On the 1st of May the Duke of Connaught was born. His birthday was coincident with that of the Duke of Wellington, and he had as his sponsors two of the most illustrious soldiers of Europe—the great Duke himself, and Prince William of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany. The ceremony of baptism took place on the 22nd of June, when the Prince was christened Arthur William Patrick Albert, the Duke and the Prince of Prussia both being present.

As spring gave place to summer, the shadow of death fell on the Royal Family. We have seen how genuine and profound was the Queen’s sorrow over the death of Peel. But closely following that sad event came the serious illness of the Duke of Cambridge, a kind-hearted Prince, noted for his bonhomie and for the profusion of his charities. The Queen was assiduous in her attentions to her uncle, whom she dearly loved, and one of her visits to his sick bed accidentally exposed her to a cowardly outrage. When she was leaving Cambridge House, sad-eyed and sorrowful, a man suddenly stepped forward and struck at her face with a cane. Her bonnet protected her somewhat, but her forehead was cruelly bruised by the assault. “The perpetrator is a dandy,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar, “whom you must have often seen in the park, where he makes himself conspicuous.” He was one Robert Pate, formerly a lieutenant in the army. After being tried for his offence on the 11th of July, he was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. No motive could be assigned for the outrage, and the jury refused to accept Pate’s plea of insanity.

The Duke of Cambridge, it may here be said, died on the 8th of July.

Meantime, as if to add to the Queen’s private griefs, an extraordinary attack was made in the press upon Prince Albert and the Exhibition Commissioners. The building was to be in Hyde Park, and this invasion of one of the pleasure-grounds of “the people” was resented. The truth is that a rich and selfish clique of families dwelling in the neighbourhood objected to a great public show, likely to attract multitudes of sightseers, coming between the wind and their nobility, and they represented “the people” for the occasion. The extent to which they were sensitive as to the rights of the populace may be indicated by one suggestion which they made. It was that the Exhibition be transported as a nuisance to the Isle of Dogs, where “the people” dwell in teeming masses. At last an attack was organised on the Exhibition Commissioners in Parliament, and the Queen, knowing well that if it were successful, the project must be abandoned, was sorely grieved at the folly and prejudice which inspired the opposition. The Times was very bitter. Even Mr. Punch, notorious for his sentimental devotion to the Queen, proved himself a sad recreant on this occasion, and Leech made fun of the Prince, because the public were a little niggardly with their subscriptions,[23] which fell far short of £100,000, which was the lowest estimate tendered for the building. But though the attempt of “a little knot of selfish persons,” as the Queen calls them in a letter in which she implores Stockmar to come and comfort her and her husband in their troubles, to drive the Exhibition out of Hyde Park failed, and their attacks in Parliament collapsed, the Prince was still “plagued about the Exhibition,” and the old symptoms of insomnia reappeared, greatly to the alarm of her Majesty. At last a way out of all their difficulties was opened up. It was proposed to establish a guarantee fund to meet any deficit that might be incurred, and on the 12th of June it was started by a subscription of £50,000 from Messrs. Peto, the contractors. In a few days the subscriptions sufficed to solve the financial problem. Ultimately, to the surprise of those who had scoffed at the Prince’s sanguine anticipations, not only were the guarantors freed from all responsibility, but when the Exhibition accounts were closed, the Commissioners found themselves with a balance of a quarter of a million in hand. The work was accordingly begun without further delay.

But no sooner had one source of vexation vanished than another was opened. In August the Queen, mortified at further displays of wayward recklessness on Lord Palmerston’s part, and failing to inspire the Prime Minister with enough courage to rebuke him, at last determined to take the matter in hand herself. Although Palmerston was then at the height of his popularity, owing to the triumph of his civis Romanum sum doctrine in the Don Pacifico debate, her Majesty penned a Memorandum to Lord John Russell, which has become historic. It is dated the 16th of August, and was written at Osborne. In it she accepts Lord Palmerston’s disavowal of an intention to offer her any disrespect by his past neglect, but, to prevent fresh mistakes, she deems it as well to say that in future she requires—

“(1) That he (the Foreign Secretary) will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case, in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she has given her Royal sanction. (2) Having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must consider as failure in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her Constitutional right of dismissing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken based on that intercourse; to receive the foreign despatches in good time, and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents before they must be sent off.” Lord John Russell sent this Memorandum to Palmerston, who lightly pleaded pressure of business in palliation of his past faults, but promised to behave better in time to come. Had he been a man of high spirit or sensitive feelings, he would have resigned when the Queen’s Memorandum was sent to him. High spirit, however, was not to be expected from the Minister that sent a British fleet to coerce Greece, though he dared not utter a word of protest against the Russian invasion of Hungary,[24] or who, whilst he could be swift to resent an impertinence from a decrepit Power like Spain, accepted with the utmost meekness a rebuke from Russia in reference to the Greek affair, couched in the language of deliberate insult. On the contrary, whilst his friends gave out that he was manfully fighting the battle of the people against the Sovereign and the foreign Prince, who was “the power behind the Throne,” Palmerston was abasing himself before both. He implored Prince Albert to intercede for him with the Queen in order that she might grant him an interview. The Prince, in a Memorandum dated 17th of August, 1850, writes:—

“After the Council for the Speech from the Throne for the Prorogation of Parliament on the 14th I saw Lord Palmerston, as he had desired it. He was very much agitated, shook, and had tears in his eyes, so as to quite move me, who never under any circumstances had known him otherwise than with a bland smile on his face.” It was not the condemnation of his policy, he told Prince Albert, that affected him most closely. The “accusation that he had been wanting in his respect to the Queen, whom he had every reason to respect as his Sovereign, and as a woman whose virtues he admired, and to whom he was bound by every tie of duty and gratitude, was an imputation on his honour as a gentleman, and if he could have made himself guilty of it, he was almost no longer fit to be tolerated in society.”[25] The “almost” is

characteristically Palmerstonian. Her Majesty, according to Prince Albert, did not impute any intentional want of regard to Lord Palmerston; but her complaint was that he never submitted any question to her “intact,” that is to say, he always contrived to commit the Government before the Queen could express an opinion. As her opinion had of late been at variance with Lord Palmerston’s, this mode of doing business was to her objectionable. Her Majesty had always been frank with her Ministers, and when overruled, she had accepted loyally their decision. “She knew,” said the Prince, “that they were going to battle together, and that she was going to receive the blows which were aimed at the Government; and that she had these last years received several such as no Sovereign of England had before been obliged to put up with, and which had been most painful to her.” She did not wish to trouble her Ministers about details. But when principles were settled at their conferences, she thought she too should be consulted and advised. Palmerston’s excuse was the old one—want of time; but he said he was willing to come to the Palace at any moment to Prince Albert, and give any explanations that might be wanted either to the Queen or her husband.

If the Prince’s account be correct, the Minister seems to have conducted himself throughout this interview with hysterical servility, which may, however, have been simulated. As for his penitence, it was short-lived. In September he had another quarrel with the Queen over the wording of a despatch, in which he had foolishly gone out of his way to impugn the honour of England. This despatch rose out of the Haynau incident. The Austrian General Haynau had come to England on a visit, and the Radicals stirred up public feeling against him on account of his brutality in crushing the Hungarian insurrection, more especially for his cowardly conduct in stripping women, and flogging them publicly. When he went to visit the Brewery of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins, the workmen in the place recognised him. They turned out en masse, assaulted, hustled, and insulted “the Austrian butcher,” till he fled in terror from the premises, and took refuge in a little public-house, from which the police smuggled him away. Naturally, Lord Palmerston expressed his regret to the Austrian Ambassador; but it was also necessary to send a formal Note on the subject to the Austrian Government. This Note was a model of Palmerstonian maladroitness. In the first place, it contained an uncalled-for imputation on the English people, because it admitted that they were so incapable of courtesy and self-control that no foreigner was safe in England who happened to be unpopular. Secondly, it implied that Haynau had been imprudent in visiting England at all. The Queen, whose views were shared by the Prime Minister, objected to both of these statements—one as derogatory to the honour of England, the other as needlessly offensive to Austria. But, on her objecting, she discovered that it was impossible to alter the Note, which had been sent to the Austrian Ambassador before the draft had been submitted to her. The Queen, however, insisted on the withdrawal of the Note, and so did Lord John Russell. Palmerston first of all tried to browbeat the Prime Minister by threatening to resign. But when Lord John informed him (16th of October) that the threat was futile, Palmerston submissively withdrew the Note, and substituted for it another drawn up in accordance with the Queen’s views.

Another serious conflict of opinion between the Queen and Lord Palmerston at this period arose out of the dispute between Denmark and the German States as to the settlement of Schleswig-Holstein. The German population of these Duchies had revolted against the petty tyranny of the Danes, and it was notorious that they were supported secretly by Prussia. The rebellion was suppressed; and though almost all the Liberals of Europe were in favour of letting the Duchies be incorporated in Germany, the Governments of the various Powers took the contrary view. The Austro-Prussian Convention at Olmütz, of 29th November, restoring peace and stipulating for the disarmament of the Duchies, left the matter uncertain; but Austria was obviously for thwarting, whilst Prussia was for gratifying, the aspirations of the German or national party in the Duchies. All through this controversy the Queen was anti-Austrian, and strongly in favour of letting the Schleswig-Hoisteiners have their own way. Palmerston, and in this he was powerfully supported by the Tories, was violently pro-Austrian, and used the influence of England as far as possible to prevent the Duchies gravitating to Germany. For the moment he was successful. But subsequent events, as all the world knows, justified the wiser and more liberal views of the Queen.

On the 26th of August, 1850, Louis Philippe died; in fact, the sad news of his death greeted the Queen and her husband a few days after their return from a brief visit to the King of the Belgians at Ostend, and marred the celebration of Prince Albert’s thirty-first birthday at Osborne.

On the 27th of August the Royal Family migrated northwards. The Queen and Prince Albert opened the great railway bridges at Newcastle and Berwick, and then went on to Edinburgh, where they stayed at Holyrood Palace.

The reception of the Queen in the “grey metropolis of the North” was picturesque as well as enthusiastic. The Royal Company of Archers in their quaint old costume, headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, claimed their historic right of acting as the Queen’s body-guard, and they surrounded her carriage as it drove through swarming crowds from the railway station to the Palace, in which no Queen of Scotland had set foot since Mary Stuart crossed its threshold, never to return to it again. Immediately after her arrival, the Queen and her family began to explore the Palace and its ruined precincts, and she records her delight in her Diary at discovering in the crumbling Abbey the tomb “of Flora Macdonald’s mother,” not the Flora Macdonald who assisted the Young Pretender to escape, but a lady of the Clanranald family, who was then serving as a Maid of Honour. Next morning the Queen and “the children” drove round the park, and climbed Arthur’s Seat, and the Prince proceeded to lay the foundation-stone of the National Gallery of Arts, whilst the rest of the day was spent in sightseeing. At half-past eight on the following morning her Majesty started for Balmoral, which she reached in the afternoon. Here, as Prince Albert says in one of his letters to Stockmar, they tried to strengthen their hearts amid the stillness and solemnity of the mountains,[26] and truly they had much need of rest. The harassing conflicts with Lord Palmerston, the deaths of Peel, Louis Philippe, Queen Adelaide, the Duke of Cambridge, and the faithful Anson, and the news that the Queen of the Belgians was dying, contributed to produce in the Queen great depression of spirits.

The sport on the hills delighted the Prince. The primitive life and guileless character of the people vastly interested the Queen, who has left on record her account of several curious excursions she made, and of the gathering of clansmen at Braemar, which she witnessed. Writing on the 12th of September, 1850, her Majesty says in her “Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “We lunched early, and then went at half-past two o’clock, with the children and all our party, except Lady Douro, to the Gathering at the Castle of Braemar, as we did last year. The Duffs, Farquharsons, the Leeds’s, and those staying with them, and Captain Forbes and forty of his men who had come over from Strath Don, were there. Some of our people were there also. There were the usual games of ‘putting the stone,’ ‘throwing the hammer’ and ‘caber,’ and racing up the hill of Craig Cheunnich, which was accomplished in less than six minutes and a half; and we were all much pleased to see our gillie Duncan,[27] who is an active, good-looking young man, win. He was far before the others the whole way. It is a fearful exertion. Mr. Farquharson brought him up to me afterwards. Eighteen or nineteen started, and it looked very pretty to see them run off in their different coloured kilts, with their white shirts (the jackets or doublets they take off for all the games), and scramble up through the wood, emerging gradually at the edge of it, and climbing the hill.

“After this we went into the Castle, and saw some dancing; the prettiest was a reel by Mr. Farquharson’s children and some other children, and the ‘Ghillie Callum,’ beautifully danced by John Athole Farquharson, the fourth son. The twelve children were all there, including the baby, who is two years old.

“Mama, Charles, and Ernest joined us at Braemar. Mama enjoys it all very much; it is her first visit to Scotland. We left after the dancing.”

The Court returned to Windsor late in the autumn, and one of the first dismal communications made to her Majesty was that of the death of the Queen of the Belgians on the 11th of October. “Victoria is greatly distressed,” writes Prince Albert to Stockmar. “Her aunt was her only confidante and friend. Sex, age, culture, feeling, rank—in all these they were so much on a par, that a relation of unconstrained friendship naturally grew up between them.” This friendship, it may be added, survived even the treachery of Queen Louise’s father, Louis Philippe, in the matter of the Spanish marriages.

The end of the year 1850 was marked by another amazing epidemic of bigotry on the part of the people and the Government, which was very distressing to the serene and evenly balanced minds of the Queen and her husband. This was known as the “Papal Aggression movement,” and it is in these days difficult to understand how a sensible nation could have been swept into its vortex.

On the 24th of September the Pope issued a Brief re-establishing the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England. In other words, he substituted Bishops and Archbishops deriving their titles from their sees, for the Vicars Apostolic who govern Romish missions in heathen lands. He partitioned England into sees, very much as the Wesleyans had mapped it into circuits and districts. The act was purely one of ecclesiastical administration, and of no concern to any body but the small Roman Catholic community in England. But prominent leaders of the Church began to talk about it in extravagant terms, as if it constituted the spiritual annexation of England to Rome, and as if it were a formal assertion of the authority of the Pope over that of the Queen. The Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Dr. Nicholas Wiseman, and Father (now Cardinal) Newman, were particularly indiscreet in their references to the Papal Brief. Dr. Wiseman, for example, issued a pompous Pastoral “Given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome,” on the 7th of October, boasting that “Catholic England had been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished.”

Dr. Ullathorne, the Bishop of Birmingham, was one of those prelates who had the sense and tact to see what mischief would spring from Cardinal Wiseman’s folly, and he did his best to explain the real meaning of the Papal Brief. But his voice was like that of one crying in the wilderness. Did not Father Newman, preaching at Dr. Ullathorne’s enthronisation, say that “the people of England, who for so many years have been separated from the see of Rome, are about, of their own free will, to be added to the Holy Church”? Was it not clear, despite the reasonable explanations of Dr. Ullathorne and others, that what the Papists really meant was that the Reformation was now reversed, and that England was reconquered for Rome? Outraged Protestantism, arguing in this fashion, without distinction of party or sect, accordingly rose in its wrath, and hurled angry defiance at the Pope. The bigots, taking advantage of this outburst of popular passion, demanded that the law should step in and punish the insolent priesthood, who thus challenged the prerogatives of the Crown.

On the 4th of November, Lord John Russell addressed to the Bishop of Durham a letter, almost equalling Cardinal Wiseman’s in its folly. The Prime Minister, in fact, gave expression to the worst phase of contemporary excitement, and fully endorsed the ridiculous notion that a prelate, who had but recently been restored to, and even then was kept on, his throne in Rome by foreign bayonets, had established his supremacy over England, in a manner inconsistent with the authority of the Queen. This Durham letter further stimulated the frenzy of intolerance into which England plunged. Meetings were held everywhere protesting against Papal aggression, and transmitting loyal addresses to the Queen. Guy Fawkes’ Day was celebrated with more

than usual zeal, and in most towns effigies of the Pope and Cardinal Wiseman were paraded through hooting crowds, and burnt in bonfires amidst the derision of the populace. The Universities and the Corporation of London in December sent deputations in great state to Windsor to present addresses to the Queen, protesting against insidious attacks on the authority, prerogatives, and exclusive jurisdiction of the Crown. The Queen’s replies to these addresses were spirited but calm, and absolutely free from intolerance. “I would never have consented,” she tells her “aunt Gloucester” in a letter written after the deputations had been received, “to say anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sincerely Protestant as I always have been and always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves Protestants, while they are in fact quite the contrary,[28] I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at the public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many good and innocent Roman Catholics.”[29]

On the last day of December, 1850, the Queen was gratified to hear that one of her husband’s cherished designs had been carried out. The building for the International Exhibition had risen from the ground in Hyde Park with the magical rapidity of a fairy palace. The design which had been chosen was that of a French artist, and Londoners had looked on with amazement at the erection of the great central dome of crystal, which dwarfed even that of St. Paul’s into insignificance. The plan for carrying out the design was suggested by Mr. Paxton, chief superintendent of the Duke of Devonshire’s gardens, and it was but an expansion of the grand conservatory which he had built for his Grace at Chatsworth. Iron and glass were the materials used for its construction. The cast-iron columns and girders were all alike—four columns and four girders being placed in relative positions forming a square of 24 feet, which could be raised to any height, or expanded laterally in any required direction, merely by joining other columns and girders to them. The building, therefore, grew up in multiples of twenty-four, and it could be taken to pieces just as readily as if it had been a doll’s house, and put up on any other site in exactly the same form. As a matter of fact, after the Exhibition was held in 1851, this wonderful Palace of Crystal was removed to Sydenham, where it has long been one of the raree-shows of London. The building covered 18 acres of ground, and gave an exhibiting surface of 21 acres; in truth, it was, within ten feet, twice the width of St. Paul’s, and four times as long. The contractors, Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., accepted the order for the work on the 26th of July, and though there was not a single bar of iron or pane of glass prepared at that date, they handed the completed building over to the Commissioners, ready for painting and fitting, on the last day of the year.

CHAPTER XXV.

FALL OF THE WHIG CABINET.

On the 4th of February, 1851, Parliament assembled with the din of the agitation over Papal aggression ringing in its ears. Men talked of nothing save the legislation that might be necessary to check the encroachments of Rome. But it was not supposed that the course of the Government would be other than smooth, for not only was the Prime Minister in full accord with the popular feeling against Papal aggression, but the great International Exhibition dwarfed public interest in purely party questions. We shall see how these anticipations were falsified by events, and how the Whig Government was hurried to its doom. One of the politicians behind the scenes, who forecast the fall of the Cabinet more accurately than the public, was Mr. Cobden. “I expect,” he writes on the 19th of February in one of his letters, “that this ‘No Popery’ cry will prove fatal to the Ministry. It is generally thought that the Government will be in a minority on some important question, probably the Income Tax, in less than a fortnight. The Irish Catholic members are determined to do everything to turn out Lord John. Indeed, Ireland is in such a state of exasperation with the Whigs, that no Irish member having a Catholic constituency will have a chance of being elected again unless he votes through thick and thin to upset the Ministry.”[30]

The Address to the Queen was carried in both Houses. The Queen’s Speech promised a measure for resisting the assumption that a foreign Power had a right to confer ecclesiastical titles in England; and some forthcoming Chancery reforms, and reforms in the registration of titles, were also promised. The Protectionists harped on their old string—agricultural distress. The Radicals complained that the Government gave them no hope of cutting down taxation, and grumbled because no reference was made to Parliamentary reform. But they fought rather shy of the proposed legislation against Papal aggression; yet speaking generally, the “No Popery” cry was popular in both Houses of Parliament.

On the 7th of February, Lord John Russell moved for leave to introduce his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, which prevented the assumption of such titles “in respect of places in the United Kingdom,” and he was met by a scathing attack from Mr. Roebuck, who condemned the measure as retrograde and reactionary. The feebleness of the Bill was in comic contrast with the fierce agitation which had produced it, and with the extravagant terms of the Premier’s speech, which might have led one to suppose the Penal Laws were being re-enacted. As Mr. Roebuck said, if Dr. Wiseman called himself Archbishop, instead of Archbishop of Westminster, the Bill could not even touch him. For four nights did the debate drag on, till ultimately leave to introduce the measure was carried by a majority of 332. The Irish members, had they been sixty Quakers instead of sixty Catholics, could dictate terms to any Ministry in a keen party fight, and as they were determined to punish Lord John Russell for his Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, it was obvious that on some other question where a close division was expected the Government would be beaten by the votes of their Irish supporters. It was an ominous sign that they were saved from defeat only by a majority of

sixteen on Mr. Disraeli’s motion for the relief of agricultural distress. But the fatal blow came when Mr. Locke King, on the 20th of February, brought forward his motion for leave to introduce a Bill for equalising the town and county franchise, by reducing the latter to the limit of £10 yearly value. Although Lord John Russell promised to bring in a measure for improving representation, he resisted Mr. King’s motion. It was then carried against him by a vote of 100 against 52. “The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill,” writes Mr. Cobden to his friend Mr. J. Parker, “is the real cause of the upset of the Whig coach, or rather of the coachman leaping from the box to escape an upset. This measure cannot be persevered in by any Government so far as Ireland is concerned, for no Government can exist if fifty Irish members are pledged to vote against them under all circumstances when they are in danger. A dissolution would give at least fifty members to do that work, and they would be all watched as they are now by their constituents. This mode of fighting by means of adverse votes in the House is far more difficult to deal with by our aristocratic rulers than was the plan of O’Connell, when he called his monster meetings. They could be stopped by a proclamation or put down by soldiers, but neither of these modes will avail in the House. What folly,” adds Mr. Cobden, as if he had even then foreseen the success of Parnellism in our day, “it was to give a real representation to the Irish counties, and to think of still maintaining the old persecuting ascendency.”[31] On the 22nd of February, Lord John, as Mr. Cobden says, “leaped from the box,” for on that day he and his colleagues resigned.

The Queen sent for Lord Stanley, who frankly told her that he could not undertake to form a Ministry. He, however, said he would try to form one if Lord John Russell failed to reconstruct his defeated Cabinet. Lord Stanley’s motive for refusing office is to be found in the fact that there was a serious division of opinion among his followers, on the one question that was vital to their existence as a party. Some of the ablest of them, led by Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley, objected to any proposal to tax foreign corn, and yet if the Protectionists refused to do that, their locus standi in the country was gone. Her Majesty next appealed to Lord John Russell to form a coalition with the Peelites. This project proved to be hopeless. The Peelites were bitterly opposed to the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and though Lord John offered to attenuate it to the verge of absolute nullity, they could not sanction it in any shape or form. Moreover, Sir James Graham was afraid that if he joined a Whig Ministry he might quarrel with Lord Palmerston, and Lord Grey was equally afraid that he might quarrel with Sir James Graham. The Peelite leaders also thought that before a Coalition Government could be organised with any chance of success, it must be preceded by co-operation in opposition, between the two parties to it, and hence they wished Lord Stanley to form a Ministry which, from its Protectionist policy, must needs have but a brief existence. This abortive attempt to form an alliance between the Whigs and the Peelites is memorable, because it was the first step that led them both on the path which brought them to the celebrated and fateful Coalition of 1852.

On the 26th of February, the Queen accordingly sent for Lord Stanley again, and he, with a somewhat rueful countenance, pledged himself to try and form a Cabinet. Again he failed, and for reasons which are given by Lord Malmesbury in his diary under the date of the 28th of February. “We met,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “at Lord Stanley’s in St. James’s Square, and have failed in forming a Government. He had previously requested me to take the Colonial Office, which I consider a great compliment, as it is one of the hardest worked of places. Those assembled were Mr. Disraeli, Sir John Pakington, Mr. Walpole, Lord Hardwicke, Mr. Henley, Mr. Herries, Lord John Manners, and Lord Eglinton. Everything went smoothly, each willingly accepting the respective post to which Lord Stanley appointed him, excepting Mr. Henley, who made such difficulties about himself, and submitted so many upon various subjects, that Lord Stanley threw up the game, to the great disappointment and disgust of most of the others present. Mr. Henley seemed quite overpowered by the responsibility he was asked to undertake as President of the Board of Trade, and is evidently a most nervous man. Mr. Disraeli did not conceal his anger at his want of courage and interest in the matter.... In the House of Lords, Lord Stanley announced his failure, and did not conceal it as being caused by the want of experience in public business which he found existed in his party. This is possibly the case, but what really caused the break up of the conference was the timid conduct of Mr. Henley and Mr. Herries.[32] Mr. Herries,” adds Lord Malmesbury, “at this conference, looked like an old doctor who had just killed a patient, and Mr. Henley like the undertaker who was to bury him.” Lord Stanley gave a half-sarcastic turn to his announcement in the House of Lords of the various motives which had led his friends to refuse office. There was a titter when he said that one gentleman had declined to serve because he was pressed with domestic duties, which gave occasion for one of Lord Stanley’s brightest jokes. Lady Jocelyn ironically asked Stanley who it was who was so anxious about his domestic duties. “It is not Jocelyn,” was the cutting reply.[33] An attempted combination with the Peelites had broken down, though Mr. Gladstone was offered a high post in the Cabinet, and the Queen then summoned the Duke of Wellington for his advice.

Matters were at an absolute deadlock. There were three questions in the public mind—Protection versus Free Trade, Parliamentary Reform, and Papal Aggression. As Prince Albert put it in a memorandum which he drew up for the Duke’s consideration, on the first question Peelites, Radicals, and Whigs were united, and formed a solid working majority. On the second question they were also united against the Protectionists. But on the third question the Whigs and Protectionists were united against the Peelites and the Radicals reinforced by the Irish party. Any policy that could unite Peelites, Whigs, Radicals, and Irish would therefore furnish a majority capable of keeping in office a Cabinet that could carry on the Queen’s Government. But the Peelites, the Irish, and the Radicals were just as determined that there should be no anti-Papal legislation, as the Whigs and Protectionists were determined on demanding it. Why not, in such circumstances, leave Papal aggression an open question, in a Coalition Ministry of Whigs, Peelites, and Radicals, allowing Lord John Russell to go on with an attenuated Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and Sir James Graham to oppose it? This suggestion

obviously sprang from the opinion which the Queen had held strongly ever since the year 1846, that the country would never get an efficient Government till a Coalition Ministry was formed. It was, however, quite impracticable. The Queen made no allowance for the ease with which a Cabinet loses prestige in the atmosphere of passion which pervades the House of Commons, where the fact that a Cabinet is even suspected of being divided destroys its moral authority. Neither the Duke of Wellington nor Lord Lansdowne, who was also consulted, could advise the Queen to put forward this project. The Duke, in fact, advised her to send for Lord John Russell once again. This was accordingly done. “The last act of the drama fell out last night,” writes Mr. Greville on the 4th of March, “as everybody foresaw it would and must.” Lord John returned to office with his Ministry unchanged, which, says Mr. Greville, “was better than trying some trifling patching-up, or some shuffling of the same pack, and it makes a future reconstruction more easy.” On the same night Lord Granville dined at the Palace. “The Queen and Prince Albert,” writes Mr. Greville, “both talked to him a great deal of what has been passing, and very openly. She is satisfied with herself, as well she may be, and hardly with anybody else;

not dissatisfied personally with Stanley, of whom she spoke in terms indicative of liking him. She thinks Lord John Russell and his Cabinet might have done more than they did to obtain Graham and the Peelites, and might have made the Papal question more of an open question; but Granville says that it is evident she is heart and soul with the Peelites, so strong is the influence of Sir Robert, and they are very stout and determined about Free Trade. The Queen and Prince think this resuscitated concern very shaky, and that it will not last. Her favourite aversions are, first and foremost, Palmerston, and Disraeli next. It is very likely that this latter antipathy (which no doubt Stanley discovered) contributed to his reluctance to form a Government. Such is the feeling about him in their minds.” Mr. Disraeli, aware of their antipathy, had, indeed, offered to efface himself or to accept any office, no matter how humble, that would not bring him into personal communication with the Sovereign, in order to facilitate the return of his party to power. It may be here convenient to note that the Queen, though entertaining strong personal opinions about the capacity of her Ministers, has been ever prompt to change them when they gave her good reasons for doing so. Her antipathy to Peel in 1839 was notorious. Yet when Peel became Prime Minister he completely won her confidence. Her antipathy to Palmerston ceased after he left the Foreign Office and became Prime Minister, and the same may be said of her aversion to Mr. Disraeli, who, as Lord Beaconsfield, received from the Crown a tribute of homage and favour rarely accorded to any subject.

The reinstatement of the Whigs pleased nobody. However, a dissolution was dreaded, and all parties were therefore forced to tolerate them. But they were, as a Government, utterly discredited, and their final fall was imminent. On their return to office, the Government produced a new edition of their Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It consisted simply in a declaration that the assumption of such titles was illegal. What may be termed the stringent penal clauses were cut out, and in this form the measure was received with universal displeasure, mingled with contempt. The bigots complained that the measure was rendered futile. The Radicals complained that it was a concession to the bigots. As for the Irish members, they opposed what was left of it, simply to compel the Government to drain the chalice of mortification to the lees. So ingeniously was the Bill obstructed that it was not read a third time till a month after its introduction. The House of Lords passed it after debating the second reading for two nights. Its opponents predicted it would be a dead letter, and events verified their prophecies. As Sir George Cornewall Lewis said, “Neither the assumption of the territorial title nor the prohibition to assume it was of the least practical importance.”[34]

The story of the Parliamentary Session of 1851 may be briefly told. The obstruction of the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill left little time for legislation. Sir Charles Wood, as usual, bungled the Budget. He had a comfortable surplus of £2,521,000. His estimates were careful and judicious, and showed on the basis of existing taxation an anticipated surplus of £1,892,000. It was in disposing of this sum that Sir Charles plunged into a sea of difficulties. He said it would not enable him to abolish the Income Tax, the retention of which, during the early days of Free Trade, he recommended as necessary for the stability of the fiscal system. Hence he proposed to spend his estimated surplus in (1), reducing debt by about £1,000,000; (2), in commuting a tax “which bore on the health and morals of the lower classes,” namely, the Window Tax, into a house duty; (3), in reducing the duty on foreign and colonial coffee to a uniform rate of threepence in the pound; (4), in reducing the timber duty by fifty per cent.; (5), and by transferring to the State a certain proportion of the local charge for maintaining pauper lunatics. On the 17th of February, in Committee of Ways and Means, Sir Charles accordingly moved that the Income Tax and Stamp Duties in Ireland be renewed for a limited period. The manner in which the Budget was received clearly showed that it would be unpopular. The Tories attacked it because the Income Tax was to be retained, and the transfer of the charge for pauper lunatics they ridiculed as a mockery of relief to the distressed rural ratepayers. Mr. Hume complained that there was no attempt made to reduce military expenditure by asking the Colonies to bear the cost of their own defence. The representatives of the large towns protested violently against commuting the Window Tax into a house duty. The controversy was, however, cut short by Lord John Russell’s resignation after his defeat on Mr. Locke King’s resolution, to which reference has already been made.

On the 5th of April Sir Charles Wood, after his usual manner, brought forward a new Budget. He proposed now to levy a uniform duty of ninepence on the annual value of houses, and sixpence on shops, without reference to the number of their windows. This would in nearly all cases impose a smaller burden on houses than the Window Tax, the capricious and unequal incidence of which had made it intensely unpopular—the greatest relief being given to the houses which had more windows than were proportionate to their annual value. The loss from the Window Tax and the reduction of the duty on coffee left a surplus of £924,000 for emergencies, and Sir Charles Wood was still deaf to the demand for the abolition of the Income Tax. The Tories contended that the tax had been granted to meet a deficit. There was now no deficit, therefore the tax ought to be removed. The Whigs admitted these facts, but denied the conclusion drawn from them. The tax, they argued, ought not to be removed, because a new reason had risen for its continuance, namely, that the Income Tax enabled the Government to minimise the loss to the revenue which might be entailed by the abandonment of protective duties. This, in fact, is the clue to all the tangled Income Tax controversies of the time. The Income Tax was in truth the keystone of Peel’s Free Trade policy. The Tories, therefore, spared no pains to strike it out of the fabric of fiscal legislation which he and the Whigs had built up. Yet the injustice and frauds perpetrated under the Income Tax were admitted on all sides; and finally an effort was made by Mr. Hume to limit the renewal of the tax to one year, and refer the whole question of its assessment and incidence to a Select Committee. Mr. Hume’s motion was carried against the Government by a vote of 244 to 230. But the fatal objection to it, as Mr. Sidney Herbert pointed out, was that, unless the Government had the Income Tax secured to them for three years, they could not make permanent