not merely the desire for free land, but the want of confidence of the black population in the tribunals before which cases affecting their interests were tried. It was shown that, if the insurgents had been temporarily successful, the suppression of the rebellion would have been attended with greater loss of life and property than had been recorded. Hence praise was awarded to Governor Eyre for the vigour and promptitude with which he put down the rising. But, on the other hand, the Commissioners strongly condemned the Authorities for continuing martial law longer than was desirable, for inflicting excessive punishments, for awarding the death penalty far oftener than was necessary, for sentencing people to be flogged with reckless barbarity, and for burning 1,000 houses in a wanton and cruel manner. This Report, on the whole, justified the first suspicions of calm-minded men at home. The Governor had very skilfully put down the rising before it grew from a riot to a revolution. Then, carried away by “the White Terror” which Lord Canning had so coolly withstood at Calcutta during the Indian Mutiny, he had let the colonial authorities violate the common law, and revel in judicial murders and other hideous barbarities which are inevitable, though regrettable, incidents in the suppression of all servile revolts.

The approaching marriage of the Princess Helena with Prince Christian of Sleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, which had been announced in the Queen’s Speech, gave occasion to messages from the Crown to the two Houses of Parliament, asking them to make provision for the Princess, and also for Prince Alfred on his coming of age. Mr. Gladstone, in introducing the subject to the House of Commons, observed that with respect to the Princess Helena, “her position was a peculiar one, as she was the eldest unmarried Princess of the Royal Family when the most crushing calamity that could befall humanity descended upon her Majesty, and that during that trial all the prominent qualities of the Princess’s character, her strength, her wisdom, and her tenderness were put to the test.” Ignoring to some extent the devotion of the Princess Alice, Mr. Gladstone added that the Princess Helena “was then, and had been since, the stay and solace of her illustrious mother.” He therefore proposed to vote her an annuity of £6,000 a year, in addition to a dowry of £30,000. To Prince Alfred he proposed to grant an annuity of £15,000 a year. Mr. Disraeli said that the claim now made only elicited a fresh outflow of sympathy and affection from a devoted people, and the proposals were at once agreed to. The marriage of the Princess was solemnised in the chapel within Windsor Castle, on the 5th of July. A very lengthy procession entered the church as Handel’s March from Scipio was played. The Queen wore a rich black moiré-antique dress, interwoven with silver and trimmed with black crape, and a row of diamonds round the body. A coronet of diamonds, attached to a long white crape veil, a diamond necklace and cross, and a brooch composed of a large sapphire set in diamonds, the riband and star of the Order of the Garter, and the Victoria and Albert Order completed her adornment. The bride, who wore a rich dress of white satin, on arriving at the chapel took her place on the left side of the altar, while the Queen was conducted to the seat prepared for her near the bride. The Archbishop of Canterbury performed the service, the bride being given away by the Queen. The Prince and Princess left for Osborne after the ceremony.

The Queen appreciated the generous devotion of the House of Commons in so willingly voting a substantial provision for the Princess Helena, all the more that early in the year the financial embarrassments of the Princess Louis of Hesse had caused her sore anxiety. Although the Princess was an excellent house-manager, it was discovered that the handsome income and dowry which had been granted to her by the House of Commons, did not suffice for the wants of her husband’s establishment. Her gentle, uncomplaining nature, ever mindful of the feelings of others, had led her to conceal her difficulties from the Queen, who, however, made the painful discovery soon after suggesting some plans for her daughter’s benefit. These unfortunately could not be entertained. Pauperis est numerare pecus, and the Princess Louis had therefore to explain her circumstances to her mother. Writing from Darmstadt on the 18th of March she says, “Your idea of Friedrichroda for us was so good, but, alas! now even that will be impracticable, on account of money. Louis has had to take up money again at Coutts’s to pay for the house, and the house is surety. We must live so economically—not going anywhere, or seeing many people, so as to be able to spare as much a year as we can. England cost us a great deal, as the visit was short last time. We have sold four carriage horses, and have only six to drive with now, two of which the ladies constantly want for theatre, visits, etc., so we are rather badly off in some things. But I should not bore you with our troubles, which are easy to bear.”[246] The Queen’s nice tact and quick sympathy were shown in not directly noting these matters. But when the Princess’s birthday came round, her Majesty did not forget her daughter’s impecuniosity. Writing to the Queen on the 25th of April the Princess Louis says, “A thousand thanks for your dear lines, and the money, and charming bas-relief of you, which I think very good. I thought so much of former birthdays at home in Buckingham Palace. They were so happy.... The money will go to Louis’ man of business, towards paying off the furniture, and is indeed very acceptable, more so under present circumstances than anything else you could give us; and that part of the furniture,” adds the poor Princess, with the pride of one who seeks to reconcile herself to accept a birthday gift in the form of a cheque, “will then all be your present.”[247] In another letter she endeavours to reassure the Queen as to her embarrassments by speaking brightly and cheerily of them. “I have made all the summer walking-out dresses,” she writes—“seven in number, with paletôts for the girls—not embroidered, but entirely made from beginning to end: likewise the new necessary flannel shawls for the expected. I manage all the nursery accounts, and everything myself, which gives me plenty to do, as everything increases, and on account of the house, we must live very economically for these next years.” The Princess, as will be seen, was looking for an early addition to her family, and the Queen felt that her health was imperilled by the fresh anxiety and the increasing household drudgery which her straitened circumstances added to the burden of her social and public duties. Her Majesty, therefore, with characteristic generosity, herself made arrangements for her daughter’s accouchement, which relieved her of some of her worry. “It is so kind of you,” writes the Princess, gratefully, to the Queen, “to give Dr. Priestly his fee, otherwise I would have scruples in giving so large a sum for my own comfort.” How welcome her mother’s assistance was to the Princess may be gathered from another passage in one of her letters to the Queen, in which she says, “The man who built our house has nearly been made bankrupt, and wants money from us to save him from ruin, and we can scarcely manage it.”[248] Again the same sad subject crops up some nine months after the birth of her daughter, which took place during the Austro-Prussian War. The accumulated anxieties of that dreadful time had told on the health of the Princess. The Queen had taken charge of the little ones in the Darmstadt household, and thus freed the Princess from much care. Hence in autumn we find her rejoicing that the slight change to Nierstein, Gelbes Haus, has done her good, and adding, “If later, through your [the Queen’s] kindness, a little journey should be possible to us, it would be very beneficial to us.” But in a few days she soon fell ill again, and on the 29th of August she writes to the Queen saying, “Mountain air Weber wants me to have, and quite away from all bother; but I fear that is impossible now, on account of Louis not being able to leave—and, then, financially. I have some heimweh [home-sickness] after dear old England, Balmoral, and all at home, I own, though the joy of being near dear Louis again is so great. But life is meant for work and not for pleasure, and I learn more and more to be grateful and content with that which the Almighty sends me, and to find the sunshine in spite of the clouds.” Nor was the Queen’s generosity limited to her daughter. She treated the Prince Louis at this time with great tenderness and sympathy. In one letter from the Princess to the Queen we find her saying, “We are so pleased at your saying that you claim Louis as your son. He always considers himself in particular your child, and if anything helps to stimulate him in doing his duty well, it is the sincere wish of being worthy to claim and deserve that title.” And the Queen’s kindness was not confined to words. She gave him (Prince Louis) the charger that he rode during the war, and helped him in many ways. “That you sent Louis,” writes the Princess to her on the 16th of September, “besides the pretty souvenir, the money for something in the house, is really so kind. Our whole dining-room we consider your present, and it is furnished as like an English one as possible.” Lastly, when the war ended in the triumph of Prussia, and the Princess thought that she and her husband, to use her own phrase, would be made “beggars,” the Queen employed her potent influence at the Court of Berlin to procure favourable terms for Hesse-Darmstadt in the peace that followed. But for the Queen, the Grand Duchy would have been blotted out of the map of Germany as a sovereign State.[249] “We are so grateful,” says the Princess in one of her letters at this anxious moment in her husband’s life, “for your having written to good Fritz [the Crown Prince of Prussia]. What he can do I know he will.”

The eminent American merchant, Mr. Peabody, having added to his splendid gift of the preceding year for the improvements of the dwellings of the poor of London another munificent donation, her Majesty addressed to him the following autograph letter:—

In the spring the Queen was well enough to renew her acquaintance with Aldershot. For the first time during five years she visited the camp. She reviewed the troops in garrison, and inspected the ranks; after which the regiments marched past in grand divisions to the music of their bands. When she had inspected the Infantry, the Queen drove through the South Camp, by way of the Prince Consort’s Library, to the Artillery and Cavalry Barracks, and then past the Memorial Church to the Pavilion, where luncheon was served for her. Again on the 5th of April the Queen paid a brief and hurried visit to the Camp, in order to present a new pair of colours to the 89th Regiment. The visit was strictly private, only a few chief officers being aware that it had been arranged. Nearly 11,000 men were on the ground, but there were, comparatively speaking, few spectators. In presenting the colours, the Queen said, “I have much pleasure in renewing the colours given you many years ago, relying confidently on the loyal devotion to my service by which you and all my troops have ever been so distinguished.” Referring to this event, the Princess Louis, in one of her letters to her mother, says: “How trying the visit to Aldershot must have been, but it is so wise and kind of you to go. I cannot think of it without tears in my eyes. Formerly that was one of the greatest pleasures of my girlhood, and you and darling papa looked so handsome together. I so enjoyed following you on those occasions. Such moments I should like to call back for an instant.”

In April the Albert Medal was founded by her Majesty. According to the London Gazette, it was to be awarded, “in cases where it shall be considered fit, to such persons as shall endanger their own lives in saving or endeavouring to save the lives of others from shipwreck or other perils of the sea.”

On the 12th of June the Queen attended the marriage of the Princess Mary of Cambridge to the Duke of Teck. This illustrious lady has always been the most popular of English Princesses—popular alike with the aristocracy and the mob. Her marriage stirred up a good deal of interest. It was celebrated very quietly and simply in her own parish church at Kew, in the midst of the people among whom she had lived from her childhood, and to whom she had endeared herself by her spirited geniality, her good and tender heart, and her generous though somewhat impulsive charities.

On the 27th of June the Queen sent the first message over the telegraph cable that had been successfully laid between Ireland and the United States. It ran as follows: “From the Queen, Osborne, to the President of the United States, Washington.—The Queen congratulates the President on the successful completion of an undertaking which she hopes may serve as an additional bond of union between the United States and England.” President Andrew Johnson replied:—“The President of the United States acknowledges with profound gratification the receipt of her Majesty’s despatch, and cordially reciprocates the hope that the cable that now unites the Eastern and Western hemispheres may serve to strengthen and perpetuate peace and amity between the Government of England and the Republic of the United States.” The President’s reply to the Queen occupied one hour and nine minutes in its transit from Newfoundland to Osborne. The cable laid in 1865 had been lost, but it had been successfully raised, and the daily journal of the operations of the ships comprising the telegraph squadron engaged in recovering it, is a record in which heroic perseverance, extraordinary mechanical ingenuity, and able seamanship alike compel admiration.

On the 20th of September the Prince of Wales presided at the unveiling of a fine marble statue of the Queen at Aberdeen. The subscriptions for this work of art were collected just after the inauguration of the memorial to the Prince Consort by the Queen in October, 1863. A thousand pounds were easily obtained, a large number of the subscribers being working men. The artist, Mr. Alexander Brodie, a local sculptor, represented the Queen standing, bearing the sceptre in her right hand, while with, the other she clasped the folds of a tartan plaid. The statue stands 8 feet 6 inches in height, is cut from a block of Sicilian marble, and is placed on a richly-polished pedestal over 10 feet high. The Prince on the occasion was dressed in Highland costume, and received hearty cheers from the crowds who greeted him. In accordance with a unanimous resolution of the Town Council, he received the freedom of the city. While speaking at the inauguration ceremony, he stated that the Queen had desired him to say how much she appreciated the motive which had led the people of Aberdeen to give this lasting evidence of their attachment, loyalty, and sympathy.

On the 16th of October the Queen herself opened the Aberdeen New Waterworks at Invercannie, twenty-two miles distant from the “Granite City,” and a convenient drive of thirty miles from Balmoral. After receiving an address, her Majesty, speaking in public in her official capacity for the first time since the death of the Prince Consort, said:—“I thank you for your dutiful address, and am very sensible of the fresh mark of the loyal attachment of my neighbours the people of Aberdeen. I have felt that, at a time when the attention of the country has been so anxiously directed to the state of the public health, it was right that I should make an exertion to testify my sense of the importance of a work so well calculated as this to promote the health and comfort of your ancient city.” The Queen then, advancing to an ingenious piece of machinery erected at the edge of the reservoir, gave several turns to the handle, and in an instant the water came plunging in, pure and plentiful. The Queen then declared the Aberdeen Waterworks open.

On the 30th of November her Majesty received an enthusiastic welcome from her subjects in Wolverhampton, on the occasion of her inaugurating a statue erected to the Prince Consort. The Queen was accompanied by the Earl of Derby, Princess Helena, Prince Christian, the Princess Louise, and the customary suite. Between two and three thousand people were admitted into the railway station-yard and approaches. At the entrance there had been built an arch of coal, firmly joined by mortar, with abutments of pig-iron. Trophies of picks, spades, and other implements of the collier’s trade were so placed as to give relief to the material of the arch, which, though not very sightly, was very characteristic of the local industry. Beyond this was a trophy of coal, thirty feet high, formed of immense blocks some of them weighing nearly three tons, from Lord Dudley’s pits. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm and devotion displayed by the population. Town and county assembled in the streets. The colliers, the puddlers, and the forgemen from the iron districts, the workers in metal, japan, papier-maché, and in all the staple trades of Wolverhampton, lined the barriers, and raised a mighty shout when the royal carriages appeared. The treacherous weather of an English November made it, of course, indispensable that the ceremony of unveiling the statue should be performed and witnessed under cover, and an amphitheatre had accordingly been constructed which held two thousand people. The Bishop of Lichfield having offered up a prayer, the Recorder read an address to the Queen, which she accepted. Lord Derby having handed her a sword, she next bestowed the accolade on the kneeling Mayor, who thereupon rose up as Sir John Morris. Before leaving the pavilion, the Queen desired the Mayor to tell her subjects in Wolverhampton that she was greatly pleased with her reception, and with the loyal feeling which had been manifested. A few days afterwards, at a meeting of the Wolverhampton Council, the Mayor produced a letter which, though marked “private,” he had obtained permission to read at that meeting. The letter was from Sir C. Grey. It was dated Windsor Castle, December 1, and, after stating that an official answer to the address of the Corporation would be sent, went on to say:—“Her Majesty is anxious that you should hear, as it were, more directly from herself how much she was gratified by the heartiness and cordiality of the reception she met with from every individual of the vast assemblage that yesterday filled your streets, and how deeply—how very deeply—she was touched by the proof which the day’s proceedings afforded of the respect and affection entertained at Wolverhampton for the memory of her beloved husband. I have also been requested by Princess Christian to say how much she has been gratified by the kindness shown yesterday to herself and Prince Christian, and that she will have much pleasure in wearing the beautiful bracelet presented to her at the station as a remembrance of a most interesting and gratifying day.” Sir John Morris then read another letter he had received from Sir Thomas Biddulph, in which the Queen desired that her condolence might be conveyed to a volunteer who had met with an accident on the occasion of her visit, and also expressed her Majesty’s intention to settle upon him an annuity of £20, payable quarterly. This announcement was naturally received with great enthusiasm by the Council.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TIDE OF DEMOCRACY.

When Lord Derby came to power in 1866 he was reported to have said that it would be his mission “to stem the tide of democracy.” It has, therefore, been supposed that he was an irreconcilable opponent of Reform. As he passed an extremely democratic measure of Parliamentary Reform—thereby, to use his own phrase, “dishing the Whigs”—he has been accused of the grossest possible tergiversation. What, then, was the attitude of the Tories to Reform in 1866? The party, as a whole, was certainly hostile to it. To give votes to people who paid £6 a year for their houses meant, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton declared, the enfranchisement of “poverty and passion.” No speeches stirred the hearts and sympathies of the Tory party throughout this country so strongly as those in which Mr. Lowe, and other Adullamites, heaped the coarsest abuse on the working-classes of England. In those days an English artisan was spoken of in Tory society with an antipathy stronger even than that with which the “mean whites” regarded the negroes in the Southern States. The leaders of the Tory party, however—Lord Derby, Lord Stanley, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Henley—never shared these prejudices. But what would they do after being called to power by the declared enemies of Reform? The first public utterances of Ministers did not throw much light on their intentions. Mr. Disraeli told his constituents that when the Government attempted to deal with Reform they would not adopt any foreign pattern—either American or French—as a model for the Parliamentary institutions of the country. He protested that he could not discover whether the defeated Bill was based on the rights of man or the rights of numbers. He seemed to have some notion that “the estate of the Commons” should, like all other estates, have a fair share in the Government of the country. But his idea evidently was to enfranchise not masses but classes, and to give electoral power to the élite of all the different “orders” of society. Sir Stafford Northcote was opposed to bringing in any new Reform Bill.[250] Lord Stanley said bluntly that he had objected to the defeated Bill, because it made the franchise lower than the House of Commons would endure; and as for Lord Derby, his opinion was very ambiguous. He had no objection to see the electorate largely increased. But his difficulty was, that the agitators who were alone earnest in demanding Reform would never be satisfied with any Bill which the great parties in the State could unite in accepting. It was quite clear that he intended to let the matter rest and ripen. Lord Derby and his colleagues, however, made a fatal mistake in imagining that they would be allowed to let the matter rest. He completely miscalculated the strength of the social and political forces which had been let loose by the death of Lord Palmerston. The nation was in a condition of suspense and excitement that recalled revolutionary memories of 1848, and the working-classes had been roused from their apathy by the speeches in which the Tories and Adullamites had held them up to contempt. The Reform League promptly set on foot a great popular agitation, and, to the astonishment of the Adullamites and the Tories, the reply of the people to the refusal of a £6 franchise was a demand for “registered residential manhood suffrage and the ballot.” Huge mass meetings were held all over the country, at which this demand was put forward, and the temper of the populace rapidly became revolutionary. An accident brought this unpleasant fact home to the minds of Ministers.

The Reform League, under the leadership of Mr. Edmond Beales—an energetic barrister, who afterwards became a County Court Judge—organised a meeting in Hyde Park. On the 22nd of July, 1866, notices were posted up by order of the Government prohibiting the Reformers from holding the meeting. On the 23rd the Leaguers, accompanied by an angry mob, proceeded to the Park and demanded admission. When this was refused, Mr. Beales and his colleagues tried to lead the crowd to Trafalgar Square for the purpose of protesting against the action of the Home Secretary. But the crowd refused to be led. It took a more summary and effective method of protesting, for it tore down the railings of Hyde Park and held the ground till it was driven out, after a desperate fight with the police and Life Guards. It was at first supposed that this timely exhibition of force would end the conflict; and Mr. Walpole, the Home Secretary, posted strong patrols of police and soldiery all over the Park. That step was, of course, quickly resented by the people. They attacked the police and the troops on the 24th, and it was not till cavalry were employed that the turmoil was suppressed. But during the whole day the fashionable people in carriages were pelted with mud and stones by the “roughs” whenever they made their appearance. This inglorious warfare went on in the same manner till the 27th, when the Duke of Cambridge decided to bring up three additional regiments of cavalry, whereupon it began to dawn on Society that somehow or other life was not altogether pleasant in the West End of London under the new “Government of moral order.” The Queen, whose legal right to exclude people from the Royal Parks was the pretext for the action of the Government, became extremely nervous as to the effect which the policy of her Ministers might have on the stability of the Monarchy, and it finally turned out that the Home Secretary had gone beyond the law, in vindicating her Majesty’s rights over Hyde Park by military force. Those rights were secured to the Crown solely by a civil action for trespass. At the height of the dispute the leaders of the Reform League obtained an interview with Mr. Walpole, in the course of which that amiable but misguided Minister shed tears when the grave consequences of his action became manifest to him. He withdrew his opposition to the use of the Park. The Reformers held their meetings, and on the 28th of July London was so quiet and orderly, that no chance visitor would have dreamt that it had during the week been on the verge of revolution. Parliament was prorogued on the 11th of August, and the agitation went on throughout the country.

The Derby-Disraeli Government were by this time completely cowed by the mob, and they frankly admitted that it was too dangerous to let Reform alone. Parliament met on the 5th of February, 1867, and was opened by the Queen, who, though driven in a close carriage from the Palace to Westminster, was received with the heartiest cheers by crowds of people, who, despite the wet and dismal weather, came out to greet her as she passed. The Royal Speech was listened to with suppressed excitement, especially when the paragraph relating to Reform was read by the Lord Chancellor. It, however, merely hinted at the introduction of a measure for extending the Franchise, so that naturally attention was next concentrated on Mr. Disraeli’s utterances on the vexed question.[251] He rather amused his opponents by solemnly announcing that the subject of Reform should no longer be treated as one to determine the fate of Cabinets.[252] No doubt it was a little difficult to treat such an announcement seriously, coming from a Minister who had dexterously used the question for the purpose of upsetting Lord Russell’s Cabinet. Still, it was the wisest policy that could be adopted in the circumstances, and its adoption had been strongly pressed on Lord Derby by the Queen herself. Her Majesty’s view was that the history, especially the recent history, of the Reform agitation, proved conclusively two things—first, that no possible Government could by its own effort and authority carry a Reform Bill; and second, as Mr. Gladstone had himself admitted to her, that with a £10 franchise it was not likely that a House of Commons could be obtained with a strong working majority pledged to support a Reform Ministry. “If,” said Lord Derby, in his speech on the Address, in words which aptly reflected the

opinion of the Sovereign, “we desire to see the representation of the country placed upon a sound basis; if we desire to see a settlement of the question, which I will not say shall be final, but which shall render unnecessary and improbable any further agitation upon the subject for a very considerable time, then I say this object cannot be attained by making the question one of party and political strife for the purpose of obtaining office or Parliamentary majorities. The question must be examined in a fair, deliberate, and dispassionate spirit; we must be prepared to give and take, to meet each other’s views, and, above all things, to cast away all party objects.”

The real obstacle had been the Adullamites. But, says Mr. Hayward, in a letter to Mr. Gladstone, dated the 31st of January, “the Cave has split already. Elcho, Lord Grosvenor, heading one section with Lowe and Horsman; Beaumont, Dunkellin, &c., with the other; the numbers about equal.... Beaumont and Co. would vote for an immediate settlement of the Reform Question. This he told me. Elcho would consent to no reduction of the Franchise.”[253] The fate of this small but brilliant party, Bishop Wilberforce says, inspired Mr. Gladstone with a new commandment—“Thou shalt not commit Adullamy.”[254]

On the 11th of February Mr. Disraeli explained to the House of Commons how the Government intended to deal with Reform. He suggested that they should pass a series of Resolutions admitting the necessity of increasing the electorate, and of giving more direct representation to the working-classes, but affirming that it was contrary to the Constitution to give any single interest in the country dominant power over the others. His Resolutions were also in favour of basing the franchise on rating, of plural voting, of the use of voting papers, and of the extension of borough boundaries. The House of Commons, however, clearly showed that it desired the Government to bring in a Bill, and that was plainly the opinion of the public also. Lord Malmesbury writes on the 16th of February:—“New plan on Reform proposed by Disraeli. Four franchises, namely, £5 rated house, £50 in savings bank, an educational franchise, and direct taxation, supposed in its result to give 680,000 voters to property, and 360,000 to democracy. General Peel positively objects. The press, in a body, abuse our Resolutions.”[255] On the 19th a Cabinet meeting was held, at which General Peel, finding he was the only dissentient, withdrew his objections.[256] But public opinion was against the scheme, and the spirit of dissension was brooding over the Cabinet. “Meanwhile,” writes Lord Malmesbury, who has given the world the only authentic account of the secret history of the startling events which followed, “after a Cabinet held on Saturday, Feb. 22nd, at which no difficulty occurred, and after Lord Derby’s having gone down to Windsor to announce unanimity of the Cabinet, on Sunday night Lord Cranborne informed Lord Carnarvon that he could not agree to the Reform Bill as it stood, and must resign. Lord Carnarvon did the same, and at 8.30 on Feb. 25th they wrote to Lord Derby to call a Cabinet at twelve for Lord Cranborne to explain his objections. The confusion may be conceived, as at 2 p.m. Lord Derby had summoned his party to hear the new Bill, and Disraeli was to explain it at five in the House of Commons. It was a paralysis. The dissentients were now joined by General Peel, who refused to remain [he had dissented from the first], and in half an hour, at Stanley’s suggestion, they agreed to meet the M.P.’s with a Bill founded on the £6 and £20 rating, to which the trio agreed. This crude action exposed us to great condemnation and ridicule.” The Bill was afterwards nicknamed the “Six Hours Bill,” and some indiscreet revelations which were made by Sir John Pakington led to it being scoffed at as “the Ten Minutes Bill.” A more ludicrous blunder has probably never been committed by any Government, as some of the Ministers confessed to each other. “No doubt,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “the best thing in such a position would have been to accept the resignation of these three able and honourable men (however serious the loss), and to tell the truth to Parliament, deferring the Bill for a week. I wrote a strong letter to Lord Derby from Heron Court, begging him to do this. The following Saturday it was done, and the Dukes of Richmond and Marlborough and Mr. Corry took the vacant seats in the Cabinet—the first as Board of Trade, the second as Colonial Secretary, the third as First Lord of the Admiralty; Northcote, India; and Pakington, War Office. The statement made by Lords Cranborne and Carnarvon was that Disraeli and Baxter[257] had completely mistaken their figures, and that the result would not be what we intended, but would be perfectly fatal.”

On the 26th of February a meeting of Liberal members, held at Mr. Gladstone’s house, expressed a very strong opinion against the Resolutions and against the Bill with the four franchises—“fancy franchises,” they were called by Mr. Bright and the Radicals—which Mr. Disraeli had sketched under pressure from Mr. Gladstone on the previous day. It was resolved to move an amendment to the Resolutions. But on the same evening Mr. Disraeli foiled this attack by withdrawing them, and by promising to bring in a Bill next week. This was the “Ten Minutes Bill” which had just been adopted in haste by the Ministers at their distracted Councils in Lord Derby’s house. On the 28th of February Lord John Manners, in a letter to Lord Malmesbury, writes:—“A meeting of Conservative M.P.’s was held at the Carlton to-day, Sir M. W. Ridley in the chair; between 120 and 150 present. Much difference of opinion, no resolutions passed, but a general disposition evinced in favour of rated residential household suffrage v. £6 rating and an equal division of new seats between the counties and the boroughs. An anxious desire expressed that we should fix upon the franchise thought best and then stick to it, declining to carry our opponents’ measure. They (our opponents) are, I believe, in equal difficulties, and are quite unable to take office at present.”[258] On the 4th of March it was made known to the country that Lord Carnarvon, Lord Cranborne, and General Peel had resigned their seats in the Cabinet; and on the 18th of March Mr. Disraeli asked and obtained leave to bring in the Bill which the Government had finally adopted. In the debate on the Second Reading Mr. Gladstone somewhat haughtily formulated the changes in it which he must demand. These practically eviscerated the Bill, and at the time it was not supposed that the Government could with any degree of self-respect assent to them. But when the Bill went into Committee it was soon apparent that Mr. Gladstone and his followers meant to force all their proposals on the Government. Ministers day after day held melancholy and mournful Cabinet meetings, and it was with rage that the Adullamites saw the men whom they had brought into office surrendering position after position.

“The laissez aller system followed by the Government,” writes Lord Malmesbury in May, “trying to make the best they could of it, but constantly yielding something. The Conservative members seem disposed to adopt anything, and to think that it is ‘in for a penny in for a pound.’” At each Cabinet meeting it was found that the Bill had become more Radical; indeed, it seemed as if Tory opposition stimulated Radical aggressiveness. Nor was the demoralisation confined to the Tory Party. There was some dread lest the persistent humiliation to which Mr. Gladstone and his

subordinates subjected Mr. Disraeli day after day might tempt him to resign and abandon the Bill. A body of Radicals, called the “Tea Room Clique,” began to give the Government friendly aid, and so greatly encumbered Mr. Gladstone’s opposition, that for a time he refused to be responsible for the leadership of the Liberal Party. The great difficulty was to apply the Bill to tenants who compounded with their landlords for their rates. As these householders were not personally rated, they would not be enfranchised. Mr. Gladstone’s idea was to definitely fix the franchise at a £5 rating limit, and on the 5th of April Mr. Coleridge was put up to move an instruction to the Committee to clear the path for Mr. Gladstone’s proposal. The Radicals who met in the “Tea Room” of the House of Commons forced Mr. Coleridge to give way. When Mr. Gladstone in Committee proposed his plan, it was defeated by the defection of the Tea Room Party. Finally, the matter was settled by Mr. Disraeli putting an end to the practice of compounding for rates, so that every householder, unless he were a pauper, got a vote. Perhaps the most graphic view of the struggles, and the confused strife of this Session when Mr. Disraeli demoralised his own party by perpetual surrender, and broke up the Opposition under the solvent of intrigue, is given by Mr. Paul’s comparison of the original provisions of the Bill and its provisions when it received the Queen’s assent.

As the Duke of Buccleuch said bitterly, the only part of the Bill which the Radicals had allowed to stand was “the word ‘Whereas.’” Mr. Disraeli, in fact, induced his party to tolerate the measure because he surrounded Household Suffrage with an elaborate series of checks. The process of removing these one by one, but so gradually that he familiarised his followers with capitulation, was the process which he subsequently described in a speech at Edinburgh as that of “educating his party.” But when the checks disappeared the Conservative Reform Bill was to all intents and purposes the Bill of Mr. Bright and the advocates of Household Suffrage pure and simple. In June Lord Malmesbury says, “After many vicissitudes, the Reform Bill came up to the House of Lords, and Lord Derby moved the Second Reading without a division, saying it was ‘a leap in the dark.’ Peers on our side were averse to it, but at a meeting of them Lord Derby said he would resign if it was rejected.” That settled the matter. The Bill was ultimately passed on the 15th of August with only one important amendment—the clause creating the three-cornered constituencies. The Bills for Scotland and Ireland were carried in the following year, the Irish franchise being, however, fixed at £4 in boroughs. At Manchester and Edinburgh Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, during the recess, celebrated the passing of the Bill at great Conservative festivals, Mr. Disraeli vaunting the success with which he had “educated” his party up to the point of surrender.

During the struggle for Parliamentary Reform in England another great democratic movement on the Continent was in full and rapid progress. It was the movement of the German people in favour of German Unity, which had been arrested in 1848. The pacific policy of the Queen had saved England from sharing in Palmerston’s wild scheme to thwart the aspirations of the German race in 1865. Hence Englishmen could view critically the strife between the people of Germany, led by Prussia, and the forces of Teutonic feudalism, organised and made militant by Austria. But it was impossible for the Queen to be indifferent to the result of this conflict. The husbands of her daughters were fighting on different sides. The struggle had been long foreseen by the Prince Consort, who was a strong partisan of German Unity, and had for years used all his influence with the Court of Berlin to induce Prussia to lead the national movement in Germany. In the summer of 1866 Europe felt that the truce of Gastein was fast coming to an end. Manteuffel was the Prussian Governor of Holstein. Goblenz was the Austrian Governor of Sleswig, and the claims of the Augustenburg Pretender—reserved for future settlement by the Convention of Gastein—soon furnished the administrators of the two provinces with a fruitful cause of quarrel. When a popular ovation was accepted by the Prince-Pretender in Sleswig, Manteuffel harshly reprimanded him. At Kiel in Holstein Austria openly encouraged the Pretender’s Party in defiance of Prussia. Agitators from South Germany went about the country, under Austrian patronage, urging the Holsteiners to shake off the yoke of Prussia. The “conjoint dominion’ was no longer endurable. Austria proposed to submit the dispute to the German Diet, a proposal which Prussia rejected, and when the Powers began to prepare for war, their example was followed by Italy, who now saw her chance of delivering Venice. In fact, early in spring, 1866, Italy and Prussia had entered into a secret Treaty embodying offensive and defensive action against Austria. The French Emperor knew of the existence of this Treaty, and it was a mystery why he did not intervene between the disputants. The probability is that he calculated on being able to interfere with profit to France after Prussia and Austria had each exhausted themselves in a long and sanguinary struggle, a reckoning which the sudden collapse of Austria completely upset. Napoleon III., though ostensibly suggesting a reference of the dispute to a European Conference, was secretly intriguing with both Powers. To Prussia he proposed an alliance on the basis of ceding to France the left bank of the Rhine, including Belgium, which England was bound to defend by arms. To Austria he offered an alliance based on the cession of Venice to Italy, in return for Silesia—a province which every Prussian regards with pride, as one of the Great Frederick’s spoils of war. And all this time England was under the delusion that France was still a loyal ally, while the English Foreign Office was in utter darkness as to the subterranean negotiations in which Napoleon was engaged. Nothing now made for peace, except the scruples of the King of Prussia, who was personally attached to the Austrian Emperor, and who regarded with horror anything approaching fratricidal strife. The project of a Conference was abandoned because Austria disliked it. Prussia refused to submit to the arbitration or jurisdiction of the German Diet, the majority of which took the side of Austria, and the Austrians accordingly plunged into war, with Bavaria, Würtemberg, Hanover, Saxony, and many of the smaller States as their allies. In England fashionable opinion was all in favour of Austria. Her army, we were assured by the leading organs of the upper classes, was invincible. As for the troops and the generals of Prussia, they were spoken of as if they were beneath contempt.

On the 14th of June the Diet, 1866, on the motion of Austria, resolved to put in Federal execution against Prussia, in Holstein. On the 16th Prussian troops were marching through Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and Hesse-Darmstadt in three columns on Saxony. This swift blow paralysed the minor States; in fact, Bavaria, with her army of 100,000, was not ready to come to the help of Austria till the war was over. Western Germany north of the Maine thus fell an easy prey to Prussian skill and valour. But that skill and valour were more conspicuously displayed in the chief theatre of the war. The Austrian commander, Marshal Benedek, having allowed the Prussians to seize Dresden at the outset, joined the Austrians in Bohemia. In two columns, one under the “Red Prince” (Frederick Charles), and the other under the Crown Prince (the “our Fritz” of the Queen’s family), the Prussians poured like a rapid and resistless torrent through Saxony and the Silesia passes, in a parallel line, into the plains of Bohemia. What need to tell the tale? The flower of the Austrian army—its German troops—was wasted in Venetia. The Italian and Hungarian regiments in Bohemia were disaffected. The Prussians had the needle-gun, whereas the Austrians had the old, slow-firing muzzle-loader. Von Moltke, the ablest strategist in Europe, directed the Prussian attack, and thus fight after fight was lost by Austria. On the 3rd of July, 1866, the crowning victory of the war was won by Prussia at Sadowa, where the Crown Prince, aided by Blumenthal, played the part of Blucher at Waterloo, and the invincible Austrian Empire lay prostrate in the dust. In Italy the Austrians were more successful. They won the battle of Custozza and the sea-fight of Lissa—victories which were barren of results. Peace was signed at Prague on the 23rd of August, 1866. Venice had been surrendered to France, who was to hand it over to Italy. Austria was expelled from Germany, and the Danish duchies were transferred to Prussia, but with the proviso that the people of North Sleswig might, if they desired it, join Denmark. Saxony, however, retained a certain amount of independence, whereas the smaller States were to be organised into a new German Confederation under Prussian leadership. Germany north of the Maine was annexed to Prussia. The triumph of Prussia was immediately followed by the reorganisation of the French army, and the initiation of reforms in Austria.