of the French Emperor, who feared that the war in Asia Minor would dangerously enhance British prestige in that region. On the 28th of April Mr. Whiteside also raised a debate on the subject in the House of Commons, but the Tory party was so unwilling to follow its leaders, that Lord Derby regretted the matter had ever been stirred. The discussion merely established the facts that Lord Stratford had cruelly neglected to press General Williams’ appeals for reinforcements on the Porte, that the Government had culpably neglected to give Williams the money (£100,000) which would have provisioned Kars. But as the fortress was to be restored to the Turks, and as General Williams was to be consoled with a baronetcy, the House of Commons thought the matter had better drop, and Mr. Whiteside’s motion was lost by a majority of 303 to 176. Much more serious was the defeat inflicted on the Government on another subject which deeply interested the Queen—that of Baron Parke’s life peerage.

Writing on the 9th of January, 1856, in his Diary, Lord Campbell says, “Bethell, the Solicitor-General, has made Baron Parke a peer. The judicial business of the House of Lords could not go on another session as it did last. Pemberton Leigh was first offered a peerage, and I wish much that he had accepted it, but he positively refused to be pitchforked. I don’t know that anything less exceptional could be done than applying next to Baron Surrebutter.”[268] At the Lord Chancellor’s levee on the first day of Hilary Term, Lord Campbell asked him if there was any truth in the story that Parke’s peerage was to be for life. On hearing that it was, Lord Campbell replied, “Then sorry am I to say that I must make a row about it.” At first he thought that the grant of a life peerage was not illegal—for Coke asserted its legality—but merely unconstitutional. When, however, Lord Campbell studied the precedents, he became convinced that “no life peerage had been granted to any man for more than 400 years, and that there was no authenticated instance of a peer ever having sat and voted in the House of Lords having in him a life peerage only—the life peerages relied upon being superinduced on pre-existing peerages, e.g., De Vere, Earl of Oxford (a title which had been in his family since the Conquest), was created by Richard II. Marquis of Dublin for life.” Lord Campbell goes on to say, “My eyes were opened. The power of the Crown to give a right to vote in the House must depend on the exercise of the power; and no one had voted in right of a peerage for life more than of a peerage granted during the pleasure of the King—for the granting of which there was at least one precedent.”[269]

When Sir Theodore Martin says that “the right of the Crown to create a life peerage with a right to sit in Parliament” was “scarcely disputed in the discussions which arose,” his anxiety to exaggerate the Queen’s prerogative has led him into a grave error. As Lord Campbell says, “It was not necessary to resort to the doctrine of desuetude,” for “the non-exercise of a prerogative, ever since the Constitution was settled, afforded a strong inference that it had never lawfully existed.” The fact is that the arguments in favour of recognising the right of the Crown to create a peer for life, with the right of voting in the House of Lords, would have been equally good for creating a peer with a similar right, during the Sovereign’s pleasure. A peer who could at any moment be deprived of his rank and senatorial privileges would, of course, either be a creature of the Court or the minion of the Minister. Lord Lyndhurst, therefore, had little difficulty in carrying a motion referring Baron Parke’s Letters Patent to a Committee of Privileges, which reported against the right asserted by the Crown. The Government yielded, and Sir James Parke was finally created an hereditary peer in the ordinary way, under the title of Lord Wensleydale.

The rebuff was annoying to the Queen; all the more that it led to a fresh series of attacks on Prince Albert. He was accused of having attempted to extend the Queen’s prerogative with the ulterior object of packing the House of Lords with certain scientific men who were supposed to be Court favourites.[270] In his “Memoirs,” according to Mr. Greville, General Grey “told his brother, the Earl, that his Royal Highness knew nothing of the matter till after it had been settled.” The truth is that nobody was cognisant of the affair except the Lord Chancellor, Lord Granville, and Lord Palmerston. Mr. Greville says, “George Lewis told me that the life peerage had never been brought before the Cabinet, and he knew nothing of it till he saw it in the Gazette,”[271] which illustrates the thoughtless manner in which Lord Palmerston allowed himself to be committed to a step, that roused public jealousy against the Crown and the Court. Lord Malmesbury also states, that when Lord Derby was dining one day with the Queen, she told him that if she had had any idea that the question would have created such a disturbance, she would never have dreamt of granting Parke his life peerage.[272]

Fortunately the negotiations for peace were now proceeding apace at Paris. The Queen had written a letter to the French Emperor, which Lord Clarendon had delivered to him, earnestly insisting on the necessity of unity of action between France and England at the Congress of the Powers. The Emperor told Lord Clarendon it was “a charming letter;” but in spite of his flattering account of it, the influence of France from first to last was turned against England in the discussions between the plenipotentiaries. Possibly this was due to the constitutional indolence and weakness of the Emperor, who permitted Walewski to manage matters his own way, and as for Walewski, he betrayed Lord Clarendon at every opportunity. Napoleon III. was really in the hands of his entourage, and they were to a great extent in the hands of Russia.[273] Lord Cowley, indeed, informed Mr. Greville that Walewski privately made known to Orloff, the Russian plenipotentiary, not only the points he must yield, but those as to which he might safely defy Lord Clarendon with the open or secret support of France.

“The signing of the Treaty of Peace with Russia,” writes Lord Malmesbury

on the 30th of March, “was announced by the firing of cannon from the Tower and Horse Guards. Numbers collected in the streets, but no enthusiasm was shown.”[274] In fact, when the terms became known there was much popular disappointment, and the Sun newspaper actually appeared in deep mourning over our national humiliation. On the next morning a great crowd assembled in front of the Mansion House. At ten o’clock the Lord Mayor, attended by the Sheriffs, the Sword-bearer, Mace-bearer, and City Marshal, advanced to the stone balcony, and amidst loud cheers read a despatch from the Home Secretary informing him that the Treaty was signed. At noon the Lord Mayor proceeded in state to the Royal Exchange, where a great number of ladies had mingled with the crowd, and read the despatch again.

And what were the terms of peace? The Powers admitted Turkey to participate in all the advantages of the public law of Europe, and they agreed that in any future dispute with the Porte, the matter must be submitted to arbitration before force was used by either side. The Sultan was bound by the Treaty to communicate to the Powers a firman improving the condition of his Christian subjects, but this instrument, it was stipulated, gave the Powers no collective or individual right to interfere between Turkey and her Christian subjects. The Black Sea was neutralised—i.e., all ships of war were excluded from it, and the establishment of arsenals on its coasts was prohibited. But the Euxine was declared free to the trading vessels of all nations, and the Powers were at liberty to keep a few armed ships of light draught for police duty on the neutralised sea. The navigation of the Danube was declared free. Russia ceded Bessarabia to Turkey. The privileges and immunities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Servia were guaranteed, but the Sultan was permitted to garrison the latter province. Russia and Turkey were bound to restore to each other the conquests they had respectively made in Asia. On the invitation of France the Congress was asked to consider the position of Greece, the Roman States, and the two Sicilies. It was also asked to condemn the licence of the Belgian Press, and to formulate new rules for maritime warfare. These discussions came to naught, but it was agreed by the “Declarations of Paris” that privateering should be abolished; that, with the exception of contraband, an enemy’s goods must be free from capture under a neutral flag, a neutral’s goods being also respected under an enemy’s flag; and that “paper blockades” should not be recognised, i.e., a blockade to be effective must in future be maintained by a force strong enough to cut off access to the coasts of an enemy.[275] It will be observed that there was nothing in this instrument to provide means for punishing Russia if she broke it. Hence, on the 15th of April, France, Austria, and England signed what was called the Tripartite Treaty, binding each other jointly or severally to go to war against any Power that violated the Treaty of Paris. This compact was treated like a dead letter when Russia attacked Turkey in 1877. “The peace,” said Prince Albert in a letter to Stockmar, “is not such as we could have wished, still infinitely to be preferred to the prosecution of the war, with the present complication of general policy.” That was in truth the verdict of the country. Comparing the terms with those which we might have obtained at Vienna in 1855, it was a humiliating settlement for England, in no way justifying the continuance of the war after the battle of Inkermann. Comparing them with the terms which the Czar might have obtained before the invasion of the Crimea, the settlement was humiliating to Russia.

In Parliament the debates on the Treaty were on the whole favourable to the Government. Complaint was, however, made that no effective steps had been taken to protect Turkey from Russian aggression in Asia Minor; that the Circassians had been abandoned; that Lord Clarendon in the Congress had not protested with enough warmth against the attacks made on the Belgian Press; that no definite provision had been made to prevent Russia from building war-ships at Nicolaieff; that the government of the Principalities had been left an open question; and that by the Declarations rights of search at sea, which were extremely useful to a naval power during war, were surrendered. It is true that, by agreeing to abolish privateering, England sacrificed what may be called her right of fighting with naval volunteers; and it seems as if the American doctrine—namely, that to the merchant whose ships are plundered, it matters little whether the mischief is done by a man-of-war or a privateer—is sensible. On the other hand, it was obvious that England could not carry on a naval war for a year on the principle that free ships did not make free goods, without coming into collision with every neutral State in the world. But to all objections there was, of course, one answer. No better terms could be got unless England was prepared to carry on the war alone. Yet, as a matter of fact, Russia had suffered so severely during the winter, that it is probable she might have been more complaisant at Paris, had Lord Clarendon been firmer, and had Napoleon III. not perfidiously played into her hands.

The solitary result of the Crimean War, says Mr. Spencer Walpole, was to “set back the clock for some fourteen years.”[276] Still he seems to think that it “was perhaps worth some sacrifice, to prove that England was still ready to strike a blow for a weak neighbour whom she believed to be oppressed.” This would have been a gain had it added to English prestige. But the war really diminished that prestige. M. De Tocqueville, after returning from a Continental tour, said to the late Mr. Senior, “I heard universal and unqualified praise of the heroic courage of your soldiers, but at the same time I found spread abroad the persuasion that the importance of England had been overrated as a military power properly so called—a power which consists in administering as much as in fighting, and, above all, that it was impossible (and this had never before been believed) for her to raise large armies, even under the most pressing circumstances. I never heard anything like it since my childhood. You are supposed to be entirely dependent on us.... A year ago we probably overrated your military power. I believe that now we most mischievously underrate it. A year ago nothing alarmed us more than a whisper of the chance of a war with England. We talk of one now with great composure. We believe that it would not be difficult to throw 100,000 men upon your shores, and we believe that half that number would walk over England or Ireland.”[277]

After peace had been proclaimed, public life in England stagnated for a time, and party rancour temporarily disappeared. Ministers and Ex-Ministers met in society on the friendliest terms, and Lord Malmesbury describes a dinner party which the Queen gave on the 7th of May in honour of Baron Brunnow, at which the leaders of both factions were present—“the happy family I call them,” says the Queen in a letter to King Leopold. “Lord John Russell was there,” says Lord Malmesbury, “and very civil to me, as when I arrived he crossed the room to come to speak to me—a thing he never did before. He began by saying ‘You gave it them well last night,’[278] and seemed quite delighted at the Government being bullied.... I had to take Lady Clarendon to dinner. She was at first very cross, but I ended by laughing her out of her bad humour.”[279] A slight ripple on the calm waters was due to the suspension of diplomatic relations with the United States. In raising recruits under the Foreign Enlistment Act, it seems some overzealous British agents had given the American Government not unreasonable cause to complain that we were violating their law during the war. The dispute became acute, when the British Minister to the United States was requested to leave Washington—but the quarrel was not a serious one. “The Americans,” Prince Albert informs Stockmar on the 16th June, “have sent away our Minister, but accompanied the act with such assurances of friendship and affection, and of their perfect readiness to adjust all points of difference in conformity with our wishes, that it will be difficult to give theirs his congé in return.” As a matter of fact the British Government apologised, and on the 16th of March, 1857, Lord Napier was received at Washington as Mr. Crampton’s successor. In truth there was no real ill-feeling at all between the two nations—and of this a curious proof was given at the end of the year. H.M.S. Resolute which had been attached to the last Arctic expedition had been abandoned in the ice. Some American explorers found her adrift and took her to the United States. There she was re-fitted at the expense of the Government, and sent back to England as a present to the Queen. When Resolute made her appearance at Cowes, the Queen insisted on going in person, on the 16th of December, to receive the gift. Her courteous reception of the American officers touched them deeply, and Lord Clarendon informed her Majesty that Mr. Dallas, the American Minister, told him, his countrymen were quite overwhelmed with the kindness which they had everywhere received.

Lord Palmerston’s unwearied attention to business, and his popularity after peace had been proclaimed, almost silenced criticism on his domestic policy. It had been supposed that the Budget would tempt the Opposition to attack him, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer had a dismal story to tell when the House of Commons met after Whitsuntide. The expenditure for the past year had come to £88,428,355, or £22,723,854 in excess of the revenue. In fact, during the three years ending with 1856 the war had cost England

£77,588,000. After making the most cautious estimates, Sir George Cornewall Lewis said that for the coming year, on the basis of existing taxation, his expected revenue would fall short of his anticipated expenditure by £7,000,000. As no new taxes were to be levied, he was compelled to find the money by borrowing, and, of course, no remission of taxation could in such circumstances be looked for. The House sanctioned the scheme of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but he was warned that in future reduced estimates would be demanded.

More than one attempt was made by Mr. Disraeli to assail the Italian policy of Lord Palmerston. That policy was somewhat tortuous, for whilst the English Foreign Office was perpetually encouraging Sardinia to protest against the Austrian occupation of North Italy, England had, with Austria and France, become a party to the Tripartite Treaty guaranteeing the execution of the Treaty of Paris. Mr. Disraeli argued that it was inconsistent to stir up Sardinia and the discontented populations of Italy against Austria, at a time when we had by the Tripartite Treaty virtually bound ourselves in a close alliance with the Austrian Empire. The tyrannical Government of Sicily also elicited remonstrances from England, against which Russia protested, on the ground that we had no right to interfere between King “Bomba” and his subjects. But no enthusiasm was roused on these subjects—in fact, the country did not desire a change of Government at the time, and every effort to weaken the Ministry was therefore futile. Yet the home policy of the Ministry was a signal failure. They succeeded in assimilating the mercantile law of England and Scotland; but their first Bill to amend the law of partnership was abandoned in March. A second one was introduced, and abandoned in July. A Bill for the amendment of the Poor Law met the same fate. The Bill to regulate lunatic asylums in Ireland, and a Bill to relieve merchant vessels of tolls and dues were also abandoned. Ministers were equally unfortunate with their Divorce Bill, and with their Bills to establish jurisdiction over wills, and to check the criminal appropriation of trust property. Their Church Discipline Bill was rejected by the Lords. The Bills to reconstruct the Irish Court of Chancery and the Insolvency Court were dropped.[280] The Jury Bill, Juvenile Offenders Bill, and Dublin Police Bill were also given up. The Civil Servants’ Superannuation Bill, the London Municipal Reform Bill, the Bill for the local management of the metropolis, a burial Bill, a vaccination Bill, a Bill dealing with the Queen’s College in Ireland, and a Scotch education Bill were all abandoned. A Bill enabling two Bishops to retire on handsome terms was passed, though the arrangement was denounced as simoniacal, and the County Police Bill also became law. But the legislative failures of the Government showed that it had no firm hold over the House of Commons, and that its position was safe, merely because the nation was not in a mood for change so soon after its energies had been exhausted in a costly and inglorious war. Moreover, Parties were still disorganised. Lord John Russell’s isolation and the position of the Peelites being disturbing factors in the situation. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli, however, began to draw nearer and nearer to each other, Lord Stanley being regarded as the connecting link between them, and some of the Whigs, a little alarmed at the prospect of a hostile coalition, began to hint that Palmerston would be wise to attract the Peelites back to his standard. The fact is, the war left the country profoundly disgusted with Party government. Sir James Graham told Mr. Greville that hitherto the party system had been efficient for government, because patronage had been “the great instrument for keeping parties together.” Peel, however, broke up the old party system in 1846, and now, said Sir James Graham, “between the Press, the public opinion which the Press had made, and the views of certain people in Parliament, of whom Gladstone is the most eminent and strenuous, patronage was either destroyed or going rapidly to destruction.”[281] To some extent the Queen shared these views, but in the event of any mishap leading to Palmerston’s resignation, the idea of the Court was to organise a coalition under Clarendon. Parliament was prorogued on the 29th of July.

Outside politics the life of the Queen during 1856 was not very eventful. On the 20th of March the confirmation of the Princess Royal brought together an interesting family gathering at the private chapel at Windsor. Prince Albert led the princess in, and was followed by the Queen and King Leopold of Belgium. The officers of State, and of the household, and most of the members of the Royal Family, were present, and the Bishop of Oxford, Lord High Almoner, read the preface, the Archbishop of Canterbury performing the ceremony. Several guests were present, and in describing the event to Stockmar the Prince dwells with some pride on the fact that the Princess came through the ordeal of Dean Wellesley’s preliminary examination a few days before with great success.[282] The choice of the Navy as Prince Alfred’s profession had now been made, and in April the Queen and Prince Albert, after much anxious thought, selected a tutor for their son. He is described by the Prince in one of his letters as “a distinguished and most amiable young officer of Engineers ... one Lieutenant Cowell, who was Adjutant of Sir Harry Jones at Bomarsund and before Sebastopol.... He is only twenty-three, and has had a high scientific training. By this a great load has been taken off my heart.”[283]

During the spring of the year the wounded from the Crimea had been pouring in. In February the Queen presented Miss Florence Nightingale with a jewel, somewhat resembling the badge of an Order of Knighthood, for her services at Scutari. On the 16th of April her Majesty went to Chatham with her husband to visit these victims of the war. She passed through the wards much affected by the sight of some of the more ghastly wounds, speaking kind and comforting words of sympathy to those who had suffered most severely. The Camp at Aldershot was also visited on the 18th of April, and 14,000 troops were reviewed, her Majesty riding along the line whilst the men presented arms. Next morning was a field day, and the Queen appeared on the ground on horseback, wearing a Field-Marshal’s uniform, with the Star of the Garter over a dark-blue riding-habit. On the 23rd of April the splendid fleet

at Spithead was reviewed. The spectacle was one of surpassing magnificence, and upwards of 100,000 persons witnessed it, crowding every spot from which a view could be obtained between Fort Monckton and Southsea Castle. The Solent was alive with yachts and craft of all kinds, decked with bunting, which fluttered gaily in the light breeze. The Queen’s yacht left Portsmouth Harbour at noon, steamed down and returned through the double line of war-ships. As the yacht rounded the Royal George and Duke of Wellington they opened a Royal salute, and their yards were suddenly manned, as if by magic, with seamen, each trying to cheer louder than his comrade. This manœuvre was repeated in succession by every ship in the fleet, and the effect was imposing and impressive. A mimic attack on Southsea Castle followed, and at night the whole fleet was suddenly and simultaneously illuminated with blue lights from yards and portholes.

“Our army,” Prince Albert wrote, in April, “has begun to return, and it will require redoubled exertions to keep up its organisation.” In fact, already an active party in the Cabinet had begun to demand heavy retrenchment on military expenditure. The Queen had long been convinced that hurried retrenchments led to wasteful panic expenditure, and was very much concerned when she heard what was being mooted in the Ministry. Hence she wrote to Lord Palmerston expressing her strong feeling that retrenchment should be moderate and gradual. “To the miserable reductions of the last thirty years,” she says, “is entirely owing our state of helplessness when the war began;” and surely, she urged, Ministers were not going to forget the lesson taught by our sufferings in the Crimea. What, however, was most seriously wanted was a new military system which would properly utilise the money already voted for the army, and prevent it from being jobbed into the hands of incompetent persons with powerful family interest. Sir De Lacy Evans, on the 4th of March, made an effort to persuade the House of Commons to abolish the purchase system, which he described as “a stain upon the service and a dishonour to England,” and Lord Goderich warmly advocated the application of some effective tests of competence to candidates for commissions. But though everybody sympathised with Evans, nobody would help him to carry out his ideas. In the abstract, said Lord Palmerston, purchase was bad. No one would propose such a system if we were establishing an army for the first time. It existed only in the British army, but, then, it did exist, and it had existed so long that it was hard to get rid of it without injustice to individuals,[284] and great expenditure in compensation. Yet the highest estimate made of the value of commissions did not exceed £8,000,000—less than half the sum voted every year by the House of Commons for the troops; and even that sum would have had to be paid, not at once, but over a long series of years, under any scheme, to release an army which had been pawned to its officers. Prince Albert, in conjunction with Lord Hardinge, drew up a plan for a new military organisation, which, however, did not touch questions of patronage or promotion. On the 19th of May the Queen laid the foundation stone of the great military hospital at Netley, the first of the kind in England, and an institution which we owe entirely to her Majesty. “Loving my dear, brave army as I do,” she writes to King Leopold, “and having seen so many of my poor sick and wounded soldiers, I shall watch over this work with maternal anxiety,”[285] A visit from Prince Frederick William of Prussia brought sunshine into the Royal household, and gladdened the heart of the Queen’s eldest daughter, who was supremely happy at once again meeting her betrothed. It was during this visit that the Princess met with an accident, on the 25th of June, that might have ended fatally. She was sitting at her table in Buckingham Palace, reading a letter, when the sleeve of her dress caught fire from a candle. Luckily Miss Hildyard and Miss Anderson (who were in the room at the time) promptly rolled the Princess in the hearthrug and extinguished the flames, though her arm was severely burnt from below the elbow to the shoulder.

On the 8th of July the Queen again went to Aldershot to review a great body of Crimean troops, the Royal party including the King of the Belgians and Prince Oscar of Sweden. Unfortunately the weather somewhat marred the grandeur of the spectacle, but it became fair enough ere the day was done to admit of the regiments forming in three sides of a square round the Queen’s carriage. Then the officers who had been under fire, with four men from each company and troop, stepped forward, and her Majesty, rising, addressed them a few words of welcome and thanks. She told them to say to their comrades that she had herself watched anxiously over their difficulties and hardships, and mourned with deep sorrow for the brave men who had fallen in their country’s cause. When she ceased to speak, the cry of “God save the Queen” burst forth from every lip. The air was black with helmets, bearskins, and shakoes, which the men tossed up with delight. Flashing sabres were waving and glancing along the lines, and on every hillside crowds caught up the cheering that rose from the serried and glittering ranks of the army. Unhappily the day was saddened by a strange and melancholy occurrence. Lord Hardinge was seized with a fit whilst talking to the Queen. “He fell forward,” says Prince Albert, “upon the table before which he was standing. I assisted him to the nearest sofa, where he at once resumed what he was saying with the greatest clearness and calmness, merely apologising that he had made such a disturbance. When he was moved to London it was found his right side was paralysed.” Next day the Guards and Highlanders arrived, and were received by the Queen and enthusiastic crowds in the Park. “They marched past in fours,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “preceded by their colonels on horseback and their bands, in heavy marching order. Certainly they looked as if they had done work; their uniforms were shabby, many having almost lost all colour, their bearskins quite brown, and they themselves, poor fellows, though they seemed happy, and were laughing as they marched along, were very thin and worn.”[286] Lord Hardinge’s career was now closed. On the 9th of July he resigned, and on the 24th of September he died. On the 12th of July the Cabinet accordingly advised the Queen to appoint her cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief, in succession to Lord Hardinge, and her Majesty was gratified to find that the arrangement was one which was highly popular with the troops. Thus the intention of Wellington was fulfilled, and the army again passed under the direct command of a Prince of the Blood Royal.

The Prince and Princess of Prussia paid a visit to England in August, arriving on the 10th and leaving on the 29th, by which time the Court had retired to Osborne. On the 30th, after spending two days in Edinburgh, the Queen and her family arrived at Balmoral. “We found the house finished,” writes the Queen in her Diary, “as well as the offices, and the poor old house gone!”[287] It was a stormy, tempestuous holiday, but the Queen made the best of it. On the 21st of September Sir James Clark introduced Miss Florence Nightingale to the Queen, who was greatly charmed with her, and with whom her Majesty held grave consultations as to the reforms that were needed in military hospitals. The coronation of the Czar at Moscow, on the 7th of September, was attended by Lord Granville as the Queen’s representative, and when his reports reached Balmoral, Prince Albert, in a letter to Stockmar, said that they regarded these as “an apotheosis and homage paid to the vanquished, and which cannot fail to inspire both worshipper and worshipped with dangerous illusions in regard to the real state of things.”

The Queen was now getting alarmed as to the carrying out of the Treaty of Peace. She saw Russia making strenuous efforts to separate France and England. Instead of restoring Kars to the Turks, the Russians demolished the fortifications, and prolonged their military occupation of the country in defiance of the Treaty of Paris. They tried to filch Serpent Island at the mouth of the Danube, under the pretext that it was inside the new line of their frontier. They sought to push their new frontier as far south as Lake Jalpuk, because the Powers, misled by a faulty map, had permitted them to retain the Moldavian town of Bolgrad.[288] In each case the Emperor of the French was inclined to support the Russian claim. The British fleet was therefore ordered to occupy the Black Sea till the deadlock was ended, and when Chreptovitch, the new Russian ambassador, threatened to leave England because this step had been taken, Lord Palmerston coolly told him “the sooner he did so the better,” if he did not mean to give England satisfaction.[289]

The King of Prussia now began to press the Queen to interfere in a quarrel between him and the Swiss Republic. Neuenburg or Neufchâtel, by dynastic inheritance, had come into the possession of Frederick I. in 1707. In 1806 it was ceded to Napoleon, who gave it to Berthier, the most diplomatic of his generals. After the Great Peace it was granted an oligarchic constitution,

and received as a Canton into the Swiss Confederation, but its vassalage to the House of Hohenzollern was formally acknowledged. In 1848 the Republican citizens of Neuenburg broke the bond that tied them to the Prussian crown, and though the Protocol of London of the 24th May, 1852, recognised the Prussian claim to the Province, the Province ignored the Protocol of London. In the autumn of 1856 the Prussian party in Neuenburg attacked the Republicans, but the Swiss Federal troops ruthlessly suppressed the rising, and not only killed twelve royalists, but had the audacity to throw a hundred others into prison, simply because they were loyal to their feudal lord. The King of Prussia objected to their being put on trial, and demanded their surrender, but it was a far cry from Berlin to Berne, and the stubborn Switzers paid no heed to his demands. Napoleon III. menaced them in vain. Austria, always pleased to see Prussia humbled in Germany, threw obstacles in the way of Prussian troops marching through the territory of the Confederation to coerce Switzerland, and Napoleon did not dare to outrage French opinion by letting them march through Alsace-Lorraine. In England, Palmerston smiled grimly over the embarrassment of Russia’s most faithful ally. He said to the Hanoverian Minister in London when Prussia was threatening coercion, “the Prussians will incur much expense, and in January Switzerland will condemn the captives and then amnesty them; donc la farce sera finie, et la Prusse y sera pour les frais.”[290]

Nor was this the only anxiety at Court. King “Bomba’s” misgovernment in southern Italy, and his brutal treatment of persons arbitrarily arrested on suspicion of disloyalty, were provoking revolution. An outbreak in the south must lead to a rising in the north, which in turn must involve France and Sardinia in war with Austria. England and France, finding their remonstrances disregarded by the Neapolitan Government, withdrew their legations from Naples in October, and ordered the fleet to make a demonstration in the bay. This step was sanctioned by the Queen not without some misgiving, because to suspend diplomatic relations with a State because its internal government is not to our liking, was to establish a dangerous diplomatic precedent. It evoked from Russia a cutting remonstrance, which, however, Lord Palmerston had to accept as best he could.

On the 19th of October the Court returned to Windsor, and on the 17th of November, Stockmar, in response to a pressing appeal to come and advise the Queen in the midst of her growing difficulties, paid her what was destined to be his last visit. He found her heavily stricken with grief because of the death of her half-brother, Prince Leiningen, on the 13th. “We three,” (the Prince, the Princess Hohenlohe, and the Queen), she writes to King Leopold, “were very fond of each other, and never felt or fancied that we were not real Geschwister (children of the same parents). We knew but one parent—our mother.”[291] The last day of the year brought with it one consolation. The Conference in Paris had settled our dispute with Russia, and a map was signed by the plenipotentiaries which met the requirements of the Czar, without giving Russia strategical advantages which she had tried to obtain.[292]

CHAPTER XXXV.

TWO LITTLE WARS AND A “PENAL DISSOLUTION.”

Writing on New Year’s Day in 1857, Lord Malmesbury says in his Diary, “The Conference opened yesterday on the questions of Bolgrad and the Isle of Serpents, which the Russians falsely claim as being included in the Treaty of Peace. The Swiss are making energetic preparations for resisting the threatened invasion of Neufchâtel by Prussia; whilst England and France are using their utmost exertions to prevent a war. England has declared war against Persia, and Admiral Seymour has bombarded Canton to avenge an insult offered to our flag.”[293] The Queen, in a letter conveying her greetings to the Emperor of the French, also observes, mournfully, that “the New Year again begins amid the din of warlike preparation;” and there was undoubtedly a feeling of disappointment in England that the Peace of Paris had not brought peace to the world. Yet the general condition of the country was prosperous. Crime, however—especially fraud and murder—had increased shockingly, and severe moralists in Pall Mall went about predicting that Parliament must now devote a Session to social legislation—especially penal legislation—so as to purge a corrupt people of its wickedness. But the corrupt people, much to the Queen’s regret, was of quite another opinion—and so were the political factions. The constituencies were beginning to murmur against taxation. Now that war was over, they demanded sweeping reductions in the income and other taxes, which involved the diminution of the army and navy to such slender dimensions, that her Majesty felt certain they would be as unfit to cope with a sudden emergency as they were when the Crimea was invaded. As for the factions, they were determined to turn out the Government, which they knew existed solely on the credit Palmerston had obtained by carrying on war when the nation wanted it, and ending it when the nation was getting sick of the struggle. The Queen was hostile to any abrupt change of Government at a time when she could see no means of replacing Palmerston’s Cabinet by a stronger one, and she viewed with disapprobation the subterranean intrigues which were going on between the Tories and the Peelites. That Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli were attempting, through the medium of Lord Stanley, to form a Coalition, was known at the Court; nay, it was even said that Mr. Gladstone was to take the leadership of the Tory Party in the House of Commons. Sir William Jolliffe, the Tory Whip, when pressed on the point in December, 1856, told Mr. George Byng that this was “not true at present; that he could not say what might or might not happen hereafter, but that he (Mr. Gladstone) could not be accepted as a leader, and must, in any case, first serve in the ranks.” Only a short time before that some of the younger members of the Party had visited the drawing-room of the Carlton Club with the amiable intention of throwing Mr. Gladstone out of the window. That they had now modified their repugnance to him indicates how keen their hunger for office had grown. But that the Tory Party was disorganised through Mr. Disraeli’s unpopularity, and also because Lord Palmerston’s policy, though Liberal abroad, was really too Conservative at home to be successfully attacked, is clear from a letter which Lord Derby wrote to Lord Malmesbury on the prosperity of the Conservatives at the close of 1856.[294]

Parliament was opened on the 3rd of February, 1857, and the Queen’s Speech naturally referred to the wars and rumours of war that filled the air. Law Reform and the Bank Act were the only subjects of domestic interest dwelt upon. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert now appeared almost anxious to join Lord Derby; and the Tories, on their part, were quite prepared to support Mr. Gladstone in demanding that the Income Tax be reduced to 5d. in the current year, and abolished altogether in 1860, as had been agreed on in 1853.[295] Mr. Disraeli’s attack, on the other hand, was directed against the Foreign Policy of the Government. He complained that at the very time Lord Clarendon was encouraging the hopes of Count Cavour and of Italy at the Congress of Paris, France had signed a Secret Treaty guaranteeing to Austria her Italian provinces, and had signed it by the advice of England. Lord Palmerston denied the existence of this Secret Treaty. But he admitted that in 1854, when there was some hope that Austria would take part in the war, an agreement was made to the effect that should Russia raise an insurrection in North Italy, France would help Austria to put it down, if Austrian armies were actually co-operating with the Allies against Russia. In the Upper House, Lord Aberdeen voted for the amendment to the Address with many of the Tories—a somewhat unusual thing for an ex-Premier to do—and this, along with Mr. Gladstone’s cordial support of Mr. Disraeli, was taken to be a sign that the Peelites desired to coalesce with the Opposition. Lord John Russell, who was a kind of political Ishmaelite, also spoke bitterly about the abortive demonstration of the fleet at Naples, which had drawn upon us insulting remonstrances, and had not coerced King Ferdinand into good behaviour. On the 17th of February Mr. Disraeli compelled Lord Palmerston to admit that “a military convention,” if not a Secret Treaty, between France and Austria had been signed, but only as a temporary arrangement. When, however, Mr. Disraeli persisted in saying it was a Secret Treaty, and that on the face of it there was no limit to the period of its operation, Palmerston lost his temper, a circumstance so extraordinary that it convinced the House he had been again caught tripping.