themselves before the gates. They bore with them a despatch from General Elphinstone, ordering Sir Robert Sale to evacuate the country without delay. Sale was placed in a very difficult position; for Elphinstone was his superior officer, and yet to obey his orders, as by strict military duty he was bound to do, might entail the destruction of his whole force. He accordingly summoned a council of war, at which it was formally resolved that to obey such an order would be imprudent. The position, therefore, was held with splendid gallantry. The ruined fortifications had already been reconstructed, and every effort was now made to supply the town with food and fuel. It was known that an army under General Pollock was hastening to the relief of the garrison; but some time must elapse ere it could arrive, and in the meanwhile the situation was fraught with peril. Akbar Khan, with a numerous army, had appeared before the walls; but Sale determined to hold out to the last. On the 19th of January, an earthquake shook the defences of the town into ruins; and had

Akbar immediately assaulted the place, it is almost certain that he would have taken it. Probably, the unexpected convulsion inspired him with awe, and, as the English at once set to work to repair the damage that had been done, they were soon in a position to resist attack. In the early part of April, food and ammunition began to fail, and the spirited commander determined on active operations. On the 7th of the month the Afghans were attacked and driven off. With the remnant of his disheartened army, Akbar fled towards Cabul, leaving in our hands a vast amount of stores. Pollock was with difficulty forcing his way through the Khyber Pass; on the 16th of April he arrived at Jelalabad; at the same time, General Nott and Major (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson were holding Candahar; but Colonel Palmer, after a gallant defence, was forced to surrender Ghizni to the Afghans. In the same month which witnessed the

relief of Jelalabad, Shah Soojah was assassinated by the adherents of his elder brother—a man, like himself, far advanced in years. The position of Nott at Candahar was precarious, but, when at length relieved, he was able to join Sale and Pollock in an advance on Cabul, where they resolved to avenge the injuries of their countrymen. The chief command was in the hands of Nott, who showed himself a thoroughly capable officer. His first proceeding was to retake Ghizni, and on the 17th of September all three divisions effected their junction at Cabul. It is lamentable to be obliged to add that the city was pillaged by our infuriated soldiers, though perhaps not with the sanction of their commanders, and that needless destruction and slaughter marked the path of the avenging army.

The English prisoners, including the women and children, had during their captivity been frequently moved about from place to place, often in the most terrible extremities of weather, and under circumstances of great hardship; but when the British army arrived at Cabul, they were on their way back to that city. General Elphinstone had died on the 23rd of April; the other members of the party were alive and well. On the 12th of October, the invaders left Cabul, and again, as on the occasion of their advance, passed through defiles still rendered terrible by the whitening bones of their comrades. The greater part of Jelalabad was destroyed, together with the fortifications; Ali Musjid, in the Khyber Pass, was blown into the air; and Afghanistan was entirely evacuated by our troops before the close of 1842. The policy of Lord Auckland was now completely reversed by his successor, Lord Ellenborough, whose term of office had commenced on the 28th of February. In announcing the withdrawal of the British forces from Afghanistan (which he did in a proclamation dated from Simla on the 1st of October), Lord Ellenborough observed that “to force a sovereign upon a reluctant people would be as inconsistent with the policy as it is with the principles of the British Government.” That, no doubt, was the only just position to assume; but it should have been assumed three or four years earlier, and England would then have been spared one of the greatest and most humiliating disasters in the long course of her history. Our interposition had entailed infinite misery on ourselves and on the Afghans, and it had been absolutely unproductive of any good whatever. The country which we had taken under our protection, and from which we had been ignominiously expelled, was now in a state of anarchy, and, as that anarchy was of our own creation, it behoved us to do something towards the restoration of order. Dost Mahomed was set at liberty by the Anglo-Indian Government; and he whom we had refused to recognise in 1838, whom we had driven forth in 1839, and whom we received as a prisoner in 1840, was in 1843 restored to the throne which he seems to have had a legitimate claim to fill. His reign was thus divided into two parts, and the division is marked by a wide river of human blood.

After a tragedy, it was formerly the custom to play a farce. One might almost suppose that the principle involved in this theatrical usage had influenced the mind of Lord Ellenborough in a certain exploit which he performed, in a very demonstrative spirit, shortly after the conclusion of the Afghan war. When Sultan Mahmoud took the Hindoo city of Somnauth, in 1025, he carried away with him the gates of the vast temple dedicated to the god Soma, the idols of which he had shattered and cast down. These trophies were taken to the Imperial city of Ghizni, from which Mahmoud ruled his wide possessions; and there they had remained, or something like them had been preserved, during a period of more than eight hundred years. Lord Ellenborough was a man of great ability, but of somewhat grandiose and theatrical tastes, even in the management of practical affairs. He therefore determined to bring back the so-called Gates of Somnauth to the place whence they had been originally removed. The act would have been foolish enough, even had the genuineness of the gates been entirely beyond dispute, which was very far from the case. The Mohammedans could not but have felt insulted by the restoration of anything connected with a gross idolatry, formerly destroyed by one of the most illustrious of Moslem sovereigns; while the Hindoos were simply reminded of their ancient disgrace and humiliation. These considerations, however, were absent from the mind of Lord Ellenborough, or disregarded by him; and on the 16th of November, 1842, he issued a sonorous proclamation to all the princes, chiefs, and people of India. “My brothers and my friends,” he said, “our victorious army bears the gates of the Temple of Somnauth in triumph from Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmoud looks upon the ruins of Ghizni. The insult of eight hundred years is at last avenged. The gates of the Temple of Somnauth, so long the memorial of your humiliation, are become the proudest record of your national glory,—the proof of your superiority in arms over the nations beyond the Indus. To you, princes and chiefs of Sirhind, of Rajwarra, of Malwa and Guzerat, I shall commit this glorious trophy of successful war. You will yourselves, with all honour, transmit the gates of sandal-wood through your respective territories to the restored Temple of Somnauth.” On the 14th of January, 1843, the gates were carried into Delhi in state, under a canopy of crimson and gold; but the proceedings afterwards created great annoyance in England, and were made the subject of animated Parliamentary debates.

Again we must revert to tragedy, for it is impossible to pass over, in the events of this period, some terrible circumstances which occurred in Bokhara, and of which two of our own countrymen were the victims. Colonel Stoddart had been sent a few years previously to the Persian camp before Herat, to insist that Persia must abandon the siege of that important position. Thence he proceeded on some official business to Bokhara, where, after a time, the Ameer became suspicious of his designs, and threw him into prison. At a later date, Captain Arthur Conolly was sent into the same country, but, after making a vain attempt to procure the liberation of Stoddart, was himself confined in a subterranean dungeon, where he and his fellow-sufferer were kept in complete darkness, without being allowed to change their clothes, or to wash themselves, and with a very insufficient supply of food, which was let down to them once in four or five days. The Ameer suspected the two strangers of being spies in the employment of his enemies, and their case was considerably prejudiced by the refusal of the Indian and Home Governments to recognise the captives as official agents. Conolly had in the first instance gone to Khokand, where he was engaged in endeavouring to effect the release of slaves; but Lord Ellenborough declared that he had no knowledge of his mission to that country having been authorised, and he added that that unfortunate officer had been expressly instructed by the President of the Board of Control not to go to Khokand, so that, it was remarked, he in all probability owed his misfortunes to the direct transgression of those orders. How far these statements are to be accepted as absolute truth, appears somewhat doubtful; but at any rate the adoption of such a tone was ill calculated to obtain the release of the prisoners from a ferocious tyrant like the Ameer of Bokhara. Appeals, it is true, were made to his good feelings; but unfortunately he did not possess any, and the condition of the prisoners became progressively worse. Under these circumstances, Dr. Wolff, a German Jew who had been converted to Christianity, courageously undertook an expedition to Bokhara, in the hope of delivering the prisoners. On arriving in that country, however, he heard they had already been put to death. The

double execution seems to have been in the summer of 1843, some time before Dr. Wolff even set out on his expedition. The heroic missionary was himself imprisoned for a considerable time, but at length obtained his release, and came to England in 1845, when he was enthusiastically received by all who had watched his fortunes with mingled admiration and alarm.

While Afghanistan was distracted by a vengeful war, the general state of England continued even worse than in the earlier part of the year. Parliament was prorogued on the 12th of August, 1842, by the Queen in person, and in the Speech from the Throne her Majesty expressed a hope that the members of the two Houses “would do their utmost to encourage, by example and active exertions, that spirit of order and submission to the law without which there

can be no enjoyment of the fruits of peaceful industry, and no advance in the career of social improvement.” Sedition was indeed becoming more ripe every day. In the manufacturing towns, mills were violently entered by disorderly mobs, their machinery was destroyed, and those who were willing to work were compelled to abandon their labours. Manchester was in so disturbed a state that a regiment of the Guards was despatched thither to overawe the malcontents; and in many of the northern towns collisions, attended by bloodshed and loss of life, occurred from time to time. The demand of the workpeople was for increase of wages; but political ideas also were mixed up with the purely social question. The Chartists joined the discontented artisans, and for a while the Government was seriously alarmed. But the arrest of the leaders struck terror into the rest, and, as the autumn advanced, the worst of the danger was at an end. In the west of Scotland, however, disturbances continued for some time longer; yet it was at this period that the Queen and Prince Albert paid their first visit to the Northern Kingdom.

It had been intended by the Royal couple to visit Belgium in the autumn of 1842, to meet there some members of the family of Louis Philippe. This design, however, was frustrated by the unhappy death of the Duke of Orleans, who was killed by an accident on the 13th of July. The Duke was the favourite brother of the Queen of the Belgians, and the sad event threw both Courts into the deepest mourning. Her Majesty and Prince Albert were profoundly afflicted by the casualty, and, being unable to visit Belgium, resolved to turn their faces towards Scotland. Notwithstanding the turbulence of the Scottish working classes in the manufacturing cities, the reception given to the Queen and her husband was of the most enthusiastic character, and the journey of 1842 became a precedent for many later years. The Royal yacht was accompanied by a squadron of nine vessels, in addition to which were the Trinity House steamer and a packet. The voyage was slow and tedious, and her Majesty suffered a good deal from the roughness of the sea. She was much struck by the first appearance of the Scottish coast, which she describes as “dark, rocky, bold, and wild.” At half-past six on the evening of August 31st, they passed St. Abb’s Head, and her Majesty records that “numbers of fishing boats (in one of which was a piper playing), and steamers full of people, came out to meet us, and on board of one large steamer they danced a reel to a band. It was a beautiful evening, calm, with a fine sunset, and the air so pure.”[14] As the Royal yacht proceeded up the Firth of Forth under the gathering darkness, the neighbouring heights were seen to be lighted with beacon-fires, to which the yacht responded by sending up rockets and burning blue lights. The Royal party landed at Leith on the 1st of September, and drove in a barouche to Edinburgh, with which both the Queen and Prince Albert were greatly pleased. The various historical monuments and buildings in the Scottish capital, and the objects of interest in the neighbourhood, proved sources of great delight to the distinguished visitors; and Prince Albert, writing to the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha on the 18th of September, shortly after the return to Windsor, says:—“Scotland has made a most favourable impression upon us both. The country is full of beauty, of a severe and grand character; perfect for sport, and the air remarkably pure and light in comparison with what we have here. The people are more natural, and marked by that honesty and sympathy which always distinguish the inhabitants of mountainous countries who live away from towns. There is, moreover, no country where historical traditions are preserved with such fidelity, or to the same extent.” Although the stay of the Royal visitors was not very long, they entered the Highlands, and at every point were received with the warmth which Scotsmen are not slow to exhibit when their national pride is delicately touched.

When the Queen first entered Edinburgh, there had been a slight mistake, which occasioned some inconvenience. It was expected that her Majesty would be received by the Lord Provost and magistrates of the city; but, owing to a misconception as to the hour of landing, they were not there. To make up for the disappointment thus occasioned, the Queen re-entered the city on the 3rd of September, when she was received in state by the authorities. The route, which was crowded with sight-seers, was from Holyrood, up the Canongate and High Street, to the Castle, and then by the Earthen Mound and Princes Street to Dalmeny Park, the seat of the Earl of Rosebery. On the same day, the foundation-stone of Victoria Hall, designed for the use of the General Assembly of the Kirk, was laid in honour of her Majesty’s visit; and on later days the seats of some of the Scottish nobility were visited by the Royal party, when a great deal was seen of the Highland clans and their feudal usages. The Queen sailed from Granton Pier on the 15th of September, and a letter was addressed to the Lord Advocate by the Earl of Aberdeen, in which the latter was instructed to say:—“The Queen will leave Scotland with a feeling of regret that her visit on the present occasion could not be farther prolonged. Her Majesty fully expected to witness the loyalty and attachment of her Scottish subjects; but the devotion and enthusiasm evinced in every quarter, and by all ranks, have produced an impression on the mind of her Majesty which can never be effaced.” The journey was in many respects a memorable one; and shortly after the return of her Majesty and the Prince, they received intelligence of the fall of Ghizni and Cabul, of the rescue of the prisoners in Afghanistan, and of the conclusion of peace with China. The news reached them on the 23rd of November at Walmer Castle, which had been placed at their disposal by the Duke of Wellington. It was the desire of the Queen that a Chinese and also an Afghan medal should be struck, and distributed throughout the armies. Lord Ellenborough however, had already, though without due authority, issued medals to the Indian army, and all that her Majesty could now do was to confer honours on the combatants in China.

The interest of Prince Albert in English politics continued to increase with every year, and the Queen leant proportionately on his judgment for direction in affairs of State. The Prince never obtruded his advice, yet it was none the less a subtle influence, pervading the mind of his consort, and operating for good in many ways. The Ministry of Sir Robert Peel was even more inclined than that of Lord Melbourne to admit this influence; and as early as 1842 suggestions were made that, in the event of the Duke of Wellington’s death, the office of Commander-in-Chief should be conferred upon the Prince. Baron Stockmar, whose judgment was frequently appealed to on such matters, both by the Royal Family and the Government, was consulted on this subject; but the project met with his entire disapproval. It was one of many instances showing the good sense possessed by that devoted friend of the Prince and of her Majesty. The occupation of such a post by a foreigner would not unreasonably have offended the susceptibilities of the English nation. The Prince himself saw the wisdom of the Baron’s advice, though it would seem that there was occasionally a little sensitiveness in his own mind as to the light in which he was regarded by Englishmen generally. His secretary, Mr. Anson, has recorded that one day, about this period, the Prince, in reading Hallam’s “Constitutional History,” copied out and sent to him a passage concerning William III., which runs:—“The demeanour of William, always cold, and sometimes harsh, his foreign origin (a sort of crime in English eyes), etc., conspired to keep alive this disaffection.” In talking over this matter with the Prince, Mr. Anson observed that a laudable and natural jealousy of foreigners prevailed in the minds of Englishmen, but that he did not think any such feeling existed towards the Prince himself. His Royal Highness fully admitted this view, and acknowledged the kindness with which he had been received in England. Yet it is difficult to understand why he should have made so pointed an extract, unless he had thought that it contained, by reflection, some kind of reference to his own case.

In one respect especially, the example of Prince Albert was of the greatest value to the whole nation. He maintained a high character for honour and purity in the Court, and thence, by a species of moral contagion of the better kind, throughout the circles with which he was immediately connected. From the very commencement of his career in England, he determined, not merely that his actions should be free from reproach, but that his whole conduct should be so strictly governed as to render reproach impossible. This noble resolve has been well described by General Grey, who, in his interesting work on the early life of the Prince, writes:—“He imposed a degree of restraint and self-denial upon his own movements which could not but have been irksome, had he not been sustained by a sense of the advantage which the Throne would derive from it. He denied himself the pleasure—which, to one so fond as he was of personally watching and inspecting every improvement that was in progress, would have been very great—of walking at will about the town. Wherever he went, whether in a carriage or on horseback, he was accompanied by his equerry. He paid no visits in general society. His visits were to the studio of the artist, to museums of art or science, to institutions for good and benevolent purposes. Wherever a visit from him, or his presence, could tend to advance the real good of the people, there his horses might be seen waiting; never at the door of mere

fashion.”[15] To this testimony may be added that of her Majesty, who has recorded that he would frequently return to luncheon at a great pace, and would always come through the Queen’s dressing-room, where she generally was at that time, with that bright, loving smile with which he ever greeted her; telling where he had been—what new buildings he had seen—what studios, &c., he had visited. Riding for mere riding’s sake he disliked, and said, “It bores me so!”

By this date his time was fully occupied, for he had undertaken many duties, and was obliged to see many people. In the autumn of 1842 he undertook some of the duties of the Privy Purse, which until then had been discharged by the Baroness Lehzen; and it was about this time that he began to give serious attention to that reorganisation of the Royal Household which has already been described. The demands upon him had indeed become so incessant that he was often obliged to sacrifice his hasty rides. In the December of the same year her Majesty writes to Baron Stockmar to the effect that measures should be taken “to prevent his being besieged in London by so many unnecessary people. His health is so invaluable, not only to me (to whom he is more than all-in-all), but to this whole country, that we must do our duty, and manage that he is not so overwhelmed with people.” The Prince was in fact a working man in the truest sense of the word. His life was one of almost incessant toil, and the pleasures with which he lightened and relieved it were those of an intellectual inquirer, who could be satisfied with nothing that was frivolous or base.

In the existing distress at this period of our history, much attention was given to colonisation. On the 28th of April, a meeting was held in London under the Presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with a view to raising funds for sending out Bishops to our distant possessions, and a large sum of money was obtained for that purpose. On the same day the preliminary expedition of the second colony to New Zealand sailed under the command of Captain Wakefield, and the colony itself was to be formed on the principle laid down by Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, which provided that the land-produce fund should be applied to the purpose of obtaining labour. Scarcely anything was known of New Zealand until 1769-70, when it was circumnavigated by Captain Cook, and found to be insular, and not continental, as had been supposed. Very little was done in the way of colonisation until 1839, when a New Zealand Company was established, and the town of Wellington was founded. On the 13th of February, 1841, a dinner was given to Lord John Russell, then Colonial Secretary, to celebrate the foundation of England’s most recent colony; and in subsequent years the settlement made excellent progress, though often exposed to attack from the Maories. In 1842 a law received the Royal Assent conferring a representative Government on New South Wales; and, from this time forward, the colonies of Great Britain wisely received from the Home Administration and Legislature a greater amount of attention than had been previously bestowed.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR ROBERT PEEL.

During the first few years of her reign the Queen had not the benefit (such as it is) of those poetical eulogiums which are reasonably to be expected by a court which maintains a Poet Laureate. Although Southey, the then holder of the office, did not die until 1843, his mental state had for some years been such as to render all intellectual work impossible. In this interregnum of Parnassus, Leigh Hunt—who, a generation earlier, had been imprisoned for libelling the Prince Regent, but who was converted to courtliness by the liberal development of modern times—addressed some verses to the Queen, in the earliest of which, with the quaint familiarity of his genius, he commends her Majesty for possessing “the ripe Guelph cheek, and good, straight Coburg brow,” which were held to be significant of “pleasure and reason.” The poet afterwards alludes to the recent birth of the Princess Royal in lines of touching beauty. Still speaking of the Queen herself, he writes:—

Another poem, more particularly addressed to the Princess Royal, “Three Visions occasioned by the Birth and Christening of the Prince of Wales,” and some “Lines on the Birth of the Princess Alice” (which occurred on the 25th of April, 1843), appeared in due succession. But the poetical interregnum came to an end in the spring of 1843, when, owing to the death of Southey, Wordsworth succeeded to the post; and the volunteer lyrist was heard no more on such topics. His few courtly poems are singularly pervaded by that profound faith in the speedy coming of a kind of golden age of peace, wisdom, health, gentleness, and universal prosperity, which characterised the earlier years of the present century, and especially the mind of Leigh Hunt, but which, in the disappointments and gathering melancholy of the present day, wears an aspect at once mournful and tender. The conclusion of the poem to the Princess Alice is worth quoting, because of the sad failure of its aspiration, combined with its remarkable truthfulness in other respects. Still harping on that wondrous age of human perfection which seems as far off as ever, the poet exclaims:—

Shortly after the birth of the Princess Alice the Queen wrote to the King of the Belgians:—“Albert has been, as usual, all kindness and goodness. Our little baby is to be called Alice, an old English name, and the other names are to be Maud (another old English name, and the same as Matilda), and Mary, as she was born on Aunt Gloucester’s birthday. The sponsors are to be the King of Hanover, Ernestus Primus (now the Duke of Coburg), poor Princess Sophia Matilda, and Feodore; and the christening [is] to be on the 2nd of June.” The ceremony went off very well; but the King of Hanover arrived too late to be present. In after years the Princess Alice became the wife of the Grand Duke of Hesse, and was well known for her intelligent benevolence and charity. She died on the 14th of December, 1878.

Unfettered by indirect influences, the Government of Sir Robert Peel was

now acquiring the confidence of the country by the masterly way in which its chief handled the great questions of the hour. One of the first things to be dealt with was the financial deficit left by the Whigs, which had reached the alarming total of more than ten millions for the previous six years. This was met by the creation of an Income Tax of sevenpence in the pound; and in the memorable statement which Sir Robert Peel made to the House of Commons on the 11th of March, 1842, a confident expectation was held out that the proceeds of such an impost would not merely fill up the deficit, but yield a surplus such as would enable the Ministry to reduce the taxes on commodities to an immense extent. All incomes below £150 were to be exempt from the new, or rather the revived, tax; but no distinction was made between the precarious income resulting from trades, professions, and employments, and that derived from the much more assured source of landed and other property. This was regarded by the professional and mercantile classes as an injustice; but though the tax was not popular, most persons were compelled to admit that they saw no other way out of the difficulty. Sir Robert Peel argued that the maximum of indirect taxation had been reached, and that to accumulate further duties on the necessaries and luxuries of life would be productive of the greatest injury to trade, while to reduce them would operate as a stimulus to manufactures and to commerce. If, then, indirect taxation was shut out by the very circumstances of the case, a tax on income was all that remained. Such an impost, amounting to no less than ten per cent. on the income of the country, was cheerfully borne during the war with Bonaparte; yet people thought it hard that, with no war at all, they were to be subjected to the same vexatious demand, though at the much lower rate of something less than three per cent. It was understood at the time that the tax was not to last beyond three, or at the most five, years; but in fact it has never been taken off to this day, though varying in amount from time to time. We must never forget, however, that its existence, unpleasant and objectionable as it is in some respects, has enabled successive Governments to remove many millions of taxation, which hampered trade, and seriously enhanced the price of necessaries. In the year now passing under notice (1842), Sir Robert Peel reduced the Customs duties on 750 out of 1,200 articles, and entirely abolished the duties on some minor foreign commodities. The reduction of indirect taxation in the ensuing three years was about £12,000,000.

While thus opening a new and in many ways better prospect to the country, the Premier still clung to Protectionist measures with regard to foreign corn. On the 9th of February—a month before the introduction of the new Tariff—he brought forward his Sliding Scale, by which the duties on foreign wheat, oats, and barley, rose or fell according to the cheapness or dearness of what was grown at home. The arrangement gave satisfaction to no one. Mr. Cobden and his followers would accept nothing but absolute freedom of trade; the landed proprietors were content with nothing short of absolute Protection; and between these two extremes were the Whigs, who preferred—for the present, at least—the low fixed duty which they had proposed the year before. Nevertheless, Peel carried his Sliding Scale, for he had a good party vote at his back. The members of the Anti-Corn-Law League, however, had the greatest cause for rejoicing, for it was evident that matters were moving in the direction of Free Trade. People began to talk of the Corn Laws as doomed, and even Sir Robert Peel, in his speech of March 11th, when introducing his Tariff proposals, observed:—“I believe that on the general principle of Free Trade there is now no great difference of opinion, and that all agree in the general rule that we should purchase in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest.” He still held back from applying this rule to corn; but no one could doubt how his mind was tending, and some four years later he began that beneficent course of Free Trade legislation which Liberal Governments afterwards perfected. The Leaguers acquired fresh spirit from the prospect of approaching triumph, and renewed meetings were held, both in London and the provinces.

In the early part of 1843 a very painful incident occurred, which excited the liveliest sympathy of the Queen and Prince Albert, and which for a time seemed to place the life of Sir Robert Peel in jeopardy. On the 20th of January, a man named Daniel McNaughten shot Mr. Edward Drummond, the private secretary of the Premier, as he was passing along Whitehall between the Admiralty and the Horse Guards. The unfortunate gentleman expired on the 25th of the same month, and some were found to maintain that the fatal issue was due more to the bleeding ordered by his medical attendants than to the effects of the pistol-shot. However this may have been, it is certain that the practice of phlebotomy decreased shortly after this melancholy event, and has never since regained the position it once held in medical practice. McNaughten, on being seized, and conveyed to the nearest police-station, declared that the Tories had been persecuting him for many years, and that that was his justification for committing the act. From this expression, and some others to which he gave utterance, it was inferred that his intention was to shoot Sir Robert Peel, and that he mistook Mr. Drummond for the First Minister, to whom the secretary seems to have borne some slight resemblance. The public mind was much excited by what appeared to be a deliberate attempt to make the head of the Government personally responsible for a supposed, and doubtless an imaginary, wrong. Taken in conjunction with the recent attacks upon the Queen, the crime was thought by many to reveal a widespread conspiracy against the deepest principles of social order, and the alarm in Court circles, and amongst the members of the Administration, was naturally very great. Of course there was exaggeration in this feeling; matters were not really so bad as they appeared. But for some time it was considered necessary that Sir Robert Peel should be guarded by policemen in plain clothes, and measures were taken to protect the Court. Alluding to the assassination in a letter to King Leopold, dated January 31st, the Queen observes:—“Poor Drummond is universally regretted. Indeed, I seldom remember so strong an interest (beginning with ourselves) being taken in, and so much feeling so generally shown towards, a private individual. People can hardly think of anything else. I trust it will have the beneficial effect of making people feel the difference between complete madness, which deprives a man of all sense, and madness which does not prevent a man from knowing right from wrong.” This distinction does not seem to have been present to the minds of the jury before whom McNaughten was tried early in March. They returned a verdict that the prisoner was “Not guilty, on the ground of insanity;” and he was ordered to be kept in confinement during her Majesty’s pleasure. The public, however, were greatly

discontented with this finding; and the general question, as to what was to be considered the standard of irresponsible mania, was submitted to the whole of the Judges, who were desired to answer the question, “If a person under an insane delusion as to existing facts commits an offence in consequence thereof, is he thereby excused?” The answer was given on the 19th of July, 1843,

when an unanimous opinion was pronounced, that he was equally liable with the person of sane mind.

Lady Peel was made very ill by the terrible event of January; and the habitual equanimity of Sir Robert himself underwent some disturbance. This was seen on the 16th of February, during the debate on Lord Howick’s motion for a Committee of the whole House to consider the reference in the Queen’s Speech at the opening of Parliament (February 2nd) to the long-continued depression of manufacturing industry. In the course of the discussion, Mr. Cobden said that he held Sir Robert Peel personally responsible for the existing lamentable and dangerous state of affairs. The words were not well chosen; but the Premier, who was out of health at the time, and suffering from anxiety and sorrow, passionately leapt to the conclusion that Mr. Cobden was uttering a thinly-veiled incentive to his assassination. The distinguished Free Trader denied the imputation, received a direct contradiction from his adversary, and ultimately explained, in the midst of great confusion, that what he meant was that the right honourable Baronet was responsible by virtue of his office. The time was one of abnormal excitement, and great allowance must be made both for Peel and Cobden, but especially for the former. Only a few weeks later, Mr. Goulburn, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, applied at Bow Street Police Office for a warrant to arrest a retired officer of the navy, who had threatened to shoot him.

The unsettled condition of the country was shown by some disturbances which occurred about this time in South Wales. The small farmers in that portion of the Principality complained much of the heavy road-taxes which had been recently imposed. The tolls were often so onerous as to absorb the profit arising from the commodities which these humble people took to market. A number of gates had been set up, which were generally believed to be beyond the provisions of the law; and as these were destroyed with impunity, many people resolved to make a crusade against all toll-gates, wheresoever they might be found. In a wild and thinly-peopled country like Wales, authority is necessarily weak; and the conspirators against the gates were able to carry out their projects with less interference than would have been encountered in many other parts of the island. But it was considered advisable that these operations should take place after dark, and the winter of 1842-3 was rendered memorable by a series of successful attacks upon the toll-bars, attended by circumstances which were at once picturesque and alarming. The leader of the movement called himself “Rebecca,” from a strange misapplication of a passage in Genesis, and dressed himself in women’s clothes. Several of his followers were similarly disguised, and those who preserved their proper character as men wore masks over their faces. In the middle of the night the toll-keepers were aroused by a disorderly mob, armed with guns, and bearing torches, saws, and hatchets. Not only were the gates cut down and thrown on the adjacent land, but the toll-houses also were destroyed, and the occupants obliged to finish their night’s rest, if they could finish it at all, in the open field, or on the bleak hill-side. So general was the support given to these rioters that the police and soldiery were frequently baffled in their endeavours to come up with them. But at first no personal outrages were committed. Unfortunately, however, a much worse spirit afterwards set in. Some Chartist emissaries were sent into South Wales; political ideas, having reference to the abolition of tithes, of Church rates, and of the existing Poor Law, were mixed up with the original objects of the association; and in the autumn of 1843 incendiarism and murder marked the progress of this disorderly band. At the same period, however, the gang were severely handled by the military; and when some exemplary punishments had been passed upon the principal rioters, a more lawful state of mind began to set in. The Government, on the other hand, showed a disposition to leniency, and in the following year an amended Turnpike Act for South Wales removed the grievances which had been the original excuse for the outbreak.

The greatest sufferers are usually silent; it is others who discover their miseries, bring them into the light of day, and procure their amendment. Such was the case with the workers in mines and collieries, an inquiry into whose state was conducted by a Commission, whose report was published in the early part of 1842. It appeared from this report that, in some of the coal-mines, women and girls were employed as beasts of burden. By means of a chain passing between the legs, and connected with a belt strapped round their waists, they were compelled to drag to and fro, on hands and knees, and often for fourteen or sixteen hours a day, trucks heavily laden with coal, through passages too low to permit of these persons going upright. They were nearly naked, their clothing consisting of nothing more than a pair of trousers made of sacking. Their bodies were encrusted with the grime of the coal-dust, and many were completely unsexed, and presented chests that were as flat as those of men. By far the greater part of their lives was passed underground, in the black and cavernous recesses of the mine; and the morality of these unhappy creatures was equal to their physical degradation. Children were also employed, and treated with even greater brutality. Overworked and beaten by their cruel taskmasters, these children grew up stunted and diseased, and it was evident that nothing but widespread ruin, both of body and soul, could result from a system so monstrously opposed to all the laws of nature. The statesman who procured the Commission of Inquiry was Lord Ashley, afterwards still more famous as Earl of Shaftesbury; and it was he who subsequently introduced and carried the Mines and Collieries Act, by which women and girls were forbidden to be employed in any form of mining or colliery labour, and the employment of boys was not to be permitted under the age of ten years. Moreover, the term of apprenticeship was limited, and the Secretary of State was empowered to appoint Inspectors of Mines and Collieries, that the provisions of the Bill should not be evaded by those interested in defeating them. The Act was passed in 1842, but did not come into operation until 1843. Its effect was unquestionably good; yet it was found difficult to restrain many women from continuing the work to which they had been accustomed, and which perhaps they could not readily exchange for anything better. The Mines and Collieries Act was a measure in which we may be certain that the Queen, as a woman and a mother, took the deepest interest, and it is equally beyond question that the benevolent and clear-seeing mind of Prince Albert was also enlisted on behalf of sufferers of so peculiar and helpless an order.

It was at this time that great attention began to be paid to social as apart from political questions. Lord Ashley devoted a good deal of pains to effecting a limitation of the daily labour of women and young persons in factories. He ultimately obtained from the Government, in 1844, a Factories Act which threw some protection around children who had previously been employed to an extent, and for a number of successive hours, terribly injurious to their physical and moral health. It was the desire of Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, to engraft upon this Bill certain provisions for the education of young persons engaged in the large manufacturing establishments of the country; but, owing to the opposition of the Dissenters, who feared that the influence of the Church would be unduly extended, it was found necessary to abandon the proposed clauses. Even with respect to the main objects of the Bill, there was considerable opposition; for the bigoted adherents of political economy would not tolerate a measure which interfered with what they regarded as the right of contract between the employers and the employed. Their principle was doubtless a good one in the main; but children are so much under the influence of others that some departure from the rule was necessary in their case, especially as it was well known that the evil and the suffering were great. The more bitter opponents of Lord Ashley argued that he ought to look nearer home; that the peasantry on his father’s estates, to which in due course he would succeed, were in a worse condition than the female and juvenile operatives in the factories; that the aristocratic reformer knew nothing about manufacturing life; and that in truth there was not much to complain of. But the fact that the agricultural labourers on the lands of Lord Ashley’s father were poor and miserable, was no reason why Lord Ashley should not interest himself in another class of sufferers; while, as to the condition of the children in the seats of manufacturing industry, there could be no question, to any impartial mind, that it was such as to render the interposition of the law imperatively necessary. The general principle has since been extended in many other Acts of Parliament, even to the protection of women; and the bitter opposition of former times has become less and less. It is now admitted that special circumstances call for special legislation; that care for the young has even yet been insufficiently carried out; and that to sacrifice tender lives to economical theories is little better than to repeat in another form the Hindoo worship of Juggernaut. Some slight extension of the time devoted to education was introduced into the Act of 1844, in place of the more complete provision which it was originally intended to make; and the effect of this arrangement was found to be good, though a still further application of the system would unquestionably have been better.

As the session of 1843 advanced, the Queen and Prince Albert conceived a yet higher opinion of the great qualities exhibited by Sir Robert Peel. Her Majesty described him to the King of the Belgians as “a man who thinks but little of party, and never of himself.” The Prince, with his remarkable keenness of judgment, anticipated that it would not be long ere Peel would quit the Conservative party, or the Conservatives, in the main, would desert him. In a Memorandum of Mr. Anson’s, dated April 30th, 1843, we read:—“The Prince said yesterday, that Sir Robert Peel was certainly far from popular with the Conservative party. He, for his part, had the greater confidence in Sir Robert for the very cause to which he attributed the want of confidence with which his party regarded him. It was that Sir Robert was determined to adopt his own line, and not to be turned aside by the fear of making political enemies, or losing support. He was determined either to stand or fall by his own opinion; and the Prince felt that in such a man’s hands the interests of the Crown were most secure.” In little more than three years it was seen that Peel did in truth “fall” by devotion to what he considered necessary to the well-being of the