the external relations of the kingdom. In plain English, the Queen has always held that if a Minister tells a lie in Parliament, nine people out of ten on the Continent will suspect that she has ordered or induced him to tell it. Hence her indignation on reading Lord Palmerston’s reply to Mr. Milner Gibson’s question was tinged with a feeling of personal humiliation and shame. Public opinion was similarly excited when the newspapers were studied, and fuller questions were immediately put to Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell. They gave evasive and prevaricating answers, attempting to explain away the French Ambassador’s letter of recall, much to the disgust of all parties in Parliament. The tide of anger rose higher every day that the scandal was discussed. Lord John Russell told his brother, the Duke of Bedford, that Ministers must defend Palmerston on this occasion, but, after the dispute came to an end, he would have Palmerston dismissed from the Foreign Office. “He is,” writes Mr. Greville on the 19th of May, “to see the Queen on Tuesday, who will of course be boiling over with indignation;” for by this time Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador, had warned Lord John that he, too, must ask to be relieved from his post, as “it was impossible for him to stay here to be on bad terms with Palmerston.”

The question has often been asked, Why did English statesmen get up in both Houses of Parliament and tell a series of falsehoods which they knew must be discovered in forty-eight hours by official refutation from France? The fact is, Lord Palmerston had deceived his colleagues. He assured them that M. de Lhuys had taken back to Paris explanations so conciliatory, that his letter of recall would be quietly cancelled. Assured by Palmerston that he had made the cancelling of the recall a certainty, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell assumed that the letter of recall was suppressed, and they both answered as if it never had existed. On the 25th of May, Mr. Greville writes:—“The morning before yesterday the Duke of Bedford came here again. He had seen Lord John since, and heard what passed with the Queen. She was full of this affair, and again urged all her objections to Lord Palmerston. This time she found Lord John better disposed than heretofore, and he is certainly revolving in his mind how the thing can be done. He does not by any means contemplate going out himself, or breaking up the Government. What he looks to is this, that the Queen should take the initiative, and urge Palmerston’s removal from the Foreign Office. She is quite ready to do this as soon as she is assured of her wishes being attended to.”[13]

Lord John Russell screwed up his courage to the point of contemplating the removal of Lord Palmerston from the Foreign Office to some other department of State, he himself undertaking the duties of Foreign Secretary along with those of the Premiership. Such a combination is never a wise one. Even in recent times, when Lord Salisbury attempted to unite in his own person the two offices, the strain was found to be greater than his strength could bear; and in the case of Lord John, whose health was at this time capricious and precarious, it was perhaps as well that at the eleventh hour he shrank from proposing the change to Lord Palmerston. Lord John has been accused of lack of courage in connection with this affair. The truth is, that a perverted chivalry prompted him to stand by Lord Palmerston. The Greek affair was hardly defensible. But it was bruited about that the Opposition, under cover of condemning Lord Palmerston in that special case, meant to direct a severe attack on the foreign policy of the Government as a whole. Lord Palmerston’s colleagues had, however, permitted themselves not only to be identified with that policy, but had thought fit to defend every blunder he had made in carrying it out. Lord John Russell, then, cannot be blamed for considering that to desert the Foreign Secretary on the Greek Question, would have been tantamount to making him the scapegoat of the Cabinet. Hence, in spite of the Queen’s strong feeling in the matter, it was agreed that Palmerston should not be “thrown over.”

After much fencing between the leaders of the two parties, the first of the attacks, which led to a series of debates almost unparalleled in our history as displays of sustained Parliamentary eloquence, was made in the House of Lords on the 17th of June. Lord Stanley moved a vote of censure on the Ministry for their coercive measures in Greece, affirming, however, the general proposition that it was the right and duty of the Government to secure to British subjects in foreign States, the full protection of the laws of those States. The scene was a memorable one. The House was crowded in every part, and the conflict began with an amusing farce. The Peeress’s Gallery was crammed to overflowing, and when Lady Melbourne and Lady Newport, under Lord Brougham’s escort, went to their places, they found them filled, and were ignominiously turned away. Brougham, however, espied Bunsen, the Prussian Minister, in the gallery, and requested him to retire to his proper seat in the Ambassadors’ quarter, but he refused. Then Brougham went down to his own place, and avenged himself on Bunsen by calling the attention of their lordships to the fact that there was “a stranger in the Peeress’s Gallery,” adding, “if he does not come down, I shall move your lordships to enforce the order of the House. It is the more intolerable as he has a place assigned to him in another part, and he is now keeping the room of two Peeresses.” As Bunsen was notoriously a fat, overgrown man, Brougham’s malicious personality was received with shouts of laughter. But it had no effect on the stolid Prussian, who kept his seat till Sir Augustus Clifford, Usher of the Black Rod, made him retire.[14]

The issue before the House was simple enough. (1), Lord Palmerston had agreed with M. Drouyn de Lhuys that if the terms which M. Gros, the French Envoy at Athens, proposed on behalf of Greece were rejected by Mr. Wyse, the British Envoy, coercion should not be again applied without special orders from Britain. But if M. Gros threw up his office of mediator because the Greeks declined to let him offer fair terms, then of course Mr. Wyse was to

resort to coercion without further instructions. (2), M. Drouyn de Lhuys and Lord Palmerston in London agreed on a settlement, the terms of which were less onerous than those demanded by Mr. Wyse. (3), Though this was informally communicated by the French to Mr. Wyse, he rejected the terms which M. Gros offered on behalf of Greece, contending that he had no instructions from Lord Palmerston as to the adoption of any other course. (4), M. Gros then dropped the negotiations. Mr. Wyse, again arguing that he was without instructions, ordered coercion to be applied, upon which the Greek Government yielded. The pith of the dispute centred in one point. Did Palmerston or did he not send Mr. Wyse instructions as to the arrangement made in London with M. Drouyn de Lhuys? The French said that their Envoy abandoned negotiations because Mr. Wyse was unreasonable. Lord Palmerston contended that Mr. Wyse was of opinion that M. Gros had dropped mediation because the

Greeks were unreasonable, and that therefore, in terms of the arrangement made in London, Mr. Wyse was justified in resorting to coercion without further instructions. Mr. Wyse may have been mistaken in supposing that M. Gros retired from the negotiations in the circumstances which, according to the London Convention, would have justified a resort to coercion without further reference to Lord Palmerston. If that were the case, the Government had a good defence; for it would have been unfair to censure them for Mr. Wyse’s blunder. But was it the case? How could Mr. Wyse have blundered in interpreting the conditions of the London Convention, if no instructions in accordance with that Convention had been sent to him? The complaint was that the Foreign Secretary had neglected to send these instructions, and a close and careful examination of Palmerston’s own Blue-book, fails to bring to light the slightest proof that they ever were sent. Therefore it was clear (1), that England had broken a binding diplomatic compact with France, and (2), that this breach of faith had enabled Mr. Wyse at Athens to extort by force from a small, weak Power more onerous terms than the English Government had agreed with France to accept in London. The House of Lords took this view of the matter, and when the debate ended, in the grey dawn of a summer’s morning, it was found on division that there was a majority of 37 against the Government.

Some members of the Cabinet were for resignation. Many friends of the Government thought that Palmerston should personally offer the Queen his resignation, begging her not to accept that of his colleagues if they tendered theirs. But the Foreign Secretary made no offer to resign, and at first the Cabinet resolved to take no more notice of the vote of censure in the Upper House. Ultimately, they found that they must notice it, and as their Foreign Policy as a whole was impugned, they decided not to abandon the Foreign Secretary. On the 20th of June, Lord John Russell explained why he would not resign. He gave two reasons—one good and the other bad,—the first being one of which the Queen approved. It was that a change of Government, in consequence of a resolution of the House of Lords, would be unconstitutional, because, in his opinion, it might be dangerous even to the House of Lords to lay upon it the responsibility of controlling her Majesty’s Executive. Two precedents, one a hundred years old, and one taken from 1833, when the Peers, on the motion of the Duke of Wellington, censured Lord Grey’s Foreign Policy in Portugal, were ingeniously cited by Lord John Russell in support of this constitutional doctrine. But his second reason was characteristically Palmerstonian. He said that the House of Lords had laid it down, that it was the duty of the British Government to see that British subjects in Foreign States got full protection from the laws of those States. That was a limitation of duty which Lord John Russell refused to recognise, because, said he, a Foreign State might make bad laws, and it would be the duty of England to prevent her subjects from being injured by those laws. No principle is more clearly established in international law than this—that a Sovereign State has an absolute right to dictate the terms on which any alien shall abide on its soil.[15] If the alien does not like the law of the Foreign State, he has no business to call on his own countrymen to defend him by force of arms in refusing to obey it, seeing that it was not at their request or in their interest, but of his own free will, and in pursuit of his own fortune, he went to live or traffic abroad. In fact, to lay it down that England might levy war on any country, whose laws Englishmen residing in that country considered inequitable, was tantamount to proclaiming her hostis humani generis. Yet such was the doctrine which the House of Commons, in spite of the protests of the Tories, of Radicals like Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, and Peelites like Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, cheerfully accepted from the Whigs at this period. The only thing that can be said in its defence is that it is a doctrine which the House has never dared to apply to a stronger Power than Greece—never to a Power like Russia, which deports English Jews, nor like Germany, which deports English residents, personally obnoxious to Prince Bismarck, in the most arbitrary manner. It is doubtful if it would even dare to apply it to an autonomous colony like Victoria, had her Government refused, as was threatened, to permit the Irish informer, James Carey, to reside within her frontier.

Having decided to defy the House of Lords, the Government hit on an ingenious plan for neutralising the vote of censure. They put up Mr. Roebuck on the 21st of June to move a vote of confidence in them not touching the Greek dispute, but approving generally of their Foreign Policy as one likely “to preserve untarnished the honour and dignity of this country.” The debate, which lasted five days, was a veritable tournament of Titans. On both sides speeches were made that touch the highest point to which Parliamentary eloquence can reach. Mr. Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, delivered an oration by which, at one bound, he leapt into the first rank of British orators. Peel delivered the last speech he was fated to make in the great assembly, on which for years he had played with the easy mastery of a musician on his favourite instrument. Palmerston himself spoke for four hours and a quarter with more than his usual dash and intrepidity, and with surprising moderation and good taste—basing his case virtually on the application of the civis Romanus sum doctrine to British Foreign Policy. This was the point in it which Mr. Gladstone demolished in a passionate protest, that may be said to have become classical. But in the end the Government triumphed by a majority of 46! Yet, on the face of the facts, they had absolutely no case. Why, then, were they victorious? For many reasons. In the then divided state of parties, the Government was felt to be the only possible Government. Palmerston, by adroitly spreading the report that the attack on

him was really fomented by the agents of the despotic Powers, whose policy he had persistently opposed, won strong support from the Radicals. The Whigs felt that as the Foreign Policy of the Government as a whole was attacked, they were bound to defend the Ministry, quite irrespective of Palmerston’s possibly objectionable method of carrying out that policy. Moreover, it was undoubtedly a weak point in the tactics of the Opposition, that they did not venture to submit in the House of Commons, the motion of censure which they had carried in the House of Lords. But though Lord Palmerston’s triumph was complete, the Queen continued to be dissatisfied

with his reckless manner of managing the Foreign Office. Pressure was put on him by the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon to take another department, which, however, he refused to do. For the time—confident in his popularity—he was able to hold his position, but ere a year had elapsed her Majesty’s warnings were fulfilled, and Lord John was simply compelled to force him to retire.[16] It must be here told how this whole controversy ended. Before the debate closed, it was announced that we had accepted, with some trifling modifications in detail, the French proposals made on behalf of Greece. The demands of the claimants in support of whom we had been brought to the brink of war with France, were finally assessed at £10,000—about one-thirtieth part of the sum they originally asked!

No other question of Foreign Policy agitated the House of Commons in 1850, save Mr. Hutt’s proposal to withdraw the British war-ships engaged in suppressing the West African slave trade. The cost of the squadron had made its maintenance unpopular even with Liberals, and when Lord John Russell threatened to stake the existence of his Ministry on it, the Queen was distressed to learn that there was every prospect of his being defeated, at a time when a change of Government would have produced the utmost confusion. A meeting of the Liberal Party was convened by the Prime Minister at Downing Street, and pressure, which they hardly dared to resist, induced the malcontents to support the Government. Mr. Hutt’s motion was lost, many Ministerialists, however, complaining bitterly that the Prime Minister had concussed them into voting against their convictions.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SOME EPOCH-MARKING LEGISLATION.

Far more interesting, however, was the Colonial legislation of the Government in 1850, which indeed might be termed epoch-marking. The Queen had at the opening of the Session indicated in her Speech from the Throne that a measure extending Constitutional government to the Colonies would be introduced. It was known that she was personally of opinion that the Colonies were giving promise of a growth so rapid, that it would be impossible for any length of time to hold them in the leading-strings of the Colonial Office. The incessant attacks which had been made on Lord Grey in Parliament and in the Press merely served to confirm the Queen in this opinion. It was, therefore, with great satisfaction that she discovered that men of light and leading on both sides of the House of Commons were so far agreed on the subject, that it was deemed practicable by Lord John Russell to minimise the friction between the Colonies and the Colonial Office, by conceding to the Colonists large powers of representative self-government. Lord John Russell explained the scheme which embodied these ideas on the 8th of February. To the Cape Colony he granted two Chambers. The first was representative, and elected under a property qualification. The second, or Legislative Council, was to be elected by persons with a higher property qualification, who had been named by the Crown or municipal bodies for magisterial and municipal offices as individuals of weight and influence. For Australia he proposed a system under which there should be only one Legislative Council, two-thirds elected by the people, and one-third named by the Governor, on the pattern of the system adopted by New South Wales, but with power to the Colonists to change to the bi-cameral or two-Chamber system if they preferred it. Provision was made for constituting, on petition of any two Colonies, a Federal Assembly representing all the Colonial Legislatures, to frame a common tariff, or initiate a common policy for dealing with waste lands. It was in introducing this great scheme that Lord John Russell said that, whilst reserving questions of military defence, the central idea of his Colonial policy was this: political freedom can be best promoted in the Colonies by acting on the general rule, that while the Imperial Government must be their representative in all foreign relations, it will interfere in their domestic affairs no further than may be manifestly necessary to prevent a conflict in the State itself.

By finally and formally establishing this principle, the Government of the Queen did all that was humanly possible to repair the wrong done to England and the English people by her grandfather, George III., who flung away, not a crown, as did James II., but a virgin continent, to gratify an absolutist prejudice.

The Bill passed the House of Commons, though the scheme was open to objection. Had it not been open to objection, it would have been a perfect Bill, “that faultless monster,” to adapt Pope’s line, “which the world ne’er saw.” On the whole, however, it was wonderfully well received. Its opponents objected mainly to the adoption of the uni-cameral instead of the bi-cameral system, namely, that of governing by one instead of by two Legislative Assemblies. Why, it was asked, should Australia be limited to one Legislative Assembly when the Cape was permitted to have two? Another objection was to the introduction of a Federative Assembly, which was opposed bitterly as a novelty even by Tory politicians like Mr. Disraeli, who in after-years strongly advocated Imperial Federation. Another more valid objection urged by Radicals like Sir W. Molesworth, was that the scheme gave the Colonial Office too much power. There was good sense in his contention, supported by Tories like Mr. Adderley (afterwards Lord Norton), that the Colonial Parliament should not only be vested with all legislative powers which were not Imperial, but that this should be done by mentioning the powers that were Imperial, and leaving everything not mentioned in that category, to be considered as Colonial. This point gave rise to an able and thoughtful debate on the report of the Bill after it emerged from

Committee, in which it may be interesting to state that Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech in support of the Tory-Radical opposition, which may be said to contain the germs of the principle on which his Irish Home Rule Bill of 1886 was based. On the other hand, to Mr. Gladstone must be credited the oddest and most ridiculous of all the amendments to the measure. His ecclesiasticism induced him to propose that in every Colony the Church of England be authorised to form a synod independent of the Imperial or Colonial Government, and empowered to make laws binding on Anglican Colonists. The idea of empowering the Anglican Church courts in our free Colonies to make regulations, quite independently of the Crown or the Colony, which were to be not only binding in foro conscientiæ, but were also to have the force of law, in Royal and Colonial courts, was not only mediæval, but monstrous. Yet it was only rejected by 187 to 182. Perhaps this accounted for what was by far the most trenchant speech made in opposition to the Bill, that of the Bishop of Oxford in the House of Lords, though even he did not venture to reject the measure, his proposal being merely to refer

it to a Committee. It was a speech that would have defeated the Government, but for Lord Grey’s conciliatory offer to go on with the Bill even if the House struck out the clause enabling Colonial Legislatures to alter their constitution, and the clause enabling the Colonists to form a Federative Assembly. This won for the Government a majority of 13. As the clause sanctioning a Federative Assembly was carried in the Lords, against the bitter opposition of the Tories, only by a majority of one, it was eventually abandoned. They further marred the Bill by conferring exceptional political privileges on wealthy squatters, and by prohibiting any Legislative Chamber from eliminating its non-elective element. The interesting thing to notice is how the Tory Party of the day completely stamped out the germ of that Imperial policy of Colonial confederation which Lord John Russell and Lord Grey so wisely strove to plant. As “amended” by the Lords, the Bill passed into law, much to the satisfaction of the Queen, who, when she sanctioned the measure, felt sure that a vigilant personal superintendence of the details of Colonial, as well as foreign affairs, would not thereafter be added to the already arduous duties and anxieties of the Sovereign.

Ireland, as usual, was this Session the object or victim of an eleemosynary financial policy. She had hanging over her, in the shape of relief loans made during ten years, an unliquidated debt of £4,483,000. Besides that, some of the Poor Law Unions were so burdened with debt contracted for local purposes—frequently purposes of jobbery—that they needed help. Lord John Russell therefore proposed to consolidate the unliquidated local debts since 1839, and, subject to existing conditions of interest, extend the period of repayment to forty years. For the immediate relief of bankrupt and semi-bankrupt Unions he proposed another advance from the Treasury of £300,000. The justification for these loans, which were sanctioned, was that the Irish landowners could not pay the interest on the local debt, in addition to the existing poor-rates.

Ireland having been decimated by famine and emigration, it was considered that it would not be unsafe to lower her elective franchise to one of £8 of annual rateable value, more especially as such a proposal tended to conciliate, without concession, the Radical agitators for Parliamentary reform in England. It did not, however, conciliate Mr. Hume, who caustically reminded Sir William Somerville, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, when he introduced the Irish Franchise Bill, that it put the franchise on a narrower basis than that of Cape Colony, and contended that Irishmen should at least be treated as generously as Hottentots. The Bill enacted that instead of each voter being compelled to claim registration, local authorities should make up lists of voters, subject to the usual objections—in other words, that the rate-book should be a self-acting register. The Tories failed in their attack on the Bill in the House of Commons; but in the Lords they succeeded in raising the qualification to £15, and in altering the registration clause so that new voters must each claim to be registered before they were put on the voters’ roll. The two Houses ultimately accepted a compromise. The Government agreed to increase the qualification from £8 to £12, and the Tories agreed to abandon their alteration of the registration clauses.

On the 18th of May, Lord John Russell brought in a memorable Bill to abolish the office of Lord-Lieutenant—an office the maintenance of which has undoubtedly given an Imperial sanction to the Separatist principle in Ireland. The idea of the Whigs was that the Lord-Lieutenant was an anachronism. The Minister representing Ireland in the House of Commons, though popularly called Secretary for Ireland, is really and legally only Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. Sometimes he sits in the Cabinet when the Lord-Lieutenant does not, and then he is his master’s superior. The Lord-Lieutenant, argued Lord John, had all the responsibility, but never the freedom of action of a Minister of the Crown, and the abolition of his office would facilitate that blending of the Irish and Imperial administrations, which would go far to destroy the Separatist feeling in Ireland. The Queen was very much inclined to favour this step, and for a curious reason. Her Irish tour had impressed her with the fact that her social influence in Ireland might be turned to good account in winning the hearts of a chivalrous and generous people, thereby converting the golden link of the Crown into a healing institution of conciliation. But it was somewhat embarrassing to all parties for the Sovereign to reside regularly in a country, in which the official head of the State was her own Viceroy. Were the Viceroyalty abolished, the Queen promised Lord John Russell that she would from time to time visit Ireland in State, and keep up the Viceregal Lodge in Phœnix Park as a Royal Palace. As for the business of Ireland, it would, according to Lord John, be best carried on by a fourth Secretary of State. The Tories opposed the Bill, because they contended that Lord Clarendon’s success in governing Ireland proved that the Viceroyalty was useful, and because the creation of a fourth Secretary of State was objectionable, for it would necessitate an expensive administrative establishment, and perchance lead to conflicts of authority between the Irish Secretary and the Home Secretary. The Irish members were divided in opinion. Some supported and some opposed the Bill, because it might tend to stimulate Nationalism. Others supported and opposed it for precisely the opposite reason. A third section, as to whose sincerity there could be no doubt, opposed it because it would spoil the trade of Dublin. The general feeling of the country was expressed by Peel, who said he was willing that the experiment should be made, though he said so with hesitancy, but he was also desirous, if it were possible, to see the Irish Administration merged in the Home Office, and not conducted by a fourth Secretary of State.[17] The measure was read a second time by a vote of 295 to 70, but introduced as it was when the country was in a fever of excitement over Lord Palmerston’s foreign quarrels, the country took little interest in it, and it was not pressed further.

Lord Clarendon having in October, 1849, dismissed from the Commission of the Peers, Lord Roden and other Orange magistrates who had been privy to a fray at Dolly’s Brae in the preceding July, their case was brought before the House of Lords this Session by Lord Stanley, on the 12th of July. Stanley delivered a bitter attack on Lord Clarendon, but when he made it clear that he did not propose to do anything more than move for papers and correspondence relating to the affair, it was obvious that he had forced on a debate merely to gratify his Orange supporters. Lord Clarendon defended himself successfully, and convinced everybody that he had simply done his duty as an impartial administrator.

The financial condition of the country was so favourable that Sir C.

Wood, in his Budget Speech of 15th March, said there was a surplus at his disposal of £2,225,000. His estimates for the coming year, on the basis of existing taxation and anticipated expenditure, led him to expect a surplus of £1,500,000. Therefore, there was room for some remission of taxes. The first charge on a surplus, he held ought to be for the reduction of the National Debt—and for that purpose he set aside half his hoped-for surplus. As to the rest, he proposed to exhaust it: first, in reducing the Stamp Duties on the Transfer of Land, and on mortgages under £1,000, and in converting the Stamp Duty on leases into a uniform one of ½ per cent.; and secondly, in ameliorating the lot of the badly-housed labouring classes by repealing the tax on bricks. Though the Budget was ridiculed by the economists, Sir C. Wood’s proposals were agreed to, with the exception of the alteration in the Stamp Duties. It was argued successfully that though the new scale of Stamp Duties would reduce the revenue derived from small sums, they would increase, out of all proportion to this reduction, the revenue from large sums, so that under the pretext of reducing, Sir Charles Wood was actually increasing his revenue. Never was there such haggling and bungling. Nobody seemed to understand a scheme which was complex in detail, and explained by a Minister who was indistinct in his articulation and confused in exposition. Sir Charles Wood had more than once to withdraw his proposals, and substitute others, but finally he accepted a reduction of ½ instead of 1 per cent. on legal conveyances, and 1/8 instead of ½ per cent. on mortgages. The result showed that his opponents were right, and that he was utterly wrong in his calculations of the effect his reductions would have on the revenue of the year.

The demand for retrenchment which had been originally raised by the Radicals, was now emphasised by the Protectionists. Following the example of some of their party in the Colonies, they saw in an attack on the cost of establishments, a means of annoying a Free Trade Government, and perchance of relieving the rural taxpayers, who undoubtedly were suffering by the loss of Protection. Mr. Henley accordingly first appeared with a motion to reduce official salaries. Whereupon Lord John Russell intervened with a motion for a Select Committee to inquire into the subject. Mr. Disraeli opposed to this an amendment to the effect that the House had enough information, and that the Government ought not to shirk the responsibility of initiating, without delay, every practicable reduction in the cost of establishments. His party followed him faithfully, though some, like John Wilson Croker, condemned his tactics and his speech as “Jacobinical.”[18] Mr. Hume also supported him, but Mr. Bright thought that if a Committee recommended reductions, they would be more patiently borne by the victims than if they were enforced by the Government. Mr. Horsman outdid Mr. Disraeli and Mr. Hume, for he demanded that ecclesiastical establishments should also come within the purview of the Committee: Lord John, however, carried his motion. Mr. Cobden then brought forward resolutions in favour of a general reduction of expenditure, contending that it would be possible to save £10,000,000 by cutting down expenditure to the standard of 1835. The Radical financial reformers declared that their object was to reduce taxation that pressed on Labour and impeded production, and that the best way of doing that was to curtail expenditure on the Army and Navy, which were in excess of the strength necessary for National Defence, provided the Foreign Office pursued a policy of non-intervention. Whigs and Tories united in defeating Mr. Cobden. Mr. Henry Drummond next, on behalf of the Protectionist Tories, moved that adequate means be adopted to reduce taxation, and thereby increase the wage-fund of the country. His plan was to cut down all official salaries, and revise all burdens that checked the growth of raw produce. The motion was disposed of by carrying the “previous question,” because, though some Radicals like Mr. Hume and Mr. Bright voted for it, most people saw in it a Protectionist “trap.” Lord Duncan very nearly on a subsequent occasion repealed the Window Tax,[19] but Mr. Milner Gibson failed in his attack on the Paper Duty, as did Mr. Cayley in his effort to repeal the Malt Tax.

After much determined opposition from the Tories, with whom Mr. Gladstone acted on this occasion, the Government succeeded in carrying the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of the Universities—a proposal which had the warm support of the Queen and Prince Albert, in consequence of which some foolish people went about saying that there was a conspiracy on foot to Germanise the academic system of England.

The Bishop of London’s Ecclesiastical Appeals Bill, which was introduced into the House of Lords on the 3rd of June, touched on matters regarding which the Queen has always been sensitive—the relation of the Church to the prerogative of the Crown. The principle of the Bill was that ecclesiastical appeals should be tried, not before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as representing the Queen, but before an assemblage of Bishops, whose decision should be binding, not merely on the Judicial Committee, but on the Queen also. This, of course, destroyed her supremacy over the Established Church of England, a prerogative of the Crown which has always been tenaciously guarded. The Bill was rejected. And here it may be well to record what it was that led to its introduction. It was introduced to tranquillise the High Churchmen and Tractarians, who were smarting over the decision of the famous “Gorham case.”

Mr. Gorham had been presented by the Crown to the benefice of Bramford Speke in August, 1847. When the Bishop examined him, he found that he was an extreme Low Churchman, and that he denied that spiritual regeneration was conferred by the sacrament of Baptism; also that his views on other matters, such as predestination and election, were those of the narrowest Presbyterian Calvinists. The Bishop of Exeter refused to institute Mr. Gorham, and, after much litigation, the case was appealed by him from the Court of Arches to the Judicial Committee, who decided that Mr. Gorham’s views were not incompatible with the Thirty-nine Articles. The Judicial Committee on this occasion consisted of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and the Bishop of London. Associated with them were the Master of the Rolls (Lord Langdale), the Lord Chief Justice (Lord Campbell), Mr. Baron Parke, Vice-Chancellor, Sir J. Knight Bruce, Dr. Lushington, and the Right Hon. Pemberton Leigh. The complaint of the Churchmen was that the ruling of a Bishop and an ecclesiastical court on a disputed point of doctrine was not only considered, but actually reversed by a secular tribunal the large majority of whose members were laymen, and the clerical members of which could not vote, but merely gave their opinion to the lay members who formed the Judicial Committee. Churchmen passionately resented these proceedings, and the excitement they raised was fierce and uncontrollable. The Gorham Appeal Case was the badge of the Church’s servitude to the State. The Bishop of London’s Bill was an attempt to remove that badge by constituting a purely ecclesiastical tribunal to try all ecclesiastical appeals, thereby avoiding the necessity for submitting them to lay judges.

When the Queen prorogued Parliament the shadow of mourning was over both Houses. Sir Robert Peel had died suddenly on the 2nd of July. Returning on horseback from a visit to Buckingham Palace on the 29th of June, he met Miss Ellice, one of Lady Dover’s daughters, on Constitution Hill. As he bowed to her, his horse shied at the Green Park railings, and threw him. His fifth rib was broken, and its jagged end pierced the lung with a mortal wound. He lingered in great agony for three days, and it is hardly possible to describe the extraordinary sensation his accident and illness produced throughout the country. Party animosities vanished, and the nation with one voice joined the Queen in the expressions of sorrow which came from her when she said, “The country mourns over him as over a father.”[20]

Peel’s character will, for this generation, be an enigma. Look at one aspect of it, and it seems as the character of a patriot of the pure Roman type, who flourished in the days “when none were for a Party, and all were for the State.” Look at another aspect of it, and it seems as if it were permeated by the conscious insincerity of the unscrupulous political intriguer, whose stock-in-trade was Party principle, which he bought and sold for power in the Parliamentary market. One thing is clear. His abandonment of Protection could not possibly have been due to a love of office. He knew too well when he determined to repeal the Corn Laws, that he doomed himself to political ostracism. Two things seem to account for Peel’s difficulties with his partisans. He saw clearly, but he did not see far. He used his influence as a political leader to become a Minister, but the Minister of the Queen, and not the Minister of his Party. Long before Catholic Emancipation triumphed he ought to have seen that its triumph was inevitable, and the same may be said of the repeal of the Corn Laws. When he suddenly awoke to the fact that in the one case war, and in the other famine was impending, he reversed his policy, but he had to change front so quickly that he had not time to “educate his Party.” On both occasions he had to choose between his Party and the nation. On neither did he shrink from making his choice as a patriot, even at the cost of his reputation as a far-seeing statesman, or a faithful Party leader. Mr. Disraeli said he was not the greatest statesman, but the greatest Member of Parliament England ever produced. That was a just estimate of his magical power of mastering and managing the House of Commons. But it did no justice to his genius for administration, his vast and accurate knowledge of affairs, and latterly the serene judicial temper of mind, in which he dealt with the most agitating and perplexing political problems. Coldness, secretiveness, and egotism were the only flaws in a character, which otherwise almost realised the loftiest ideal of British patriotism.

At the beginning of 1850 the Queen became grievously alarmed about the health of Prince Albert. The toil and anxieties of politics during the years of revolution and counter-revolution had sadly worn his nervous system. In addition to his work as confidential private secretary to the Queen, his own occupations, which have been noticed from time to time in these pages, had grown more numerous and varied each year. As Mr. Gladstone once observed of Mr. Ayrton, “he was a cormorant for work.” As Sir Theodore Martin says, “Ministers and diplomatists found him at every interview possessed of an encyclopædic range of information, extending even to the minutest details.” The Court at this time was a rich treasure-store of information regarding the inner history of Courts and Embassies on the Continent, on which our diplomatists were grateful to draw for aid and suggestions, when appointed to difficult and delicate missions. “But to the claims of politics,” writes Sir Theodore Martin, “had to be added those which science, art, and questions of social improvement were constantly forcing upon the Prince’s attention.... He was habitually an early riser. Even in winter he would be up by seven, and dispose of a great deal of work before breakfast, by the light of the green German lamp, the original of which he had brought over with him, and which has since become so familiar an object in our English homes.[21] The Queen shared his early habits; but before her Majesty joined him in the sitting-room, where their writing-tables stood always side by side, much had, as a rule, been prepared for her consideration—much done to lighten the pressure of those labours, both of head and hands, which are inseparable from the discharge of the Sovereign’s duties.”[22] These labours ultimately produced insomnia or sleeplessness, and at the beginning of the year the Queen, writing from Windsor to Baron Stockmar, alludes to a suggestion from their doctor that his Royal Highness should take a trip to Brussels, and adds:—“For the sake of his health, which, I assure you, is the cause of my shaken nerves, I could quite bear this sacrifice. He must be set right before we go to London, or God knows how ill he may get.”

The Queen’s affectionate desires could not be gratified. The business of organising the Great Exhibition of 1851 proved more engrossing than had been anticipated, not merely because the idea at the bottom of it was her husband’s, but because he was found to be the only man in England who thoroughly understood the scheme. As Lord Granville, in a letter to Prince Albert’s secretary, remarked, his Royal Highness seemed to be almost the only person who had considered the subject as a whole and in details. “The whole thing,” said Lord Granville, “would fall to pieces if he left it to itself.”

On the 21st of February a brilliant meeting in support of the undertaking was held at Willis’s Rooms, which was attended by the diplomatic representatives of the leading nations. This was followed up by a grand banquet at the Mansion House, which was attended by the great dignitaries of State, the Foreign Ambassadors, the Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition, and the heads of the county and municipal magistracy. After the Royal Commission had been appointed, the questions of site, space, and finance were those which pressed for settlement, and without doubt the last gave the Queen the utmost anxiety. The public, she saw, must be induced to support the scheme, and meetings be organised for the purpose of making its advantages known. Prince Albert’s speech at this banquet, however, struck the key-note of all the subsequent advocacy which the Exhibition received. The age, said he, was advancing towards the realisation of a unity of mankind, to be attained as the result and product, and not by the destruction, of national characteristics. Science, by abridging distance, was increasing the communicability of ideas. The principle of the division of labour was gradually being applied everywhere, giving rise to specialism, but specialism practised in publicity, and under the stimulus of competition and capital. Thus was Man winning new powers in fulfilling his mission in the world—the discovery of Natural Laws and the conquest of Nature by compliance with them. The central idea of this Exhibition of 1851 was to give a true test, and a living picture of the point at which civilised Man had arrived in carrying out his mission, and to serve as a base of operations for further efforts which might carry Humanity upwards and onwards to a larger and loftier stage. Such, in a brief paraphrase, were the views of Prince Albert, and they ran through the country amidst a chorus of approval. The whole nation responded to the appeal of his Royal Highness, despite the metaphysics and mysticism which slightly tinged it, and the delight of the Queen was correspondingly great. We can easily understand that King Leopold was at first under the impression that a speech of such stately but restrained eloquence, rich in thought and fruitful in suggestion, must have been read. The Queen, however, informed him that he was mistaken. It was, she says, prepared most carefully and laboriously, and then written down; after which it was spoken freely and fluently without reference to the manuscript. “This,” says the Queen, in her letter to the King of the Belgians, “he does so well that no one believes he is ever nervous, which he is.” On the 23rd of February a meeting of ladies was held at Stafford House, under the presidency of the Duchess of Sutherland, with the object of inviting the women of England to assist in promoting the success of the Exhibition, and a very influential committee was formed for this purpose.

When Easter arrived the Queen’s anxiety grew greater as she saw the Prince showing signs of increasing fatigue. At last, yielding to her importunity, he agreed to leave London and take a brief holiday at Windsor. But his idea of a holiday was peculiar. It was to devise a system of draining Osborne, and utilising the sewage, &c., of the estate.

Age and infirmity had now begun to tell sadly on the Duke of Wellington, and he had become anxious as to the future of the army. Whilst he was alive and strong, as he said, he could hold the Commandership-in-chief. But his position was entirely exceptional for a subject, and in theory at least the office ought to be vested in the Sovereign, or some one very near the Throne. Englishmen have ever been a little jealous of permitting this post to be occupied by a subject. The favour it confers on him, and the influence which—if he has a magic personality—he may wield, might, if wedded to ambition, lead to untoward changes. But the fact that the Sovereign was a woman rendered it impossible to vest the Commandership-in-chief in the Crown. The Duke, therefore, to the surprise of the Queen, who apparently had never thought about the matter, suddenly proposed that arrangements should be made for installing Prince Albert as his successor. It says much for the sagacity and good sense of the Queen and Prince that neither of them liked the proposal—although it was one which would have presented an irresistible temptation to most young men. The Prince pleaded want of military experience. The Duke replied that his plan was to appoint under the Prince, as Chief of the Staff, the general who had most experience in the army. But this did not seem to weigh much with the Queen. Probably she knew her husband’s nature better than the Duke, and was perfectly well aware that he would never permit himself to hold office as an ornamental “dummy.” The revolution he wrought in Cambridge after he became Chancellor of the University gives us an indication of what must have happened in the army had he consented to become the Duke’s successor. It would be wrong to say that the Queen paid much heed to the objection on the score of inexperience. Like the Duke, she fully believed that her husband’s extraordinary power of work, and pertinacity of resolution, would soon fit him for the post. But, on the other hand, it was quite clear that the work would absorb all his time. In short, as the Prince would be certain to insist on doing the duty of the office to the fullest extent, and on his own responsibility, it was equally certain that if he became Commander-in-chief, he must abandon all his other occupations—even the chemical researches on the utilisation of sewage, in his pursuance of which he imagined at the time that he had within his grasp a discovery that would immortalise him as a benefactor of humanity. Moreover, how was the Queen to replace him as her private secretary? So much assiduous service could not be expected from any other holder of that office as Prince Albert cheerfully gave, and it was furthermore an office the duties of which, at a time when the Sovereign was beginning to wield an ever-increasing consultative and moderating influence on public affairs, were necessarily augmenting. Then the Queen also urged that as she believed the Prince was undertaking too much work already, she could not approve of his burdening himself with more. To sum up the views of the Queen and her husband on this difficult and delicate affair: many able generals could do the duty of Commander-in-chief as well, if not better, than the Prince. Nobody, however, in the kingdom could possibly do the work he was then doing for the Queen as well as he did it, and so the flattering proposal was put aside. Had it been accepted, and had the Prince overhauled the Horse Guards as he did the University of Cambridge, perhaps the terrible and shameful disasters of the Crimea might have been avoided. On the other hand, it may be doubted if even his patient resolution would have enabled him to reform in so short a time the military administration which collapsed in 1854. In that case, the Court would have been blamed, and blamed unjustly, for the departmental catastrophes that still invest the Crimea with bitter memories for British soldiers.