But for some occult reason, the Federal cause was unpopular in this country from the beginning; the initial reverses sustained by the armies of the North were hailed with satisfaction in the English Press; and this, combined with a rash expression used in public by Lord Palmerston about the “unfortunate rapid movements” of Federal troops in the action at Bull’s Run, caused a very sore feeling against Great Britain among both leaders and people in the Northern States.

An unfortunate incident arose early in the war to intensify this feeling, and the corresponding unpopularity of the Federals in England. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, being anxious to obtain recognition by European Courts, sent two Envoys, Mr. Mason to represent him at the Court of St. James’s, and Mr. Slidell at the Court of the Tuileries. These two gentlemen, escaping by night from Charleston, then under blockade, embarked at Havana in the English mail steamer Trent. |The “Trent” Affair.| A Federal sloop-of-war was cruising about in search of the Confederate privateer Sumter, and her commander, Captain Wilkes, on hearing about the Confederate Envoys, resolved to get possession of them. Intercepting the Trent in the Bahama Channel, he hailed her to heave to, fired a couple of shots across her bows, boarded her, and carried off Messrs. Mason and Slidell. Of course this act was wholly unjustifiable by international law, and President Lincoln at once directed Mr. Seward to reply by complying with Earl Russell’s demand for the surrender of the Confederate Envoys. They were liberated accordingly on January 1, 1862, and sailed for Europe. But unluckily Lord Palmerston had no reason to calculate on this ready compliance with British demands. Captain Wilkes had received approval of his conduct from the Federal Secretary to the Navy, a vote of thanks to him had been passed by the Washington House of Representatives, and he had been fêted wherever he went. All this was taken as indicating President Lincoln’s intention to defend the action of his officer: indeed, but for what was going on in England, Lincoln’s best intentions might have been overborne by the tide of public opinion. Simultaneously with the despatch of Lord John Russell’s demand for the surrender of the prisoners, 8,000 troops were embarked in England for service in Canada, and every preparation was made for immediate war. This not only cost Great Britain about a million of money, but also deprived President Lincoln’s act of all grace in the eyes of English people.

The Trent difficulty was the last public question in which the Prince Consort was to take part. A memorandum dated December 1, 1861, written by him and conveying to Lord Russell the Queen’s remarks on the drafts of despatches he was about to forward to Lord Lyons, was the last State paper to which the Prince Consort set his hand. He had been ill for some days previously, and soon afterwards gastric fever developed itself. In spite of the tender attention of the Queen and the Princesses, the malady continued, not much worse, apparently, but no better. |Death of the Prince Consort.| Congestion of the lungs set in, and at midnight on Saturday, December 14, the tolling of the great bell of St. Paul’s Cathedral announced to the people of London that the Monarch’s Consort was no more—that their Queen was a widow.

The Prince died in his forty-third year. It is pretty well understood by this time how well he had discharged the duties of a difficult station as Consort of the Crown, how true was the love which united him to the Queen, how deep was her sorrow at parting with him after twenty-one years of wedded life. He had lived down the prejudice which undoubtedly was prevalent at the time of, and for some years after, the marriage. Without appearing in political affairs with such prominence as might have aroused the susceptibilities of a self-governing people, his attention to public affairs was as incessant as that of any Cabinet Minister. The writing tables of the Queen and the Prince stood side by side; he was ever at hand to advise Her Majesty in her correspondence with Ministers; many of her letters and memoranda to the Cabinet are in the Prince’s handwriting. When the final solution of the Trent dispute was communicated to Her Majesty on January 9, 1862, she wrote to the Prime Minister: “Lord Palmerston cannot but look on this peaceful issue of the American quarrel as greatly owing to her beloved Prince, who wrote the observations on the draft to Lord Lyons, in which Lord Palmerston so entirely concurred. It was the last thing he ever wrote.”

The only danger to the Prince Consort’s place in the affections of the British people in his later years was of the nature of that which over-took Aristides. There is a certain monotony in virtue, like that of uninterrupted serene weather, which weighs upon natures of a less lofty tenour. But no sooner was the Prince departed than the nation realised the value of the part he had performed, and it has never since ceased to be grateful for the energy he displayed in promoting every scheme of social or intellectual advancement, and stimulating the growth of commercial and industrial enterprise.

|The Cruiser “Alabama.”|

The next controversy endangering friendly relations between the Governments of Queen Victoria and President Lincoln arose out of Confederate privateering. Many of the private dockyards of Great Britain were turning out vessels as fast as they could to sell to the Confederate leaders. One of these ships, the Alabama, built in Messrs. Laird’s yard at Birkenhead, became the terror of Federal commerce, having captured between sixty and seventy merchantmen in two years. At last she was sunk by the Federal ship-of-war Kearsarge, but her fame did not perish with her; it was the cause of an important alteration in international law. The fact is, the Alabama was, for all intents and purposes, an English pirate. Built and armed in England, most of her crew and all her gunners were English, some of the latter being actually in English pay, as belonging to the Royal Naval Reserve. She approached her prizes flying the British colours at her peak, and only hauled them down when her prey could not escape. She was constantly in English harbours, and never in a Confederate one. While she was being built at Birkenhead, the American Minister appealed in vain to the British Government to detain her under the Foreign Enlistment Act; she was allowed to go to sea. Later on, two ironclads were on the point of leaving the Mersey for the Confederate service. Again Mr. Adams, the American Minister, demanded their detention, adding in his letter to Lord Russell, “it would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.” The ironclads were detained, but President Lincoln, Earl Russell, and Lord Palmerston had all passed away before the dispute about the Alabama was brought to a close. The American civil war had ended, General Grant was President of the United States, and Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister of England, when the question came up for final settlement. When it had been raised first, Lord Palmerston’s Government had refused to admit any responsibility; then followed Lord Derby’s third administration in 1866, and Lord Stanley as Foreign Secretary consented to the proposal for arbitration. But the introduction of various claims on the part of private individuals, arising out of events long antecedent to the civil war caused the postponement of any agreement until the year 1871. Each nation then appointed a Commission to meet at Washington to discuss all the subjects of international controversy, of which the Alabama claims were the principal. The British Commissioners were Earl de Grey (the present Marquis of Ripon), Sir Stafford Northcote (afterwards Earl of Iddesleigh), Mr. Montague Bernard, Sir Edward Thornton, British Ambassador at Washington, and Sir John Macdonald, Prime Minister of the Canadian Parliament. The Conference resulted in the Treaty of Washington, of which the opening clause gave occasion to considerable resentment in the minds of the British public. It was no less than an apology—dignified but explicit—on the part of the Queen’s Government, for having permitted the escape of the Alabama and other cruisers from British ports, to the injury of American commerce. England, it was loudly protested, had never apologised to any other Power; she would never had been so humiliated had “Old Pam” remained at the head of affairs; the whole British case had been given away before the matter got to the stage of arbitration. So said the British Press, and so said a large section of the public. However, Great Britain having professed herself ready to pay something to secure the friendship of President Grant’s Government, the claims went before a tribunal of five arbitrators, of whom one was appointed by Queen Victoria, and one each by President Grant, the King of Italy, the Emperor of Brazil, and the President of the Swiss Confederation. This tribunal assembled at Geneva in 1872, and decreed that Great Britain should pay an indemnity of £3,250,000 for the acts of the Alabama and other Confederate cruisers. The fine was paid, but the impression produced on the minds of the British people cannot be said to have been favourable to the doctrine of arbitration. It was felt that John Bull had been made to “knuckle down” to Brother Jonathan, and the amicable intentions of the British Commissioners at Washington of promoting cordial relations between the British and American peoples were frustrated almost as thoroughly as they might have been had the dispute been fought out in the ordinary way.

On March 10, 1863, took place the marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, to the Princess AlexandraH, eldest daughter of Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, heir to the throne of Denmark. |Marriage of the Prince of Wales.| The announcement of the betrothal had been favourably received in Great Britain, but, on the arrival of the bride-elect in London, her exceeding personal beauty, her charm of manner and amiability, produced a remarkable effect, and public feeling rose to a very high degree of enthusiastic approval. London hastened to cover up the dingy traces of an English winter with gay bunting; the lively Danish national colours, scarlet and white, draped all the thoroughfares; and everywhere might be seen the Dannebrog—the national ensign of Denmark—streaming side by side with the British standard in the keen wind and bright sunshine of March.

The course of events on the Continent at this time gave to the royal marriage an appearance of political significance which, in reality, it did not possess. In olden times, no doubt, the espousal of the heir of England to the daughter of Denmark would have implied a political and military alliance, offensive and defensive, between the two Crowns. But in Europe of the nineteenth century it is peoples, not princes, who hold the decrees of peace and war. It was this very fact which, shortly after the Prince of Wales’s marriage, seemed likely to precipitate a conflict between Great Britain and Denmark on the one side, and Austria and Prussia on the other. Englishmen had grown proud of their beautiful Princess, and were chivalrously disposed to take up the cause of her little country. They forgot or did not know that it was only the adopted country of her family.

The crisis arose on the death of Frederick VII., King of Denmark. The succession, as had been decreed by the Great Powers in 1852, devolved on the father of the Princess of Wales, who became King Christian IX. of Denmark. |The Schleswig-Holstein Difficulty.| There had existed between Germany and Denmark a long-standing dispute about the possession of the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. The King of Denmark was also Duke of Holstein and Lauenburg, just as, previous to Queen Victoria’s accession, the King of England had been also King of Hanover. But the vast majority of the population of these Duchies was purely German, and the German Confederation had been anxious for a long time to admit them to their common nationality. The Danish Government, on the other hand, desired to incorporate these provinces in the Kingdom of Denmark. Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg disputed the succession of Christian IX. to the Duchies in question. The Germanic Diet, under the influence of Herr von Bismarck, supported Prince Frederick’s claim, and an allied army, provided by Austria and Prussia, crossed the frontiers of Holstein and Schleswig to enforce it. The Danish army was mobilised, and Denmark entered upon a hopeless contest—hopeless, seeing that she, one of the weakest of European States, was pitted against two of the most powerful.

It must be confessed that the Danes had not unreasonable grounds for believing they would not be left to meet such odds single-handed. Lord Russell had often warned the Danish Government that unless it respected the liberty of its German subjects, Denmark must look for no help from England in a conflict with the Germanic Powers. The Danes protested that they had scrupulously followed this advice, and there can be no doubt that they had been encouraged to look for the support of Great Britain if any attempt were made to infringe legitimate Danish authority, and that both Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston contemplated armed intervention between Denmark and her possible aggressors as a duty which Great Britain might have to undertake. But Great Britain had too much at stake to risk a conflict single-handed with Austria and Prussia, who, as Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord Russell, “could bring 200,000 or 300,000 men into the field.” England was not more bound by the Treaty of Vienna than France was; France refused to act, and England adopted the prudent, but apparently cold-blooded, part of looker-on. Public opinion in Great Britain ran pretty high in favour of the Danes, and many Englishmen felt ashamed of the part their country was made to play. They could not understand how Palmerston, of all men, could act so unhandsomely, and perhaps the only thing that saved the Government from defeat on a vote of censure, was that Disraeli, who moved it, shrank from advocating the only logical alternative to their policy—a declaration of war.

The sixth Parliament of Queen Victoria was dissolved on July 6, 1865, having attained the unusual age of six years and thirty-six days. |Dissolution of Parliament.| The chief feature of the general election which followed was the number of seats gained by the Radicals at the expense of the remnants of the Whig party or Moderate Liberals. Mr. Gladstone, reckoned as a Liberal-Conservative up to this time, though well known to be inclining more and more to the policy typified by John Bright, was unseated for Oxford University by Mr. Gathorne-Hardy (now Earl of Cranbrook), and the last tie which attached him to the Conservatives was severed by his subsequent election for South Lancashire.

Palmerston’s appeal to the country had been answered by an expression of confidence in him, but that confidence was of a very complex kind. The Radicals voted for him, because, as long as he was in Parliament, no other man could lead the Liberal party; but they distrusted his foreign policy, and chafed at his indifference to questions of reform. The Liberals voted for him, because he represented exactly the views of moderate Liberalism; and the attitude of many Conservatives was accurately expressed in a letter written by Mr. W. H. Smith, Liberal-Conservative candidate for Westminster, to Colonel Taylor, the Whip of the Conservative party, thanking him for the support he had received from Conservatives in his unsuccessful contest against Mr. Mill. “I believe in Lord Palmerston,” he said, “and look forward ultimately to a fusion of the moderate men following Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston into a strong Liberal-Conservative party.”

|Death of Lord Palmerston.|

But the strong link which for so long had bound the present to the past, and acted as a check on precipitate legislation, snapped at last. Palmerston died on October 18, 1865, aged eighty-one years, less two days, having sat in the House of Commons for fifty-eight years, which, as Mr. Cardwell observed, was just one-tenth of its whole existence. The feeling in the country was more profound than any which had been manifested since the death of Wellington. In the course of these pages no attempt has been made to palliate or conceal some of the errors of judgment, the faults of statesmanship, even the occasional want of sincerity to Parliament and the public which formed blemishes in his career, especially in the earlier part of the Queen’s reign. In spite of these blots—and some of them were far from venial—he had lived to secure the confidence of his Sovereign and the affection of her people. A great deal of this was owing to his personal character and manner and his kindly humour. It is no slight upon Scotsmen or Irishmen to say that the chief secret of his universal popularity was that he was such a thorough Englishman. Some of his sayings had a much deeper meaning than their tone of levity implied. Two of them will bear repetition here, seeing how accurately the lapse of years has fulfilled the prediction contained in them. Palmerston was known to be opposed to any further extension of the franchise. Somebody once observed to him that it really would not make much difference, for the same class of member would be returned as before. “Yes,” replied Palmerston, “the same men will get in as before, but they will play to the shilling gallery instead of to the boxes.” The late Earl of Shaftesbury put on record one of Palmerston’s latest sayings. Palmerston always distrusted Mr. Gladstone as a politician, and made no secret of it. But he always was extremely anxious for Mr. Gladstone’s return for Oxford University. “He is a dangerous man,” he said to Lord Shaftesbury: “keep him in Oxford, and he is partially muzzled, but send him elsewhere, and he will run wild.” This came to Mr. Gladstone’s ears, so, after his defeat at Oxford in 1865, he opened his campaign in South Lancashire by saying to the electors assembled in the Free Trade Hall of Manchester: “At last, my friends, I have come amongst you.... I am come among you unmuzzled.”

CHAPTER XIII.
1866–1872.

Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill—The Cave of Adullam—Defeat and Resignation of the Ministry—Retirement of Earl Russell—Lord Derby’s Last Administration—Disturbance in Hyde Park—Commercial Panic—Completion of the Atlantic Cable—Mr. Disraeli’s Reform Bill—Secessions from the Cabinet—The Fenians—War with Abyssinia—Retirement of Lord Derby—The Irish State Church—Dissolution of Parliament—Liberal Triumph—Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet—Disestablishment of the Irish Church—Death of Lord Derby—Irish Land Legislation—National Education—Army Purchase—The Ballot Bill—Adoption of Secret Voting.

THE only changes in the old Cabinet, consequent on the death of its great chief, were the advance of Earl Russell to the Premiership and the appointment of Lord Clarendon to the Foreign Office. But the change in the House of Commons was as momentous as it was abrupt. The place of its old leader—the safe, the leisurely, the unemotional Palmerston—was filled by the restless and ardent, the uncertain Gladstone. The Conservatives were dispirited and anxious; they were afraid of what the new House of Commons might be led to do; party feeling began to acquire a new bitterness, the offspring of fear, which was to grow more and more intense until the final retirement of Mr. Gladstone in 1895. The Radicals, on the other hand, were sanguine and jubilant. Reinforced in numbers, and relieved from the restraint which the irresistible prestige of Palmerston had imposed on their aspirations, they felt that the moment for action had come; they had got a leader after their own hearts, and the first thing to do was to extend the franchise. But there was disappointment in store for them. Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill on March 12; it pleased nobody. The Radicals detected in it the frigid hand of the Whigs, and the moderate Liberals, secretly detesting all schemes for a Democratic franchise, began by viewing it coldly, and gradually drifted into opposition with the Conservatives. Its most formidable opponent rose from the Ministerial Benches. Mr. Robert Lowe, whom an intimate acquaintance with Australasian politics had imbued with profound distrust for Democratic institutions, made a brilliant and fearless onslaught on the measure, and received all that rapturous applause which is the invariable reward of a strong man turning his weapons against his own party. Gradually he drew to himself a compact band of malcontents, whose memory might have passed into oblivion long ere this but for a happy metaphor employed by Mr. John Bright, who likened them to the men who gathered to David in the Cave of Adullam. |The Cave of Adullam.| “Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him.” People were tickled with the illustration: straightway the Liberal dissentients were dubbed Adullamites, and “a cave” has remained ever since the recognised term for a group of men combining to act against their own party.

Mr. Lowe’s band proved strong enough to kill the measure. It passed the second reading, indeed, by a majority of five, but it perished in Committee, and the Ministry resigned. It was the closing scene of Earl Russell’s long career, which somehow had missed the success which his achievements seemed to have earned. Born in the very holiest of holies of the Whig sanctuary, with natural abilities far more varied, with acquired culture far more extensive, with greater advantages from family connection than Palmerston could boast, and without Palmerston’s headstrong tendencies, he never attained more than a fraction of the influence and popularity which Palmerston had so fully secured. Indispensable for more than a generation to every Whig or Liberal Cabinet, he had become associated more with the failures than the successes of his party, and people ungratefully remembered him rather as the betrayer of Denmark than as the pioneer of Reform.

|Lord Derby’s last Administration.|Once more it was Lord Derby’s fate to form a stop-gap Administration, and no sooner was the new Ministry complete, early in July, than the country suddenly threw off the indifference it had shown to Mr. Gladstone’s offer of an extended franchise, and public meetings were held all over the country vehemently demanding Reform. It was too late in the session, of course, to do anything that year in Parliament, but the agitation sufficed to show that there was at least one weak man in the Cabinet. The Reform League summoned a meeting in Hyde Park for the evening of July 23, which it was decided to prohibit, and amiable, gentle Mr. Walpole, the Home Secretary, issued a notice that the Park gates would be closed at 5 p.m. Notwithstanding this announcement, processions with bands and banners arrived at the appointed hour, and Mr. Beales, President of the League, demanded admittance, which was refused. Mr. Beales was an experienced barrister, and knew very well what he was about. He was of opinion that in denying the right of public meeting in Hyde Park, the Home Secretary was acting beyond his powers, and, content with asserting this right in a formal way, he intended to adjourn the meeting and claim redress by constitutional means. But a meeting in Hyde Park, no matter for what purpose, invariably attracts thousands of idlers and roughs, who have no part and no interest in the question to be discussed. Mr. Beales and the earnest reformers adjourned to Trafalgar Square and passed resolutions to their hearts’ content; but the rough and idle part of the crowd remained about Hyde Park. The gates were strong enough to resist any pressure, but the railings were old and frail. |Disturbance in Hyde Park.| People climbing on them felt them shake and creak; half a dozen fellows gave a push together in Park Lane—the railings gave way; in an instant the whole length from Hamilton Gardens to the Marble Arch went down, and the Park was filled with a tumultuous, rollicking mob. The grass and the flower-beds were the only property that suffered; the police took a few prisoners, and the crowd dispersed peacefully at nightfall. Mr. Beales took a small deputation to the Home Secretary next day, urging him to withdraw the troops and police, and trust the people to take care of the town. Mr. Walpole consented; it may have been prudent to do so, but the manner of doing it was unfortunate. It is a dangerous precedent for a Home Secretary to show himself afraid of the consequence of carrying out his own decrees.

The summer of 1866 will be remembered long in the City of London by reason of the commercial disaster and monetary panic which followed sharply on a period of speculative inflation, the combined result of active trade and the new law of limited liability. |Commercial Panic.| The suspension early in May of the great discount firm of Overend and Gurney, with liabilities figured at £19,000,000, was followed within the same week by the failure of several banks and the suspension of the Bank Charter Act. On May 11 the Bank rate was raised to 10 per cent. and continued at that point till August 17. The shock was one from which the credit of the country took a long time to recover, and the amount of private misfortune and loss of income reacted on almost every department of trade, though the public revenue maintained a surprising degree of elasticity.

A brighter passage in the record of 1866 is that which commemorates the completion of telegraphic communication between Great Britain and America. Attempts had been made in 1857, 1858, and 1865 to lay a cable across the Atlantic, all of which ended in failure; but Mr. Cyrus Field would not abandon his dream. |The Atlantic Cable.| The Great Eastern steamship sailed from Berehaven on July 12, and on July 27 the first messages were exchanged between the old and new worlds. A feat hardly less inspiring was performed later in the same season, in the recovery of the broken cable of 1865, which was spliced, thereby effecting a second connection between the two continents.

Mr. Disraeli, as has been said, had undertaken the task in which Mr. Gladstone had failed, and brought in a Reform Bill early in the session of 1867. It cost the Government a heavy price at the outset: Lord Carnarvon, Lord Cranbourne (now Marquis of Salisbury), and General Peel resigned their seats in the Cabinet because they disapproved of it. The Bill went forward, and, after undergoing many changes, finally passed in a form conferring household suffrage in boroughs and a £12 franchise in counties. |“A Leap in the Dark.”| “No doubt,” said Lord Derby on the third reading of the Bill in the Lords, quoting a remark made by Lord Cranbourne in the other House, “no doubt we are making a great experiment and ‘taking a leap in the dark,’ but I have the greatest confidence in the sound sense of my fellow-countrymen.” But another saying by Lord Derby gives a truer insight into the real object of a Conservative Government in doing work so repugnant to its accredited principles. Somebody having observed to him that the measure was dangerously democratic—“We have dished the Whigs!” was all that Derby replied. Mr. Disraeli, in reference to the same subject, made use of a phrase which gave bitter offence to some of his party, and deepened the distrust with which the old school of Conservatives regarded him almost to the end of his life. On October 29, 1867, he was entertained at a banquet by the Conservatives of Edinburgh, and when passing in review the events of the session, and especially his Reform Act, he said: “I had to prepare the mind of the country, and to educate—if it be not arrogant to use such a phrase—to educate our party.”

The stream of emigration westward which set in after the Irish famine in 1848 had resulted in creating a very large Irish population in the United States. All these emigrants had brought with them a bitter hatred of England, on whom they laid the blame of all the sufferings of their own people. They had found in America the true remedy for their wrongs, which, had they realised it, arose not so much from political, as from physical causes. By moving to a spacious land where labour was in demand, they escaped from the evils which must always press upon a congested population with no proper outlet for its energy. But still they loved old Ireland and hated England, and, finding themselves of political importance in the new land, for the Irish vote soon became indispensable to the Democratic party, they busied themselves with projects for the deliverance of their country. They found plenty of encouragement from Americans, for the feeling in the Northern States was very bitter against England after the close of the civil war. Thousands of Irishmen had learnt the art of war and the use of weapons in the Federal armies; a military organisation was set on foot in the belief that Great Britain and the United States were on the point of going to war. |The Fenians.| This organisation, which adopted the title of Fenian, had for its leader a man of great ability and experience, James Stephens. The Government received due warning of what was in preparation; in fact, the leaders of the movement in Ireland openly proclaimed their intention of restoring by force of arms the independence of Ireland. They had plenty of funds: every Irish man and maid in America contributed something to such a glorious purpose. A steady stream of American-Irish, most of them old soldiers of the civil war, set in from across the Atlantic, and scattered themselves among the towns and villages of Ireland. At last Stephens himself arrived, who, having been mixed up in the rising of 1848, was promptly arrested and lodged in Richmond Prison, Dublin, in November, 1865. All Ireland was convulsed with delight when, a few days later, he was found to have escaped.

The absence of Stephens from America had evil results to the Fenians there. One party was for invading Canada, a project which Stephens had never favoured. No sooner was his back turned, than a party of Fenians actually crossed the Niagara river, occupied a fort, and defeated a force of Canadian volunteers. Just as in 1838, when the Canadians were in revolt, the United States Government had saved the position for Great Britain by enforcing the neutrality of their frontier, so now it acted a similar part, and put an end to what might have become a highly dangerous state of affairs. Stephens never reappeared, but the preparations he had started were continued. With the pathetic hero-worship of the Celt, the Irish peasantry were confident that their lost leader would return among them soon and lead them to victory. But one brief taste of prison discipline had been enough for this doughty champion, and he is believed to have spent the rest of his life abroad in comparative affluence, derived from the subscriptions collected from his dupes.

In February 1867 the Government frustrated a Fenian plot to seize Chester Castle; there was an attempt at a general rising in Ireland, which ended in the loss of a few lives in harebrained and disconnected attacks on police barracks in Cork, Limerick, Louth, and elsewhere, and a number of American-Irish were arrested. Two of these prisoners were being conveyed across Manchester in a prison van, when it was suddenly attacked by a party of armed Fenians. A policeman was shot dead, the prisoners were rescued and were never recaptured.