CHAPTER XV

.

FALL OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.

Social condition of the Country in 1870--Mr. Bright’s “Six Omnibuses in Temple Bar”--Opening of Parliament--Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill--Amendments to the Bill--Dual-Ownership Established--The Bill and the House of Lords--The Revolt of Lord Salisbury--The Education Bill--Mutiny of the Liberal Dissenters--Mr. Lowe’s Second Budget--The Civil Service opened to Competition--Mr. Cardwell’s Failure at the War Office--The Queen and the Army--Mr. Childers and Admiralty Reform--Mr. Baxter and Navy Contracts--The Wreck of the _Captain_--Lord Granville and the Colonies--Death of Lord Clarendon--The Franco-Prussian War--Collapse of the French Armies--Sedan--Fall of the Bonapartist Dynasty--Proclamation of the Third Republic--Investment of Paris--The Government of National Defence at Tours--M. Gambetta Rouses Prostrate France--Gallant Stand of the Mobiles--A Passing Glimpse of Victory--The Queen and the War--Prussia and England--Russia Repudiates the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of Paris--Papal Infallibility and the Italian Occupation of Rome--King William Proclaimed German Emperor--Opening of London University--Betrothal of the Princess Louise--Death of General Grey--Death of Dickens--The Novelist and the Queen--Garden Party at Windsor Castle--The Red River Expedition.

If the social condition of Ireland when the year 1870 opened was gloomy, that of England could not be considered bright. Trade was still bad, and desponding critics began to hint that it would not for many years recover from the disaster of 1866. Raw cotton was still scarce and dear, and high prices had rendered the demand for manufactured goods stagnant. The feud between the capitalists and the trades unions was still disturbing the peace of the industrial world, and the political horizon of the Continent was heavy with the bodeful war cloud that broke during the latter half of the year in the sudden storm that wrecked the Second Empire. Irish land tenure, the establishment of a national system of elementary public instruction in England, and the admission of candidates to the Civil Service by competitive examination, were the topics that were most keenly canvassed in the early weeks of the year. From this discussion it was clear that public opinion was set against what was derisively called “the one-horse system of legislation”--that is to say, the exhaustion of the Session by one great measure like the Irish Church Bill. At least four measures were expected from Parliament ere the year closed--the Irish Land Bill, the Primary Education Bill, the Bill abolishing University Tests, and a Bill introducing Election by Ballot. In the end of 1869 a few changes had occurred in the composition of the Ministry. Mr. Layard had been appointed Minister to Madrid. To him Mr. Ayrton succeeded as First Commissioner of Works, while Mr. Stansfeld took Mr. Ayrton’s place as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Lord Cairns resigned the leadership of his Party in the House of Lords, and it seemed likely that the Duke of Marlborough or the Duke of Abercorn would be his successor. But from this calamity the Tories were saved by the self-denial of Lord Cairns, who withdrew his resignation and resumed his post. Speculation was busy as to the Ministerial programme, and Mr. Bright’s speeches at Birmingham, in which he dwelt on the difficulties of legislation, had a depressing effect on the country. “You cannot drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar,” was the phrase with which Mr. Bright endeavoured to moderate the expectations of the people. On the other hand, Mr. Forster, addressing his constituents at Bradford, endeavoured to neutralise Mr. Bright’s pleas for delay. It was true, he said, that it was hopeless to drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, but that was no reason why they should not go through one after the other. The “Irish Land Omnibus” said Mr. Forster, must go through first, after which the “Education Omnibus,” driven by himself and Lord de Grey, must follow.

Parliament was opened by Commission on the 8th of February with a Queen’s Speech, from which, at the last moment, paragraphs congratulating France on the re-establishment of constitutional government, and rejoicing over the reception of the Duke of Edinburgh in India, had been mysteriously excised. The Royal Speech promised reduced estimates, an Irish Land Bill, an Education Bill, a Licensing Bill, a Land Transfer Bill, an Intestacy Bill, a Bill to legalise Trades Unions, and a Merchant Shipping Bill. The Ballot Bill was ignored, and the Bill for the abolition of University Tests dimly alluded to, rather than definitely promised. In the House of Lords Opposition criticism was in the main a complaint that the Government had abdicated its functions of maintaining order in Ireland. In the House of Commons Mr. Disraeli admitted that the Irish policy of the Cabinet was not _per se_ the cause of Irish disturbances. But it had been so susceptible to misapprehension that it had sent Ireland into “spontaneous combustion” and “riotous hallucination.” It was a policy which had excited the wildest of false hopes, both as to the Repeal of the Union, and the transference of the landlords’ property to the tillers of the soil. But both Lord Cairns and Mr. Disraeli avoided committing their Party either to a demand for coercive legislation in Ireland, or to any position on the Land Question that would prevent them from attacking or supporting the Ministerial Bill when it was produced. On the Liberal benches, however, it was felt that the only weak point in Mr. Gladstone’s policy touched by his Tory critics was what he called “the discriminating amnesty” to the Fenian prisoners. It was generally admitted that if Ministers had only clearly said at the outset that they did not intend to extend their amnesty, the hopes that had unsettled and agitated the Irish people during the recess would never have been raised.

On the 14th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced his Land Bill, which legalised all Ulster customs of selling tenant-right, gave the tenant a right to compensation for his improvements and for capricious eviction, and provided means for peasants buying their holdings through advances made out of the Irish Church surplus, in cases where the tenant deposited one-fourth of the purchase-money. Mr. Disraeli was, on the whole, generous in his treatment of the Bill. Irish landlords, like Lord Granard, recognised its moderation, and, though they did not quite approve of its principles, they deprecated all factious opposition. It was soon seen that the Tory leaders meant to let the measure pass. But Mr. Disraeli, ever mindful of the great secret of successful leadership, resolved, with masterly strategic skill, to show his followers “sport” by advising them, at a meeting held in Lord Lonsdale’s house, to attack three points. On each of these they were in full accord with him. On one of them they had a chance of winning; on another they might safely yield, and yet get great credit for the highest patriotism; whilst on the third, though defeat was probable, it could not be attended with dishonour. The first point was that police-cess--incurred to protect landlords from assassination--which the Bill divided between landlord and tenant, should be paid by the latter alone. The second was that where there was doubt about an improvement, the law should presume it was made by the landlord, and not, as stipulated, by the tenant. The third was to cut out of the Bill everything that interfered with freedom of contract. In other words, Mr. Disraeli desired to leave landlords and tenants free to contract themselves out of the Bill in a country where the landlord, and not the tenant, was really the only one of the two contracting parties who could be plausibly called free. Upwards of three hundred amendments to the Bill were, however, put down before Easter, and the first clause, legalising Ulster customs, took twelve hours’ debating before it passed the ordeal of Committee. The Government soon found it necessary to modify the measure so as to separate compensation for improvements, from compensation for eviction. Then they struck out a clause which enabled landlords to get rid of all claims by offering a tenant a thirty-one years’ lease. These changes, Mr. Disraeli alleged,

[Illustration: BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, LONDON.]

formed a breach of the terms on which he had promised the Government conditional support, and for a time factious obstruction prevailed.[321] For the clause enabling landlords to nullify the Bill by offering leases, Ministers substituted a clause permitting landlord and tenant to come to a voluntary arrangement for a thirty-one years’ lease, but allowed the Courts to take this offer of a lease, if it were refused, into consideration in assessing compensation for eviction. Mr. Disraeli’s argument here was far-seeing. He said these changes would tempt the landlords to use ruthlessly the only power left to them by the Bill--that of eviction for non-payment of a rent which, however, they were permitted to raise, till it was impossible for any tenant to pay it. This, indeed, was what happened. At first the Bill, as has been explained, compensated eviction by the offer of a thirty-one years’ lease. The moment that clause was withdrawn, and eviction was compensated by damages, it was recognised that occupancy, _per se_, gave the occupier certain rights in the soil; in other words, the dual-ownership of landlord and occupier was then recognised as a principle. A long and weary struggle in Committee, in which the defence of the Bill was brilliantly conducted by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chichester Fortescue, followed, and the Opposition, aided by some crotchety Liberals, attempted to smother its principle by loading it with incompatible details. As Easter drew near, it was despondently whispered that the measure would have to be abandoned. Under unseen pressure from the constituencies, however, the action of the House was quickened after the Easter Recess, and all attempts at re-opening the controversy over the principles of the Bill under the pretext of improving it in detail, were crushed. Considerable concessions were made to the Tories. Mr. Gladstone’s original scheme provided that no tenant who paid under £100 a year of rent could contract himself out of the Bill. The Government lowered the limit to £50 of rental. The clause creating the presumption that improvements were made by the tenant, was limited as regards those made before the Act took effect. In Committee nothing was done for tenants who were evicted after it was known the Land Bill would be brought in. Nothing was done for reclaiming occupiers under middlemen, whose own tenancies expired with their leases from superior landlords. But before Parliament adjourned for Whitsuntide the Bill had passed through the House of Commons substantially unchanged. The landlords’ friends preferred to accept it as an alternative to further agrarian agitation, though Mr. Hardy threatened that the House of Lords would abrogate the penalty on evictions.

Lord Cairns had by this time been compelled through ill-health to finally resign the leadership of the Tory Party in the Peers, which he had reluctantly resumed, and the Duke of Richmond had been chosen as his successor. The new chief’s first speech on the Irish Land Bill was moderate and business-like, and his proposed amendments were to exempt all landlords from the Bill if they offered twenty-one instead of thirty-one years’ leases, to fix a date beyond which no tenant’s claim for improvements would be considered, to let landlord and tenant settle their disputes privately, without going into court, and to cut out a clause limiting distress for rent to persons who had contracted to submit to it. Though he disapproved of the Bright clauses creating a peasant proprietory, they were defended by Lord Salisbury and Lord Cairns. Lord Athlumney, as an Irish proprietor, said the Bill contained nothing which a humane landlord would object to accept, and the Duke of Abercorn gave the measure a general support. Lord Derby’s criticism was more subtle. The Bill did not apply to large farms. That was offering landlords an inducement to clear out small tenants, for it gave landlords what the custom of the country had denied them--a moral right to evict on paying damages for the privilege. Lord Lurgan on the Second Reading said the Bill no more hurt him than would a Bill legalising his debts of honour, but Lord Leitrim objected to it “from the title downwards,” and thought that disputes between landlords and tenants should be settled by Quarter Sessions--a tribunal composed of landlords alone. In Committee amendments were passed cutting down the scale of compensation, denying compensation to assignees not approved by the landlord (Duke of Richmond), enacting that no tenant paying more than £50 a year was in any circumstances to get compensation for eviction (Lord Salisbury), asserting that the presumption of law was to be that all improvements were made by landlords (Lord Clanricarde), prohibiting tenants from letting gardens to their labourers (Duke of Richmond), in fact, with the exception of the Bright clauses, the Peers mangled the Bill so as to make it utterly useless to the tenants. The excitement usually stirred up by a conflict between the two Houses grew every day, and men began to talk of an autumn session, the rapid passing of the Bill again through the Commons, and a creation of new Peers to force it through the House of Lords. For this dead-lock Lord Salisbury was chiefly responsible, for he practically ousted the Duke of Richmond from the leadership. After a day’s reflection, however, the Peers, influenced by Lord Cairns and Mr. Disraeli, retreated from the perilous position they had taken up. They withdrew their amendments on report, accepting instead a few plausible but transparently illusory compromises suggested by Lord Granville by way of saving their dignity. The result was that, for a time, Lord Salisbury was discredited, and the position of the Duke of Richmond, whose hand he had admittedly forced, was strengthened in the leadership. The Commons accepted all the amended amendments of the Peers except three,[322] and so the Bill passed. It marked an epoch in the political development of England. It was the first great constructive measure which recognised the right of the poorest class as distinguished from the middle class, to participate in beneficial legislation. It recognised the justice of legislating for the interests of the masses on the principle that it was not safe to leave them to the mercy of Supply and Demand, and of the economic Moloch of _laissez-faire_.

The other great measure of the Session--Mr. Forster’s Education Bill--illustrated the change in the drift of English legislation during the Victorian age still more strikingly. On the 17th of February Mr. Forster introduced his Education Bill. The problem to be solved, as Mr. Forster said, was “how to cover the country with good schools.” The conditions under which it must be solved were two: (1), the interests of the parents and children must be harmonised with those of the ratepayers; and (2), the new system must not be so built up as to destroy the old one where it was efficient. England was mapped out by Mr. Forster into school districts.[323] If in any of these more schools were needed, the people would have a year of grace in which to provide them, by voluntary subscription. If not, an elected local School Board would provide them compulsorily, and maintain them out of fees, rates, and the usual Government “Grants in Aid.” Religious teaching was not proscribed--the kind and quantity of it to be given, subject to a Conscience Clause, being left to the Boards. The Boards might also assist existing schools, or adopt compulsory education if they chose, and the Bill dealt with children between the ages of five and twelve. Where districts or Boards refused to provide efficient schooling for the people, the Education Department was to have power to force them to do so. The opposition to the Bill centred round the religious question. As Mr. Lowe said in his speech on the Second Reading, the House agreeing on the general principle, fixed their whole attention on one narrow point, like a “fierce herd of cattle in a large meadow deserting the grass which is abundant about them, and delighting themselves by fighting over a bed of nettles in a corner of the field.” The opposition of the Anglican clergy was anticipated. They naturally objected to any system that gave the parish schoolmaster something approaching the endowed status of the parish priest, and which released him from abject servitude to the Church. They could not conceal their hostility to a scheme of education which was National without being Anglican, and in which the principle of religious equality, so fatal to the claims of an Established Church, was not only recognised, but endowed by the State. But what had not been foreseen was the opposition of the Dissenting ministers and churches--an opposition that culminated in personal animosity to Mr. Forster. Representative Dissenters, like Mr. Winterbotham, told the House that they would prefer to delay the settlement of the whole question, till the country was prepared to accept secular education pure and simple. Their belief was that the Bill would tempt the different religious bodies to fight for control over the School Boards, so as to influence their decision on the question of religious teaching, and that in this struggle the Established Church, from the _prestige_ of its connection with the State, would again assert its ascendency. The Party of Free Thought, led by Mr. Mill, joined the Dissenters in their attacks on Mr. Forster, Mr. Mill’s objection to the Bill being, that under it the whole body of the ratepayers might be taxed to pay for teaching a particular religion to the majority. Lord Russell, who also pleaded for delay, advocated

[Illustration: MR. DISRAELI (AFTERWARDS LORD BEACONSFIELD).

(_From the Bust by J. E. Boehm, R.A., in the Possession of the Queen._)]

a compromise which would have legalised formal Bible-reading and hymn-singing during school-hours, divorced from any distinctive religious instruction, whereas Mr. Mill and Mr. Fawcett would have preferred compulsory secularism, to permissive sectarianism. Bible-reading, without note or comment, it was felt, might be unobjectionable in the case of children reared in religious families. But it was obviously useless to the “wastrels” of the gutter whom it was the primary object of the Bill to instruct. The great majority of Englishmen believed that moral teaching was a powerful agent for civilising this class of children, and that though catechisms and formularies should be excluded from new rate-built schools, it was not wise to fetter the discretion of the teacher, in explaining the Bible to the best of his judgment and ability. But as to the old denominational schools, it was generally admitted that Parliament could not do more than ask them to separate their sectarian, from their secular instruction by a “Time-table Conscience Clause.” It would not have been just to insist that they should submit to be virtually secularised,[324] under pain of forfeiting their share in the school-rate or the Imperial Grant in Aid. Mr. Forster was willing to concede vote by ballot for the Boards, and the Time-table Conscience Clause. But he refused to give effect to the national feeling in favour of excluding from rate-built schools denominational creeds and formularies, and leaving religious teaching to the discretion and good taste of schoolmasters and school managers. Moreover, he failed to meet the reasonable demand that a School Board should by law be established in every parish, so as to provide a competent authority for keeping the education of the district up to the proper standard of efficiency. At length the Government bent before the tempest of agitation which the Secularists and Dissenters raised. Mr. Gladstone accepted an amendment of Mr. Cowper Temple’s, excluding from all rate-built schools denominational catechisms and formularies. But instead of limiting the power of denominational managers to control religious teaching in cases where they did not supply a large moiety of the school funds, he entirely severed the connection between these schools and local authorities elected by the ratepayers. They were to depend on the Imperial Grant alone, but then this Grant to _all_ schools was to be raised so as to cover not one third, but about one half of their expenses. Mr. Disraeli, with an eye to the Radical Secularist “Cave,” scoffed at the compromise as a scheme for endowing “a new sacerdotal caste.” Lord John Manners lamented that it would ruin denominational schools. The Dissenters averred it would encourage them by doubling their Grants in Aid. They seemed to argue that parents who preferred denominational education should themselves pay a special price for it, whereas, parents who desired secular education should get it at the expense of the State. Mr. Gladstone’s compromise, however, was accepted, and the Bill was passed by both Houses. But it created a feud between the Dissenters and the Liberal Party, which irretrievably weakened the Government.

With the exception of a Bill to enable persons in Holy Orders to get rid of Clerical Disabilities when they desired to quit the ministry of the Church, and a Coercion Bill for Ireland, the legislative results of the Session were not of much importance. Mr. Lowe’s second Budget, introduced on the 11th of April, showed the amazing surplus of £7,870,000 on the accounts for 1869-70. He had spent out of this sum £4,300,000 for the Abyssinian War,[325] £1,000,000 in retiring Exchequer bills, and the remainder in swelling the Exchequer balances in hand at the Bank, which stood at £8,606,000--a sum which, he admitted, was excessive. He had sold £3,000,000 of new Consols privately to the public, and £4,000,000 of them to the National Debt Commissioners, which enabled him to pay the cost of buying up the telegraphs. To wipe out this fresh debt of £7,000,000, he had created terminable annuities which would cease in 1885. For the coming year he estimated a revenue of £71,450,000 and an expenditure of £67,113,000, so that, if taxes were not altered, he would have a surplus of £4,337,000. Of this he disposed by reducing the Income Tax to fourpence in the £, halving the sugar duties, and altering the tax of 5 per cent. on the passenger receipts of railway companies to 1 per cent. on their gross receipts. After these remissions, Mr. Lowe still kept in reserve a probable surplus of £311,000. He proposed, however, with the consent of the Committee, to increase the rigour of tax-collection, to substitute for game licences, licences to carry guns, and to abolish hawkers’ licences and several other trade licences. The Budget was well received, but it was not one that strengthened the Government politically. With such a large surplus, Mr. Lowe might have conciliated the farmers by dealing with the Malt Tax, more especially as he admitted he owed much of his surplus to the fall in wheat. In three years it had dropped from 72s. to 42s. a quarter, and cheap food had produced an increased consumption of dutiable articles, _i.e._, an “elastic revenue.” Still he was credited with having influenced one decision of the Ministry which was extremely popular in the country--their decision to throw the whole Civil Service, with the exception of the Foreign Office, open to competition, like the Civil Service of India. This heavy blow at privilege was struck on the 4th of June, when the Queen signed the Order in Council which gave rich and poor alike the same passport to the service of the State, and relieved members of Parliament from the annoyance of being pestered for “nominations” by aggressive constituents.

The management of the defensive services of the country in 1870 further illustrated the susceptibility of the Ministry to democratic pressure. Mr. Cardwell, however, failed to get credit for that portion of his work which was good, mainly because he gave the House of Commons the impression that he strove to evade inconvenient questions by cloudy verbosity, that he was too much at the mercy of his official subordinates, and had not the knowledge or the vigour to check the accuracy of the soothing and roseate

[Illustration: COWES, ISLE OF WIGHT.]

statements which they poured through his facile lips into the House of Commons. His estimates (£13,000,000) showed a reduction of £2,000,000, and, with Reserves and Auxiliaries, he asserted that he had a force of 322,000 men in the nine military districts of the United Kingdom. He proposed that recruits should serve for six years in the Line, and six in the Reserve, and he reduced the number of subaltern officers. These estimates and figures were, however, vitiated by the suspicion that the strength of the Army was mainly on paper, that it lacked efficient transport and artillery, and that even when Mr. Cardwell said, as he did towards the end of the Session, when the Franco-Prussian War created a panic as to national defences, that he could detach for active service a perfectly-equipped force of 30,000 men, he had an inadequate conception of national wants. The Ministerial policy raised up two different classes of opponents. To conciliate the Radicals, the Government cut down the Estimates by reducing the fighting power of the Army. The militant Radicals, however, declared that they desired to increase, rather than reduce the strength of the Army, and complained that the money for this purpose was not obtained by checking waste at the War Office and Horse Guards. The Party of “the Colonels” in the House of Commons were incensed against the Government for making reductions, that interfered with their professional interests. In midsummer, however, Mr. Cardwell effected one reform, by sanctioning which the Queen won great popularity at the time. Her Majesty, by signing an Order which made the Duke of Cambridge, Commanding-in-Chief, subordinate to the Secretary of State for War, ended a conflict which had been waged for years between the War Office and the Horse Guards. Every Sovereign of the House of Hanover had fought with stubbornness for the direct control of the Army, and Parliamentary influence over it was still indirect. To make it absolute, it would have been necessary to refuse supplies, and the Secretary of State, as the agent of Parliament, could only address requests, and not orders, to the Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Gladstone’s ears were quick to hear the first murmurings of the democracy against exempting this Department of the State, from Parliamentary control and supervision. There was also a suspicion abroad that no reform could be forced on the Army, whilst the Queen’s cousin held absolute power over it as the Queen’s agent. Rather than give enemies of the Monarchy a pretext for a Republican agitation based on a popular cry, Mr. Gladstone advised the Queen to surrender to the Secretary of State that part of the Royal prerogative by which the internal discipline of the Army was entirely regulated by her direct

## action.

Mr. Childers, not being hampered by a rival authority like that which the Duke of Cambridge wielded over the army, was able to adopt a vigorous policy of Reform at the Admiralty. His estimates amounted to £9,000,000, and for that sum he promised to strengthen the fleet by fifty of the most powerful iron-clads in the world, and to build at the rate of 13,000 tons a year till twenty more first-class iron-clads were afloat. He reduced the clerical staff of his office, effected sweeping reductions in the dockyards, and instead of keeping vessels in dock, sent as many to sea as were fit for service. Mr. Baxter, the Secretary to the Admiralty, abolished the old system of making purchases by contract, and instead, bought stores in the open market after the manner of private firms. The outcry raised against both Ministers from the vested interests which they assailed was loud and deep. Their policy was unscrupulously misrepresented, and it created for the Government a host of active and irrepressible enemies. The fatigues of office and the harassments of the attacks which were made upon him in the House of Commons for saving the taxpayers’ money, undermined Mr. Childers’ health in June, and for a month he had to abandon all work. The loss of the turret-ship _Captain_, one of the most powerful iron-clads in the Navy, which was capsized off Cape Finisterre in a gale in September, with all her crew--including her designer, Captain Coles, and Mr. Childers’ son, who was serving on board as a midshipman--clouded the naval administration of the Government. The ship went down because she was overmasted and overweighted, and had not enough freeboard. It was, moreover, unfortunate that naval experts who had in vain pointed out these defects to the Admiralty had warned them that she was unsafe before she was sent to sea.

Lord Granville’s Colonial policy, it has been stated, was directed to further the severance of the Colonies from the Mother Country. The controversy was chiefly fought out over New Zealand, which had been seriously grieved by the withdrawal of Imperial troops when she was engaged in Maori warfare. After much irritating discussion, Lord Granville attempted to conciliate the colonists by a niggardly offer of a guarantee for a loan of £500,000, which was rejected by the Colonial Commissioners. But in May he became alarmed when he found out that his policy was forcing separation on the colony, and that the idea of separation was hateful to the English people. He then offered to guarantee a loan of £1,200,000, and this was accepted as a token that the scheme he was supposed to favour--that of cutting the Colonies adrift--was, for a time, abandoned.[326] But the death of Lord Clarendon on the 27th of June enabled Mr. Gladstone to transfer Lord Granville to the Foreign Office, and Lord Kimberley reigned in his stead over the discontented Colonies.

Lord Clarendon’s death happened at an evil time, for Europe was distracted by the war between France and Prussia which had at last broken out. It is a curious fact that at the beginning of the year none of the diplomatists--not even Von Bismarck himself--had the faintest suspicion that ere six months had passed, this war would be declared. The Emperor of the French was watching in July, 1869, with straining eyes the election of a new Legislature. This election, as we have seen, ended in the return of a strong Opposition, headed by M. Thiers, M. Jules Favre, and M. Emile Ollivier, whose criticism of personal Government drove Napoleon to make popular concessions. A Parliamentary Constitution was granted, and at the end of the year the Emperor had induced M. Ollivier and a few moderate Liberals to form a Cabinet charged with the mission of reconciling Parliamentary Government with Universal Suffrage and the claims of the Imperial dynasty. The Emperor discarded the old friends who had been the servile instruments of his will, but shrewd Liberals still held aloof from the Imperial Court and Government, apparently distrusting his sincerity. And they were right. The Emperor considered that his new Liberal Constitution should be revised by the Senate, and the ever-subservient Senate accordingly inserted in it a provision authorising the Emperor to “go behind” his Parliamentary Ministry, and submit any question to a _plébiscite_. This of course meant that whenever Parliament thwarted the Emperor, he could set aside its decision and appeal on a confused issue to a hasty vote of an ignorant democracy, whose verdict was pre-arranged by subservient Prefects. The new Constitution itself was submitted to such a vote, and though M. Ollivier remained in office, most of his abler colleagues resigned. By a majority of five and a quarter millions against a million and a half, the people cast their suffrages for the Emperor. The issue on which they voted was nominally whether they approved of the Constitution reforms which he and the Senate had effected. In reality, it was whether Napoleon III. should, in spite of Parliament, be allowed still to rule France from above. The first result of the vote was the appointment of a Ministry in which M. Ollivier was the sole representative of Liberal feeling, or Constitutional instincts. The Duc de Gramont became Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Marshal Lebœuf, the Minister of War. But fifty thousand soldiers had voted against the Emperor in the _plébiscite_, and Napoleon III. was accordingly warned that to conciliate the army something must be done by France to eclipse the fame which Prussia had won at Sadowa. His envoys and agents in Germany assured him that the German States hated Prussia, and in their hearts looked to France for deliverance. As a matter of fact, it was German hatred of France and the German terror of a French occupation, that was binding them closer to Prussia. French intrigues might have delayed the union of Germany, but French aggression was certain to precipitate it, and yet Napoleon resolved to adopt an aggressive policy. As for the means, they were ready to his hand. Did not Marshal Lebœuf report that the re-organised army of France could go anywhere and do anything? There was not even a button wanting, and the new _chassepot_ and _mitrailleuse_ must annihilate any troops that faced their fire. The pretext for the quarrel was soon found. Spain had long been looking for a King. She offered her crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. On the 6th of July the Duc de Gramont angrily declared in the Legislature that if Prussia permitted a Prussian Prince to accept the Crown of Spain, France would consider his acceptance as a cause of war. In vain did the Opposition warn the Emperor and his Ministers that such a war would be unjustifiable and disastrous. Paris went into a frenzy of delight at the prospect of a march to Berlin. Ever anxious to promote the cause of peace, the Queen personally strove to avert hostilities, and so far as Prussia was concerned with some success. The English Court and the English Cabinet induced King William to advise Prince Leopold to refuse the Spanish Crown. King William’s magnanimity and moderation in making this concession to the arrogant demands of France were ill-requited. M. Ollivier, it is true, announced to the Legislature that the dispute was at an end, and Europe breathed freely. But to the amazement of everybody it soon appeared that M. Ollivier had been duped, for instead of crossing the golden bridge of retreat which the King of Prussia generously built for him, Napoleon put forward a fresh demand. It was not enough, said he, that Prince Leopold’s candidature should be withdrawn. King William, as head of the Hohenzollerns, must give a pledge that he would never in all time coming permit a Hohenzollern to aspire to the Crown of Spain. The insolent claim was rejected. A sensational and mendacious statement in the French Ministerial Press, to the effect that King William had rudely refused even to grant an audience to the French Ambassador, lashed the Parisians into a warlike mood. This insult, the Duc de Gramont, amid a tempest of cheering, told the French Chamber could only be avenged by a war--a war into which M. Ollivier airily observed he went “with a light heart.” On the 16th of July the French Declaration of War was delivered at Berlin, and French armies were moving towards the Rhine, with Parisian screams of “_À Berlin!_” ringing in their ears.

[Illustration: SEDAN.]

Napoleon commanded in person, with Lebœuf as his lieutenant; Marshal Macmahon led the right wing, or Army of Strasbourg; Bazaine, with Frossard, Douay, and De Failly, commanded the corps that held the line northward as far as Metz and Thionville. The aggressiveness of France had flung the German States into the arms of Prussia, and Napoleon delayed his march so long, that he lost his only chance of thrusting himself between the

[Illustration: THE FRENCH TROOPS LEAVING METZ.]

hosts of Prussia and her South German allies. The administration of the French army was soon seen to be in confusion, and its strength only on paper. Its transport and commissariat broke down, and almost from the outset it acted on the defensive, while the Imperial Staff seemed ignorant of the geography of their own country. In the meanwhile Von Bismarck biassed the opinion of England against France by publishing, on the 25th of July, the draft of a secret Treaty which our ally Napoleon III. had proposed to the King of Prussia, by which France was to consent to the union of Prussia, or North Germany, with the States of South Germany, in consideration of Germany helping France to seize Belgium. As England stood pledged to defend Belgium, such a proposal revealed a depth of perfidy which disgusted Europe with Bonapartism.[327] It was a plot to make war on England, concocted by Napoleon at the very time (August or September, 1866) when he was pretending to be her ally.[328] North and South Germany swiftly mobilised their armies under the supreme command of the King of Prussia, with Von Moltke as Chief of the Staff. The Crown Prince of Prussia, with Blumenthal as his Chief of Staff, led the South German troops. His cousin, Prince Frederick Charles, and General Steinmetz, commanded the corps that marched on the valley of the Moselle. When the Parisians were vaunting the success of the French troops in a slight skirmish at Saarbrück, the Crown Prince defeated the French at Weissenburg on the 4th of August, and on the 6th shattered Macmahon’s army at Wörth, while Steinmetz--the “blood spendthrift,” as Bismarck called him--crushed Frossard on Spicheren heights. A German corps was sent to invest Strasbourg, whither part of Macmahon’s army had fled. The Crown Prince started after the rest of that ill-fated force, then retreating on Châlons. The relics of Frossard’s army had fled to join Bazaine near Metz, whose design was to unite with Macmahon at Châlons. The Emperor of the French had appointed the Empress as Regent when he took command in person of the army near Metz. This command he now resigned to Bazaine. The Legislative Body, infuriated by the defeats on the frontier, turned the Ministry of Ollivier out of office, and General Montauban, Duke of Palikao,[329] was called to power. To secure the Emperor from the political consequences of retreat, Bazaine had delayed his departure from Metz to Châlons for a fortnight after the rout at Wörth. This obviously enabled the Germans to come up in time to prevent him from joining hands with Macmahon. On the 14th Steinmetz held him for a day at Courcelles. Then Prince Frederick Charles advanced and harassed Bazaine with impetuous cavalry charges till reinforcements arrived, which drove the French back on Gravelotte St. Privat. On the 18th the Germans fought and won the battle of Gravelotte, but at the cost of one-seventh of their effective strength,[330] and finally shut Bazaine up in Metz. Von Moltke immediately made arrangements to crush Macmahon’s reorganised army at Châlons. It is due to Macmahon to say that he himself and the Emperor desired to fall back on Paris, but the Empress-Regent, fearing that the Emperor’s appearance in Paris, with an army in retreat, might have bad political results, foolishly insisted on Macmahon hastening eastwards to Metz to relieve Bazaine. Macmahon obeyed these orders, and, as might have been expected, was intercepted and surrounded by the Germans at Sedan, where the Emperor and his army, after a disastrous fight, surrendered to the King of Prussia as prisoners of war on the 1st of September. The Second Empire was consumed in the circle of fire at Sedan. On the 4th of September the Imperial dynasty was deposed, and a Republic proclaimed. The Empress and the Ministry fled for their lives, the Empress making good her retreat to England. A Provisional Government was formed under General Trochu, Commander of the garrison of Paris, M. Jules Favre, M. Gambetta, and M. de Rochefort, and M. Thiers undertook to roam over Europe in the futile attempt to get some of the European Powers to mediate between France and Prussia.[331] Germany now demanded the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, and on the 19th of September Paris was invested and practically cut off from all communication with the rest of France. M. Jules Favre opened up pacific negotiations with Von Bismarck, but, as he refused to admit that some transfer of strongholds and territory to Germany was necessary, they were broken off. “Not an inch of our territory nor a stone of our fortresses,” was the reply of M. Favre to the Prussian Minister’s proposals. Bazaine might have escaped from Metz and relieved Paris, but then the result of his skill and the valour of his army would have been to strengthen the new-born Republic. He delayed too long, and he also opened up negotiations with Von Bismarck through a secret envoy, General Boyer. Bismarck had only one object--to conclude peace with some kind of French Government which would be strong enough to keep its pledges. Hence he had been willing to consent to an armistice, so that the Government of the Republic might, by means of a General Election, obtain an authoritative mandate from the people. This project having failed, he was quite willing to conclude a peace with the Imperial Government covered by Bazaine’s bayonets. He was willing to let Bazaine leave Metz and proceed with his troops to some place where they might form a rallying-point for the defeated dynasty.[332] The Empress-Regent in England was consulted, but she declined to consent to any proposals which made cession of territory a basis of peace. On the 25th of October the King of Prussia wrote to the Empress that negotiations were at an end, and on the 28th the great army of Metz--the last hope of the Bonapartes--surrendered unconditionally. Bismarck’s policy was now to foster the Third Republic till it became authoritative enough to undertake and uphold Treaty obligations.

Though Paris was invested, a delegation of the Government of National Defence, headed by M. Gambetta, a brilliant and eloquent young advocate, who leapt into popularity by his attacks on the Emperor during a political trial, escaped to Tours in a balloon, and on the 9th of October he set up a civil and military administration for provincial France. M. Gambetta displayed astounding courage, irrepressible energy, and the highest practical administrative ability. Armies rose at his word as if by magic, and a force of from 150,000 to 200,000 men, with 506 guns, under D’Aurelle de Paladines, was concentrated on the Loire. Had Bazaine only held Metz for another month the siege of Paris must have been raised. But the fall of Metz liberated the investing army of Prince Frederick Charles, and Gambetta’s legions were for the most part raw militiamen. Hence, when D’Aurelle de Paladines drove Von der Tann out of Orleans he could not follow up his victory. Prince Frederick Charles came up with the army of Metz, and Manteuffel stood between the besiegers of Paris and any relief from the south-west. In vain did D’Aurelle de Paladines and Trochu by concerted movements endeavour to break the ring of steel which encircled Paris. Their rough, raw peasants and improvised officers fought with the utmost gallantry, as if in contrast to the Imperial troops at Sedan and in the battles before Metz, where the rank and file in too many cases shrank from closing with the enemy. But they could not stand against the superb troops of the German States led by the ablest generals in Europe. After the recapture of Orleans by the Germans on the 4th of December, D’Aurelle de Paladines was superseded. His army was broken up into two corps, and under Bourbaki and Chanzy retreated to the south-east and south-west of the right bank of the Loire. The “Red Prince” (Frederick Charles) pursued Bourbaki, and the Duke of Mecklenburg, after a series of obstinate conflicts, pushed Chanzy slowly but surely from his positions near Marchenoir. The French Government had now to quit Tours and remove to Bordeaux, whereupon Chanzy retreated westwards. In the north-west, Faidherbe, the only strategist of signal ability whom the war brought to the front on the French side, had many toughly contested engagements with Von Goeben and Manteuffel, in which the Germans usually had the advantage. But after Christmas the French leader fairly claimed to have beaten his German antagonists at Noyelles, where he held his main position in spite of the attacks of the enemy, though he voluntarily evacuated it next day, and fell back on his old line at Lille.[333] Werder was not fortunate in the east. He could not hold Nuits, and he had to let Dijon fall into the hands of Garibaldi, who, in a fit of Republican enthusiasm, had given his sword to France after the Empire fell. The net result of the war at the end of the year was this: Paris was

[Illustration: VERSAILLES, 1871: PROCLAIMING KING WILLIAM GERMAN EMPEROR.]

completely invested. But, thanks to M. Gambetta’s fiery genius and practical organising power, France, after the surrender of the regular troops of the Third Empire, with their trained officers at their head, had actually more troops in the field than she possessed when Napoleon III. advanced to Saarbrück. These improvised armies of the infant Republic consisted of the rawest recruits. But they freed Normandy and Picardy, and all accounts showed that on the whole they fought with more pluck than the Imperial legions who surrendered at Metz and Sedan.

The effect of the war on English public opinion was curious. At the outset Englishmen of the better sort without distinction of class seemed to sympathise with Prussia. But the Roman Catholics both in Ireland and England became partisans of France. After Sedan a change took place. The enthusiasm of the Roman Catholic party rather cooled, whereas the working-classes and the advanced democrats in England transferred their moral support from Prussia to France. The Queen, though she felt the deepest personal sympathy for the fallen Emperor and his consort, was naturally drawn to the German cause. It was freighted with those high aspirations after German unity, which had been the central idea of her husband’s foreign policy. The brilliant victories of the South German armies had been won under the leadership of her favourite son-in-law, in whom the romance and chivalry of mediæval Teutonic Knighthood seemed to live again. The husband of her favourite daughter and constant correspondent (the Princess Louis) was a Divisional commander in the great host, whose iron grasp held Bazaine in Metz. Writing in July to the Queen, the Princess says, “How much I feel for you now, for I know how truly you must feel for Germany; and _all_ know that every good thing England does for Germany, and every evil she wards off her, is owing to your wisdom and experience, and to your true and just feelings. You would, I am sure, be pleased to hear how universally this is recognised and appreciated. What would beloved papa have thought of this war? The unity of Germany, which it has brought about, would please him, but not the shocking means.”[334] Unfortunately the personal relations of friendliness which often bind Courts have in these days but slight influence on the relations that subsist between Governments. The Prussian Government was not contented with English sympathy. England, said the Prussians, might by timely diplomatic action have prevented the outbreak of the war.[335] But she had a selfish motive in eliminating Imperial France from Europe as a dominating force. Prussia, in crushing France, was incidentally doing the work of England in defending Belgium, and hence England made no effort to keep the peace. Then there had been some trivial exports of arms from England to France, and the Prussian Minister--forgetting how Prussia had supplied Russia during the Crimean War--pretended to consider these exports a breach of neutrality. Oddly enough, though the Americans had engaged much more extensively in this traffic, Prussia made no complaint against them. The German case, as argued by Count Bernstoff, was obviously weak. So long as a country carries on its trade with belligerents, not as a partisan but as a neutral, it is impossible for diplomacy to stop that trade. Count Bernstoff, however, argued that as Prussia did not need to buy arms from England, whereas France did, the English trade in arms with France must be necessarily one-sided or partisan. His despatches laying down his eccentric doctrine of “benevolent neutrality” simply amounted to the assertion of a new principle. The usage had been that the neutral was free, subject to the usual risks, to trade with either of two belligerents just as if there were no war at all. The new principle asserted by Count Bernstoff was that the neutral, before selling a belligerent anything, must consider carefully whether the transaction will confer a benefit on him which it is beyond anybody’s power to confer on the other belligerent on the same terms. Neutral traffic must, according to the Prussian Foreign Office, cease whenever its results give one belligerent certain advantages direct and indirect over the other. Lord Granville had little difficulty in disposing of a chimerical doctrine which would have cast on a neutral the burden of weighing his lawful trade with belligerents to see that each got exactly the same fair share of it. But the absurd paradox was advanced merely to give Von Bismarck an excuse for conniving at an act of diplomatic hostility to England, on the part of Russia, his connivance being the price he had to pay the Czar, who held back Austria, for “benevolent neutrality” in 1870-71.

In the middle of November the Russian Government suddenly issued a Circular repudiating the clause in the Treaty of Paris which prevented Russia from keeping a fleet in the Black Sea. Lord Granville protested with high spirit against the claim of Russia to repudiate any clause in a Treaty she had signed, save with the consent of the cosignatories. Austria, Turkey, and Italy supported England, but Bismarck told Mr. Odo Russell, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to the King of Prussia at Versailles, that Prussia had always thought the Treaty needlessly harsh to Russia, and that, as German interests were not involved, he had no intention of taking any notice of the Russian Circular. “Resolved, as Bismarck therefore was,” says Mr. Lowe, “to let the Russians have their own way, and even help them to attain it, his only care was how to do this in the manner least objectionable to England. The Black Sea Clause had been knocked on the head, and was already as dead as a door-nail; but there was no reason why it should be flung into a ditch like a dog, and not interred with the decent ceremony of undertakers’ woe.... Thus too, doubtless, thought Bismarck when he proposed that the Powers should meet and wail a doleful dirge over the lamented body of their lifeless offspring. Ingenious idea! A coroner’s inquest in the shape of a diplomatic Conference to sit on the murdered body of the Black Sea Clause!”[336] Lord Granville’s position was an embarrassing one. It has already been pointed out that the Black Sea Clause was in many respects indefensible, and it was not possible to offer the English people any adequate return for the money and blood that must be spent in waging a futile war with Russia to maintain the Treaty. Yet the manner in which Russia had “denounced” it was meant to be humiliating to England, and it needed some adroit manœuvring to extricate the country from the situation which had been created for it by the foolish diplomacy of 1856. When the Conference met on the 17th of January, 1871, the representatives of the Powers kept their gravity when the President (Lord Granville) said that it met without any foregone conclusions. To save the honour of England and put on record a formal avowal of theoretical belief in the sanctity of Treaties, the Conference unanimously agreed to declare that no State could recede from its engagements with other States, save with the consent of these States. Then Russia was released from the obligations of the Black Sea Clause, which she had already declared she had no intention of respecting.

For a time the revolutionary forces in Spain were stilled by the election of the Prince Amadeus of Italy (the Duke of Aosta), second son of Victor Emmanuel, to the throne of the Cortes. The collapse of the French Empire naturally led to the annexation of Rome by Italy, and it was a strange coincidence that the year which saw the extinction of the temporal power of the Pope, saw his spiritual power asserted more firmly and extensively than ever. The Assembly of Roman Catholic prelates at Rome known as the Œcumenical Council, met at the beginning of the year to proclaim the dogma of Papal Infallibility. The opposition to this proclamation was organised by the most eminent of the English, American, German, and Hungarian bishops, and at one time it was feared they would triumph. The Pope had, however, secured a majority of votes by the somewhat sublunary method of creating new bishops governing mythical sees. The doctrine of Infallibility was accordingly proclaimed a few days after the declaration of war by France against Germany, a war which had been vigorously promoted by the secret agents of the Vatican, who had acquired a controlling spiritual influence over the French Empress. After the annexation of Rome by Victor Emmanuel on the 20th of September, the Pope refused to hold any intercourse with the Italian Government. Immuring himself in the Leonine City as a voluntary prisoner, he pathetically appealed for sympathy to the blunted sensibilities of a wicked world.

As the year wore on, and the German armies strengthened their hold on France, it became clear that German unity under Prussian leadership was an accomplished fact. The autumnal negotiations for the absorption of the South German States in the North German Confederation ended well, mainly because Bismarck made generous concessions, reserving the sovereign rights of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and abandoning on the part of Prussia an exclusive right to declare war. The King of Bavaria, the Grand Duke of Baden, and the other Sovereign Princes, then invited King William of Prussia to assume the Imperial Crown, and on the 18th of January, 1871, he was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Kings at Versailles.[337]

During 1870 the Queen emerged from her seclusion on the 11th of May to open the splendid hall and offices of the University of London in Burlington Gardens. The ceremonial was conducted with a pomp and dignity worthy of the occasion. The senate and graduates wore their academic costume, Mr. Lowe being the only dignitary who appeared in any other garb. He, however, had donned for the occasion the official robes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a sumptuous garment for which it was whispered he had been so extravagant as to pay £130. The Queen was accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Louise, and a brilliant train of distinguished persons. The Chancellor (Lord Granville) read an address to the Queen. Her Majesty handed him a reply, and having declared the building open the silver bugles blew a blast of joy. When the Queen retired, Lord Granville, in distributing the prizes, referred felicitously to Queen Elizabeth’s visits to Oxford and Cambridge--those visits during which she is described as “questioning and answering and scolding not only in Latin but also in Greek.”

In the autumn of the year the Queen in Council gave her consent to the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lorne, the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. When it became known that the Queen had violated the exclusive traditions of the House of Brunswick, and reverted to old precedents set by the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, who all contracted marriages with subjects, society was greatly excited. The marriage was regarded as a triumph of aristocratic and democratic ideas over the monarchical principle--that is to say, of the triumph of the two ideas that have ever been most popular in England. The Queen with great tact had consciously or unconsciously responded to the instinctive feeling that had silently grown among her people. They had always disliked, though they had never dared to repeal, the Royal Marriage Act. It was felt to be a sacrifice to expediency--and it was passed mainly because Englishmen did not desire to see Mrs. FitzHerbert crowned as Queen of England. The Act bound all the descendants of George III. who wished to marry to obtain the written consent of the Sovereign,[338] and it was felt that as Princes and Princesses were very apt to form _mésalliances_, it would be difficult to maintain the _prestige_ of the monarchy, save under some such restrictions as the Act imposed.[339] But when the Royal Family increased and multiplied, so that the Princess Louise only stood twentieth in the line of succession to the Queen, it was time to relax the usage. No State interest could, in such a case, be practically endangered, by permitting a daughter of England to indulge her personal preferences in the selection of a husband.

The death of General Grey in the spring of the year was deeply felt by the Queen. The Princess Louis in one of her letters to her mother says, “Lady Car (Barrington) wrote to me how very grateful Mrs. Grey was to you for your great kindness and consideration. In trouble no one can have a more true and sympathising friend than my beloved mamma always is. How many hearts has she not gained by this, and how many a poor sufferer’s burdens has she not lightened!” General Grey’s services as Private Secretary to the Sovereign, indeed, were such as to render his death a matter of serious political interest. At this time the Queen exercised a personal supervision over every department of State, more especially over the Foreign Office, War Office, Admiralty, and Poor Law Board. On all matters of importance connected with the administration of these offices it was her custom to send to the Government of the day her own views, and such notes of precedents and of the opinions of former Ministers, as her carefully-kept series of State commonplace books supplied. It was the duty of General Grey to take the rough drafts of memoranda as they came from the Queen’s hand, and give them the form of State papers. In fact, he did the work which the Prince Consort had been in the habit of doing, and his position was really that of a supernumerary Minister in attendance at Court, but without a seat in the Cabinet, and without any responsibility to Parliament. After General Grey’s death it was suggested that a new Cabinet office should be created, to be held by a Minister who should have no other duty than that of residing in personal attendance on the Queen, and acting as her Private Secretary. The suggestion was happily not pressed, because it would obviously have led to Constitutional difficulties. The new Minister must have become either the Queen’s clerk, in which case he would have been an encumbrance to the Cabinet, or he must have become a real Minister of State confidentially representing the Sovereign, in which case he would have become its master. Colonel Ponsonby was therefore selected to succeed General Grey, and the revival of Government by favourites, which was the bane of the early years of George III.’s reign, was prevented.

The death of Charles Dickens on the 9th of June robbed England of a great humourist, whose genius was consecrated not only to the delight, but to the service of the English people. It was his mission to soften the harsh contrasts of society, and quicken the consciences, and touch the hearts of the governing classes, to whose apathy and ignorance of life among the poor he traced most “of the oppression that is done under the sun.” Whether Dickens will survive as an English classic has been doubted. But no doubt exists as to the qualities which gave him an unique position among men of letters in the Victorian period. His sense of humour was singularly keen and delicate. His faculty of observation exceeded that ever given to mortal man; in fact, what he saw, he saw so vividly that by his descriptive method he could print it on his reader’s mind with photographic fidelity. His power of characterisation, it is true, was limited, but that was because his characterisation was invariably idiosyncratic. It was always an isolated phase of a character that impressed him--a single trait to which he gave corporeal reality. On the other hand,

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS.]

there was no limit to his power of producing fresh illustrations of this phase or trait under an infinite variety of circumstances and conditions. If he rang the changes on one theme, his capacity for producing variations on the original air with unfailing freshness, and seductive spontaneity, imparted some semblance of the roundness and many-sidedness of Nature even to the oddest of his oddities. But his sense of colour was faulty, and his passion for melodramatic effect, and his habit of harping too much on one string of feeling, gave to his pathos, a false note of theatrical sentimentality. None of his

[Illustration: GARDEN PARTY AT WINDSOR CASTLE.]

readers in England, it may fairly be said, was a more consistent and devoted admirer of the genius of Dickens than the Queen. Next to Scott and George Eliot, Dickens was her favourite novelist. It had been her desire in the early days of her married life to make his acquaintance personally, but the touch of false pride which marred Dickens’s character, and rendered him morbidly sensitive as to “patronage,” prevented their meeting. In 1857, the Queen had been compelled to refuse her name for the dramatic performance of the _Frozen Deep_, given for the benefit of Douglas Jerrold,[340] but she offered to allow Dickens and his company of players to select a room in the Palace and perform the play there before her and the Court. Dickens begged leave to decline the offer, as he could not feel easy about the social position of his daughters at a Court under such circumstances. He suggested that the Queen might come to the Gallery of Illustrations a week before the subscription night, with her own friends, and witness a private performance of the play. “This,” writes Dickens, “with the good sense that seems to accompany her good nature on all occasions, she resolved within a few hours to do.” So delighted was the Queen with the performance that she sent round a kind message to Dickens asking him to come and see her and receive her thanks personally. “I replied,” says Dickens, in his account of the affair, “that I was in my farce dress, and must beg to be excused. Whereupon she sent again, saying that the dress ‘would not be so ridiculous as that,’ and repeating the request. I sent my duty in reply, but again hoped her Majesty would have the kindness to excuse myself presenting myself in a costume and appearance that was not my own. I was mighty glad to think, when I awoke this morning, that I had carried the point.” This incident occurred in 1857.

In 1858 the Queen made another attempt to bring the great novelist to Court. “I was put into a state of much perplexity on Sunday” (30th March, 1858), writes Dickens. “I don’t know who had spoken to my informant, but it seems that the Queen is bent upon hearing the ‘Carol’ read, and has expressed her desire to bring it about without offence, and hesitating about the manner of it, in consequence of my having begged to be excused from going to her when she sent for me after the _Frozen Deep_. I parried the thing as well as I could, but being asked to be prepared with a considerate and obliging answer, as it was known the request would be preferred, I said, ‘Well, I supposed Colonel Phipps would speak to me about it, and, if it were he who did so, I should assure him of my desire to meet any wish of her Majesty, and should express my hope that she would indulge me by making one of some audience or other, for I thought an audience necessary to the effect.’ Thus it stands, but it bothers me.” This difficulty could not be got over, though the Queen, by buying a copy of the “Carol,” embellished with the author’s autograph, at the sale of Thackeray’s library, testified to her interest in the two great humourists of the Victorian age.[341] Indeed, it was not till 1870, shortly before Dickens’s death, that the novelist met the Queen. He had brought from his American tour a great many large photographs of the battle-fields of the Civil War. Having taken a deep interest in that struggle, and having followed its details closely, her Majesty, who heard of the photographs through Mr. Arthur Helps (Clerk of the Privy Council), expressed a desire to see them. Dickens, on hearing of this from Mr. Helps, at once sent the photographs to Buckingham Palace, and then received a message from the Queen inviting him to see her, that she might thank him in person. “The Queen’s kindness,” says Mr. Forster, “left a strong impression on Dickens. Upon her Majesty expressing regret not to have heard his readings, Dickens intimated that they had become now a thing of the past, while he acknowledged gratefully her Majesty’s compliment in regard to them. She spoke to him of the impression made upon her by his acting in the _Frozen Deep_, and, on his stating, in reply to her inquiry, that the little play had not been very successful on the public stage, said this did not surprise her, since it no longer had the advantage of his performance in it. Then arose some mention of some alleged discourtesy shown to Prince Arthur in New York, and he begged her Majesty not to confound the true Americans of that city with the Fenian portion of its Irish population, on which she made the quiet comment that she was sure the people about the Prince had made too much of the story. He related to her the story of President Lincoln’s dream the night before his murder. She asked him to give her his writings, and could she have them that afternoon? but he begged to be allowed to send a bound copy. Her Majesty then took from a table her own book on the Highlands, with an autograph inscription to ‘Charles Dickens,’ and saying that the ‘humblest of writers’ would be ashamed to offer it to ‘one of the greatest,’ but that Mr. Helps, being asked to give it, had remarked that it would be valued most from herself, closed the interview by placing it in his hands.” Though Dickens refused a baronetcy, which the Queen would have gladly conferred on him, he was persuaded to go to Court. In March, 1870, he writes to a friend:--“As my Sovereign desires that I should attend the next levee, don’t faint with amazement if you see my name in that unwonted connection. I have scrupulously kept myself free for the 2nd of April, in case you should be accessible.” His name is among those who attended the levee, and his daughter’s name appears among those who were at the Drawing Room that followed. “I never saw Mr. Dickens more agreeable,” says Lady Houghton in a letter to Mr. Forster, “than at a dinner at our house about a fortnight before his death, when he met the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales, at the special desire of the latter.”[342]

The chief social function of the season of 1870 was the Garden Party at Windsor, which took place on the 25th of June. Great preparations were made for the event. A series of tastefully arranged tents had been erected on the lawn under the East Terrace, and in the grounds of the Home Park towards Frogmore, and the State Apartments of the Castle were also thrown open for the reception of guests, who were conveyed from the station by forty carriages. They began to arrive about four o’clock, and the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the Royal Family came on the scene later on. The street and road to the Castle were kept by a large body of the Metropolitan Police; a guard of honour of the Scots Fusilier Guards was posted in the quadrangle of the Castle, and the Yeomen of the Royal Body Guard were on duty inside. The Queen, who looked well and cheerful, received her visitors in a tent near the wall of the East Terrace, and was surrounded by members of her family, and attended by the Lord Chamberlain, the Duchess of Sutherland, and the Marchioness of Ely. The London Glee and Madrigal Union and her Majesty’s private band supplied the music that delighted the gay and brilliant crowd of promenaders, who did not break up and return to town till about seven o’clock in the evening. It had been expected that the Queen would be able to attend and open the Thames Embankment early in July, and her appearance at the Garden Party at Windsor strengthened popular anticipations. Unfortunately, when the time came round, her Majesty felt herself unable to endure the strain of the public ceremony, and the consequence was that, when it was performed on her behalf by the Prince of Wales (13th July), at least a thousand seats were vacant for which tickets had been issued.

Ere the year ended the rebellion in the Red River Settlement, or the “Revolt of the Winnipegers,” as the Americans called them, was quelled. The history of the rising was as follows:--The Hudson’s Bay Company had enjoyed powers of proprietorship and exclusive trade in the vast region extending from the American frontier to the Frozen Ocean. Early in the century Lord Selkirk had established in the extreme south of this region, and close to the American line, a colony of mixed blood, descended from French, Canadian, English, and Scottish parents, servants of the Company. They squatted on a strip of fertile land on the Red River, which flows from Minnesota into Lake Winnipeg. These people increased to the number of 10,000, and they inhabited, perhaps, the most secluded spot ever reached by European colonists, in the centre of the North American Continent. They had been ruled by the Company under a “Governor of Assiniboia,” and a Recorder. In 1869 the Company agreed to sell all their territorial and sovereign rights in Rupert’s Land to Canada for £300,000. This cession included the Red River Settlement. The “Winnipegers” however, objected to be transferred to what they called a “foreign power,” and they split into two parties--the Canadians, almost all half-breeds, speaking French and professing the Catholic religion, and who rose in rebellion, and a minority of English and Scots who remained loyal. The rebels refused to admit into the district Mr. Macdougal, who was sent by Canada as Governor. A leading agitator, Louis Riel, was proclaimed (in February) “President of the Republic of the North-West,” and the insurgents appealed to the United States for protection. A contingent under command of Colonel Wolseley was despatched to suppress the insurrection. The expedition reached Fort Garry, the headquarters of Riel and his rebel followers, on the 23rd of August. They were welcomed by the loyal party, and found that Riel himself had disappeared, with a considerable amount of plunder, into the neighbouring American territory. The British force was admirably handled, and did not lose a single man, despite the enormous difficulties of its march over a rough and broken country. For from its point of disembarkation in Lake Superior, it had to travel through 600 miles of an unknown wilderness of water, rocks, and forests, where no supplies were obtainable. The whole expense was under £100,000, of which one quarter only was to be paid by England. Order was re-established on the Red River at the end of 1870, and, as the “province of Manitoba,” it was added to Canada.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In 1847 the rate of discount had risen to 8 per cent., and the bullion in the Bank had fallen to £8,313,000. On the 9th of November, 1857, the rate of discount rose to 10 per cent., and yet gold still flowed out till it sank to £7,171,000. The Bank was authorised to increase its issue by £21,000,000.

[2] Campbell’s army consisted of 25,000 men, 16,000 being European troops, the largest number ever brought together in India up to that time.

[3] Sir H. Rose’s losses were 38 killed, and 215 wounded. The starving women and children were, however, spared, and, indeed, fed by the English soldiers, out of their own rations. The massacre of the garrison was an act of vengeance for the treacherous butchery of the English in Jhansi, who, on the 4th of June, 1857, had surrendered, on the assurance that their lives would be spared by the implacable Ranee. She, however, ordered them to be killed, as at Cawnpore.

[4] The Nankin Treaty of 1842 was confirmed. Ambassadors and diplomatic agents were by the new Treaty to be appointed at St. James’s and Pekin, and the British Minister was to be received at Pekin without being called on to perform any humiliating ceremony. Disrespect to the British Minister was to be a punishable offence, and Consuls in open ports were to be respected. Chinese Christians were to be protected, and not persecuted by the Government, and British subjects were to have a right of travelling in China under passports. Newchwang, Tang-chow, Taiwan, Chan-chow, and Kiung-chow were to be, with the ports, opened by the Treaty of Nankin free to British subjects. British subjects were permitted to employ Chinamen in any lawful capacity, and British ships were to trade on the Yang-Tsze river. All questions of right between British subjects were to be decided by British authorities, but Chinese criminals were to be punished by the Chinese tribunals. Other clauses stipulated for a war indemnity to England, for full privileges of protection to British subjects, and for tariff and customs dues on goods carried by British ships. After the Treaty was concluded, the Chinese Emperor evaded his obligation to ratify it, till compelled to do so by force in 1860.

[5] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 125, 126.

[6] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 133, 134.

[7] Palmerston in defeating Mr. Locke King’s motion for leave to bring in a Reform Bill committed a fatal error. The Cabinet originally meant to support the scheme, but to insist on raising Mr. King’s £10 county franchise to £20--which would probably have settled the Reform question for ten or fifteen years. As it was, by opposing the measure, and referring Reform to a Cabinet Committee, they disgusted a powerful body of their own supporters, who felt that the Whigs meant to shelve Reform altogether.

[8] Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll.

[9] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 155.

[10] Mr. Henley, one of the ablest members of the Tory Party, strenuously opposed his leaders on this question, and supported the vote of thanks to Lord Canning.

[11] It is more than probable that had the Tories been in office Napoleon III. would never have dreamt of pressing them, as he pressed Palmerston, to alter the law of Conspiracy so as to harass political refugees in England. In 1853 he sounded Lord Malmesbury on the subject, who told him, with manly firmness and frankness, that “Every country had its own subject on which no cession could be made. The Holy Places in the East was that of Russia, the refugees was ours, and it was useless to torment us about an impossibility, for no English Minister could alter the law at present.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 392.

[12] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, entry under date 21st February.

[13] See Letter of Prince Consort to Stockmar, Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIII.

[14] Her Majesty’s sanction strengthened the hands of the unconstitutional sections of the Radical and Tory Parties, who have of late years connived at the progressive usurpation of the functions of the Executive by the House of Commons, thereby laying the basis for “Home Rule” agitations in discontented Ireland, and in “neglected” Wales and Scotland. In the attempt to combine executive with legislative functions the House of Commons has virtually broken down.

[15] The Cabinet consisted of Lord Derby, Premier; Lord Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor; Lord Salisbury, President of the Council; Lord Hardwicke, Lord Privy Seal; Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Mr. Walpole, Home Secretary; Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary; Sir John Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty; General Peel, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Henley, President of the Board of Trade; Lord John Manners, First Commissioner of Works; Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control; and Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons.

[16] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 98. Soon afterwards, however, arrangements were made which enabled Sir E. B. Lytton to take the Colonial Office, Lord Derby going to the India Office.

[17] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 99.

[18] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 214. The evidence of Mr. Greville in this instance is that of an unwilling witness. He still affected, like most independent political thinkers in 1858, to treat a Derby-Disraeli Cabinet as a burlesque Ministry. For example, he never condescended to attend as Clerk of the Privy Council after Lord Derby took office, but allowed his deputy to do duty. When this was pointed out to Lord Derby, he only laughed, and said “he had not observed his (Greville’s) absence, as he never knew whether it was John or Thomas who answered the bell.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 153.

[19] Moreover, there was just a chance that Ministers might be beaten, which would necessarily have brought back Lord John Russell, a prospect to which Whigs like Lord Clarendon looked forward with horror, because he would come back with a Reform Bill. See a private letter from Lord Malmesbury to Lord Cowley in The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 100.

[20] See The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 101, 106, 151, and 152, for evidence bearing on this grave charge against Palmerston and Persigny.

[21] The Peelite leaders sneered at the appointment. Mr. Greville calls Pélissier “a military ruffian, as ignorant of diplomacy as of astronomy.”--Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 181. The Palmerstonians objected to him because his ignorance of diplomacy rendered it difficult for them to intrigue with him for the purpose of embarrassing the Government of their own country.

[22] A few days after the formation of the Derby-Disraeli Ministry, De Persigny told Clarendon that the Tory Government “had prepared for themselves an _héritage de rupture_ by the concurrence of their Party in the vote that had driven Lord Palmerston from power.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV. “The first time I met him (Persigny) at the Foreign Office,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “he literally raved, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword (he was in Court dress), and shouting ‘_C’est la guerre! c’est la guerre!_’ during which scene I sat perfectly silent and unmoved, till he was blown, which is the best way of meeting such explosions from foreigners.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 106.

[23] The _Cagliari_ was a Sardinian ship fitted out to carry a revolutionary expedition to stir up Calabria. She was seized by the Neapolitan Government, and her two English engineers, Messrs. Watts and Park, were imprisoned.

[24] Mr. Greville hints that the Radicals were subsequently angry at Lord John Russell for helping Mr. Disraeli out of his difficulty with the India Bill. On this point he seems to have been misinformed. See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[25] The phrase was one used by Pélissier to the Prince Consort. See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV.

[26] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 428; Holmes’ History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 454; Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 118.

[27] The Talookdars of Oudh were not freeholders, but Crown vassals--in some cases hereditary--who really farmed the Crown rents as middlemen between the cultivators and the State. As a matter of abstract right, Canning’s proclamation, declaring the soil of Oudh to be the sole property of the British Government, could not be impugned. Nor could its policy as regards rebel Talookdars be disputed. Still, it is but fair to say that Outram thought the original draft too sweeping, and that it might prejudice many claims which it would be prudent to recognise. Canning allowed Outram to soften the Proclamation, and it was so discreetly acted on by Outram and his successor, Mr. Robert Montgomery, that the powerful local aristocracy of Oudh were speedily pacified. There was, therefore, just a grain of truth in Ellenborough’s objections to the original draft.

[28] A Resolution of this sort, however, was valid only for the current Session. Hence it had to be renewed every Session a Jew came to be sworn. In 1860 a new Act substituted a standing order for a Resolution, so that Jews could be sworn without any preliminary proceedings. Even this last relic of bigotry was swept away by the Act 29 & 30 Vict., c. 19, which deleted the words “on the true faith of a Christian” from the Parliamentary Oath. See Sir Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, Sixth Edition, pp. 189-192.

[29] In May they were induced to shake hands at Mr. Ellice’s (“Bear” Ellice) house. But Lord Malmesbury says that when the incident was discussed at Lady Palmerston’s, Lady William Russell observed, “They have shaken hands, and embraced, and hate each other more than ever.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 120.

[30] After much diplomatic squabbling, a Conference settled the point on the 10th of August, by establishing the same institutions in both Principalities, both with separate Ministries and Parliaments. The first thing the Provinces did was to vote their own union under Prince Couza--a mortification for England, against the probable occurrence of which her careless diplomatists had not stipulated.

[31] Her Majesty was not the only one of the guests who had been shaken. “An absurd occurrence,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “took place when Sir John Pakington, as First Lord of the Admiralty, landed Lord Hardwicke and Admiral Dundas in his barge. As he steered her, he kept time with the men as he would if he had been rowing on the Thames, bending his body backwards and forwards, and as he approached the pier, not having given the order ‘Way enough,’ the boat with her whole force struck the mole, and the two admirals and the whole crew fell sprawling on their backs. The rage of the two former, after recovering themselves, was vented with uncontrolled expressions on the unfortunate First Lord, amidst the laughter of the spectators, who were standing on the pier.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. Vol II., pp. 129, 130.

[32] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVII.

[33] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[34] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[35] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 213.

[36] This important secret pact was not unknown to the British Government. It came into Mr. Kinglake’s possession, and at Lord Palmerston’s request he gave a copy of it privately to Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, who represented the Foreign Office in the House of Commons. The text was revealed by Lord Malmesbury. The Princess Clothilde made a grim joke upon her loveless and ill-fated marriage--“Quand on a vendu l’enfant, on peut bien vendre le berceau.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 220, 221, 223.

[37] The intrigue between Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III. at Compiègne, in November, gave great and justifiable offence to the Tory Ministry, and was regarded with disapproval by the country.

[38] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 236.

[39] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[40] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 155.

[41] See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[42] Votes were given to persons who had £10 a year in Bank Stock or the Funds, or a deposit of £60 in a Savings Bank, or a pension from the State of £20 a year, and to University graduates, members of the learned professions, and certain schoolmasters.

[43] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCII.

[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCIII.

[45] Lord Palmerston’s organs in the Press were, during this controversy, virtually official organs of the French Emperor, and were embarrassing ministers with factious opposition. Lord Malmesbury, writing in his Diary on the 21st of February, observes, “Lady Tankerville says that Lady Palmerston told her that the attack upon the Foreign Policy of our Government, for which her husband had given notice to-morrow, was made in compliance with the Emperor’s wish!”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 158.

[46] Lord Malmesbury warned Prussia that England could not approve of her going to war with France, and would give her no assistance in protecting the German coast against an attack by a French or a Franco-Russian fleet.--See Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, pp. 204, 205.

[47] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 184.

[48] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 160.

[49] The surrender of Lombardy and the Duchies to Sardinia was one.

[50] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 200, 201.

[51] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II.

[52] The Queen apparently did not know that, owing to the use which Napoleon had made of Palmerston’s indiscreet approval of Persigny’s proposals, the Emperor of Austria was under the impression that we had been willing to act as extortioners. On the 12th of July, a day before the Queen wrote her letter to Lord John Russell, the Austrian Emperor wrote to Napoleon III., thanking him for informing him that England supported Persigny’s terms. Lord John Russell, in a despatch (July 27), found it necessary to undeceive the Austrian Government on this point.

[53] It was raised from 5d. to 9d.

[54] Palmerston contended in the end of August that these plans came within the decision of the Cabinet not to meddle with the Italian question till after the Treaty of Zurich had been signed. The Queen held that they did not, and on a Cabinet meeting being hastily summoned to settle the point, the decision went for the view of the Queen.

[55] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 270.

[56] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 174.

[57] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 213.

[58] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVII.

[59] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXVI.

[60] The National Budget, by Alexander Johnstone Wilson. London: Macmillan: 1882, p. 90.

[61] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 216. Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[62] In a letter to Mr. Bright he says, “To form a fair judgment of this reckless levity and utter want of dignity and decency on the part of the Prime Minister, just turn to the volumes of the life of the first Lord Auckland, who was sent by Pitt to negotiate the Commercial Treaty with France in 1786. I have not seen the book, but I can tell you what you will not find in its pages. You will not read that in the midst of those negotiations Pitt rose in the House, and declared that he apprehended danger of a sudden and unprovoked attack on our shores by the French king; that (whilst history told us we had 84,000 men voted for our Navy to the 31,000 in France, and whilst we had 150,000 riflemen assembled for drill) he, Mr. Pitt, pursued the eccentric course of proposing that the nation should spend £10,000,000 on fortifications, and that he accompanied this with speeches in the House in which he imputed treacherous and unprovoked designs upon us on the part of the monarch with whom his own Plenipotentiary was then negotiating a Treaty of Commerce in Paris. On the contrary, you will find Pitt consistently defending, in all its breadth and moral bearings, his peaceful policy, and it is the most enduring title to fame that he left in all his public career.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[63] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVIII.

[64] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 190.

[65] Count Vitzthum illustrates the relations between the Republican conspirators and the Italian Court by the following anecdote:--One day an English gentleman visited Cavour, who was surprised to find he knew a great deal about the intrigues of Victor Emmanuel’s Government. He exclaimed, “How is it that you, a stranger, are acquainted with secrets which I thought were only known to _one_ man besides the King and myself--namely, the Republican exile, Mazzini?”--St. Petersburg and London in the years 1852-1864. Reminiscences of Count Charles Frederick Vitzthum von Eckstaedt, late Saxon Minister at the Court of St. James’s: Longmans and Co. (1887).

[66] Count Vitzthum hints that the mysterious collapse of the Royalist armies in the Sicilies was due to foul play. He says of Garibaldi, “His jugglery, thanks to the inaction of Europe and the melancholy condition of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, met with unexpected success. One example will suffice. A few weeks after Garibaldi’s entry into Naples, a former Neapolitan General was arrested at Paris. He had, without knowing it, paid out some forged banknotes. The examination showed he had received them from Garibaldi as a bribe. People knew after this how the latter bought his victories.” Vitzthum seems to have disliked Garibaldi, and his opinion on the matter is not conclusive. One would like to have better evidence than the confession of an utterer of forged notes that he got them from Garibaldi. Even if the story be true, it only points to what was one justification for the Sicilian insurrection--the complete demoralisation of the servants of the State.

[67] Cavour’s invasion of the Papal States was inevitable, though the pretext was flimsy. His subtle justification will be found in his masterly despatch of the 12th of October, reviewing the affairs of Italy, in which he dwelt on the advantage of substituting for the discredited dynasties, an Italian Kingdom that would “rob revolutionary passions of a theatre where previously most insane enterprises had chances, if not of success, at least of exciting the sympathies of all generously-minded men.” In a word, his case was that Sardinian intervention could alone prevent the national movement from degenerating into sheer anarchy. Fear, lest Garibaldi might be induced by Mazzini’s partisans, who had surrounded him, to set up a Republic, led the European Courts to condone by passive acquiescence a despatch which postulated the inherent right of a people to depose an hereditary monarch. France withdrew her Minister from Turin by way of formally discountenancing the invasion, which, however, had been secretly arranged at an interview between Napoleon and Cavour at Chambéry. England alone avowed her approval of Cavour’s policy, in a despatch which Lord John Russell sent to Sir J. Hudson on the 27th of October, but of which he kept the Queen and his colleagues in ignorance. The feeling of the country being with Lord John, the Queen and Lord Palmerston did not find it expedient to resent the affront. The truth is, that Lord John had previously written a despatch (31st August) menacing Sardinia if she attacked Austria in Venetia, and admitting the right of Austria to hold Venetia, which had enraged the Radicals. So by way of conciliating them he wrote the despatch of the 17th of October, recanting the absolutist doctrines he had promulgated in August. But personally, Lord John was notoriously a partisan of the national movement in Italy. “Sir J. Hudson,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “told me that Lord John virtually encouraged the King (Victor Emmanuel) to invade Naples, by asking his _aide-de-camp_ at Richmond whether the King was not _afraid_. This was quite enough to send Victor Emmanuel _anywhere_.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 237.

[68] See the Queen’s letter to Lord Palmerston (3rd June) quoted in Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CII.

[69] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 263.

[70] Another part of Napoleon’s scheme at Baden was to suggest the

## partition of Turkey by way of compensating Austria for the loss of

Venetia, an old idea of Talleyrand’s. Russia, however, objected to the Danubian provinces of Turkey being given to Austria, so the proposal was not made. The whole scheme would have thus been--the annexation of Rhenish territory to France, of the northern German States to Prussia, of the Danubian provinces to Austria, and of Venetia to Italy.

[71] This letter (which was published) was written without the knowledge of the French Ministry. It was prompted by certain suspicions which had been expressed as to the Emperor’s good faith in interfering again in the Eastern Question. In June Europe was shocked to learn that the Druses, who were Moslems, had massacred thousands of the Christian Maronites in the Lebanon. The Turks had abetted these atrocities, their defence being that the Maronites were meditating a rebellion. On the 9th of July Moslem fanatics, aided by Turkish troops, also butchered the people in the Christian quarter of Damascus--3,500 males being slaughtered. The Consulates of France, Austria, Russia, Holland, Belgium, and Greece were sacked, their inmates finding a refuge in the house of Abd-el-Kader. Fuad Pasha, the Imperial Ottoman Commissioner, punished the guilty parties, but the French Emperor also insisted on sending out troops to keep order in the country. This proposal was jealously regarded by England, but it was agreed to after much negotiation--France furnishing 6,000 men, and the other Powers as many more up to 6,000 as might be necessary, six months being fixed as the term of the occupation. The Emperor resented our suspicions as to his motives in occupying Syria, and in his celebrated letter to Persigny defends their disinterestedness.

[72] “It is high time,” wrote the Prince Consort to the Prince Regent of Prussia. “It seems to me one of his chief difficulties consists in the fundamental difference between his and the people’s way of looking at things. He proposes to make concessions as acts of grace; they, on the other hand, ask to have a legal _status_, and institutions not dependent on the good-or ill-will of the Sovereign. They had most of them Documentary Rights, as they were called, in the Middle Ages, and as the Revolution of 1848 had overthrown everything, the Emperor was wrong, when it had been put down, not to return to a state of things based on law and right, instead of, as it were, legitimising the Revolution by proclaiming himself as its heir.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIV. Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 264, contains a curious letter of Prince Bismarck’s on this interview, showing how utterly misinformed he was as to its purport.

[73] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.

[74] _The English Historical Review_, No. 6, April, 1887, pp. 296-298.

[75] _The English Historical Review_, No. 6, April 1887, p. 297.

[76] Mr. John Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[77] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 230-231.

[78] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 230.

[79] This great inventor and armourer had been offered £10,000 a year for life by Napoleon III. if he would go to France and manufacture his new cannon exclusively for the French. The offer was refused from patriotic motives, which was perhaps the reason why the British Government never could be got to behave as fairly to Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Whitworth’s guns as to those produced by the engineers in the employment of Mr. (afterwards Sir W.) Armstrong at Elswick.

[80] The growth of the Volunteer Force was striking. The army sneered at it, and in December, 1859, it was in a sickly condition. In March, 1860, to the surprise and delight of the Queen it had grown to be 70,000 strong, and at a levee she held for volunteer officers, 2,500 were presented to her. Before the end of the summer the force had increased to 180,000 men, and at the close of the year it had grown to be 200,000, and this, too, in spite of the fact that the recruits had to make their first acquaintance with military duties in a spring and summer notable for stormy and inclement weather.

[81] Canada had fitted out a regiment of infantry for the war.

[82] William IV. was pressed hard by his illegitimate son, the Earl of Munster, to make him Governor-General of Australasia. He always refused, for dynastic reasons--alleging that it was not prudent to create princely viceroys.

[83] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVIII.

[84] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, _ibid._

[85] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CI.

[86] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.

[87] The war arose out of an attempt on the part of China to evade the ratification of the Treaty. The Taku forts were captured by the French and English allied forces, on the 21st of August, 1860. On the 21st of September, Consul Parkes, Captains Anderson and Brabazon, Messrs. De Norman, _attaché_ of the Hon. F. Bruce, Mr. Loch, Lord Elgin’s secretary, and Mr. Bowlby, _Times_ correspondent, were sent to the Chinese camp, on the invitation of the Chinese, under a flag of truce, to arrange for Lord Elgin’s journey to Pekin, where peace was to be made. Anderson, Brabazon, De Norman, Bowlby, and ten troopers were treacherously murdered. Parkes and Loch were cast into prison, and treated with odious brutality. That very day General Sir Hope Grant crushed the forces of the Chinese General, Sang-Ko-lin-sin. On the 6th of October the French looted the Summer Palace at Pekin, and on the 18th the English burnt it. The city itself surrendered on the 12th. Heavy indemnities, besides the ratification of the Treaty, were extorted from the Chinese.

[88] It is a curious fact that Dr. A. B. Granville had diagnosed the symptoms of the Czar’s hereditary malady--congestion of the brain--in 1853, and he warned Lord Palmerston that his Majesty would die in two years--a prophecy which came true. Had Nicholas therefore been handled gently, but firmly, by an accomplished diplomatist loyally carrying out Aberdeen’s temporising and cautious policy, and had steps been taken to prevent the Turks and Napoleon from irritating the autocrat at every turn in events, peace could have been maintained. See on this subject Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. I., pp. 30, 40.

[89] The phrase, which was a catchword in club-land, and which gave great offence to our American kinsfolk, was attributed, it is to be hoped erroneously, to the Marquis of Hartington.

[90] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 205.

[91] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, _ibid._

[92] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 227.

[93] St. Petersburg and London: Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, late Saxon Minister at the Court of St. James’s, Vol. II., p. 113 (Longmans), 1887.

[94] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIX.

[95] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol II., p. 249.

[96] Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 113.

[97] A passage in Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences explains the Prince Consort’s allusion. “Among the elder ladies who in those days exercised some influence over Government circles,” writes Count Vitzthum, “was the widow of the former British Ambassador in Berlin, Lady William Russell. She was a clever, experienced lady, an admirable mother to her sons, the present Duke of Bedford, and Lord Ampthill, who died lately as Ambassador at Berlin. Her house was the constant resort of visitors, who liked to chat with her, even if they did not come, like her brother-in-law, Lord John Russell, to consult her on politics. As a Roman Catholic she was no admirer of Cavour or Garibaldi, and used to laugh at the Italian sympathies of her brother-in-law and Lord Palmerston, whom she called the ‘old Italian masters.’”--St. Petersburg and London: 1852-1864: Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, Vol. II., p. 214.

[98] Others, like the Prince Napoleon, promulgated the theory that in pursuance of the Imperial policy of tearing up the treaties of 1815 it would be desirable to conciliate Italy. She would be a second-rate naval power, and the second-rate naval powers would naturally consolidate round France, who could thus overmaster even England on the seas. Such views, though officially disavowed by the Emperor, increased the distrust between England and France.

[99] Mr. Gladstone disapproved of this threat. It is, indeed, very hard to say how much truth there was in the rumours then afloat as to the cession of Sardinia. Vitzthum writes, “hitherto he (Napoleon) had only talked of giving that island to the Pope as an equivalent for the States of the Church. It was with this view that Pietri, the well known _entrepreneur du suffrage universel_ in Savoy, had been busy in that island, and had sent private reports to Napoleon during his visit to the baths at Vichy.”--Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 157.

[100] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 140.

[101] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 145.

[102] Sir George Cornewall Lewis succeeded Lord Herbert at the War Department. Sir George Grey went to the Home Office, and was succeeded by Mr. Cardwell as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir R. Peel succeeded Mr. Cardwell as Irish Secretary. Lord Campbell’s death elevated Sir R. Bethell to the Lord Chancellorship.

[103] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 211.

[104] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIII.

[105] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIV.

[106] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIV.

[107] The rule originated with Queen Elizabeth, who said she objected to her dogs wearing anybody else’s collars. Lord Clarendon himself, as Foreign Minister, had prohibited English servants of the Crown from accepting Foreign Orders. Lord Clarendon at the Coronation of the Czar Alexander, the Duke of Northumberland at the Coronation of Charles X., and Lord Beauvale at that of the Emperor Ferdinand, had to refuse Foreign Orders. The Duke of Devonshire was allowed to accept one from the Czar Nicholas at his Coronation, on the ground that, like many distinguished Englishmen, he was a personal friend of his Imperial Majesty.

[108] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXVI.

[109] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXVI.

[110] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 182.

[111] A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 65.

[112] This, says Lord Clarendon in a letter to Mr. Hayward, was “charmingly characteristic;” but he adds, thinking of the effect on the mind of the Queen, “they” (the green gloves and blue studs) “will not have been unobserved, _or_ set down to the credit side of his account.”--Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 72.

[113] Malmesbury Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 266.

[114] The Hayward Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 67.

[115] Malmesbury Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 267.

[116] The faithful Coburger, Löhlein, was the only member of the Royal household who seems to have given advice that would have saved the Prince’s life had it been acted on.

[117] It is only fair to say that Lord Palmerston was the first to make these representations. For his views on the Prince’s illness and the Queen’s doctors, see his letter to Lord Shaftesbury, of 11th December.--Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder. Vol. III., p. 130.

[118] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 178-185.

[119] Edmund Burke, by Augustine Birrell. _Contemporary Review_, July, 1866, p. 41.

[120] The Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, by Edward Barrington Fonblanque, p. 247.

[121] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters. London: John Murray, 1884, p. 360.

[122] See Memorandum by the Grand Duchess of Baden quoted in Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 18-19.

[123] The allusion here to the “revival” of Wilberforce’s old affection may seem curious. The Bishop of Oxford enjoyed more influence and favour at Court than ever fell to the lot of any ecclesiastic in our time. He was one of the extremely small group of prominent public men--Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Clarendon, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis--who enjoyed the Prince’s close personal friendship. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Prince Consort dropped him, and in one of his letters to Miss Noel the Bishop gives utterance to his sorrow over his fall at Court. Knowing Lord Aberdeen’s intimacy with the Prince, he begged his son, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, to induce his father to intercede for him. The incident curiously illustrates the Prince Consort’s character. When Lord Aberdeen opened the subject with his customary tact and delicacy, the Prince detected his object at once, and stopped him by observing, “He (the Bishop) does everything for some object. He has a motive for all his conduct.” Lord Aberdeen replied, “Yes, sir, but when a bad motive?” which, however, did not lead the Prince to continue the discussion. Again Lord Aberdeen seized an opportunity of serving the Bishop, and this time the Prince Consort frankly said he had occasion to doubt the Bishop’s sincerity--a suspicion that invariably forfeited the Prince’s confidence. Being pressed by Aberdeen still further, the Prince said that in early life he detected Wilberforce intriguing for the preceptorship of the Prince of Wales. Nor was that all. In a discussion with the Prince on a certain miracle about which he had preached, the Bishop had unduly modified his views to suit those of the Prince. It is only fair to Wilberforce to say that, in a letter to the Hon. Arthur Gordon, he denies the assertion about the preceptorship, but admits there was some colour in the other part of the Prince’s case. “The swine sermon,” writes Wilberforce, “was preached in days when he (the Prince Consort) was most friendly, long before I was Dean or Bishop; the conversation followed, and a long one it was. He did not say how entirely he disbelieved in spirits of evil, but raised all possible objections, which I combated; and the only thing like ‘convenient’ averment I said was that it was far best to believe in a devil who suggested evil to us; for that otherwise we were driven to make every man his own devil; and I thought that this view rather touched him.” It did touch him, but not in the way intended. See Life of Wilberforce, by his son, Reginald G. Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 226. For reference to the Prince’s funeral, see Vol. III., pp. 41-45.

[124] It gave Federal Commissioners power, without judge or jury, to return fugitive slaves to justice; prohibited State Courts from testing, on writ of _habeas corpus_, the rights of the person who claimed the slave in a Free State.

[125] The minority of the Judges seem to have taken a less pedantic view, and one more in accordance with the policy of the Republic, which had always been one of compromise with regard to slavery. They held that it was not by Federal but State law that a negro was made property. They contended that neither the laws of nature nor of nations, nor the Constitution of the United States, recognised him as property, so that the rights of owners over this species of property must logically be limited to the Territory where, by municipal law, it was recognised as property.--See The Constitutional History of the United States, by Simon Stern, of the New York Bar (Cassell and Co.), p. 190.

[126] According to it, slavery was prohibited north of parallel 36° 30´, but south of this it was to be recognised and never interfered with by Congress, and the Federal Government would pay for all slaves rescued from officers after arrest.

[127] There had always been a more or less tacit understanding that whilst the Northern States were to be allowed to have their manufactures protected, the Southern States, as a set-off, were to have slavery tolerated and safeguarded.

[128] Life of Lord Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder. Vol. III., p. 136.

[129] At the time, credit was given to M. Thouvenel, the Foreign Minister of France, for bringing the American Government to reason. Count Vitzthum, however, states that “the French Ambassador at Washington knew that at the eleventh hour the American Cabinet would yield, and had advised his Government to this affect. When Thouvenel, therefore, in his despatch of December 3rd, represented strongly the justice of the English demands, he risked little, and only gave a fresh proof that the Tuileries prefer siding with the gods to Cato.”--Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 177.

[130] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 146.

[131] It was decided by the House of Commons that the liability to a rate-in-aid of the other parishes of a Union should arise when the rate came to 3s. in the £, and that Guardians, subject to the sanction of the Local Government Board, might raise loans on the security of the rates, when the aggregate expenditure of the whole Union reached 3s. in the £ of its rateable property.

[132] Prior to 1860 there were four duties--1s., 1s. 9d., 2s. 5d., and 2s. 11d.--on wines, with varying degrees of alcohol, from 18 up to 42 degrees. In 1862 Mr. Gladstone substituted for these two duties--1s. a gallon on wines below 26 degrees and 2s. 6d. on wines above 26 and below 42 degrees.

[133] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 172.

[134] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 278 (Cassell and Co.).

[135] It is well known that Count Ferrol, in “Endymion,” was drawn from Prince Bismarck. The novel was written in Lord Beaconsfield’s old age, and there is a passage in it which curiously confirms Count Vitzthum’s report of Count von Bismarck’s conversation with Mr. Disraeli. It is as follows:--“The Count of Ferrol about this time made a visit to England. He was always a welcome guest there, and had received the greatest distinction which England could bestow upon a foreigner--he had been elected an honorary member of White’s. ‘You may have troubles here,’ he said to Lady Mountfort, ‘but they will pass.... We shall not get off so cheaply. Everything is quite rotten throughout the Continent. This year is tranquillity to what the next will be. There is not a throne in Europe worth a year’s purchase. My worthy master wants me to return home and be Minister; I am to fashion for him a new Constitution. I will never have anything to do with new Constitutions; their inventors are always their first victims. Instead of making a Constitution, he should make a country, and convert his heterogeneous domains into a patriotic dominion.’ ‘But how is that to be done?’ ‘There is but one way--by blood and iron.’ ‘My dear Count, you shock me:’ ‘I shall have to shock you a great deal more before the inevitable is brought about.’”

[136] Pope at first pretended that he had discovered the line of Beauregard’s retreat, and had captured his rearguard. This turned out to be an impudent fabrication, put about to divert attention from the almost inconceivable incapacity of Halleck, who let his enemy slip through his fingers after wasting the season in looking at him.

[137] This was difficult to arrange. Even the Sultan did not dare to do more than recommend Suraya Pasha to admit the Prince to the Sanctuary of the Patriarchs. For a long time the Pasha refused, but the Prince’s anger at being balked was so great that Suraya at last consented, accompanying the party himself with a strong armed escort to protect his Royal guest from assassination.

[138] General Bruce was the second son of Thomas, Seventh Earl of Elgin, and brother of the celebrated Governor-General of Canada and India.

[139] The medical evidence showed that the miners in the pit had died painlessly from poisoning by carbonic oxide gas. The Coroner’s jury recommended that all mines should have two shafts instead of one only, and that engine-beams should be made of wrought, and not of cast iron.

[140] Dr. Macleod’s ministrations at this time extended to other members of the Royal Family, and appear to have been conducted with the supple tact characteristic of the true-born Celt. “Your Royal Highness knows,” he said to one of them, “that I am here as a pastor, and that it is only as a pastor I am permitted to address you. But as I wish you to thank me when we meet before God, so would I address you now.” Again, in his letter to Mrs. Macleod, dated 12th of May, 1862, he writes:--“Prince Alfred sent for me last night to see him before going away. Thank God I spoke fully and frankly to him--we were alone--of his difficulties, temptations, and of his father’s example; what the nation expected of him; how, if he did God’s will, good and able men would rally round him; how, if he became selfish, a selfish set of flatterers would truckle to him and ruin him, while caring only for themselves. He thanked me for all I said, and wished me to travel with him to-day to Aberdeen, but the Queen wishes to see me again.”--Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., by his brother, Rev. Donald Macleod, B.A., 2 vols. London: Daldy, Isbister, and Co., 1876. Vol. II., p. 123.

[141] The Queen’s parish kirk.

[142] Life of Norman Macleod, Vol. II., pp. 123, 124.

[143] Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse: Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 27 and 29.

[144] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 37.

[145] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 207.

[146] _Ibid._

[147] The history of the Protectorate is as follows:--After the downfall of Napoleon I. in 1815, England held six of the Ionian Islands. Austria offered to undertake their government, because she said that their position enabled their population to disturb her Adriatic coast. Count Capo d’Istrias, on behalf of Russia, objected, and at the time the voice of the Czar Alexander was all-powerful. He was a strong partisan of Greece, and avowedly so because he believed that the spirit of Greek nationality would be repressed under Austria, whereas it would be fostered under England. He insisted on the Ionians being placed under a British protectorate, so that they might have the benefit of free institutions.

[148] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 228.

[149] In 1795 the Prince of Wales was voted £138,000 a year. In the reigns of the Queen’s predecessors the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall were absorbed by the Crown. But when the Prince of Wales was born, the Prince Consort, finding these revenues sadly encumbered, set them apart for the use of the Heir-Apparent. During his minority they had been so ably administered by Prince Albert that in 1862 they yielded a free income of £60,000 a year. This enabled the Government to cut down the Parliamentary vote to £40,000.

[150] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 294.

[151] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 294

[152] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 86.

[153] This letter did not satisfy all the clergy. Several of them challenged sharply Wilberforce’s doctrine of the Archepiscopal dispensing power, and indeed entangled him in controversial correspondence on the subject. Those interested in the matter will find Wilberforce’s argument more fully elaborated in a letter quoted in his “Life,” Vol. III., p. 87. He says he had discovered in his muniment box at Lavington such a dispensation to one of his own predecessors granted by Archbishop Laud.

[154] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., Vol. II., p. 132.

[155] Miss Tucker, of Branscombe, near Sidmouth, was the designer.

[156] Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, who, as usual on such occasions, wore the picturesque Highland dress.

[157] Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 88. In this letter Wilberforce says he was quite charmed with the manner in which the Crown Prince of Prussia spoke of his wife. “Bishop,” said he, “with me it has been one long honeymoon.”

[158] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 215.

[159] For a curious account of Mr. Oliphant’s Secret Mission, see Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 240, 241.

[160] English writers often draw an analogy between Ireland and Poland. There is the greatest difference between the position of the two nationalities. In Poland the Imperial Government has crushed the nobility, by taking sides with the peasantry. In Ireland the Imperial Government has striven to hold the country by allying itself with the territorial aristocracy. Had the peasants joined the nobles in Poland, Russia could not have resisted the demand for autonomy.

[161] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 308.

[162] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 261.

[163] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 221.

[164] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 322.

[165] The position of the chief claimants in the Succession may be illustrated in this way.

Christian I. | Frederick I. | +-------------------+-------------------+ | | Christian III. Adolph, 1st Duke of | Gottorp (1544). +--------------+--------------+ | | | +------+-------+ Frederick II. Hans, 1st Duke | | | of Sonderburg. Emperor of Grand Duke of Frederick III. | Russia. Oldenburg. | +---------+--------+ Royal Family of | | Denmark becomes Ducal Family of Ducal Family of extinct in Augustenburg. Glücksburg. Frederick VII. | Christian IX.

[166] This is calculated on the basis of the oats, wheat, and potato crop, with one-third the actual value of the total: the live stock added to represent the value of stock for the given current year.

[167] Customs and Income Tax showed an increase, but there was a decrease on Excise.

[168] This cost the revenue a loss of £216,000.

[169] Quoted by Sir T. Martin in his Life of the Prince Consort, Ch. CVIII.

[170] When the British ship _Prince of Wales_ was wrecked in June, 1861, on the coast of Rio Grande, it was reported that the crew had been murdered. A demand was made by the English Foreign Office on Brazil for compensation. Mr. Christy, the British Minister, happened to be an imitator of Palmerston’s hectoring manner of negotiating with weak Powers. His demands were rejected by Brazil because the compensation claimed was monstrous, and because he sought to impose conditions which were not compatible with the dignity and honour of an independent State. Reprisals were then ordered to be made. In the first instance it seems the Brazilian Government had been guilty of negligence. But Mr. Christy’s high-handed action soon put England in the wrong.

[171] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXI.

[172] Sir Stafford was denounced as one of the Exhibition clique. He moved the reduction of the vote by £25,000--the amount estimates for altering the building--as a compromise.

[173] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 299-300.

[174] The strength of the City Police was 1,000 men.

[175] Sir Francis Hastings Doyle tells a curious story which he obtained from an American officer, whose authority he vouches for as good, which throws some light on Lee’s failure, which was one of the turning-points of the war. One of his subordinate generals--“a hot-tempered, impetuous man”--received a document from Lee containing the plan of invasion, and giving him orders to carry it out. Something in these irritated him. He tore up the letter in a rage, and flung the pieces on the ground. The moment his troops moved on, the pieces were all picked up by a Northern partisan, pasted together, and conveyed to the enemy.--Reminiscences and Opinions of Sir F. H. Doyle, p. 340.

[176] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse, Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 58.

[177] The Registrar-General, in his Quarterly Report of 30th April, 1863, says: “On comparing the returns of the deaths in the eleven divisions with one exception the deaths were more numerous last quarter than in the March quarter of 1862; and the single exception is found in that division where the staple industry, on which half-a-million of persons are dependent, is overthrown, and for a twelvemonth four-fifths of that number have subsisted, unless the pittance has been aided by previous earnings, or sale of household stock, on less than 4d. a day.”

[178] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXXI.

[179] Lord Malmesbury, who, like most of the Tories, did his best to urge the Government to go to war, at this time makes an observation in his “Diary,” which is refreshing in its frigidity. “It is,” he remarks, “perhaps as well that we did not enter into this contest, as our army was not armed at that time like the Prussians, with the breechloader, and we should probably have suffered in consequence the same disaster as the Austrians did two years later.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 3-5.

[180] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 285.

[181] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 248.

[182] In criticising Palmerston’s policy of intervention, it is but just to remember that he was fatally encumbered by his imprudent declaration in the House of Commons on the 23rd of July, 1862, that if the Germans attacked the Danes “it would not be with Denmark alone they would have to contend.”

[183] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 341.

[184] Sir A. Malet’s Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation, p. 96.

[185] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 315.

[186] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 296.

[187] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 297.

[188] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 286.

[189] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 286.

[190] Speech of the 21st of January, 1864.

[191] Lowe’s Life of Prince Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 335.

[192] At Southampton on the 3rd of April.

[193] As a matter of fact, there was no comparison possible between the crowds in either case. The receptions of the French Emperor and the Danish Princess were poor and cold compared with that extended to Garibaldi. It will enable readers of the rising generation to understand what his welcome was when it is stated that as regards street crowds and popular enthusiasm, it far surpassed that given to the Queen on the 21st of June, 1887, when she celebrated her Jubilee in London.

[194] Lord Malmesbury, in his Diary, has the following entry:--“We dined at Stafford House to meet Garibaldi. The party consisted of the Palmerstons, Russells, Gladstones, Argylls, Shaftesburys, Dufferins, &c., and other Whigs, the Derbys and ourselves being the only Conservatives, so I greatly fear we have made a mistake, and that our party will be disgusted at our going. Lady Shaftesbury told me after dinner, in a _méchante_ manner, that we had fallen into a trap, to which I answered I was very much obliged to those who laid it, as I should be very sorry not to have seen Garibaldi.” And on the 15th of April Lord Malmesbury adds:--“Our party are furious with us and Lord Derby for dining with the Sutherlands last Wednesday, and Lord Bath has written to Lord Colville to resign his office of Whip, and says he will not spend a farthing upon elections. Lord Derby has written him a very temperate letter.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 320, 321.

[195] With Palmerston in favour of Denmark.

[196] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 289.

[197] Lord Shaftesbury, says his biographer, became Garibaldi’s most constant companion in London, “never leaving him, in fact, except when Garibaldi _would_ go to the Opera.”--Hodder’s Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Vol. II., p. 172.

[198] It is curious to note that five days after Lord Shaftesbury assured the Duc de Persigny that there was no “notion of politics” in Garibaldi’s visit, and that “had Garibaldi’s appearance here anything to do with touching that alliance [the alliance between France and England], I am sure that the people of England would refuse to give him a welcome,” Garibaldi was entertained at a magnificent popular demonstration at the Crystal Palace. A sword of honour was presented to him, of which he said, “I will never unsheathe it in the cause of tyrants, and will draw it only in support of oppressed nationalities. _I hope yet to carry it with me to Rome and Venice._” Lord Shaftesbury was one of the brilliant company of Palmerstonian partisans under whose auspices this unique non-political ceremony was conducted.

[199] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 322.

[200] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 289-290.

[201] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 289-290.

[202] Perhaps this consideration had something to do with the curious reluctance of France to co-operate with England in the Conference--a reluctance hitherto attributed to Lord Russell’s curt refusal to take

## part in the Napoleonic Conference of 1863.

[203] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 291.

[204] Of the Conference.

[205] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 341.

[206] Father of the present Lord Salisbury.

[207] It is interesting to note how the Tory leaders in the House of Lords at that time dictated to the whole Party its strategy and policy at critical moments.

[208] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 327, 328.

[209] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 292.

[210] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., pp. 254, 255.

[211] Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p 370.

[212] As a matter of fact, while the Conference was going on and the war party was rampant in London drawing-rooms, the Germans were greatly alarmed lest England should interfere. Count Vitzthum, writing on the 5th of May, says: “A peer who is very favourably disposed to Germany, said to me yesterday, ‘Take care, for God’s sake, to secure an armistice as soon as possible. If the question of war or peace were put to-day in the House of Commons to vote, three-fourths of the members would vote for war.’ Similar hints have been given to the Prussian Ambassador from a less unprejudiced quarter. We must not forget that England, by a blockade of the German and Austrian coasts, at a comparatively small expense, could exert a serious pressure on Vienna and Berlin, particularly if the revolution were let loose at the same time in Italy and Hungary.” Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 357. See on this point Palmerston’s own account in his letter of 1st of May to Lord Russell of the interview, in which he menaced Count Apponyi with naval intervention. Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 249. It is only just to say, that if Palmerston was eager to strike at the German Powers, he knew perfectly well where to plant a telling blow on a vulnerable point. Cobden’s argument was that a blockade of the German coast would be futile because railways had rendered blockades innocuous, unless, as in America, the blockading Power could command the internal communications of the enemy.

[213] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 258.

[214] The Confederate cruisers that had escaped from British ports--the _Florida_, _Alabama_, _Virginia_, and _Rappahannock_--had taken 187 ships and destroyed property exceeding in value £3,000,000. There was only one thing distinguishing them from English privateers--namely, that their chief officers carried Confederate commissions. Some of them got away because the Courts, from the ambiguous state of our law, could not condemn them. Others escaped through the delay and negligence of the authorities.

[215] In England the Queen’s taxes are collected by sending petty local officials round from door to door. In Scotland the Collector of Taxes is a high Imperial official, and the people on a specified date go to his office and pay their taxes. The result is, that though defalcations are too common in England, they are unknown in Scotland. Whilst in England a vast fabric of arrears accumulates from year to year and the revenue comes in driblets, the whole Imperial taxation of Scotland, including that of the poor Islanders, is paid promptly to the Treasury within the first fortnight of every January. There are no arrears except from poverty, and these are trivial.

[216] As the law stood, Government could only grant life insurances to the amount of £100 to persons who purchased deferred annuities. Mr. Gladstone abolished that restriction. It is curious that, though the Bill met with much opposition in the House of Commons, in the Lords it was welcomed as a boon to the working-classes, who urgently desired the measure to pass.

[217] One was Dr. Rowland Williams, whose essay on Bunsen’s Biblical Researches--affirming that the Bible was “an expression of devout reason, and therefore to be read with reason in freedom”--was supposed to deny that it was the actual word of God. It also affirmed that “the doctrine of merit by transfer is a fiction.” The other defendant was the Rev. H. B. Wilson, whose essay on “Séances Historiques de Genève” was said to deny that the Holy Scriptures were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and to challenge the doctrine of final judgment and eternal punishment.

[218] Wilberforce’s popular nickname was notoriously “Soapy Sam”--hence the malignity of Westbury’s attack.

[219] Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 143.

[220] It was said that at the outset he might have embarked his army from Washington and transported them without the loss of a single man to the point he had now reached, after prowling like a wolf for many weeks round the Confederate lines to the south of Richmond.

[221] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 309.

[222] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 318.

[223] He was executed on the 14th of November, 1864.

[224] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 74, 75.

[225] Life of Dr. Norman McLeod, Vol. II., pp. 176, 177.

[226] Crown Princess of Germany.

[227] Prince Alfred.

[228] The anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death.

[229] Writing to Mr. T. B. Potter on the 23rd of February, Mr. Cobden says, “Shall I confess the thought that troubles me in connection with this subject? I have seen with disgust the altered tone with which America has been treated since she was believed to have committed suicide, or something like it. In our diplomacy, our Press, and with our public speakers, all hasten to kick the dead lion. Now in a few months everybody will know that the North will triumph, and what troubles me is lest I should live to see our ruling class--which can understand and respect _power_ better than any other class--grovel once more, and more basely than before, to the giant of democracy. This would not only inspire me with disgust and indignation, but with shame and humiliation. I think I see signs that it is coming. The _Times_ is less insolent, and Lord Palmerston is more civil.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXXIV.

[230] Sterne’s Constitutional History of the United States, p. 199.

[231] A note may be here added with some details of one of the most startling and tragic events that marked the history of the English-speaking race during the Queen’s reign. President Lincoln was assassinated while the play called “Our American Cousin,” memorable for the late Mr. Sothern’s impersonation of Lord Dundreary, was going on. The assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a native of Maryland. He was an actor, and a relative of the celebrated American tragedian, Junius Brutus Booth. He was a half-crazy partisan of the Southern States, and had often threatened to kill the President. He fled to St. Mary’s County, and was ultimately discovered hiding in a barn about three miles from Port Royal. He and his companions refused to surrender, and the barn was set on fire. Sergeant Corbet, of the 16th New York Cavalry, fired his carbine through one of the windows and shot Booth in the head. He died two hours and a half after he was wounded. His three companions were tried by court-martial and executed.

[232] “The Civil Rights Bill,” says Mr. Sterne, “declared freedmen citizens of the United States. The reasons against this declaration were sound in themselves, because it admitted to the rights of citizenship a large number of persons whose prior conditions of servitude and enforced labour made them dangerous citizens. As the right to vote implies not only the right of the voter to protect himself against the aggression of others, but also involves the power, through the instrumentality of taxation, which is placed in the official hands created by the voters, to confiscate the property of others, it was apprehended by many that demagogues and adventurers would win the freemen by illusory promises of personal benefits to give them their votes, and that by the creation of public debts and the exercise of the power of taxation, they would mercilessly confiscate the property of citizens subjected to their sway.”--Constitutional History and Political Development of the United States, by Simon Sterne, of the New York Bar. Cassell and Co., pp. 202, 203.

[233] “Bismarck in the Franco-German War,” quoted in Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 347.

[234] For the conflicting accounts of this interview, see Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 352.

[235] This scandal, which was one of the sensational events of the Session of 1865, was made the most of by the Churchmen, to whom Westbury had been studiously insolent. Some little time after his fall Westbury met his old antagonist, the Bishop of Oxford, in the lobby of the House of Lords. He held out his hand, saying, “My Lord Bishop, as a Christian and a Bishop, you will not refuse to shake hands.” Wilberforce generously shook hands with him, but that did not put an end to the war of wit between them. Westbury said, “Do you remember where we last met?’ “No,” replied Wilberforce. “It was in the hour of my humiliation, when I was leaving the Queen’s Closet, having given up the Great Seal. I met you on the stairs as I was coming out, and I felt inclined to say, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’” Wilberforce retorted, “Does your lordship remember the end of the quotation?” to which Westbury answered, “We lawyers, my Lord Bishop, are not in the habit of quoting part of a passage without knowing the whole.” But, as Wilberforce used to say in telling the story, Westbury no doubt looked it out in his family Bible when he went home, and found that the end of the quotation was, “Yea, I have found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to iniquity.”--See Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 144.

[236] Life of Lord Palmerston, by the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, Vol. II., p. 273.

[237] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 335.

[238] Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 111.

[239] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 345.

[240] Forty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Political, by Thomas Frost, p. 291.

[241] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 347.

[242] When Lord Grosvenor divided the House on an amendment to the Second Reading of the Bill, he gathered round him a body of nondescript Liberals--many of whom had been disappointed in their quest of office--whom Mr. Bright likened to those who took refuge in the cave of Adullam.

[243] Forty Adullamites had promised to support him.

[244] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 358.

[245] The speech of Mr. Mill struck terror into the hearts of the reactionary landlords, who had all thought that their rents would go on rising for centuries to come. For further references, see Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his Wife, pp. 203, 216, 218, 223, and 224, London: Macmillan (1886).

[246] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 124.

[247] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 127.

[248] _Ibid._, pp. 127, 131.

[249] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 142, 144, 147, 148. 149.

[250] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 148.

[251] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 365.

[252] The History of Reform, by Alexander Paul, p. 199. Routledge, 1884.

[253] Correspondence of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 158.

[254] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 242.

[255] Memoirs of an ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 365.

[256] This was a year fruitful in Cabinet meetings. On the 22nd of January Lord Malmesbury writes, “Cabinets every day to the end of the month; some at Lord Derby’s, who was ill with the gout.”--Memoirs of an ex-Minister, _ibid._

[257] Mr. Dudley Baxter, who prepared Mr. Disraeli’s figures for him.

[258] See on this subject a curious letter from Mr. Hayward to Mr. Gladstone written on the 15th of August, 1866. Mr. Hayward says:--“I entirely agree in what you say of the House of Commons and the Liberal party, which is neutralised by the individual crotchets of its members.”--Correspondence of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 147.

[259] Mr. Alexander Paul’s History of Reform, pp. 201-203.

[260] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 371.

[261] The National Budget, by A. J. Wilson, p. 95. Macmillan and Co.

[262] The Parnellite Movement, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P., chap. vii.

[263] _Ibid._, p. 137. Popular Edition, Ward and Downey, 1887.

[264] Some of the witnesses under cross-examination broke down and fainted when confessions of guilt were extorted from them.

[265] It is instructive to look back on the speeches delivered at this meeting. They give one a vivid idea of the humiliating _status_ of the British workman at that time. The complaints of the speakers may be summed up thus: (1), whereas the masters’ associations were free to send circulars to each other urging the dismissal of “marked” unionists, workmen were, by a recent legal decision, guilty of an indictable offence if they “picketed” or endeavoured to dissuade each other from serving a master whose men had struck work; (2), the law of conspiracy had been so strained as to make an act which when done by an individual was legal, illegal when done by two or more individuals in combination; (3), masters who broke contracts were only fined, whereas breach of contract by workmen was punished by imprisonment.

[266] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 166.

[267] Afterwards Sir Howard Elphinstone, K.C.B. He was the Prince’s governor from 1859.

[268] The pet family name of the Princess of Wales--obviously a contraction of Alexandra.

[269] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 373.

[270] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., by the Rev. Donald Macleod, B.A., Vol. II., p. 252.

[271] The Barony parish of Glasgow was the one of which Macleod was minister. In one of his sermons, he had told his people that Scripture commanded them to _sing_ the praises of God, not to _grunt_ them. “But,” he added, “if you are so constituted physically that it is impossible for you to sing, but only _grunt_, then it is best to be silent.”

[272] Scots for _dandle_.

[273] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., Vol. II., pp. 208, 209.

[274] Now Duke of Connaught.

[275] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 185.

[276] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 186, 187.

[277] Willem, who had died a few months before, was a well-known figure at Balmoral. He was given to the Princess Louis by the Baron Schenk-Schmittburg, who brought him from Java. Willem was the offspring of a negro father and a Javanese mother, and was a favourite with the Queen and her daughter.

[278] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 227.

[279] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 242.

[280] Mr. Bernal Osborne had suggested one. It was to cut down the Irish Church establishment to five hundred ministers and four bishops.

[281] Writing to Wilberforce on the 9th of September on the subject, Mr. Disraeli says, “In the great struggle in which I am embarked, it is a matter of great mortification to me that I am daily crossed, and generally opposed by the High Church Party. Only think of Dean Hook opposing Henry Lennox at Chichester.” The Bishop’s answer was that Mr. Disraeli must expect to lose the High Church vote, seeing that he did not, in dispensing ecclesiastical prestige, sufficiently consider the claims of High Churchmen.--Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 260.

[282] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p 381.

[283] The last had been altered to make it clear that the House merely asked the Crown for leave to discuss a Bill suspending the exercise of its patronage till the 1st of August, 1869. A new one was added by Mr. Whitbread affirming the necessity of discontinuing the Maynooth Grant and the Presbyterian _Regium Donum_.

[284] This was in his 1844 speech, when he advocated Home Rule for Ireland and the Disestablishment of “an absentee aristocracy and an alien church.” Mr. Disraeli had been taunted with this phrase early in the Session, during the first debate on the Irish Question. His reply was infinitely humorous and audacious. He said of the phrase, with an exquisite touch of mournful reminiscence, “it appeared to me at the time I made it that nobody listened to it. It seemed to me I was pouring water on sand--but it seems now that the water came from a golden goblet.”

[285] In 1864-65 the Government had kept expenditure within the estimates by £370,000. They did so the following year by £92,000. But in 1866-67 the Derby-Disraeli Government let expenditure _exceed_ estimates by £669,000, and in 1867-68 by £537,000. This rather told against Mr. Disraeli in the General Election.

[286] The Cabinet was composed as follows:--Mr. Gladstone, Prime Minister; Sir C. Page Wood, Lord Chancellor, with the title of Lord Hatherley; Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Austen Bruce, Home Secretary; Lord Clarendon, Secretary for Foreign Affairs (with Mr. Otway as his Under-Secretary); Lord Granville, Colonial Secretary; the Duke of Argyll, Secretary for India (with Mr. Grant Duff as Under-Secretary); Mr. Cardwell, Secretary for War; Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Irish Secretary; Mr. Childers, First Lord of the Admiralty; Mr. Goschen, President of the Poor-Law Board; Mr. Bright, President of the Board of Trade; Lord Hartington, Postmaster-General; Lord Kimberley, Privy Seal; Earl de Grey, President of the Council.

[287] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 267.

[288] For Canterbury.

[289] It was said that Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester, was referred to here.

[290] It is a curious fact that his appointment of Dr. Magee, Dean of Cork, to this see brought the Government almost as much credit as the appointment of Dr. Tait to Canterbury. Dr. Magee was erroneously supposed to be Mr. Disraeli’s favourite candidate. But in this case also he seems to have got credit for the Queen’s skill in selection.

[291] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., pp. 265-269.

[292] Letters and Journals of W. J. Stanley Jevons. Edited by his Wife, p. 246.

[293] Yet at the time the Queen was personally opposed to Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Church policy, so that his statement was somewhat misleading. Perhaps he made it to minimise the evil effects that might be produced by rumours of her Majesty’s hostility to the verdict of the elections. These rumours were then current.

[294] It described the reductions for the first time in the records of Queen’s Speeches as having been already made, not as reductions that were only in contemplation.

[295] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 214.

[296] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 200.

[297] _Ibid._, p. 191.

[298] It may be well to summarise Mr. Gladstone’s financial statement:--

ASSETS OF THE CHURCH.

(1) Commuted Tithe Rent Charge £9,000,000 (2) Land and Perpetuity Rents 6,200,000 (3) Money 750,000 ----------- £15,950,000 -----------

================================================

CHARGE ON THE CHURCH FUND. Commuted Life Interests of Bishops, Beneficed Clergy, &c. £4,900,000 Curates 800,000 Lay Compensations 900,000 Private Endowments to be Repaid 500,000 Presbyterians and Maynooth 1,100,000 Building Charges 250,000 College Expenses of Presbyterians and Catholics 35,000 Expenses of Commission 200,000 ---------- £8,685,000 ----------

Thus there was a surplus fund for distribution of, say, £7,500,000, the interest on which, £311,000, Mr. Gladstone distributed as follows:--(1), Lunatic Asylums, £185,000; (2), Deaf and Dumb Institutions, £30,000; (3), Idiot Asylums, £20,000; (4), Nurses for the Poor, £15,000; (5), Reformatories and Industrial Schools, £10,000; (6), County Infirmaries, £51,000.

[299] It would seem that Dean Swift anticipated Mr. Gladstone’s notion. When Vicar of Laracor Swift presented the vicarage with nineteen acres of land. He had endowed it with certain tithes, which he left in trust for the established episcopal religion. But he stipulated that in case of Disestablishment the tithes should be administered “for the benefit of the poor.” Stella (Esther Johnson), in her will, dated 30th October, 1727, also anticipated Disestablishment. In leaving £1,000 to endow a chaplaincy in Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, she provided that if the Church were disestablished the bequest should be null and void.

[300] Sir Roundell Palmer’s argument was the only one that disturbed the conscience of the majority. Indeed, the only conceivable answer to it was that local church endowments, which were really useful in doing good parochial work, were instituted not for local but for national reasons. For national reasons such as Mr. Gladstone adduced, they might be justly resumed by the State to be applied to national purposes.

[301] Mr. Disraeli’s argument was, that a church, to be established, must have a temporal Sovereign as its head. The Church of Rome was “established” in Ireland, because the Pope was a temporal Sovereign. On grounds of religious equality, said Mr. Disraeli, it was necessary to retain the Queen’s supremacy over the Irish Church, so that it might enjoy the same status as its Roman rival. His theory of Royal supremacy over Church discipline and doctrine horrified his High Church supporters.

[302] There was a majority of all orders for the Bill, except among Bishops and Viscounts. The vote of the new families was much more Conservative than that of the old ones.

[303] It is worth noting that the Roman Catholic Peers voted against all plans for concurrent endowment of Catholicism in any shape or form.

[304] Wilberforce was subsequently promoted to the See of Winchester. But Chelmsford’s sneer was unjust. Wilberforce thought honestly that the nation having decided the question of immediate Disestablishment and Disendowment, delay would simply damage the interests of the Irish Church, and provoke a futile conflict with the people. Hence he voted against this amendment.--See Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., pp. 287-289, and Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 408.

[305] It is not generally known that the repeal of the shilling duty on corn, as indeed many of the ideas on which Mr. Lowe based his Budget were suggested to him by the late Mr. Stanley Jevons. “Having been consulted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer,” writes Mrs. Jevons, “as to the pressure of taxation upon different classes of the people, Mr. Jevons sent to him on the 13th of March a report which he had prepared with much care. The result of his inquiries was, that the artisan, with only a moderate use of beer and tobacco, was less heavily taxed than the classes above or below him, but that the labourer, if he only moderately indulged in stimulants, was rather the most heavily taxed of any class in proportion to his income. Mr. Jevons, therefore, recommended the repeal of the remaining duty of a shilling a quarter on corn, which he believed formed an appreciable burden of about one per cent. of income upon the very poorest class on the borders of pauperism.” Another proposal of Mr. Lowe’s for re-coining the gold currency, owing to the defective weight of the coins in circulation, was also suggested by Mr. Jevons.--See Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his Wife (Macmillan, 1886), pp. 245-248.

[306] According to Lord Hartington’s measure the purchase-money came to £6,750,000.

[307] They even retreated from the position of Lord Russell, who very properly refused to admit to arbitration any question as to the right of England to recognise the South as a belligerent Power--a concession which was not only an abject surrender of Sovereign rights, but _ultra vires_ on the part of any Minister.

[308] It was to some extent ignored at the time that for much of the damage done to American commerce the Federal Navy was to blame. It afforded the most meagre protection to the American mercantile marine. Though it was known a few days after its escape that the _Sumter_ was roaming in West Indian waters, yet off _none_ of the ports it visited during the next two months was there a Federal war-ship waiting to sink it. The _Alabama_ did most damage at the points which one would have thought would be swarming with prowling Federal cruisers, namely, the Azores, the crossing of the Gulf Stream, the Brazilian Coast, the “calm belts,” where ships from the South cross the tropics at the Cape, and in the China seas. Yet in none of these quarters was Captain Semmes attacked or waited for. Captain Semmes admits in “My Adventures Afloat,” that but for the gross negligence and incompetence of the United States Naval Department he could not have done the damage he did. The admission discounts much of the argument in favour of supplying swift, unarmoured cruisers in war time.

[309] The Senate was to be assembled to pass Bills which the Opposition had demanded. The Legislative Body was to control the Budget. Independent Members were to be allowed to initiate Bills. Ministers, though not responsible actually to the Legislature, would be allowed to sit in it.

[310] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 211.

[311] Carlyle’s Life in London, by J. A. Froude, Vol. III., p. 380.

[312] The speeches on this occasion were all good or eccentric. Mr. Motley, the United States Minister, for example, said of Mr. Peabody, “That fortunate as well as most generous of men has discovered a secret for which misers might sigh in vain--the art of keeping a great fortune for himself through all time. For I have often thought in this connection of that famous epitaph inscribed on the monument of an old Earl of Devonshire commonly called the Good Earl of Devonshire--‘What I spent I had, what I saved I lost, what I gave away remains with me.’” When Mr. Story’s turn came to address the company he pointed to his statue, and merely said “That is my speech.”

[313] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 221. For a detailed description of the excursions, see More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands, pp. 116-147.

[314] It was objectionable, he said, because it was a Bill of pains and penalties for mere words. Government had released the Fenians. Why, then, object to Irishmen honouring them? He also complained that the House was asked to act on the _ipse dixit_ of “an Irish Attorney-General.” Mr. Beresford Hope promptly rebelled against his leader, and approved of the Bill as a “manly step.” Mr. Gathorne-Hardy also deserted his chief, and said he would stand by the Government.

[315] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 411. The best sketch of Lady Palmerston that has appeared was the obituary notice in the _Times_ of the 15th of September, from the pen of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C.--See Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 201, also Hayward’s Selected Essays, Vol. II. (Longmans, 1878.)

[316] Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 202.

[317] Hodder’s Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., Vol. III., pp. 251-252. (Cassell and Co., 1886.)

[318] It may be interesting to record that the most brilliant Queen of Society in the Victorian period was a hard-working, thrifty house-manager. During her reign she managed personally not only the sumptuous hospitalities, but the accounts of Cambridge House, Brocket Hall, and Broadlands, and kept Palmerston’s private affairs in admirable order. Even her visiting cards were filled up by her own hand till within a very few years of her death. There was one other trace of old-fashionedness about her. She was the last lady of quality who pronounced the word oblige as if it were spelt “obleege.”

[319] Two-thirds of the electors abstained from voting. Jeremiah Donovan prefixed the aristocratic “O’” to his surname to give himself social importance. To distinguish him from other O’Donovans the place of his birth, Rossa, was now added to his name, thus: “Jeremiah O’Donovan (Rossa).” In England it soon came to be written as if “Rossa” were actually his surname.

[320] On the 7th of December Mr. W. Johnston, M.P., one of the Orange leaders, told an Orange Lodge at Derry that between Fenians and Papists he chose Fenians, and added, amidst enthusiastic cheers, that “it is no part of the duty of an Orangeman to fire a shot or draw a sword as between the English Government and the Fenians.”

[321] Mr. Disraeli did not object to compensation for disturbance when it meant compensation for unexhausted improvements, or for the “interruption of a course of good husbandry.”

[322] The Commons restored the original scale of compensation for eviction, the original duration of the lease exempting holdings from the Bill, and they restricted the permission to settle disputes between landlord and tenant to cases where they acted in concert, and not to those in which the offer came from one party alone.

[323] These were (1), in towns, the municipal boroughs; (2), in the Metropolis, workhouse school districts, or failing these, vestry areas; and (3), in counties, the civil parishes.

[324] Mr. Winterbotham said that the Dissenters must insist on every rate-aided school giving no religious instruction except Bible-reading without note or comment, and that, too, only in terms of “The Time-table Conscience Clause,” _i.e._, at specified hours before or after those for secular instruction, so that parents might use the Conscience Clause without sacrificing the educational interests of their children.

[325] This left £500,000 still to pay.

[326] Lord Granville had refused New Zealand military aid on the general principle that the sooner colonies took care of themselves and became independent the better. To save his dignity, he now said that the loan was to be advanced for public works, &c. But no device could conceal his change of front, for obviously advances to help a colony to build public works, set free its local resources to meet its military expenditure.

[327] The publication of the Treaty might have damped German enthusiasm had Germany suspected she was asked to fight France in order to save Belgium. But Napoleon dissipated that suspicion by proclaiming that the object of the war was to “maintain Austria in her elevated position” in Germany, and make the South German States independent.

[328] Von Bismarck, in his despatch of the 28th July, 1870, to Count Bernstoff, said the Draft Treaty (which also stipulated for the sale of Luxembourg to France) was communicated to him after the Luxembourg Question was settled in 1867. But M. Benedetti, in whose handwriting it was, said it was discussed by Bismarck in 1866, just after Sadowa. The facts favour Benedetti’s statement of the date. See Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 423 _et seq._

[329] He was called “Duke of Pillage” after he looted the Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperor.

[330] The French lost one-eighth.

[331] According to Mr. T. H. S. Escott’s brilliant sketch of the late Mr. Hayward in the _Fortnightly Review_ for March, 1884, the first person M. Thiers sounded in England on the subject was Mr. Hayward. “My friend,” said Hayward, when M. Thiers began to argue about the balance of power, “put all that stuff out of your head. We care for none of these things.” Writing to his sister on the 17th of September, 1870, Mr. Hayward says:--“I passed yesterday evening with the Thiers party, and breakfasted with them this morning. They are himself, his wife, sister-in-law, and secretary. His mission seems to be to persuade England to interfere on behalf of France, which England won’t do. I saw Gladstone yesterday, who told me he _could_ not mediate, as he knew neither what Prussia meant to demand nor France to concede.”--Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 217.

[332] This proposal he carried against Von Moltke, who sternly demanded the complete and unconditional surrender of the army of Metz.

[333] It was difficult to say which side won this battle, but on the whole the balance of advantage rested with Faidherbe. The Germans appreciated his ability very highly, and their two best generals next to Von Moltke, were detached to crush him.

[334] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 243.

[335] Lord Granville has himself admitted that the weak point in the policy of neutrality adopted by the Government was its starting-point. The war was plainly and deliberately aggressive on the part of France. If England had offered to head a league of neutral Powers in joining Prussia to repel unprovoked French aggression, France would not have drawn her sword. A great precedent would have been created for the establishment of an international police of neutrals for keeping the peace of Europe. At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on the 9th of November, Lord Granville discussed this view very honestly and very candidly. His reply was that the peevish jealousy with which France regarded the growing power of Germany rendered the outbreak of war inevitable, and that the menace of the neutral Powers would at best have postponed the fray for a brief period. But these menaces might have failed, and then the area of war would have been widened, the combatants multiplied, and the struggle could not have been conducted, as it was, under the restraining neutral criticism which did much to temper the passions and mitigate the horrors of the strife. No doubt this was the national conviction, and after it had been decided not to join Germany in preventing France from perpetrating a crime, it was absurd to depart from neutrality, in order to help France to escape the logical and just punishment of her own turpitude. The organs of the Tory Opposition, however, rather unpatriotically tried to make political capital out of the policy of the Government by teaching the people that the neutrality of the Cabinet was due to Ministerial cowardice and incapacity.

[336] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 606.

[337] King William had doubts as to whether he should be called Emperor of Germany or German Emperor. At last he decided in favour of the latter, which is his legal and correct title, though the wrong one--“Emperor of Germany”--is actually used on passports issued through the British Embassy at Berlin. To have called him “Emperor of Germany” would have meant that the territories of the German Sovereign Princes were in a country which belonged to him, whereas no part of Germany belonged to him save Prussia. The title “German Emperor” was a concession to the sentiments of autonomy and independence cherished by the small States. Indeed, the Hohenzollerns, when they became kings, were in a somewhat similar difficulty. They ought to have been Kings of Brandenberg. But Brandenberg was part of the old Empire, in which there could be only one King of the Germans and Holy Roman Emperor. Hence they took their title from Prussia, a new German colony, but not an integral part of the German Empire.--For a careful discussion of this quaint point of punctilio, see Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., pp. 613-618.

[338] But it was so clumsy in wording that it did not bind the Sovereign. This fact explains the anxiety of Melbourne to see the young Queen Victoria well married. So far as the law went, after her accession she might, if she had chosen, have married a lacquey. William IV., for example, could not have married Mrs. Jordan, who bore a large family to him, when he was Duke of Clarence. But he could have done so when he became King.

[339] The restrictions are not of course absolute, for a Prince may refuse to be bound by them. He may defy the Act and marry a subject without the consent of the Sovereign. The marriage is then quite valid for him as a private individual. He could not after it marry anybody else whilst his wife lived, save at the risk of a prosecution for bigamy. But the marriage confers no Royal _status_ on his wife, and no Royal rights of inheritance on his children. The wife of the Duke of Sussex was simply Lady Augusta Murray, and took merely her own rank as an earl’s daughter. The wife of the Duke of Cambridge is not Duchess of Cambridge, but merely Mrs. FitzGeorge, and the Duke’s family take the name of FitzGeorge, and the rank of Commoners. Yet it would be impossible for the Duke to marry any one else, even with the consent of the Queen.

[340] Being for the benefit of an individual, if the Queen had consented to “bespeak” them she would have been compelled to assent to an endless number of similar applications, or give a great many people bitter offence by refusal.

[341] Thackeray’s attacks on the Queen’s family and ancestors apparently had not rendered him a _persona grata_, like Dickens.

[342] See Forster’s Life of Dickens.