proposal marked the abandonment of that instrument by the only Power desirous of abiding by it. The Conference, by its abortive attempts at solving the Danish problem, therefore, extricated Austria and Prussia from their false position, for when it broke up the ill-starred Treaty of London was there and then consigned to what Carlyle calls “the limbo of dead dogs.” And the curious thing is that Palmerston and Russell seem to have almost courted a defeat, which shattered the diplomatic prestige of England for more than a decade. “The Treaty of London,” writes Count Vitzthum, “might, perhaps, have been saved, had the British Minister acknowledged from the first that the value of a Treaty, intended to settle a quæstio de futuro, an eventuality of the future, depended on the circumstances under which that eventuality occurred. A very different importance attaches to treaties which, like those of 1815, deal with faits accomplis and establish the final results of a war lasting over many years. Palmerston and Russell committed in their zeal a political blunder when they declared that to cancel the Treaty of London was tantamount to unsettling everything else. Had not Napoleon been then so seriously occupied in Mexico he would have taken the British Ministers at their word.[202] But be that as it may, the Treaty was now dead. The Conference had not only united Germany, but also served as a safety-valve against an explosion in Parliament. The saying that no change of Ministry is to be thought of after the Ascot Races was verified anew. The Ascot meeting was now over. Nevertheless, before the Session came to an end, the Ministers were doomed to suffer a humiliation without a parallel.”[203] What made this humiliation all the more mortifying to Palmerston, was that the punishment was to come from the hateful hand of Cobden.

At the end of June, says Mr. Cobden, “the Prime Minister announced that he was going to produce the Protocols,[204] and to state the decision of the Government upon the question. He gave a week’s notice of this intention, and then I witnessed what has convinced me that we have effected a revolution in our Foreign policy. The whippers-in—you know what I mean—those on each side of the House who undertake to take stock of the number and the opinion of their followers—the whippers-in during the week were taking soundings of the inclination of members of the House of Commons. And then came up from the country such a manifestation of opinion against war, that day after day during that eventful week member after member from the largest constituencies went to those who acted for the Government in Parliament, and told them distinctly that they would not allow war on any such matters as Sleswig and Holstein. Then came surging up from all the great seats and centres of manufacturing and commercial activity one unanimous veto upon war for this matter of Sleswig and Holstein.”[205]

The old device which had served Palmerston so often in his contests with the Court—that of pitting the infatuation of a bellicose people against the calm sagacity of a pacific sovereign—could not be employed, and the Minister was forced to admit that the game on which he had staked his reputation had gone against him. Hence, writes Mr. Morley, “when Lord Palmerston came down to the House on that memorable afternoon of the 27th of June, it was to make the profoundly satisfactory but profoundly humiliating announcement that there was to be no war.” He admitted that the Government “felt great sympathy for Denmark,” although “she had in the beginning been in the wrong.” But under a new sovereign she had shown some desire to act properly, and so, said the Prime Minister, “we felt that from the beginning to the end of these events she [Denmark] had been ill-used, and that might had overridden right.” With jaunty audacity he added that Ministers also knew that the sympathies of the British nation were in favour of Denmark—for he made no allusion to the confidential reports of the Ministerial “whips”—and he frankly said “we should therefore have been glad to have found it possible to recommend to our Sovereign to take part with Denmark in the approaching struggle.” But then Denmark had rejected a compromise in the Conference—a compromise which, however, he did not state, had been almost thrust on her by Lord Russell, in violation of his own pledges to her—though he did admit that in rejecting this proposal, her fault was “equally shared by her antagonists.” Yet other considerations must be looked to—an admission which illustrated the revolution that had been effected in English diplomacy since the Crimean War. It did not appear, observed Lord Palmerston blandly, that the matter in dispute “was one of very great importance,” (an amazing statement from the author of the Treaty of London) for “it did not affect the independence of Denmark, and it went very little beyond what she herself had agreed to.” Now, Lord Russell had pledged himself not to support any arrangement that went “beyond what she [Denmark] had agreed to” when she accepted the compromise arrived at in his house by the plenipotentiaries of the neutral Powers, and Lord Palmerston’s additional explanation that it turned “simply on the question to whom a portion of territory should belong,” provoked a contemptuous titter in the House. But the real truth had to be confessed at last. Ministers, said Lord Palmerston—who had led the War Party in Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet—in advising their sovereign to levy war, “could not possibly lose sight of the magnitude of the object—the magnitude of the resistance which would have to be overcome, and the comparative means which England and its supposed antagonist would have to bring to bear upon the contest.” They had discovered that neither France nor Russia would help England in supporting Denmark. “The whole brunt, therefore,” said Lord Palmerston, “of the effort to dislodge the German troops, and those who might come to their assistance, from Sleswig and Holstein, would fall upon this country alone.” Hence, he continued, “we have not thought it consistent with our duty to give our Sovereign advice to undertake such an enterprise.”

The whole scheme of Palmerstonian diplomacy seemed revealed, as if by a lightning-flash, in all its impotent meddlesomeness. In a matter of no very great importance concerning a foreign country, England was to talk daggers, but use none, if her antagonist chanced to be too strong to be cowed by menaces. The House of Commons instinctively felt that this was not a policy worthy of a great nation. It received the Prime Minister’s statement in a manner that convinced him that his spell over it was broken. He made one final effort to regain his influence by appealing to its foibles. He accordingly uttered dark and terrible threats of vengeance if Austria and Prussia attacked “the existence of Denmark as an independent Power in Europe,” and did other things which everybody knew they had no temptation to do. “If,” said he, “we should see at Copenhagen the horrors of a town taken by assault—the destruction of property, the sacrifice of the lives, not only of its defenders but of peaceful inhabitants, the confiscation which would arise, the capture of the Sovereign as a prisoner of war, or events of that kind—I do not mean to say that if any of these events were likely to happen, the position of this country might not possibly be a fit subject for reconsideration.” Then he paused to see if his old trick of rhetoric would do its work. It failed him, however, and, instead of the cheers for which he waited, his declamation was greeted with shouts of contemptuous derision. The cheers did not come till Mr. Disraeli condemned the utterance as “a continuation of those senseless and spiritless menaces by which her Majesty’s Government had lowered the influence of England in the Councils of Europe.” And they came again and again from every quarter of the House when the Tory leader declared “he should prefer that the foreign policy of this country should be conducted by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, for the result would have been the same as in the hands of her Majesty’s Government, while they would not have lured on Denmark by fallacious hopes, and exasperated the German Powers by exaggerated expressions of menace and condemnation of their conduct.” As for Lord Russell, he seemed to feel his humiliation so keenly that it was with difficulty he made his statement audible in the House of Lords. “I heard enough,” writes Lord Malmesbury in his terse summary of it, “to know that the Government were for peace at any price, and meant to desert the Danes.”

Of course the Opposition felt bound to challenge the policy of the Ministry by a vote of censure, though they were far from being unanimous as to their tactics. Writing on the 3rd of July, Lord Malmesbury says:—“Lord Derby is so ill with the gout, that he cannot bring on the question of the correspondence between Denmark and Germany next Friday, and he has deputed me to do it in his place, and Lords Salisbury,[206] Donoughmore, Colville, Hardwicke, Carnarvon, and Chelmsford came this afternoon at one o’clock to consult with me respecting the motion to be made in the House of Lords. Lord Derby is nervous in consequence of some objections made by the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord Stanhope, who talk of a collision between the two Houses, and he fears the Party will not be unanimous. I am for going on with it, and so were the rest. We adjourned at two o’clock, when a large meeting took place, I being in the chair. The two above-named Peers, with Lords Winchester and Bath, made some difficulties, but ended by giving way, and it was settled unanimously that the same resolution

which Disraeli makes to-day in the Commons is to be moved on Friday in the Lords. I went yesterday to Disraeli to settle about this, he merely pointing to a chair. I did not sit down, but gave him the message Lord Derby had sent, and went away.[207] After the meeting at Lord Salisbury’s I went to Lord Derby’s to report what had occurred. He was pleased to hear that the motion was not given up, but he was in such dreadful pain that I did not stay.”[208] The vote of censure in the House of Lords was rejected by a majority of 9, and little attention was paid to the struggle there. But all eyes turned to the arena of strife in the House of Commons, where the issue was doubtful, and where on the 4th of July Mr. Disraeli moved a Resolution “to express to her Majesty our great regret that, while the course pursued by her Majesty’s Government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of upholding the independence and integrity of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence of this country in the councils of Europe, and thereby diminished the securities for peace.” His indictment of Palmerston’s Foreign Policy was unanswerable. In alliance with France and Russia, England might have controlled the Danish Question. But Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, after annoying Russia because she persecuted Poland, provoked France by refusing to join her in protecting the Poles from persecution. When the English Government discovered that France was immovably neutral on the Danish Question, they should either have declared frankly that they would, if need be, defend Denmark by force, or, like France, they should have abstained from either menacing the German Powers, or holding out to Denmark delusive hopes of succour. The latter, said Mr. Disraeli, would have been his policy; on the other hand, the British Ministers wavered between peace and war—indulging in unaccomplished threats and unfulfilled promises. The undignified part that Lords Palmerston and Russell made England play at the Conference—which, as Mr. Disraeli observed, “lasted about as long as a Carnival and, like a Carnival, was an affair of masks and mystifications,”—laid them open to a disastrous attack. Palmerston’s first aim was to maintain the integrity of Denmark. In the Conference the English plenipotentiary was the first to accept and even suggest her dismemberment. His second aim was professedly to maintain the independence of Denmark and lessen the risk of a great war in Europe. In the Conference the English representative, however, proposed to put Denmark under the joint guarantee of the Great Powers. “They would,” as Mr. Disraeli pointed out, “have created another Turkey in Europe, in the same geographical situation, the scene of the same rival intrigues, and the same fertile source of constant misconceptions and wars.” Mr. Gladstone virtually acknowledged the diplomatic defeat of the Government. They had tried, he said in effect, to induce France and Russia—the natural enemies of England—to join them in going to war with Germany—her natural ally. But having failed they ceased to menace the German Powers, who were too strong to be intimidated by Lord Palmerston.

The resolution was only a party device to drive Ministers from office by drawing a sensational picture of the degradation to which England had been exposed by Ministerial diplomacy. Mr. Kinglake, however, interfered, and proposed a resolution drafted by Cobden evidently for the purpose of humiliating Palmerston, and yet offering a loophole of escape from a vote of censure that must, if carried, have cut short his career, and brought a Tory Ministry with violent anti-German sympathies back to power. This resolution ironically expressed the satisfaction of the House that the Queen had been advised not to aid Denmark by force of arms. Mr. Kinglake then showed Lord Palmerston a list of the Liberals who intended to vote for Mr. Disraeli’s motion, in the event of the Government declining to accept what Count Vitzthum calls Mr. Cobden’s “humiliating absolution,” so that the Prime Minister had but little choice. “He was bound either to retire from office, or swallow the bitter pill offered to him by the Manchester School and pledge himself to maintain the strictest neutrality.”[209] He agreed to swallow the pill, which Mr. Cobden refused to gild; for in his speech of the 6th of July Cobden delivered a scathing attack on the futility of Lord Palmerston’s whole scheme of foreign policy, which had subjected England to humiliation in all parts of the world. The final demonstration of its failure, he argued, was the complete justification of those principles of non-intervention which he and Mr. Bright had preached for many long and weary years. It was admitted that he laid down with a masterly hand the foreign policy which future Governments, whether Whig or Tory, would be compelled by the people to follow. “Our country,” said Cobden, amidst cheers from every part of the House, “requires peace. Some people think it is very degrading and very base that an Englishman should speak of his country as requiring peace, and as being entitled to enjoy its blessings; and if we allude to our enormous commercial and industrial engagements as a reason why we should avoid these petty embroilments, we are told that we are selfish and grovelling in our politics. But I say we were very wrong to take such measures as were calculated to extend our commerce, unless we were prepared to use prudential precautions to keep our varied manufacturing and mercantile operations free from the mischief of unnecessary war.” England had no armies to spare for Continental interference. She had 79,000 troops locked up in India. In China she had two little armies separated by thousands of miles; she had another detachment in Japan; she had 10,000 men “fighting somebody’s battles” in New Zealand; she had from 10,000 to 15,000 troops in North America, “committed as a point of honour to defend a frontier of 1,500 miles against a country which can keep 700,000 men on the field;” she had also troops at the Cape, the West Indies, West Africa, Malta, and Gibraltar. Surely the world never saw, said Cobden, such a dispersion of force as this by a Power that attempted to interfere with Continental affairs. Hence the time had come for the new departure in foreign politics, for, with the failure of Lord Palmerston’s Danish policy, it was clear our whole system of conducting our relations with foreign countries had broken down. The Foreign Office had lost its credit abroad. Foreign Governments now knew that its threats and its pledges were vain and empty, because the real power now lay, not in the Foreign Office, but in the House of Commons. It was not the Ministry he desired to change, but the system; so that, though he was prepared to vote against Mr. Disraeli’s censure, Mr. Cobden, as Lord Robert Cecil observed, was about as true a friend to the Ministry, as the Ministry had been to Denmark. The only difference was, that whilst the Government gave Denmark fair words and no succour, Mr. Cobden had given Lord Palmerston valuable succour, but no fair words. It was past midnight on the 9th of July when Palmerston rose to defend his position, but he added nothing to the debate. As Mr. Evelyn Ashley, his adoring biographer, says, “he had, in truth, a difficult task. There had been a conspicuous failure; of that much there could be no doubt. Allies, colleagues, and circumstances had proved adverse; yet the excuses for failure could not be laid on any of them. So, with the exception of a dexterous allusion to the words of the resolution as ‘a gratuitous libel upon the country by a great Party who hoped to rule it,’ he did not detain the House for long on the points immediately at issue, but, dropping the Danish matter altogether, went straight into a history of the financial triumphs of his Government.”[210] After all, for these he was indebted to Mr. Gladstone with whom he was rarely in agreement on matters of general policy; and his obvious evasion of the matter in dispute was resented by the House, which interrupted him with angry cries of “Question!” His defence certainly had no bearing on the issue; but, as Mr. Ashley observes, with unconscious cynicism, “it had all to do with the Party question, for it decided the votes of doubting men, who, caring little about Sleswig-Holstein, cared a great deal about English finance. Anyhow, it commanded success, for the Government got a majority of eighteen, and thus renewed their lease of power.” Lord Palmerston had expected only a majority of three, but several Tories had voted with the Liberals, and eleven abstained from voting at all. “This,” writes Count Vitzthum, “is explained by the fear of a Roman Catholic intrigue. The Vatican had been anxious to make use of the opportunity for overthrowing the hated Premier. Some Monsignori especially sent from Rome are said to have been busily engaged in the lobby in inducing the Irish Members to vote with the Opposition. Be that as it may, a majority of eighteen votes was a godsend so unexpected, that the Premier begged some young ladies, who had no notion of what had happened, to congratulate him. Lady Palmerston was delighted at the hand-shakings lavished on the Prime Minister by the crowd that thronged the lobby.”

The result of the division was hailed with great delight by the country. To have turned out Palmerston would have brought Lord Derby back to office, whose followers, it was suspected, would have finally driven him into war with Germany. To retain Palmerston in power, but by a vote that humiliated him and destroyed his personal prestige, was felt to be in every way safer for the country than the transference of its Government to an Opposition which was at once weak and warlike. “However the dice may fall,” writes Count Vitzthum, “the Prime Minister is disarmed, and his secret schemes of anger and revenge are condemned. The victory of the Peace Party is a victory of the Queen. Maligned, insulted, and reproached for German sympathies, her Majesty has checked the dictatorship of her Prime Minister, and beaten him three times in his own Cabinet on the question of war and peace. The Queen has recognised the true interests, the true wishes of her people, and not allowed herself to be misled by the gossip of the drawing-rooms, or the declamations of the daily Press.”[211] As for Lord Palmerston, his biographer has published some letters which show how bitterly he resented his defeat. In one of these, addressed to the King of the Belgians, he rails at Austria and Prussia for taking advantage of the weakness of Denmark, at Denmark for obstinately putting herself in the wrong, and at France for not cooperating with England. “One consequence,” he says, “is clear and certain, that if our good friend and neighbour at Paris were to take it into his head to deprive Prussia of her Rhenish provinces, not a finger in England would be stirred, nor a voice raised, nor a man or a shilling voted, to resist such a retribution upon the Prussian monarch.” As the Power which seized the Rhine would have Belgium at its mercy, it would be difficult to imagine an English Minister addressing to a Belgian Sovereign a more maladroit expression of impotent discomfiture. Then, in autumn, Palmerston, replying to a letter from Lord Russell, writes, “You say that with less timidity around us we might probably have kept Austria quiet on the Danish affair. Perhaps we might; but then we had no equal pull upon Prussia, and she would have rallied all the German Powers round her, and we should equally have failed in saving Denmark.[212] As to Cabinets, if we had colleagues like those who sat in Pitt’s Cabinet, such as Westmoreland and others, or such men as those who were with Peel, like Goulburn and Hardinge, you and I might have our own way on most things; but when, as is now the case, able men fill every department, such men will have opinions, and hold to them; but, unfortunately, they are often too busy with their own department to follow up foreign questions so as to be fully masters of them, and their conclusions are generally on the timid side of what ought to be the best.”[213] The further development of the Danish Question need not be dwelt on here, as it affected the policy neither of the Cabinet nor of the Court. The Germans resumed the war as soon as the Conference broke up. Uninterrupted victory put them in complete possession of the Duchies, to which Denmark finally renounced all claim by the Treaty of Vienna, which was signed on the 18th of October.

CHAPTER IX.

THE HEIR-PRESUMPTIVE.

Next in importance to the Danish Question in 1864, were disputes which rose out of the relations of England to the belligerents in the American Civil War. The Southern States having no navy fit to cope with that of the Federal Government, had equipped swift steam cruisers which swept American commerce from the seas. They ran no risks in scuttling unarmed merchantmen, and their speed protected them from capture by men-of-war. The most formidable of these cruisers or privateers, such as the Alabama and the Georgia, had been built in English yards, usually under the pretence of being destined for some Foreign Power which was at peace. When they escaped to sea and got their armament on board, they hoisted their true colours, and set forth to prey on American commerce. It has been shown how the precautions which the authorities had taken to prevent the Southern cruisers from escaping were evaded. The authorities, however, were more successful in arresting certain steam-rams—which were being built at the yard of Messrs. Laird in Birkenhead—the sailing of which Mr. Adams warned Lord Russell would be taken by the Federal Government as an act of war. Lord Monck, then Viceroy of Canada, in a letter to the late Mr. A. Hayward, says that the arrest of the rams had produced a good effect in favour of the English Government on the official mind in America. On the other hand, the ship-building trade supported Messrs. Laird in denouncing the action of the authorities; and the Tory Opposition, and the sympathisers with the Slave States joined the shipbuilders in attacking the Government. These attacks were futile, but to avoid the annoyance of litigation, the Government virtually bribed Messrs. Laird into silence by buying the rams for her Majesty’s service. On the other hand, the partisans of the Northern States blamed the Government for being too generous in extending hospitality to the Southern cruisers, or “pirates,” as they were termed by the extreme Radicals of the period. When the Georgia, a Confederate cruiser, which had been built on the Clyde, and secretly equipped by a Liverpool firm, put into Liverpool, it was pointed out that she ought not to be treated as a ship of war. She had been preying on the commerce of a friendly Power. Like a pirate, she had never taken her prizes to be condemned in a Prize Court, but had scuttled them on the high seas. She had never once been in any of the ports of the belligerent Power under whose flag she sailed, and altogether a very unpleasant precedent for a great Maritime State was being created by her reception at Liverpool. The Queen was understood to be somewhat uneasy on the subject, and Mr. Thomas Baring, on the part of the commercial community, expressed a similar feeling of discomfort. It was admitted that the Government had the power to exclude these vessels from English ports, but Ministers contended that it would be inexpedient to act so conspicuously in favour of one of the belligerents, between whom they desired to stand absolutely neutral. The Government could not be induced to go further than promise to remonstrate with the Confederates on account of the conduct of their agents in this country.[214] Complaints were then made that the Federal Government were surreptitiously carrying on a system of recruiting in Ireland. Of this no proof could be obtained, because of the cloak which emigration gave to the proceedings of the American agents. It was well known in Ireland that any able-bodied labourer who emigrated to New York could get a bounty of nearly £100 if he joined the colours. Hence, it is difficult to believe that the American “crimps” had any inducements to effect the enlistment of Irish recruits at Cork, rather than at New York. There is reason to think that the “crimps” infested passenger ships and cajoled emigrants during the voyage to enlist when they arrived at New York. But public opinion was satisfied that the Government could not effectually stop proceedings of this sort—especially on imperfect evidence.

In 1864 finance was again the mainstay of Lord Palmerston’s Administration. Mr. Gladstone had come to be regarded as a kind of fiscal magician. He rose superior to every reverse of fortune, and he had an expedient ready to meet every emergency. In spite of monetary panics, cotton famines, lavish military expenditure, and large remissions of taxation, the elasticity of the revenue under his fostering care supplied every deficit almost as soon as it was created. The public credit of England had never been higher; her finances had never been more stable or productive. On the 7th of April, when the Budget was introduced, he spoke to an overflowing House, and

princes, peers, foreign envoys, and men of distinction in all ranks gathered together to listen to the orator. The year had been uneventfully prosperous, and again the balances were on the right side of the national ledger. The revenue had produced £70,208,000, or £2,037,000 above the estimates; the expenditure had been £67,056,000, or £1,227,000 below the estimates. On the existing basis of taxation, Mr. Gladstone estimated for the coming year a revenue of £69,460,000; but his estimated expenditure was only £66,890,000, so that there was a large margin for financial readjustments. He got rid of £20,000 by modifying the duty on corn and grain and the tax on small licences; he devoted £1,330,000 to reduce the sugar duties, and by taking a penny off the Income Tax he sacrificed at once £800,000, though ultimately £1,200,000; he reduced the duty on fire insurances on stock-in-trade from 3s. to 1s. 6d. per £, which involved a loss of £283,000. The net result of his scheme was a loss of revenue of £2,332,000, while the relief from taxation amounted to £3,000,000. This left him with an estimated surplus for the coming year of £238,000. The Budget was popular, not only on its own account, but on account of the masterly exposition of the financial state of England which accompanied it. Englishmen read with swelling pride the figures in which Mr. Gladstone congratulated them on a steady increase of £1,000,000 every year to their revenue—an increase due to its “inherent vigour.” As for the movement of trade, it was marvellous, the value of exports and imports having increased from £377,000,000 in 1871, to £444,000,000 in 1874. Nor was the Queen capable of concealing her satisfaction at the results of the great fiscal policy, the responsibility for initiating which, she and her husband had anxiously shared with Peel. It was the justification, not only of his foresight, but of their unswerving faith in his insight and ideas, that since 1842 the trade of her people had simply been trebled—that what men of business called their “turnover” had now reached the enormous sum of £1,500,000 for every working day of the year. It was not surprising that, with such mighty interests at stake, her Majesty cast her personal influence into the scale against Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell, who led the War Party in the Cabinet, and shrank from putting such a vast fabric of industry in jeopardy, merely to gratify the wounded vanity of a Minister who, having signed an invalid Treaty, was enraged because it was torn up under his eyes. Mr. Gladstone carried his Budget, though he failed to carry a useful measure to substitute the Scottish for the English system of collecting Imperial taxes.[215] He was successful, however, in spite of the clamour of the private companies, in passing a beneficial measure removing the restriction on Government life insurances.[216]

Lord Russell in his speech at Blairgowrie, in the recess of 1863, had told Reformers that they should “rest and be thankful.” In 1864, however, they not only refused to follow the advice, but were rewarded for their enterprise by taking captive no less prominent a personage than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There had been the usual debate on the ballot, in which the old arguments for and against it were set forth in the old way. Mr. Locke King had revived his scheme for extending the £20 franchise to counties. But both projects had been rejected, and everybody felt that the cause of reform was once more shelved, till suddenly the whole question was quickened into life by Mr. Gladstone’s unexpected declaration of policy. Mr. Baines, one of the members for Leeds, had brought in a Bill substituting a £6 for a £10 rental in boroughs, and it was met by Mr. Cave moving the previous question, on the ground that the working classes did not need or want any better representation of their interests than they enjoyed already. Mr. Gladstone, however, to the consternation of the Whigs and Tories, intervened in the debate, and declared that he thought there ought to be “a sensible and considerable addition” to the infinitesimal portion of the working classes then in possession of the franchise. This he defined to be such as would have been made by the Government proposal of 1860. The Whigs grew pale with fear when they heard him, amidst Radical cheers, declare “that every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the constitution.” The upper stratum of the working class which was deprived of votes was not inferior to the lower stratum of the middle class, which had votes—indeed, the one section of society was as worthy as the other. As Mr. Forster observed, this speech from the leading member of the Government in the House—Lord Palmerston was absent on the occasion—rendered it impossible for the Ministry to set aside the question of Reform much longer. All men saw that Parties would soon have to join issue and decide whether the country was to be governed by a Tory Ministry on Tory principles, or by a Liberal Ministry acting on Conservative ideas and in secret league with the Conservative Leaders. Mr. Baines’s Bill was got rid of by carrying the “previous question”—but from that day it was settled that the reversion of the leadership of the Liberal Party in the Commons must fall to Mr. Gladstone.

The Session would have been dull and leaden save for a debate with which the Peers diverted the town in the dog days. On the 15th of July Lord Houghton, in the House of Lords, protested against Convocation issuing a synodical condemnation of a now forgotten book entitled “Essays and Reviews,” in which seven clever clergymen discoursed with mild and timorous heterodoxy on seven burning theological questions. Current views were challenged in the light of modern German research and criticism, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had acquitted two of the authors who had been prosecuted for heresy.[217] Convocation, however, issued a synodical condemnation of the book which created a considerable sensation at the time, as it was the first occasion during a century and a half on which the Church of England asserted her claim to pronounce authoritatively in controversies of faith. Lord Houghton challenged the legality of the condemnation, and pressed the Government to take action in the matter. Lord Chancellor Westbury disposed of the subject in a provokingly contemptuous statement. There

were, he said, three modes of dealing with Convocation. The first was to take no notice of its proceedings when they were harmless; the second was, when it was likely to do mischief, to prorogue it and put an end to its power; the third was to bring its members to the bar of justice. To pass such a judgment as had been pronounced on “Essays and Reviews,” Lord Westbury held was technically a usurpation of the prerogative of the Crown as the head of the Anglican Church. Hence members of Convocation had rendered themselves liable to the penalties of præmunire, and to appear as penitents in sackcloth and ashes. Something like £40,000 in fines, he declared, might be exacted from them, but still the Government in the circumstances meant to take no action. Solvuntur risu tabulæ. Westbury’s mincing sneering tones would have sufficed to stir the old Adam in militant ecclesiastics, but it happened that in describing a synodical judgment he directed a personal attack with biting wit and bad taste against the Bishop of Oxford. Such a sentence could not conveniently be dealt with, said Westbury, because “it was a set of what he might call well-lubricated words, but it was a sentence so oily, so absurd, and so saponaceous[218] that no one could grasp it, but, like an eel, it slipped through the fingers. It must mean something or nothing, and he was glad to be able to tell his noble friend (Lord Houghton) that it had literally no signification whatever.” Wilberforce

lifted the gage of battle with the spirit of a trained gladiator of debate, and he certainly had not the worst of the duel. “If,” said he, “a man has no respect for himself, he ought at all events to respect the tribunal before which he speaks, and when the highest representative of the law of England in your Lordships’ Court, upon a matter involving the liberties of the subject and the religion of the Realm, and all those high truths concerning which this discussion is, can think it fitting to descend to a ribaldry in which he knows that he can safely indulge, because those to whom he addresses it will have too much respect for their character to answer it in like sort, I say that this House has ground to complain of having its high character unnecessarily injured in the sight of the people of this land by one occupying so high a position within it.”[219] The edifying spectacle of a Bishop and the Keeper of the Queen’s Conscience waking the funereal echoes of the House of Lords with acrimonious personalities naturally enlivened the London season of 1864. Quite a year elapsed before the Bishop of Oxford and Lord Westbury resumed anything approaching friendly relations.

Two other personal questions marked the history of Parliament during the year. Lord Robert Cecil carried a resolution virtually censuring Mr. Robert Lowe (afterwards Lord Sherbrooke), the Vice-President of the Council, for cutting out of the Reports of Inspectors of Schools all views which were not in accordance with his own. Mr. Lowe resigned, Mr. H. A. Bruce being appointed in his place. But subsequently the report of a Committee exculpated Mr. Lowe, and the Resolution which censured him, was, on Lord Palmerston’s motion, rescinded. The other personal discussion arose out of a curious oversight by which five under-secretaries were placed in the House of Commons. Mr. Disraeli showed very clearly that, according to law, only four Secretaries of State and four under-secretaries could sit in the Representative Chamber, and the Prime Minister had in consequence to redistribute the Ministerial offices so as to meet the requirements of the Statute. A Select Committee reported that this breach of the law did not vacate the seats of any of these officials, but the House passed a Bill of Indemnity releasing them from any penalty that might possibly attach to the violation of the established practice.

Parliament was prorogued by Commission on the 29th of July, and it left the country satisfied with its relations to Foreign Powers and in a state of expectancy as to domestic reforms. The Eastern Question was virtually in abeyance in 1864, the ruler of the Danubian principalities having formed a government on the basis of a revolution organised on a Napoleonic model. The Ionian Islands were formally ceded by England to Greece. Russia was stamping out the last embers of the Polish insurrection, and she had still further ingratiated herself with the Polish peasants by the Imperial Ukase of the 6th of March, which released them from the oppressive rights of their landlords. Circassia was annexed, and the tide of Russian expansion was beginning to set in the direction of Central Asia. France and Italy by a convention signed at Paris, had come to an agreement, first, that French troops should quit Rome, and that Italy should pledge herself to respect the territory of the Holy See. At the same time Italy resolved to transfer her capital from Turin to Florence, the reason being that Florence was less exposed to an attack from France or Austria. The French Emperor had the good fortune in the course of the year to see his protégé, the Archduke Maximilian crowned in the Mexican capital, and the Latin Empire of the West recognised by the chief European Powers. The Government of the United States withheld its recognition, but the House of Representatives at Washington on the 5th of April passed a resolution declaring that the people of the United States would never recognise a Monarchy under the protection of a European Power, which had been established in the Western Hemisphere on the ruins of an American Republic.

But the truth is, that after the defeat of the War Party on the Danish Question, the English people in 1864 felt little interest in any foreign affairs save the Civil War in the United States, which is, however, hardly a foreign nation to Englishmen. They followed every phase of that struggle as closely as if it had been one of their own. The commercial community had good reason for doing so. Cotton was the favourite article for gambling with, and, when prices had risen to their highest point, suddenly rumours flew round to the effect that the war was coming to an end. Both sides were said to be tired of strife, and even Republican organs and orators began to hint that the end of Mr. Lincoln’s term of office in March, 1865, and the election of a new President in November, 1864, offered a good opportunity for a truce to hostilities. The Democratic Party were in favour of assembling a Convention of all the States to argue the points at issue between North and South, and everybody began to talk as if the Southern ports would soon be open. The price of cotton and the prices of other staples that had risen with it fell at once, and speculators for the rise were ruined. In September the pressure on the Money Market was enormously increased. The Leeds Bank failed; general distrust prevailed as to all financial institutions; and the Bank of England raised its rate of discount to 9 per cent. But when the weak and unstable firms were eliminated, low prices began to rule and attract buyers once again, and at the end of the year confidence revived, and the Bank rate dropped to 6 per cent. The wavering and tortuous policy of the Cabinet during the Danish Conference certainly produced one panic in the City during the early part of the year. Till spring let loose the dogs of war in America, the Northern and Southern armies were inactive. In April the rank of Lieutenant-General was conferred by Congress on General Grant, who took supreme command of all the Federal forces. He resolved to conduct the campaign in Virginia, while to General Sherman was entrusted the command of the Western army on the southern frontier of Tennessee. In the beginning of May both forces made their first move. On the 3rd of May Grant resolved to strike at Richmond, and he sent Meade with his main body over the Rapidan, so that he might gain the shelter of the wooded country south of Chancellorsville before General Lee, who covered Richmond, could attack him. Lee, however, foiled this movement by his prompt attack of the 5th and 6th of May, during which days the battle of Chancellorsville raged without ceasing. The Confederate Generals Longstreet and Jenkins fell in this fight, the result of which was not quite decisive. On former occasions, when Burnside and Hooker met with such an attack, they had shrunk from proceeding farther on the road to Richmond. But Grant was undaunted by the losses he had suffered, and persistently pressed Lee by flanking movements, which drove him back step by step. In Grant’s