. The Fenian conspiracy was the outcome of this feeling. It originated among victims of the famine clearances, and among some of the men of ’48. It was introduced into Ireland during the Indian Mutiny by Mr. James Stephen, when it was known as the Phœnix Society. One of his first converts was a Jeremiah Donovan, of Skibbereen, who afterwards dubbed himself O’Donovan Rossa. He in turn, induced ninety out of the hundred members of the Skibbereen Club to join his band. That Society could hardly have conducted its proceedings with much secrecy at this time, for it was soon denounced from every altar in the country. The Lord-Lieutenant, however, proclaimed it, and there and then elevated the Phœnix plotters to the dignity of national heroes. The leaders were arrested, and on pleading guilty were released with admonition. But over the Atlantic the Society had taken firmer root among the victims of evicting landlords, as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. Yet even there it would have probably perished from the opposition of the priests and the advocates of open agitation, but for the cleverness with which its leaders made capital out of the famous McManus funeral. McManus, one of the most amiable and highly respected members of the Young Ireland Party, had, after his escape from Van Diemen’s Land, settled in California, where he died. It was resolved by his compatriots to exhume his body and convey it to Ireland for burial. The route of the funeral, from San Francisco to Dublin, was naturally at every stage the scene of a patriotic Irish demonstration, and by adroit management the Fenian leaders had contrived to get control of all the arrangements, so that the reflected _prestige_ of this impressive and imposing demonstration of Irish nationalism went to their credit. In Ireland the Society was soon considered to be the only one that had any real power to help the people, and after the McManus funeral it grew apace. In 1862 it announced at Chicago its intention of establishing Irish independence by armed force, and its organ--the _Irish People_--was founded in Dublin by Messrs. John O’Leary, Thomas Clark Luby, and Charles James Kickham. For two years the Society was permitted to carry on its propaganda. Then in September, 1865, Luby, O’Leary, Kickham, and Stephens were arrested. Ten days after their capture Stephens escaped from jail by aid of his gaolers, who were also Fenians. In November the others were tried for treason-felony, and sentenced to penal servitude for terms varying from ten to twenty years. The organisation then became a small club in New York, whose leaders quarrelled amongst themselves. They enjoyed a fictitious importance for a time, because the Democratic Party and partisans of the Southern States, invariably professed Fenian sympathies when contesting State elections.

Two Colonial disputes gave the Government of the day some trouble before the end of the year. The Assembly of Victoria tried to pass a Protective Tariff over the veto of the Council, by tacking it on to the Bill granting the supplies for the year. The Council held to its veto. The Government was thus left without money for the public service, and affairs came to a deadlock. In the circumstances the Governor, Sir Charles Darling, cut the knot of the difficulty by allowing his Ministers to raise money under the sanction of resolutions passed by the Assembly, or representative branch of the Legislature. He also entered into an ingenious arrangement with a bank in Melbourne. The law forbade voluntary payments from the Treasury which were not authorised by an Appropriation Bill. But the bank made advances to the Treasury, and then sued it for recovery. The Treasury of course confessed judgment when sued, and thus the law was evaded.

An outbreak of negroes in Jamaica had been suppressed with great vigour by Governor Eyre. But it was soon suspected that he had mistaken a riot for a revolution, and that the local authorities had acted in violation of law, and with callous disregard of the dictates of humanity. Eyre was suspended, and a Royal Commission was sent out at the end of the year to report on the occurrence.

Though the Queen remained in close seclusion during 1865, she gave more than one token of the vigilance with which she watched popular interests. The year 1864 was famous for the number and the serious character of its railway accidents, and yet it was hopeless to expect a Palmerstonian Parliament to compel the railway companies to improve their management. In the circumstances, it occurred to the Queen that she might effect some good by using her moral influence on behalf of the travelling public, and she accordingly directed the following letter to be sent to the chief companies just as the year opened:--

“Sir Charles Phipps has received the commands of her Majesty the Queen to call the attention of the directors of the ---- to the increasing number of accidents which have lately occurred upon different lines of railroad, and to express her Majesty’s warmest hope that the directors of the ---- will carefully consider every means of guarding against these misfortunes, which are not at all the necessary accompaniments of railway travelling. It is not for her own safety that the Queen has wished to provide in thus calling the attention of the Company to the late disasters. Her Majesty is aware that when she travels extraordinary precautions are taken, but it is on account of her family, of those travelling upon her service, and of her

[Illustration: THE QUEEN UNVEILING THE STATUE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT AT COBURG.]

people generally, that she expresses the hope that the same security may be insured for all as is so carefully provided for herself. The Queen hopes it is unnecessary for her to recall to the recollection of the railway directors the heavy responsibility which they have assumed since they have succeeded in securing the monopoly of the means of travelling of almost the entire population of the country.”

On the other hand, evidence was not wanting that her Majesty’s retirement had led to laxity of administration in her household. On the 4th of March, for example, Lord Malmesbury writes in his Diary:--“All London is talking of the way in which the Corps Diplomatique has been invited to the Queen’s reception. It was, as far as I could understand, in these terms:--‘That the Queen would graciously receive them, _male_ and _female_, at a Court to be held at Buckingham Palace.’ All those concerned are trying to shift the responsibility upon one another. The diplomatists have sent their cards of invitation to their respective Courts, and therefore it has produced a great sensation all over the world, as the term _mâle et femelle_ is never used in French, except in speaking of animals.”[237] But her Majesty’s kind and gracious bearing at this reception, which was held on the 13th of March, did much to neutralise the impression produced by the rudeness of the Lord Chamberlain’s Department. On the 14th of March the Queen visited the Consumptive Hospital at Brompton, bestowing on the patients in the various wards kindly words of sympathy. Circumstances prevented her from undertaking a journey to Ireland, where the people would have been pleased to have welcomed her at the inauguration of an International Exhibition. She, however, testified her interest in that enterprise by requesting the Prince of Wales to open the exhibition in Dublin on the 9th of May. Another son was born to the Prince and Princess on the 3rd of June, and on the 7th of July the infant was baptized in the chapel at Windsor in presence of the Queen, who named him George Frederick Ernest Albert. On the 6th of August the Queen’s second son, Prince Alfred, attained his majority, and was recognised, with her sanction, as heir to the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

On the 8th of August the Queen, with Prince Leopold, the Princesses Helena, Louise, Beatrice, and suite, left England for Germany. She arrived at Coburg on the 11th, and immediately proceeded to Rosenau. On the 26th she unveiled the statue which had been set up in memory of the Prince Consort in the quaint market-place of Coburg. The town was _en fête_, every house being gay with garlands and banners, and decorated with trophies of arms and festoons of flowers and evergreens. The troops paraded the square, while crowds of light-hearted students and schoolboys, and a great concourse of loyal burghers and honest country-folk who had assembled to see the ceremony, gave life and colour to a picturesque scene. The Court carriages bore a brilliant company of Royal personages. Soon after four o’clock in the afternoon the bells in all the steeples in the town pealed forth joyous notes; the cannon of the fortress thundered out a royal salute, and the bands in the square played the English National Anthem. Then the Queen’s carriage drove up amidst deafening cheers. She was accompanied by Prince Arthur and the Princess Beatrice, and was received by the Grand Duke, who led her to the front of the pavilion that had been prepared for the ceremony. She was clad in the deepest mourning, and under her bonnet was seen the cap _à la Marie Stuart_, which about this time she had begun to wear on all public occasions. The Burgomaster of Coburg presented her with a long and loyal address. The bells rang, the bands played, the cannon saluted again, and at a given signal the veil was withdrawn from the polished bronze statue, which stood out glittering and sparkling in the sultry sunshine of an autumnal afternoon. Walking up to the monument, the Queen handed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha the bunch of flowers which had lain before her on the balcony of the pavilion. These he placed, together with another bouquet from the Princess Beatrice, on the pedestal of the statue, and the ceremony was over. On the 8th of September the Queen left Rosenau with the Princesses Helena and Louise and Prince Leopold, and stopped _en route_ at Darmstadt, where she was met by the Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse. Proceeding to Ostend, the Queen paid a brief visit to King Leopold, after which she embarked at Antwerp in her yacht for Woolwich.

During the Queen’s autumnal holiday at Balmoral the Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse again visited her. Later in the year it was announced that the Princess Helena was to be married to the Prince Christian of Sleswig-Holstein, second son of the Duke of Augustenburg. “Many thanks,” writes the Princess Louis to the Queen on the 8th of December, “for your letter received yesterday with the account of Lenchen’s _verlobung_ [betrothal]. I am so glad she is happy, and I hope every blessing will rest on them both that one can possibly desire.” It was arranged that the Queen should lend Frogmore to her daughter, so that she and her husband might be able to live in England. But the shadow of death was again brooding over the Royal Household. In the same letter in which the Princess Louis refers to her sister’s betrothal she writes, “I had a letter from Marie Brabant two days ago, where she says dear uncle’s [King Leopold] state is hopeless; but yesterday she telegraphed that he was rather better. What a loss it would be if he were to be taken from us, for his very name and existence, though he takes no active part in politics, are of weight and value.”[238] In England the news of King Leopold’s illness was received with some concern. The Queen had promised to open the next Session of Parliament in person, and it was feared that the death of his Majesty might interfere with a project in which her subjects of all classes were deeply interested. On the 11th of December King Leopold died, and on that day the Princess Louis of Hesse, ever ready to sympathise with her mother’s sorrows, wrote to the Queen, “Alas! alas! beloved Uncle Leopold is no more! How much for you, for us, for all, goes with him to the grave! One tie more of those dear old times is rent! I do feel for you so much, for dear uncle was indeed a father to you. Now you are head of all the family--it seems incredible, and that dear papa should not be by your side. The regret for dear Uncle Leopold is universal--he stood so high in the eyes of all parties; his life was a history in itself--and now that book is closed.” In another letter the Princess says, “The more I realise that we shall never see beloved Uncle Leopold again the sadder I grow. He had, apart from all his excellent qualities, such a charm as I believe we shall seldom find again.”

King Leopold’s life was indeed “a history in itself.” He was almost ostentatiously indifferent to his position--ever impressing on his subjects that he reigned in their interest rather than in his own. It has been said that he could always bring them to reason by threatening to abdicate. The sagacity and tact with which he prevented the Catholics and the Liberals in Belgium from coming to blows, gave him great influence in Europe. But that influence was enhanced by his capacity for diplomatic intrigue, and the opportunities for exercising it which his curious family connections gave him. Though he began life as one of the obscurest of the petty Princes of Germany, he had married in succession the heiress of England and the daughter of the King of the French. By a double marriage, his children were allied to the Imperial House of Hapsburg. He was the uncle and mentor of the Queen and the Prince Consort--indeed, he and Baron Stockmar had brought about their marriage. His position was supposed to be unassailable from the day when, on being threatened with a revolution, he calmly began to pack a carpet-bag in presence of the popular leaders, who thereupon, in a paroxysm of fear, implored him not to leave the country. Yet, according to Lord Malmesbury, “the last years of his life were spent in perpetual terror of Louis Napoleon, and he was constantly alarming our Ministers and everybody on the subject.”[239]

[Illustration: OPENING OF PARLIAMENT IN 1866: THE QUEEN AT THE PEERS’ ENTRANCE, WESTMINSTER PALACE.]

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