was estimated that £10,000,000 would have to be lodged in compliance with the law on the 29th of January, and on the 10th the Times, in a memorable article, declared that to lock up half that sum for a week in the circumstances would produce “the greatest inconvenience and pressure.”[69]

It was in vain that the officers of the Crown and the Government were implored by the trading community, who dreaded a Gold Famine, to sanction a deviation from the rigid rule of the Standing Order in face of the exceptional outbreak of an epidemic of speculation. This reached its height, it seems to us, just a month before the Governor of the Bank of England could be persuaded that the potato-rot was rendering famine inevitable. In the quarter ending September, 1845, there were in the market for sale £500,000,000 of stock, scrip, or letters of allotment. The shocking waste of resources that this covered is proved by two sets of figures. According to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the years 1842-46, the capital authorised to be raised was in each year respectively £6,000,000, £4,500,000, £18,000,000, £59,000,000, and for the last of these years £126,000,000! In 1842-45 the amounts

expended, however, were only £3,000,000, £4,500,000, £6,000,000, £14,000,000, and £36,000,000. In the latter half of 1846, of an authorised capital of £146,000,000, only £27,000,000 was spent. But in the records of the Victorian epoch there is nothing more curious than this fact—that of the vast sum expended during this mania, one-fifth was spent on buying land and on Parliamentary expenses, and the remaining four-fifths on materials and labour, skilled and unskilled. Some idea of the resources and the folly of the England of Queen Victoria’s youth may be gained from the fact that, during the period 1843-47, £170,000,000 were raised—£130,000,000 by shares and £40,000,000 by loans—in order to open 3,665 miles of railway for traffic.[70] It has been said that the Railway Mania was at its height in the quarter ending September, 1845. The Bank rate of interest then stood at 2½ per cent. In November it rose to 3½ per cent., and then panic smote timid investors. They glutted the market with their shares. And yet the curious thing is that the witnesses who were examined before the Committee of the House of Commons on Commercial Distress seem to agree in asserting that the general trade of the country was active at the time, and that very few people had the slightest suspicion that it was utterly unsound. Mr. E. Gardner of Manchester, in his evidence, gave an excellent and vivid sketch of industrial England at this period, when he said: “The commercial difficulty began, I think, about the middle of 1846. A good deal of business was done in 1846, but trade was not in a wholesome state; it appeared to flourish by the great abundance of money, and the great facility in getting long paper discounted.... I think, in the early part of 1846, we were at about the height of our apparent prosperity.... In the manufacturing districts there was a greater supply of goods than was justified by the demand. Immediately after the China Treaty, so great a prospect was held out to the country of a great extension of our commerce with China, that there were many large mills built with a view to that trade exclusively, in order to manufacture that class of cloth which is principally taken for the China market.... This trade turned out most ruinous; the losses averaged from 10 to 60 or 70 per cent.”[71] This is a fact which may be commended to the attention of a powerful Party in the latter years of the Queen’s reign which cherishes the perfectly erroneous belief, that an aggressive foreign policy necessarily and invariably stimulates commerce by “opening up new markets.”

No issue of paper money in 1847-48 could relieve a strain due to such causes as these, though some blame must be given to the Bank for not checking the drain of gold by raising the discount rate at the beginning of the year, when the failure of the potato crop in Ireland was manifest. But to issue £2,000,000 of notes without any increase in the real capital of the country, which could alone command foreign produce, would have been an illusory measure of relief. The heated discussions on these and cognate questions ended in May; in June the pressure on the Money Market began to be relaxed, and the crisis passed away for the time—only to reappear, as we shall see, later on in the autumn.

The Education Vote in 1847 raised a great storm of sectarian controversy, not only in Parliament, but throughout the country. The first sign that the State in England gave of awakening to the educational destitution of the country was in 1833, when the House of Commons voted £20,000 in aid of elementary public instruction. In a burst of generosity, £39,000 was voted in 1839. In 1845 the grant was raised to £100,000, but the money could only be shared by Protestant schools, because the Privy Council decreed that no school was to be subsidised unless “the Authorised Version of the Scriptures” was read in it. This of course cut off the Roman Catholics from any participation in the grant; and when, in 1847, the Education Vote came before the House of Commons, all liberal-minded men condemned the sectarian restrictions in dispensing the grants which were imposed by the Government. Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Macaulay, and Sir W. Molesworth all attacked the regulation of the Council, which pressed so harshly against the Roman Catholics; and Lord John Russell was fain to give pledges that the rule would be relaxed. During these debates, some of the High Church Tories, like Sir Robert Inglis, the Member for the University of Oxford, accused Peel of supporting the policy of Toleration in order to conciliate Catholic voters at the coming election. It is curious to note that the plan of the Government, offering equal pecuniary aid on equal terms to all schools accepting Government inspection, was opposed by the Dissenters; and even Mr. Bright declared that it was a dangerous interference with the voluntary exertions of the people to educate themselves. At this time it was thought a lesser evil to let the children of the poor remain ignorant, than to establish a system of education which was made applicable to all sects, by omitting distinctive points of sectarian teaching from the lessons given in the schools. The Dissenters objected to the Established Church getting a new endowment in the shape of grants in aid of their schools. The Secularists objected to public money in any form being spent in subsidising sectarian schools, even though these were under State inspection.

In June the subject of colonisation stirred up some discussion in the country. Ever since Mr. Charles Buller, in 1843, had emphasised the distinction between colonisation and emigration, a party had existed who taught that it was not wise to leave the settlement of our Colonial Empire to the chances of casual or voluntary emigration. Lord Lincoln attempted to enforce their teaching by drawing the attention of the House of Commons, on the 1st of June, 1847, to the importance of this question in its bearing on Irish distress. He moved an Address to the Queen praying her to take into consideration the means by which colonisation might be made subsidiary to other measures for the benefit of Ireland. He urged that the Government should endeavour to direct the surplus or redundant labouring population of Ireland to Canada and Natal, and suggested the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry. The plan was opposed by Mr. Vernon Smith as vague, and as likely to prove too costly for an embarrassed country like Ireland; and by Lord John Russell, who thought that the Colonies would be alienated if the mother country led them to suspect she was exporting to them the dregs of her population. Still, on the general principle that it was well for a weak Government to be conciliatory, Lord John Russell permitted Lord Lincoln to carry his Address, but only on the understanding that it was not to lead to any practical result.

Emigration, however, was a painful remedy for famine in Ireland, because the Celt regards exile with horror. Nor was the emigrant in those days treated very much better in his journey over the Atlantic, than the slave during the time when tales of the “middle passage” thrilled the nerves of English philanthropists. The overcrowding in the ships was scandalous, most of them carrying double their complement of passengers, utterly regardless of the law. Twelve times as many died on the voyage, as perished in ordinary circumstances. In quarantine the death rate rose from 1·75 to 40 per 1,000. Three thousand emigrants are said to have perished in Montreal in half a year. The emigrants were weaklings, ill-fitted for the rough life of a colony, and, when they landed with the symptoms of famine fever, they were shunned like lepers, save when they found a refuge in a hospital. “There is no subject,” says the late Sir Charles Trevelyan, “of which a merely one-sided view is more commonly taken than that of emigration. The evils arising from the

crowded state of the population, and the facility with which large numbers of persons may be transferred to other countries, are naturally uppermost in the minds of landlords and ratepayers; but her Majesty’s Government, to which the well-being of the British population in every quarter of the globe is confided, must have an equal regard to the interests of the emigrant and of the colonial community of which he may become a member. It is a great mistake to suppose that even Canada and the United States have an unlimited capacity of absorbing a new population. The labour market in the settled district is always so nearly full, that a small addition to the persons in search of employment makes a sensible difference; while the clearing of land requires the possession of resources and a power of sustained exertion not ordinarily belonging to the newly-arrived Irish emigrant. In this, as well as in the other operations by which society is formed and sustained, there is a natural process which cannot with impunity be departed from. A movement is continually going on towards the backwoods on the part of the young and enterprising portion of the settled population and of such of the fewer emigrants as have acquired means and experience, and the room thus made is occupied by persons recently arrived from Europe who have only their labour to depend on. The conquest of the wilderness requires more than the ordinary share of energy and perseverance, and every attempt that has yet been made to turn paupers into backwoodsmen has ended in signal failure. As long as they were rationed they held together in a feeble, helpless state, and when the issue of the rations ceased they generally returned to the settled parts of the country.”[72]

These considerations were rather lost sight of in this curious discussion which, with the best of motives, Lord Lincoln initiated. The feeling of the landed class as reflected in the debate was that, whenever too many people were reared on their estates, the Government should in some way or other help them to get rid of their surplus labour. In Ireland for years a redundant population had been encouraged for political purposes by the landlords who owned their votes; and it is curious to observe that those who favoured the growth of that population do not seem to have considered that they, and not the State, should assist them to emigrate. A redundant population in every case is obviously an incident of property in land, and it has to be endured and dealt with like any other drawback of territorial ownership. The landlord who has to pay out of his own pocket the emigration expenses of his surplus labourers, will not be eager to promote emigration to an extent likely to injure his country.

The weakness of the Government was further illustrated by their manner of dealing with the Labour Laws. They did not, like their predecessors in Sir R. Peel’s Ministry, flatly oppose all projects for lessening the hours of factory work. But they refused to make them Ministerial questions, though it must be admitted that Lord John Russell, undismayed by the attitude of the Radical manufacturers, did not flinch from supporting these benevolent measures.

Here it may not be amiss to say that for several years Lord Ashley had fought hard to get what was called the “Ten Hours Bill” carried—the Bill limiting the hours of employment of children and young persons in factories. The Tory Government had opposed and thwarted him. Radical Free Traders like Mr. Bright had been among his fiercest antagonists. Lord Ashley’s courage, however, was undaunted, and he persistently returned year after year to the charge. In 1846, unfortunately, he disappeared from the Parliamentary arena. He approved of Sir Robert Peel’s Free Trade policy, but deemed it his duty to resign his seat, so that his constituents in Dorsetshire, who had elected him as a Protectionist, might express their opinions on his change of front. They rejected him, and thus it came to pass that Mr. John Fielden, Member for Oldham, took charge of the Ten Hours Bill in his stead. Mr. Fielden was hopeful of making progress with the measure because, though Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues had steadily opposed it, the chief of the new Ministry, Lord John Russell, had favoured the project. Then it so happened that a large number of the old Tories who followed Lord George Bentinck were to be counted on as sympathetic allies. The repeal of the Corn Laws they regarded as a blow dealt by the manufacturing class at the landed interest. If they voted now for the Ten Hours Bill, they would in turn be dealing a blow at the manufacturing interest—and, moreover, they would be delivering a vote of vengeance against the Peelites. When on the 26th of January Mr. Fielden obtained leave to bring in a Bill limiting the hours of labour of women and children in factories to ten hours a day, the Government seem to have found it an embarrassing question. They therefore determined to treat it as an “open” one. They appear to have arranged that whilst the Chancellor of the Exchequer—Sir C. Wood—and Mr. Milner Gibson should vote against the Bill, Lord John Russell, Lord Morpeth, and Sir George Grey should vote for it, distinctly saying at the same time that they desired not a ten hours but an eleven hours Bill. It has been usual to represent the beneficent factory legislation with which Lord Ashley’s name is associated as one of the triumphs of Tory policy. It was nothing of the kind. For years the Tory Government, under Peel’s guidance, had resisted the measure, and Lord Ashley’s chief antagonist in those days was Sir James Graham. Lord Ashley was a Peelite himself—but Peel was one of the strongest opponents of a measure the principles of which, however, his father approved. Against the Bill the chief speakers were Mr. Joseph Hume, Mr. Bright, Dr. Bowring, Mr. Mark Phillips, and Mr. Roebuck. For the Bill were Mr. Fielden, Lord John Manners, Mr. Newdegate, Mr. Muntz, Mr. Sharman Crawfurd, and Sir Robert Inglis—an odd mixture of Liberals and Tories. On the 17th of February the second reading was carried by a vote of 195 to 87, and Lord John Russell received the most effusive expressions of gratitude from all parts-of the country, for using his influence as Premier in favour of the Bill. The third reading passed by a majority of 88, and in the Lords the opposition, despite the furious assault which Lord Brougham made on the measure, dwindled down so that the second reading was carried by a vote of 53 to 11.

Yet the Bill was not a model Bill. The Factory Act of 1844 fixed 69 hours a week as the working time for women and children. Mr. Fielden’s Act fixed the hours at 63 from the 1st of July, 1847, and at 58 from the 1st of May, 1848, But it allowed the period in the day when employment was offered to remain as fixed by the Act of 1844. The Act of 1847 was therefore systematically evaded. The ten hours’ work could be exacted between 5.30 a.m. and 8 p.m. Mills were accordingly kept running during the full period of employment, with what the mill-owners pretended to be “relays” of hands, but in such a manner that the inspectors found it impossible to prevent breaches of the law. The competition in business was so keen that an extension of the “shift” and “relay” system was inevitable—and the Act was so badly drawn that when the legality of the system was tested, the Court of Exchequer ruled that it was not forbidden.

The Session of 1847 was dull. Members were worn out by the reaction

from the passionate excitement and the repeated shocks of those Ministerial crises which exhausted Parliament in 1846. One gap in the long line of Irish relief measures we can descry, and even then it was made by an eleemosynary measure giving compensation to West India planters for the loss they were likely to suffer from the abolition of the differential duties on foreign sugar. A Bill to shorten service in the army, and one establishing a new Bishopric at Manchester, were also among the measures passed during the Session. On the 22nd of February the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood—afterwards Lord Halifax—made his financial statement. Wood was a member of the Grey section of the Cabinet, and it was of him in after-years that Mr. Grant Duff once impudently remarked, “Providence, in its inscrutable purposes, had deprived him of clearness of

expression—nay, almost of the gift of articulate speech itself.” The reporters of the old school used to tell merry tales of their difficulties in making sense of his financial speeches, but with some of his colleagues he was popular. He showed courage in fighting the Irish famine, and he did not flinch in the monetary crisis of October which followed it. But his brusquerie of manner and indistinctness of speech made many enemies, especially among deputations who waited on him. He was not, therefore, the fittest person to make heavier demands on the national purse than had been heard of for many years—and yet that was just what he did. But there was one consoling fact on which he dwelt. In spite of distress, the revenue from customs and excise during 1846 had far exceeded Mr. Goulburn’s estimates. It had left Sir C. Wood with a balance of £9,000,000 in hand, and though it showed no signs of falling off, yet a commercial crisis was to be looked for similar to those of 1825 and 1836. Sir C. Wood therefore estimated for a forthcoming revenue of £52,065,000; but then he said he had to provide for an expenditure which, owing to the changes wrought by the introduction of steam power into the navy and the arsenals, must rise to £57,570,000. Still, as £10,000,000 would be wanted as extraordinary expenditure on Irish distress, there was a deficit to be made good. This he proposed to meet by borrowing £8,000,000—the other £2,000,000 consisted of advances to local authorities, and would be repaid—fresh taxation being ill adapted to hard times. His surplus was £489,000, and to it would be added £450,000 he hoped to get from China. The Famine Loan was floated at £3 7s. 6d. per cent., but so eager were the Government to get the money that a discount of 5 per cent. was by a resolution of the House of Commons ordered to be given to those who paid in their contributions before the 18th of June.

During the early part of the Session the Queen’s interest seems to have been chiefly limited to the ceremonial side of affairs, though, of course, foreign policy, which she made a constant study, the affairs of the Duchy of Lancaster, and, in some degree, the measures for relieving famine, engaged her attention. As to ceremonies, her Majesty and Prince Albert were always curious, and keen to trace out the origins of the old customs to which she had to defer. “On Thursday,” writes Lord Campbell in a letter, dated 6th February, 1847, “I went down to Windsor and shook hands with Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, and their Royal Highnesses the Princess Royal and the Princess Alice. By-the-by, there was an amusing scene in the Queen’s closet. I had an audience that her Majesty might prick a Sheriff for the county of Lancaster, which she did in proper style with a bodkin I put into her hand. I then took her pleasure about some Duchy livings and withdrew—forgetting to make her sign the parchment roll. I obtained a second audience, and explained the mistake. While she was signing, Prince Albert said to me, ‘Pray, my Lord, when did this ceremony of pricking begin?’ Campbell: ‘In ancient times, Sir, when sovereigns did not know how to write their names.’ Queen (as she returned me the roll with her signature): ‘But we now show that we have been to school.’”

Her Majesty’s interest in the affairs of the Duchy was abiding. Writing on the 9th of March to his brother, Lord Campbell says:—“I have been to Osborne attending a Council. Had it not been so bitterly cold I should have enjoyed it. I had a private audience of her Majesty; and when my business was over she said, ‘How you were attacked in the House of Lords the other night, Lord Campbell—most abominably.’ I gave a courtier-like answer,” adds this unblushing old political comedian, “without telling her Majesty of the dinner I am to give an Saturday to Lord Stanley and Lord Brougham” (who had attacked him), “for she was excessively angry with them; and she would not understand the levity with which such matters are treated among politicians of opposite parties.”[73] The attack, it may be explained, was due to an indiscreet proposal made by Lord John Russell to appoint new Councillors for the Duchy without a view to Party, who should serve permanently. Lords Lincoln, Hardwicke, Spencer, Portman, and Sir James Graham were named, and the whole project was attacked as a Whig job, designed to conciliate the Peelites, whose precarious alliance was worth purchasing. When the fight was over, Campbell invited all the combatants to dine with the Councillors, old and new; and he gives a most amusing account of the banquet—telling how all these public enemies met on the easiest of convivial terms in private; how Brougham “shook hands with the Premier, and called him John;” and “Stanley said to Sir James Graham, ‘Graham, how are you?’” and how Brougham “related a supposed speech of Sir Charles Wetherell’s, complaining that death is now attended with a fresh terror from Campbell writing the life of a deceased person as soon as the breath was out of his body.” One wonders if the Queen would have wasted much sympathy on Campbell, or much indignation on his enemies, had she known that they “sat at table till near eleven,” and that, as “Lyndhurst was stepping into his carriage, he was overheard to say to Lord Brougham, ‘I wish we had such a Council as this once a month.’”

It is pleasing, however, to record that those who had to deal not only with the hereditary but private revenues of the Sovereign had proved themselves this year able and faithful servants. On that topic Mr. Charles Greville writes in his Journal, on the 8th of March, 1847:—“George Anson told me yesterday that the Queen’s affairs are in such good order, and so well managed, that she will be able to provide for the whole expense of Osborne out of her revenue without difficulty; and that by the time it is finished it will have cost £200,000. He said also that the Prince of Wales, when he came of age, would have not less than £70,000 a year from the Duchy of Cornwall. They have already saved £100,000. The Queen takes for his maintenance whatever she pleases, and the rest, after paying charges, is invested in the Funds or in land, and accumulates for him.”

The death of Lord Bessborough in June left the Viceroyalty of Ireland vacant; and there was some difficulty about selecting his successor. Lord John Russell would have abolished the office and appointed a Secretary of State for Ireland, but for the menaces of the Repealers and Orangemen. The two favourite candidates for the post were the Duke of Bedford, who was afraid to take it, and Lord Clarendon, who was anxious to have it; but who desired to make the world believe that he was making a great sacrifice

in accepting the office. He was ultimately appointed, and for five years ruled Ireland well, with a firm and neutral hand.

The death of O’Connell on the 15th of May, at Genoa, “made little or no sensation here,”[74] says Mr. Greville. He had quarrelled with half his followers, and the younger Repealers had grown sick of his policy of fruitless agitation. But in Dublin, when the news was posted in Conciliation Hall, vast crowds of mournful patriots assembled and silently read the placards. The Catholic chapels tolled their dismal death-knells, and the Corporation met and adjourned for three weeks as a mark of respect for the Liberator’s memory. In the famine-stricken districts the anguish of public sorrow sharpened the pangs of popular distress. His remains were laid in Glasnevin cemetery with imposing funereal pomp and pageantry. Indeed, no funeral in Ireland has ever been more numerously attended, for it was reckoned that at least 50,000 persons marched in the procession of mourners. Few people of high rank and station were there; but the middle and lower classes of the populace

were conspicuous. Even many afflicted persons from the poorest quarters were found struggling at daybreak round the mortuary chapel in Marlborough Street, to catch one glimpse of the remains of a man whom they believed to have been sent on earth with a divine mission, whose ultimate translation to the saints was to them a certainty, and a sight of whose very corpse might perchance work a miracle that would cure their infirmities.

The Cabinet, despite the weakness of its action, the instability of its support, and false reports of dissensions among its Members, had held well together. Even Lords Grey and Palmerston behaved as if they had ever been on terms of fraternal amity. In July, however, Ministers began to feel that they were in office but not in power. Bill after Bill had to be withdrawn. Some of the Peelites, too, whose support was necessary, took umbrage at the effusive compliments which were bandied about between Lord John Russell and Lord George Bentinck; indeed, this feeling was shared by Sir James Graham and by Peel himself. Concessions were made to opponents to an extent that destroyed the prestige of the Ministry, which, though indispensable, was neither popular nor respected. In July, the Cabinet therefore came to the conclusion that it would be well to appeal to the country to return a new House of Commons which might fill them with fresh strength. Ministers had appointed a Committee to feel the pulse of the constituencies, of which Lord Campbell, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was one; and they reported that not a day should be lost in bringing about a Dissolution in the interests of the Party. So eager were they to go to the country at once that “it was even suggested,” says Lord Campbell, “that, to expedite the Election by a day, the Queen should dissolve Parliament in person from the Throne. I found one precedent for this since the Revolution, in Lord Eldon’s time; but I pointed out a better expedient—that the Queen should prorogue, as usual, and that, holding a Council immediately after, she should then sign the Proclamation for the Dissolution and the calling of a new Parliament, the writs going out by the post the same evening. This course was successfully adopted.”

The Dissolution took place on July 23, almost immediately after the prorogation of Parliament. The Whigs, more or less loosely in alliance with the Radicals, formed one party; the Tory Protectionists, under the leadership of Lord George Bentinck and Lord Stanley, formed a second; the Tory Free Traders, under Peel, formed a third. Discord therefore reigned throughout the whole established system of party Government, and the dissensions caused by the Free Trade settlement were aggravated by the religious controversy, as to the possibility of giving State aid to Roman Catholic education and worship. Public suspicion had been roused by a declaration which Lord John Russell had made in the House of Commons as to the expediency of establishing formal diplomatic relations with Rome. It was intensified by the Secretary at War, who included in the Army Estimates votes providing means of worship for Roman Catholic soldiers on foreign service. It was further strengthened by the promised relaxation of the rule, which virtually cut off Roman Catholic schools from all share in the Education Grant. “There was,” says Mr. Evelyn Ashley, “little enthusiasm on either side. The Free Trade Question appeared settled; and, though a more vigorous policy was anticipated from a Russell than from a Melbourne Administration, no great organic changes were expected from it. On the other hand, the remnants of the Conservative Party had nothing to hold out beyond vague professions of attachment to an ancient institution.”[75] The result was the return of 337 Whig and Liberal Free Traders, and 318 Conservatives and Protectionists—the Protectionists numbering about one-half of the Conservative return.

Between the Election and the assembling of Parliament the Government was greatly disturbed by the renewed outbreak of outrages in Ireland, and of the commercial panic which had long been imminent. These two events caused Ministers to summon Parliament on the 18th of November. The panic in spring, which we traced to dearth and high prices of food-stuffs, was eased in Midsummer by the fall in prices. This, however, in its turn, produced the second panic in the autumn, for speculators had bought corn in advance at rates far above those which began to rule the market. Then money became “tight.” On the 5th of August the Bank raised the rate of discount to 5½ per cent., and Funds fell 2 per cent. in a week—from 88⅝ to 86¾. At the end of August failures to the extent of £3,000,000 were announced, and on the 1st of October the Bank of England refused to make any further advances on Stock. At the end of the week consols fell to 80½. On the 19th of October they were sold for money at 78, and for the account at 79, and Exchequer bills fell as low as 30 per cent. discount. Banking-houses of national importance now began to close their doors, and confidence vanished from the commercial world. On the 25th of October the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, in response to piteous appeals from merchants and bankers all over the country, recommended the directors of the Bank of England “to enlarge the amount of their discounts and advances upon approved security,” but that the rate of interest should be 8 per cent., so as “to retain this operation within reasonable limits.” They were promised an indemnity if this course led them to infringe the restrictions of the Bank Act. As the offer of advances at 8 per cent. was not tempting, the Bank never required to break the law, which established a fixed ratio between their gold and their securities, but the announcement that the Bank Act was virtually suspended, restored confidence by restoring hope. Lord Campbell seems to indicate in his Autobiography that Ministers themselves were frightened, “there being an apprehension that the dividends may not be paid, and that the Bank of England may stop, and that there may be a pecuniary crash, public and private.” All through this crisis Sir Robert Peel’s Bank Act was virulently attacked as being one of the causes of the distress. He himself behaved with signal generosity. He recognised the necessity for giving way to popular prejudices at a time of panic, and when the Queen informed him at Windsor that Lord John Russell had decided virtually to suspend the Act, he observed that the step was

justifiable in the circumstances, and that he would support the Bill of Indemnity promised to the Bank. That the attacks on Peel were unfair, seems evident from the fact that the suspension of the Act had no practical, though it had a moral, effect on the Money Market. No indemnity was needed, so that, whatever improvement followed, it could not be due to the banks expanding their issues, or to their system of advancing more generously on securities.

Next came the dismal Irish Question. The Cabinet had, after some controversy, arrived at the conclusion that they must bring in a Coercion Bill for Ireland, although they were fully aware that they exposed themselves to the taunt that they had turned out Sir Robert Peel’s Government for proposing to introduce one. But the case was urgent. That crime had increased to an appalling extent in Ireland is indicated by the fact that Sir Robert

Peel, resisting a very natural temptation to retaliate on his adversaries, supported the Government and asked the House of Commons to pass the Bill. His generosity is enshrined in one phrase of his speech—“The best reparation that can be made to the last Government will be to assist the present Government in passing this law.” The Bill was carried by a majority of 213.

Some of the murders in Ireland at the end of the year were truly of a revolting character. Here is an example. A farmer named St. John, who was done to death near Lisnamrock, in county Tipperary, had a dispute with his younger brother about the possession of a farm. The younger brother seems to have been in the right, and this roused local feeling. On the 16th of December a party of men went at night, and, dragging the elder St. John out of bed, ripped his body open and cut off his head before his wife’s eyes. There was, in fact, an epidemic of crime in the land. Murder was the remedy that was applied to redress all kinds of grievances or wrongs, and everybody went about the ordinary affairs of life armed to the teeth.

What was worse, too, was the hostility of the priesthood to the Government, and one manifestation of it was regarded as particularly offensive by her Majesty. That was the Papal Memorandum condemning the Queen’s Colleges. Although Lord John Russell had actually drafted a Bill legalising the renewal of diplomatic relations with Rome, the Pope and the Roman Catholic clergy made but a sorry recompense for his goodwill. The Sacred Congregation denounced the Queen’s Colleges—“an ungrateful return,” writes Lord Palmerston in a letter to Lord Minto,[76] which “can only be explained on the supposition that it was extorted by intrigue and false representations made at Rome by McHale, and that the Pope acted ignorantly, and without knowing the mischief he was doing.” Lord Clarendon, the Irish Viceroy, thought that good results might follow the visit of a confidential agent from the Vatican to Ireland. But Lord Palmerston, fearing that the Papal emissary would be suborned by Archbishop McHale and the enemies of the Government, objected to such an experiment. In another letter, on the 3rd of December, Lord Palmerston urges Lord Minto to assure the Pope that “in Ireland misconduct is the rule and good conduct the exception in the Catholic priests,” and he points to the murder of Major Mahon, which followed a priestly denunciation at the altar, as an illustration of the manner in which the Irish priesthood were instigating crime. He says he cannot consider it prudent to bring in a Bill for Legalising Diplomatic Intercourse with the Court of Rome at a time when there is in Ireland “a deliberate and extensive conspiracy among the priests and peasantry to kill off and drive away all the proprietors of land.” Public feeling in England, always easily roused, would have swept away the Ministry in a tempest of wrath if such a measure had been introduced at such a moment. On the other hand, it is only fair to the Pope and Cardinal Ferretti to say that they seemed to be hopelessly ignorant of Irish affairs, and that they assured Lord Minto they utterly disapproved of the political activity of the Irish priesthood.

Two other religious disputes, maintained by the zealots, excited the country. One was waged over the admission of the Jews to Parliament. The other gave rise to the famous Hampden controversy, which is so constantly alluded to in the literature and memoirs of the day.

At the General Election one of the members returned for the City of London was Baron Rothschild, a Jew by race and religion. As such he could not take his seat, for he could not take the Oath of Allegiance on the true faith of a Christian. Lord John Russell, his colleague, submitted to the House of Commons a Resolution declaring that it was expedient to remove all civil disabilities affecting the Jews—in other words, the removal of the phrase “on the faith of a Christian” from the Parliamentary Oath. Lord George Bentinck, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Gladstone, supported the Resolution. A Bill founded on it was carried in the Lower House, but rejected in the House of Lords.

On the 20th of December Parliament adjourned.

The Government were decidedly unfortunate during 1847 in their distribution of ecclesiastical patronage. They appointed the Rev. J. P. Lee, Head Master of King Edward’s School, at Birmingham, to the newly-constituted see of Manchester, after he had been publicly charged with drunkenness by a local surgeon, and had never met the accusation. It was inexplicable that Lord John Russell, when informed of the fact, should have refused to cancel or delay the appointment. Between his nomination and his consecration Mr. Lee, however, prosecuted his traducer for libel, and completely and triumphantly vindicated his character.

When, the see of Hereford fell vacant Lord John Russell, as if in sheer defiance of the feelings of Churchmen, appointed Dr. Hampden as the new Bishop. Dr. Hampden had been censured for heresy by the academic authorities of Oxford, and deprived, as Regius Professor of Divinity, of authority to grant as a privilege certificates of attendance at his lectures to students for Holy Orders. To designate him as Bishop was taken as a direct insult by the clergy. Hence the Bishop of London, representing the High Churchmen, and the Bishop of Winchester, representing the Low Churchmen, along with thirteen Bishops, protested against the appointment. The Dean of Hereford. Dr. Merewether, threatened to vote against Dr. Hampden’s election by the Chapter. This threat drew from Lord John Russell a curt reply to the effect that he acknowledged receipt of the letter in which the Dean intimated he would violate the law. Dr. Merewether’s action also drew attention to the empty formality of the congé d’élire, whereby the Crown permits the Dean and Chapter of a Cathedral to elect the nominee recommended by the Crown as Bishop. Should they refuse they incur the pains and penalties of præmunire—deprivation of benefices, confiscation of property, and imprisonment, during the Royal pleasure.

Hampden was a rather dull man, with a ponderous, obscure style,[77] whose offence lay, first, in advocating the admission of Dissenters into the University, and, secondly, in not only attributing, in his Bampton Lectures, the terminology and phraseology of Christian doctrine to the scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, but in further describing that philosophy as “an atmosphere of mist!” He was supposed to be ambiguous on the Atonement, and it had been whispered that Blanco White had “crammed” him for his Bampton Lectures. White was one of the small group of Broad Churchmen at Oriel College, Oxford, whom Newman dreaded, and as he had since become a Socinian, suspicions of Dr. Hampden’s heterodoxy were intensified. The Bishop of Oxford, after joining in the hue and cry against Hampden, declined to send him up for trial, on the ground that there was no valid case against him. There is no doubt, however, that when he discovered the Queen had espoused Dr. Hampden’s cause, Wilberforce’s zeal cooled rapidly. As for Prince Albert, he bombarded Lord John Russell with letters urging him to prosecute Dr. Merewether, who seems to have been far from a disinterested defender of the faith, if it be true, as is asserted, that he memorialised the Queen and Lord Lansdowne to terminate the controversy by appointing him to the see of Hereford in the meantime, and then consoling Dr. Hampden with the promise of the next vacancy! Much importance attached to the opposition which the Bishop of Exeter offered to Hampden. But, according to Mr. Greville, the Bishop of Exeter had, a few years before this strife, called on Hampden at Oxford to express to him the pleasure with which he had read his Bampton Lectures.[78] Archbishop Longley, who told Lord Aberdeen that he would go to the Tower rather than confirm Hampden’s nomination, subsequently begged the Bishop of Oxford to stay proceedings in the interests of the Church.

Lord John Russell, it need hardly be said, obstinately refused to cancel Hampden’s nomination. After the Queen had sanctioned his appointment, to annul it would have virtually transferred to the Universities the supreme authority of the Crown over the Episcopate. Preparations were made to resist the confirmation of Dr. Hampden at Bow Church. The only question admitted to argument there was whether the Court was competent to hear objectors summoned by its own apparitor to state their objections before it. On the 11th of January the Vicar-General of Canterbury, Dr. Burnaby, with Sir John Dodson and Dr. Lushington as assessors, decided against the competence of the Court. An application for a mandamus to compel the Archbishop to hear objectors was refused by the Queen’s Bench—the judges being equally divided. On the 15th, in the House of Lords, Lord Denman defended the decision, and declared that “it was not to be supposed for a moment that the Crown would nominate to the high position of a Bishop an unfit person; and that the law would certainly be in a strange state if it should require an archbishop, before he proceeded to confirm or consecrate a party nominated by the Crown, to call upon all the world to throw scandal upon the nominee.” He further said that “the form in the proclamation was a mere form which was never used; that, if used, the prerogative of the Crown would be most seriously interfered with;” and he warned the House against “the fatal consequences of allowing objections to be made to the nominees of the Crown,” for “by checking every attempt at such interference the Church was protected from great danger and mischief.”

CHAPTER XVII.

THE COURT AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS.