Queen Victoria’s accession was the cause of the departure from England of a Prince deservedly unpopular, whose signature stands first among those appended to the Act of Allegiance executed at Kensington Palace. |Severance of the Crown of Great Britain and Hanover.| Hitherto, for more than one hundred and twenty years, succession to the throne of Great Britain had carried with it the crown of Hanover; but, inasmuch as that crown was limited to the male line, it passed, on the death of King William, to his eldest surviving brother, the Duke of Cumberland. It is not necessary to discuss here the character of that Prince—it is enough to say that his departure to take up his inheritance in Hanover was probably cause of regret to very few persons in this country and reason for rejoicing to a great many. Nor, in looking back over the history of the past sixty years, can any thoughtful person fail to recognise advantage in the severance of the monarchies of Great Britain and Hanover. Any loss of prestige or dignity which might have been anticipated has been amply outweighed by the freedom enjoyed by this country from continental complications. England, while she has forfeited no weight in the Councils of Europe, is in a far stronger position to enforce her will when necessary, and the development of rapid and easy transit have protected Englishmen from any disadvantage that might have been apprehended from an exclusively insular Court.

One of the incidents of the ceremony of accession commented on with most interest was the fact that, in signing the Oath for the security of the Church of Scotland, the Queen wrote only “Victoria,” instead of her full name “Alexandrina Victoria.” Surely it was a happy inspiration which prompted the choice of the single name—prophetic, as it has turned out, of the character of the coming reign. Probably not one in a thousand of her subjects are aware that Her Majesty has two baptismal names, though there is historic interest attached to their origin. The Duke of Kent gave his daughter the name of Alexandrina in compliment to the Empress of Russia, intending her second name should be Georgiana. The Regent, however, objected to the name Georgiana being second to any other in this country; so, as the Princess’s father was determined that Alexandrina should be the first name, it was decided she should not bear the other one at all.

On July 17 the Queen went in State to the House of Lords to prorogue Parliament. |Prorogation of Parliament.| After listening to an Address made by the Speaker on behalf of the House of Commons, and giving her consent to certain bills, Her Majesty proceeded to read her speech to Parliament in clear and unfaltering accents. The concluding paragraph, viewed in the light of subsequent events, must be admitted to have been more amply fulfilled than most human promises, however sincerely spoken:—

“I ascend the throne with a deep sense of the responsibility imposed on me; but I am supported by the consciousness of my own right intentions, and by my dependence on the protection of Almighty God. It will be my care to strengthen our institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, by discreet improvement wherever improvement is required, and to do all in my power to compose and allay animosity and discord. Acting upon these principles, I shall, upon all occasions, look with confidence to the wisdom of Parliament and the affection of my people, which form the true support of the dignity of the Crown and ensure the stability of the Constitution.”

Every opportunity which was afforded to Parliament and the public of passing judgment on the Queen’s demeanour tended to deepen the favourable impression already created. Greville—the “Man in the Street” of those days—he of whom Lowe afterwards wrote—

is not an authority on which too much reliance should be placed, yet his diary is useful as a reflection of passing events. It is full of enthusiastic praise of the new Monarch.

“All that I hear of the young Queen leads to the conclusion that she will some day play a conspicuous part, and that she has a great deal of character.... Melbourne thinks highly of her sense, discretion, and good feeling; but what seems to distinguish her above everything are caution and prudence, the former in a degree which is almost unnatural in one so young, and unpleasing because it suppresses the youthful impulses which are so graceful and attractive.... With all her prudence and discretion she has great animal spirits, and enters into the magnificent novelties of her position with the zest and curiosity of a child.... The smallness of her stature is quite forgotten in the majesty and gracefulness of her demeanour.”

Sixty years ago! It is the second and third generation from that time which now cries “God save the Queen! Long live Victoria!” Never before in the history of our nation has it fallen to the lot of any historian to tell the story of such a long reign, to chronicle such unbroken national progress, to trace such a series of peaceful changes, to record such accumulation of wealth and diffusion of comfort in a like period.

Sixty years ago! The population of these islands was then some twenty-five millions; it amounts now to upwards of thirty-eight millions. |Early Railways.| The Liverpool and Manchester Rail­way, about thirty miles long, had been open for eight years, causing far-sighted folk to predict an important change in the mode of travelling. The Liverpool and Birmingham Railway was opened in the year of the Queen’s accession. In 1838 the line between London and Birmingham was finished, and trains were timed to do the distance—112¼ miles—at the average speed of twenty miles an hour. The London and Croydon Railway began running in 1839, and in 1840 there were 838 miles of railway open in the United Kingdom. At the present time there are 20,000 miles open, owned by companies which in 1894 had an authorised capital of £1,099,013,785, earning a gross revenue of £84,310,831, and a net profit of £37,102,518.

In order to convey the impressions of an educated traveller by the new mode of transit, the temptation to quote once more from the lively Greville is irresistible. In July 1837 he became tired of hearing nothing in London except about the Queen and the coming elections, so he resolved to see the new Birmingham and Liverpool Railway. Reaching Birmingham in 12½ hours by coach, he “got upon the railroad at half-past seven in the morning. Nothing can be more comfortable than the vehicle in which I was put, a sort of chariot with two places, and there is nothing disagreeable about it but the occasional whiffs of stinking air which it is impossible to exclude altogether. The first sensation is a slight degree of nervousness and a feeling of being run away with, but a sense of security soon supervenes, and the velocity is delightful.”

The “velocity” referred to was regulated to an average of about twenty miles an hour; but the diarist makes mention of a foolhardy driver who ventured to run forty miles an hour, and was promptly dismissed by the directors.

The application of another of the forces of Nature to the service of human intercourse has brought about a change in political, military, social, and commercial relations even more complete than that wrought by steam. |Electric Telegraph.| The invention of the electric telegraph coincided very nearly with the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign. In 1835 Mr. Morse, an American citizen, produced a working model of an instrument designed to communicate alphabetical symbols by the interruption of the electric current, but he failed to persuade Congress to furnish him with the funds necessary to the practical application of his discovery. Next year he tried to take out a patent for it in this country; but, meanwhile, Cooke and Wheatstone had anticipated him with one instrument, and the brothers Highton with another, both of which were soon in use on railways. The growth of this means of communication may be seen in the “Post Office Annual,” which shows that in the year 1895–96 about seventy-nine million telegrams were delivered through the Post Office, besides those dealt with by certain public companies.

The Queen’s Coronation was deferred till June 1838. It would be tedious to dwell on the splendour of the ceremonial. |The Coronation.| Perhaps the most readable, and not the least truthful, account has been preserved in one of Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends—Mr. Barney Maguire’s Account of the Coronation, set to the tune of The Groves of Blarney, and beginning—

Two personages in the procession, who had met under far different circumstances in earlier years, met with a tremendous ovation wherever they moved. One of these was the Duke of Wellington—our Great Duke—and the other was the veteran Duke of Dalmatia—the puissant Maréchal Soult of the Peninsula and Waterloo—once the redoubtable foe of England. Mr. Justin McCarthy has suggested that “the cheers of a London crowd on the day of the Queen’s coronation did something genuine and substantial to restore the good feeling between this country and France, and efface the bitter memories of Waterloo.” On the other hand, the anti-monarchical party in France attributed the popular reception of Soult in London to the prevalence of sympathy with Republican views. |Popular Reception of Wellington and Soult.| Certain it is that when, in later years, Soult championed the English alliance in the French Assembly he referred with feeling to his reception at Queen Victoria’s coronation: “I fought the English,” he said, “down to Toulouse, when I fired the last shot in defence of national independence; in the meantime I have been in London, and France knows how I was received. The English themselves cried ‘Vive Soult!’ They cried ‘Soult for ever!’” One may formulate rules of diplomacy and international courtesy, but who shall weigh the effect of sympathy between a generous people and a former gallant foe?

Parliament had voted £243,000 for the expenses of George IV.’s coronation—perhaps the effect of a newly-extended franchise may be traced in the more economical figure of £70,000, which sufficed for that of our present Queen.

The battle of Reform had been fought out in the country and in Parliament five years before the accession, and there were, as yet, no signs—to quote Sir Robert Peel’s famous expression at Tamworth—of the Constitution being “trampled under the hoof of a ruthless democracy.” On the whole, life—its business and pleasures—seemed to be going forward on much the same lines as before the great Act, dreaded, as it had been, as intensely by one party, as it had been pressed forward and welcomed by the other. Lord Melbourne was the head of a Whig Administration, of which, as everybody knows, the late King had waited impatiently for the first decent opportunity to get rid. But Melbourne and Lord John Russell (who, with the office of Home Secretary, was leader of the House of Commons) had to reckon with an advance wing of their own party, already known as Radicals, and were at least as profoundly averse from their projects as they were from the Tory policy. |State of Parties.| Melbourne and Russell desired to put down Radicalism and proceed with moderate and safe reforms, above all in Ireland, where the chronic discontent was being fanned to eruption by the exertions of Daniel O’Connell. The King’s death had relieved the Whig Cabinet from the adverse influence of the Court; moreover, the reliance placed from the first by the young Queen upon Lord Melbourne, and the intimate relations between them, brought about by the circumstances of the case, enabled the Whigs to assume the peculiar rôle of their opponents—that of the special supporters of the throne.

The Tories,B on the other hand, approached with much misgiving the General Election, which, according to the law as it then stood, followed of necessity on the demise of the monarch. They knew that the Duchess of Kent had favoured Whig principles in the education of the Queen; they saw that Melbourne’s personal charm had secured for him complete ascendancy in the councils of the new Sovereign, and they had nothing to expect in the country but reverse.

However, the unpopularity of the new Poor Law told against Ministers in the rural constituencies, and the elections left parties almost unchanged. |Result of General Election.| When the first Parliament of Queen Victoria assembled on November 20, 1837, the Whig Government reckoned a majority of about thirty in the House of Commons. “Of power,” wrote the contemporary compiler of the Annual Register, “in a political sense, they had none. They could carry no measure of any kind but by the sufferance of Sir Robert Peel.”

One incident in the short winter session of 1837, often as it has been recorded, retains a lasting interest because of the subsequent celebrity of the individual who gave rise to it. Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the son of a distinguished man of letters, had just entered Parliament for the first time as Member for Maidstone. He chose a debate on Irish Election Petitions as the opportunity for his maiden speech. “A bottle-green frock coat,” writes an eye-witness, “and a waistcoat of white, of the Dick Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited a network of glittering chains; large, fancy pattern pantaloons, and a black tie, above which no shirt-collar was visible, completed the outward man. A countenance lividly pale, set out by a pair of intensely black eyes, and a broad but not very high forehead, overhung by clustering ringlets of coal-black hair, which, combed away from the right temple, fell in bunches of well-oiled ringlets over his left cheek.”

Not a prepossessing personality in the eyes of the British House of Commons, and when the young orator proceeded to launch into profuse and florid metaphor, accompanied by exaggerated theatrical gestures, the forbearance usually shown towards a new member’s first appearance was overborne by impatience at Disraeli’s ludicrous affectation. He spoke amid incessant interruption and laughter. “At last, losing his temper, which until now he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in the midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indignantly in the face, raised his hands, and opening his mouth as widely as its dimensions would admit, said in a remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, ‘I have begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last; ay, sir, and though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.’” The contrast between the early manner of this statesman, and his peculiarly quiet and leisurely bearing in the debates of later years, betrays the close study which he devoted to outward effect.

The Prime Minister, William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, was a typical Whig, genuinely disposed to moderate reform, but in the habit of meeting Radical suggestions with the discouraging question, “Why not leave it alone?” Of similar political temperament was his lieutenant in the Commons, Lord John Russell. It very soon became evident that the Radicals, though diminished in numbers by the result of the elections, were likely to give Ministers trouble in the new Parliament. In the Upper Chamber, Lord Brougham, who had conceived a violent dislike to Melbourne, began to employ his fiery energy and power of acrid invective against the Government, and showed himself ready to place himself at the head of the Radicals. In his first serious attack on Ministers he allied himself with the Tory Lord Lyndhurst. The opportunity arose out of events in Canada, to which it is necessary briefly to refer.

By the Constitution of 1791 Canada had been divided into two Provinces, Upper and Lower Canada, each with its separate Governor, Executive Council (corresponding to a Privy Council), Legislative Council, appointed by the Crown for life, and Representative Assembly. The bulk of the people of Lower Canada were of French descent, Catholics, and intensely conservative of the mode of life and habits of France before the Revolution. English law had been established there by proclamation in 1763, but by the wise Act of 1774 French civil law was restored, and free exercise of the Roman Catholic religion guaranteed. Probably all would have gone tranquilly with the Province had its French population been left to themselves. But they had restless neighbours in Upper Canada. Englishmen, and especially Scots and Ulstermen, had settled there in large numbers, busy, pushing men of business, traders, and farmers, developing their land with energy, overflowing, as their children multiplied, into the territory of their French fellow-subjects, and there forming a British party, impatient of the antique legal procedure, the foreign law of land tenure, and the sleepy, unbusiness-like ways of the Lower Province. Hence arose friction which soon became chronic. |Rebellion in Canada.| The Legislative Council, nominees of the Crown, naturally favoured the British section, thereby finding themselves at issue with the Representative Assembly. Discontent had been smouldering for many years, and at last matters came to a crisis. The Representative Assembly resolved to resist further encroachment. Headed by Louis Papineau, a militia officer and Member for Montreal, they drew up a protest and laid their grievances before the Governor, Lord Gosford. They complained of arbitrary infringement of the Constitution and other matters, demanded that the Legislative Council should be made elective, and ended by refusing to vote supplies. Public meetings were held, and addressed in inflammatory language by Papineau, who dwelt on the example set by the United States in resisting tyranny. Lord Gosford met matters with a high hand. Warrants were issued for the arrest of certain representatives; resistance to their execution resulted in violence, and the transition to rebellion was as speedy as probably it was involuntary. Proximus ardet—the flame spread to Upper Canada, of which the people had grievances of their own, though of a different kind from those of their French neighbours, and a rising took place under the leadership of one McKenzie, a revolutionary journalist. But the chief danger arose from the sympathetic action of certain American citizens, who, to the number of several hundreds, assembled under a person named Van Rensselaer, and took possession of Navy Island in the Niagara River, forming part of Canadian territory. At the present day, with the dense population of the United States and rapid means of transit, such a position of affairs would undoubtedly prove extremely critical; happily the British authorities proved able to deal with it successfully. The rebels being ill-prepared for impromptu war, Lord Gosford put down the rising in Lower Canada, though not without considerable bloodshed. In Upper Canada, the Governor, Major Head, better known afterwards as Sir Francis Head, an amusing writer, sent every regular soldier at his command to the assistance of Lord Gosford, and, declaring he would rely on the loyal Canadians to suppress the rebellion, handed over 6,000 stand of arms to the Mayor of Toronto. The people responded gallantly, delighted by this mark of confidence; ten or twelve thousand men assembled under arms, and a single encounter with McKenzie’s force was enough to decide the fate of the revolt. Desultory skirmishing took place with bodies of American “sympathisers” at various points along the frontier before the affair could be said to be over, and there can be no doubt that, had the United States Government adopted a less friendly attitude, British rule in Canada might have stood in very great jeopardy.

The Imperial Parliament was summoned to meet on January 16, 1838, to consider the Canadian situation. A Bill was introduced suspending the Constitution of Lower Canada, and empowering the Queen to appoint a Governor and Special Council, who should assume for the time all the functions of the legislature in that Province. The Duke of Wellington, as leader of the Opposition in the Lords, and Sir Robert Peel in the Commons, supported the Government, and the only opposition was offered by the Radicals. Brougham attacked the Bill in a speech of which Melbourne complained as “a most laboured and extreme concentration of bitterness.” In the other House the chief point of interest to readers of the debate at this day lies in a speech by Mr. W. E. Gladstone, the Tory Member for Newark, who taunted Mr. Joseph Hume and the Radicals with their failure to perform in session their boastful promises during the recess.

The Governor appointed under the Act was the Earl of Durham, a man of remarkable ability, who had embraced Radical principles with great ardour. This, however, did not prevent him interpreting his office as that of a practical dictator—he far exceeded the powers vested in him by the Act.|The Earl of Durham.| In dealing with offenders he would not stoop to the only way of obtaining convictions—that of packing juries—and adopted the arbitrary course of ordering into exile those connected with the late rebellion, on pain of death if they returned. Looking back to the existing state of things, it is impossible to question the real clemency and wisdom of the new Governor’s ordinances; nevertheless, they were at once attacked in the Imperial Parliament, and vigorously denounced as tyrannical and unconstitutional. Lord Durham had made many enemies in both Houses. Lord Lyndhurst and the Tories joined forces with Lord Brougham and the Radicals in pressing Ministers to disallow the ordinances of which they had already approved. Brougham perceived the opportunity of discomfiting the hated Melbourne, and he pressed it. The Ministry were not strong enough to resist. Lord Durham was recalled, and, though his recommendations were ultimately carried into effect by making Canada a self-governing colony, he never recovered the unmerited disgrace he had suffered. Proud, impetuous, and sensitive, he fell into ill-health, and died in 1840 at the age of forty-eight. His end must ever be regarded as one of those misfortunes arising out of Party government, for his policy has been amply vindicated since, lying as it does at the foundation of the whole modern scheme of Colonial government.

One other debate in the Commons during this session must be referred to, if it be only to mark the wide interval which separates the Liberal Party of the present day from the Whig leaders at the beginning of the reign. On February 15 Mr. Grote brought forward his annual motion in favour of the Ballot in Parliamentary elections. |Debate on Vote by Ballot.| Hitherto little interest had been attached to the project, owing to the disfavour with which it was regarded by all but extreme Radicals. On this occasion, however, several Ministers and many supporters of the Government were known to have pledged themselves at the polls to the principle of secret voting. Lord John Russell had declared that to carry such a measure would be tantamount to a repeal of the Reform Act of 1832; that for the Government to promote it would be a breach of faith to those who had supported the extension of the franchise, and he refused to be any party to “what neither his sense of prudence nor of honour would justify.” Sir Robert Peel supported the Government in resisting the motion, and it was rejected by a majority of 117 in a House of 513 Members. This was hailed as a moral victory by the supporters of the Ballot. Brougham was jubilant, and told the Lords they must make up their minds to this fresh reform. A few days later he declared in Greville’s room that it would become law in five years from that time, and many people regarded it as paving the way to Republican government. On the other hand Greville quotes Charles Villiers, “one of the Radicals with whom I sometimes converse,” as declaring that it would prove a Conservative measure, and that better men would be chosen. In effect, it took, not five years, but thirty-four, to reconcile Englishmen to the practice of secret voting; and Mr. Villiers has lived to see that the protection thereby afforded to the voter has certainly not operated to the exclusion of Conservatives from office. But it would be unphilosophic to argue that what was conceded in 1872 to an experienced and educated electorate, without evil consequences, might have been bestowed with equal safety in 1838, only five years after the great measure of enfranchisement.

CHAPTER II.
1837–1842

Lord Melbourne’s services and character—Prevailing discontent of the Working Classes—Its Causes—The Chartists—Riots at Newport and elsewhere—Fall of the Ministry—Sir Robert Peel sent for—The “Bedchamber Question”—Melbourne recalled to Office—The Penny Post—Its remarkable Success—Betrothal of the Queen—Character of Prince Albert—Announcement to Parliament—Debates—Marriage of the Queen and Prince Albert—War declared with China—Capture of Chusan—Bombardment of the Bogue Forts—Peace concluded under the Walls of Nankin.

THE ardour and intelligence with which the Queen applied herself to master the details of ceremony and business incident to her position at the head of a great Empire, did not protect her from censorious and even malicious criticism. It was natural, perhaps, that the exclusive confidence reposed by Her Majesty in Lord Melbourne should excite the jealousy of others, whose exalted rank gave them what they considered a superior claim to access to the presence.

Lord Melbourne’s constant attendance at Court had compelled him to change his demeanour in a very remarkable degree. |Lord Melbourne’s services and character.| Hitherto, his affectation had been to conceal all traces of seriousness in transacting business; he would sprawl on a sofa, blow a feather about the room, balance a chair, or dandle a cushion while receiving deputations—the very incarnation of indolence—to the despair of those who anxiously desired to engage his attention, and who could scarcely be persuaded by those who knew him best that he had spent strenuous hours in getting up the subject under discussion, was perfectly acquainted with all its details, and was, besides, listening most attentively to all that was said. His physician, Dr. Copeland, knew how really hard the Prime Minister worked, and told Bishop Wilberforce that he (Melbourne) used to transact business all day in his bedroom with his secretaries in order that bores might be dismissed with the information that “my lord had not yet left his bedroom.”

But besides this tiresome frivolity of manner, there was another habit in regard to which Melbourne had to put severe restraint on himself in the Royal presence. It had been his custom to season his conversation with a multitude of indecorous oaths. Mr. Denison (afterwards Speaker, and subsequently Viscount Ossington) spoke to him one day about some points in the Poor Law Bill, then under consideration. Melbourne was just going out for a ride, and referred Denison to his brother George. “I have been with him,” replied Denison, “but he damned me, and damned the Bill, and damned the paupers.” “Well, damn it! what more could he do?” quoth Melbourne, and rode off.

In spite of all his affectation and a degree of underlying weakness, this Minister performed a singularly valuable public service to his country in the support and advice he afforded the Queen at the most critical time of her life; a service that was explicitly and handsomely acknowledged in the House of Lords by his chief opponent there, the Duke of Wellington, in 1841.

There was a great deal of brooding discontent in the country at the opening of Queen Victoria’s reign, which soon passed into a phase calling for active measures of repression. Some have recognised in the Chartist movement the chagrin of the working classes, who having imparted to the mills of State the impetus necessary to grind out political rights for their employers—the merchants, farmers, and middle class generally—found themselves no better equipped for political action than they were before. |Prevailing discontent of the Working Classes.| But such a suggestion finds no reflection in actual experience of popular movements. Agitators might declaim in vain against the injustice of a restricted franchise if their hearers had no other cause for discontent. The real root of bitterness lay in the suffering and distress caused by the severe winter of 1837–8, the high price of bread,C and, on the top of all, detestation of the new Poor Law. |Its causes.| It is genuine grievances such as these which, from time to time, force on the attention of those who suffer from them the glaring contrast between the privations of the many and the superfluities of the few. So, in 1838, hungry crowds were easily persuaded to listen to denunciations of the privileged classes; to believe that the Queen and a dilettante Prime Minister were insensible to their sufferings so long as their own tables were abundantly supplied; and that Government was no more than a machine for enriching the classes at the expense of the masses.

It has to be remembered, also, that during the development of crowded centres of population, consequent on the rapid increase in various industries, the artizan and mining classes found themselves at a great disadvantage in negotiating with their employers, owing to the stringent laws regulating trades unions. A whole generation was to pass away before, in 1875, Mr. (now Viscount) Cross should pass a measure abolishing criminal proceedings in cases of breach of engagement, placing employer and workman on equal terms before the law, and enacting that nothing which it was legal for a single workman to do should be illegal when done by a combination of workmen or a trades union.

The Whig leaders having declined to re-open the question of electoral reform, a document was drawn up at a conference between a few Radical members of Parliament and the representatives of the Working Men’s Association, formulating the demands made on behalf of the proletariate. Universal male suffrage, annual Parliaments, vote by ballot, abolition of the property qualification required at that time from a member of Parliament, payment of members, and equal electoral districts, were the six points insisted on; of which three, it will be seen, have since been practically carried into effect. |The Chartists.| “There is your Charter!” exclaimed O’Connell, handing it to the secretary of the Working Men’s Association; “agitate for it, and never be content with anything less.” The term took the popular fancy; the programme became known as the Charter, and those who supported it were hereafter known as Chartists.

Not a very formidable programme after all, nor one that might not be advanced by constitutional means, but one that, like many other popular agitations, fell into dangerous paths by the imprudent zeal of some of its advocates, and still more, by the violence of the discontented, unfortunate, or predatory waifs of civilisation, ever ready to promote any social change for the sake of what plunder it may bring within their reach.