who tried to make political capital out of the storm of prejudice which dispossessed jobbers raised against them. Yet, as a matter of fact, whereas the Tory Ministry discharged 3,948 dockyard hands, and pensioned 411, Mr. Childers merely pensioned 617 men, aided 666 to emigrate, and gave gratuities to 117. Forthwith a powerful body of officials, most of whom had the means of influencing the newspaper press, foreseeing that the corrupt spending departments were in danger of being reorganised, began to wage a “paper war” against the Ministry. Mr. Lowe’s vitriolic insolence to deputations who came to do business with him, his quarrel with the legal profession over the site of the New Law Courts, his contemptuous criticism of the Money Market, his proposal to coin a new sovereign with enough alloy to cover the cost of mintage, and his determination to collect the income-tax in a lump sum in the January quarter of the year, also raised up hosts of enemies. Mr. Bruce annoyed people by his obstinate officialism, and Mr. Ayrton by his overweening niggardliness, his too obvious desire to effect mean savings meanly, and his foolish fancy for rubbing pepper into the wounds of those whom he cut by his sharp tongue. Mr. Bright’s speeches on the Irish Church Bill should have vastly augmented his reputation; but his indolence as an administrator was notorious. His resolve to prevent the Board of Trade from doing any work for the people which it could avoid doing disgusted Tories and Radicals alike. His opposition to Lord Edward Cecil’s Resolution in favour of a Bill to check adulteration, based as it was upon the ideas of the old Whigs, and informed as it was by the prejudices of the vulgarest type of small tradesman, did much to destroy his popularity. Adulteration, he said, was only another form of competition. The use of false weights, as a rule, was a pure inadvertency, and if traders were to be spied on every hour by inspectors he (Mr. Bright) would advise them to emigrate. All his arguments, curiously enough, were those by which the coining of counterfeit money might be defended, and the effect of them on the public mind was not favourable to the Cabinet of which he was a member. Lord Granville, too, had sadly mismanaged the Colonial Office. His policy of gradually withdrawing Imperial troops from the self-governing colonies, and teaching them to rely on themselves and their territorial militias for defence was wise and prudent. But it was carried out with a lack of tact that irritated the susceptibilities of the Colonists. Lord Granville hardly concealed his approval of the wild doctrines of Professor Goldwin Smith to the effect that colonies were a burdensome nuisance, and that the best thing to do with them was to cut them adrift. The tone of Colonial Office despatches at this time was studiously impertinent. As for Lord Granville’s subordinates at Whitehall, they prided themselves on treating eminent Colonists as if they were returned convicts. Lord Granville’s refusal to permit a British regiment to remain in New Zealand, then engaged in a Maori war, and his recommendation to the Colonists to recognise the independence of the Maori king, naturally rendered his Colonial policy hateful to all colonists.

Foreign affairs alone seem to have been prudently managed. The only serious question with which the Foreign Office had to deal was that of the Alabama Claims. The Tory Ministry, reversing the somewhat defiant policy of Lord Russell, had conceded to the American Minister—Mr. Reverdy Johnson—every claim he was instructed to prefer.[307] This policy was continued by Lord Clarendon. Mr. Johnson’s method of working was to stupefy the English nation with gross flattery and with ecstatic post-prandial outbursts of brotherly love, and then cajole it into immeasurable concessions. He was a professional diner-out, and he took in his hosts as well as their dinners. But the American democracy ignored the concessions their Minister had obtained. Their attention was fixed on his exaggerated assurances of their goodwill, at a time when they desired him to convey the impression that they still regarded with dignified displeasure the unfriendly attitude of England during the Civil War. The Convention negotiated between Mr. Johnson and the Foreign Secretary was accordingly denounced by Mr. Sumner in the Senate in a speech in which he not only demanded an apology from England for recognising the Confederate States as belligerents, but consequential damages for all injuries to America, that were indirectly as well as directly due to the escape of the Confederate cruisers from British ports. When the Senate refused to ratify the Convention, the reply of Lord Clarendon was a courteous and decisive refusal to conduct negotiations on the absurd basis put forward by Mr. Sumner. Mr. Johnson was recalled. Mr. Motley, the eminent historian, was sent in his stead to the Court of St. James’s, and towards the end of the year American public opinion began to favour a reopening of the negotiations on a more reasonable basis, but at Washington, and not in London.[308]

The India Office, too, under the Duke of Argyle, was managed so as to add considerably to the prestige of the Government. The affairs of India had indeed been conducted, since the accession of Sir John Lawrence to the Viceroyalty, with consummate ability. The struggle for power in Afghanistan between the descendants of Dost Mahomed had been watched by Lawrence with masterly inactivity. At last, as if by a Providential inspiration, Lawrence came to the conclusion, in 1867, that of all the rival aspirants the fugitive Shere Ali was the one who was to be favoured by Fortune. He avoided an alliance with the usurper Azim Khan, and when Shere Ali at last ascended the throne his friendly overtures were amicably met. When Lord Mayo succeeded Lawrence in 1868, his appointment was denounced as a Tory job. Mr. Gladstone, with great generosity, refused to yield to those who pressed him to recall Mr. Disraeli’s viceroy in 1869, and Lord Mayo developed an unexpected capacity for government. He carried out Lawrence’s frontier policy only with greater warmth of feeling. On the 27th of March Shere Ali met Lord Mayo in durbar at Umballa, and was splendidly entertained. There Lord Mayo formally recognised his guest’s position, and on behalf of the Indian Government arranged to supply him with arms and a subsidy of £120,000 a year to defend his throne.

Foreign affairs had little interest for the Queen in 1869. In Germany the policy of Von Bismarck was directed to prevent the premature development of the national sentiment in favour of forming a new German Empire. France was engaged in hastily reorganising her military system, and the French Emperor, broken in health and depressed in spirits, had to meet, with anxious heart, the rising tide of Liberalism, which the elections that followed the dissolution of the Legislature, showed was beginning to flow in France. In July, when the Legislative Body met, the Opposition, which used to number about six, numbered 120, and when they threatened to attack the Government M. Rouher offered to come to terms with them.[309] The Emperor’s illness postponed matters for two months, but meantime the old Ministry resigned in favour of a more Liberal one. Finally, a still more Liberal one

was formed by M. Emile Ollivier, at the end of the year, charged with the mission of transforming Bonapartism into Constitutional Monarchy, on the basis of Parliamentary Government. In Spain the revolution of the previous year still dragged on. The financial embarrassments of Italy had rendered the House of Savoy a little unpopular, but the recovery of Victor Emmanuel from a perilous illness, and the birth of an heir presumptive to the Italian Crown, soon restored the popularity of their Monarchy among the Italians. The Pope attained the summit of his ambition by assembling at Rome, on the 8th of December, a grand council of the Latin Church, for the purpose of sanctioning formally the doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Holy Father, speaking ex cathedrâ and quoad sacra.

We may presume that the Queen’s domestic circle was, early in the year, alarmed by the strangely sudden illness of Prince Leopold, which prevented her from receiving in person the Address from the House of Commons in reply to the Speech from the Throne. No notice of this illness is, however, taken in the letters of the Princess Louis of Hesse; in fact, it seems to be the only illness of the Prince to which that illustrious lady does not allude in her correspondence with the Queen. The sole reference to Prince Leopold at this period is in a letter from the Princess to her mother, dated 30th January, in which she says, “Our thoughts and prayers are so much with you and dear Leopold on this day [his Confirmation]. May the Almighty bless and protect that precious boy, and give him health and strength to continue a life so well begun and so full of promise.” A month later the Queen had sad tidings of further domestic anxieties from her tender-hearted daughter. One of her servants had fallen ill, and the Darmstadt household was so seriously underhanded, that the Princess herself had to drudge in her nursery. “You will be amused,” she cheerily writes, with an obvious effort to spare her mother unnecessary anxiety, “when I tell you, that old Amelung is coming to sleep with baby, and take charge of him; but she is too old and out of practice to be able to wash and dress him morning and evening besides, so I do that, and it is, of course, a great assistance to all my being able to do it, and I don’t mind the trouble. Of a morning, as Louis is usually out riding or at his office, I take Victoria and Ella out, who are very good little girls, and very amusing.”[310] It was fortunate for the amiable Princess that her illustrious mother had brought her up to be a helpful housemother, competent at any moment to cope with the res augustæ domi.

In the beginning of the year the Queen had an interview with Mr. Carlyle, in whose sorrowful life Dean Stanley had interested her. Her Majesty expressed a desire to become personally acquainted with a man whose genius had shed so much lustre on her reign, and, according to Mr. Froude, Carlyle felt for the Queen “in her bereavement as she had remembered him in his own.” The meeting took place in the Westminster Deanery, and Carlyle’s account of it is as follows:—“The Queen was really very gracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose greatly in my esteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any point. The interview was quietly very mournful to me.”[311]

On the 17th of April the Queen visited Aldershot, and reviewed the troops stationed there. The weather was so bad in the morning that it was supposed that the review would be abandoned, but eventually, about midday, the clouds cleared off and the “Assembly” sounded. The Queen, accompanied by the Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice, left Windsor a little before noon, and was escorted by a troop of Life Guards as far as Bagshot, where a troop of the 5th Dragoon Guards relieved them, and conducted the Royal party to the camp. Her Majesty drove to the Royal Pavilion, where she partook of luncheon, and as the weather at this time was exceedingly threatening—rain falling heavily—the signal was hoisted at headquarters for the troops to “wait further orders.” At three o’clock, the weather having somewhat cleared, the review took place, about 8,000 of all ranks being on parade.

But in spite of diversions of this sort the Queen felt at times the increasing loneliness of her life. In reply to some expression of this the Princess Louis writes to her on the 16th of April, “We shall, indeed, be so pleased, if later you wish to have any of the grand-daughters with you, to comply with any such wish, for I often think, so sadly for your dear sake, how lonely it must be when one child after another grows up and leaves home; and even if they remain, to have no children in the house is most dreary. Surely you can never lack to have some from among the many grandchildren; and there are none of us who would not gladly have our children live under the same roof where we passed such a happy childhood, with such a loving grandmamma to take care of them.” In May, however, the secluded life of the Queen was to some extent brightened and cheered. “How glad I am,” writes the Princess Louis, “that the dear Countess [Blücher] is with you again; she is the pleasantest companion possible, and so dear and loving, and she is devoted to you and dear papa’s memory as never any one was.”

On the 22nd of June Ismail Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, paid a second visit to England (his first having taken place in 1867), and during his short stay of eight days his time was well occupied with fêtes, reviews, and banquets. He was met at Charing Cross by the Prince of Wales with a royal greeting in the name of the Queen, and drove to Buckingham Palace amid cheers from the crowd outside the station. On the 24th he left Buckingham Palace for Windsor Castle on a visit to her Majesty. The Prince and Princess of Wales and Prince Hassan, the Viceroy’s son, accompanied him, and with a select party dined with the Queen. On the 26th the Queen entertained the Viceroy with a review of 5,000 troops in Windsor Great Park. Next day he returned to town and dined with the Prince and Princess of Wales at Marlborough House. On July 1st, having taken leave of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Ismail Pasha started on his return journey. He was at this time endeavouring to strengthen his independent position in Egypt, and though he met with little encouragement, he considered it advisable to try and secure English support against the Sultan.

Her Majesty had taken a deep interest in the statue to Mr. Peabody, executed by Mr. Story, the American sculptor-poet, which was to be erected within the precincts of the Royal Exchange, in the City of London. Accordingly, the Prince of Wales unveiled the memorial on the 23rd of July, and his neat, natural, and polished oratory, especially his graceful allusions to his own reception in America, attracted some notice at the time.[312]

In the autumn the Queen enjoyed a series of excursions from Invertrosachs, to which the Princess Louis of Hesse refers in one of her letters from Kranichstein. “What charming expeditions you must have made,” writes the Princess to her Majesty, “in that lovely country. What I saw of it some years ago I admired so intensely. You can well be proud of all the beauties of the Highlands, which, have so entirely their own stamp that no Alpine scenery, however grand, can lessen one’s appreciation for that of Scotland.... Many thanks for the grouse, which have just arrived—the first since two years ago!”[313]

During the year the Queen was subjected to considerable annoyance, owing to the mismanagement which seemed to mar the success of the Duke of Edinburgh’s tour in Australia. At the time he was shot at by O’Farrell the Legislature of New South Wales passed at one sitting a Treason-felony Bill, the provisions of which were of the drastic character enforced in modern times only by the autocrats of opera-bouffe. But after a while from across the sea whispers of heart-burnings and discontent were wafted, which first took definite form in spring, when an ugly item was discovered in the Civil Service Estimates. It was a sum of £3,500 for gifts and presents made by the Duke of Edinburgh while voyaging in Australian waters with the Galatea. The Colonists were, not unnaturally, irritated at what they considered the lack of taste shown in throwing on the Estimates the expense of those trifling gifts which the Prince had made to several of the most eminent Australians. Though no defence was formally made for the Prince, obviously his youth and inexperience accounted, to some extent, for the unfortunate error.

A visit paid by Prince Arthur to Ireland in summer also led to some unpleasantness. In Derry the Prince’s appearance seemed to suggest to the Orangemen the idea that the occasion was one for assailing Mr. Gladstone and the Ministry, and for making riotous attacks on the Catholics who retaliated after their kind. The Mayor of Cork, too, presiding at a dinner given to two released Fenians on the 28th of April, lauded O’Farrell’s motive in shooting the Duke of Edinburgh. The observations were so pointedly directed at Prince Arthur’s visit, that they constituted practically an invitation to assassinate him. The Government accordingly brought in a Bill on the 5th of May to dismiss Mr. O’Sullivan from office “as if he were naturally dead,” the first reading of which Mr. Disraeli, to the consternation of his followers, showed a desire to resist.[314] Mr. O’Sullivan, however, saved everybody further trouble by resigning his office.

On the other hand, if two of the Queen’s sons were a little unfortunate in their experience of popular demonstrations, the Heir Apparent was fast becoming the idol of Society. It was understood that he had used his influence in order to bring about a change in Court dress, which was taken as a concession to the democratic spirit of the age. What was the origin of the rule compelling unofficial persons to wear a distinctive dress when presented to the Queen? In the early Georgian period no such rule existed. Nobody but a gentleman could go to Court, and so people who were presented, as a matter of course, wore the ordinary dress of a gentleman, just as officers have always approached the Queen in uniform, which, in theory, is their ordinary dress. But in time persons who were not, technically speaking, gentlemen, were presented to the Sovereign. The introduction of what is now known as “evening dress” for persons of all grades abolished costume as a mark of rank. Yet the Court still adhered to the theory that any one presented to the Sovereign must bear about him an outward and visible sign that he was a gentleman, and as the ordinary “swallow-tail” coat was common to all classes, the rule was laid down at Court that what had been the peculiar costume of a gentleman down to the time of George III. should always be worn. The new Court costume, as sanctioned by the Lord Chamberlain in February, 1869, was, however, a compromise between the old fashion of the Georgian period and the conventional “swallow-tail.” In form and colour the levee dress resembled an ordinary evening dress. But the material was to be velvet and not broadcloth, and the collar of the coat was to be straight and embroidered with gold. The dress sword and cocked hat were still to be worn. As for the full-dress to be worn at Drawing Rooms, it was also a compromise. Trousers were not to be worn unless they were decked out with broad gold stripes down the sides.

On Saturday, the 23rd of October, Lord Derby died in the seventy-first year of his age, forty-nine years of which had been spent in political life. For a quarter of a century his name and influence had worked like a wizard’s spell on the minds and hearts of the Tory Party, and yet, as a statesman and a legislator, he had done comparatively little. Passionate unwisdom was too often the leading trait of his policy, but his impetuous and imperious self-confidence, his stately presence, his eager spirit, fiery partisanship, and irrepressible pugnacity rendered him an invaluable Party leader. He passed away amid the wreckage of most of his political idols, conscious that he had failed in what he had haughtily asserted was his mission—to stem the tide of democracy. That a superb air of aristocratic distinction surrounded even his blunders was perhaps the secret of his success as leader of the House of Lords. As a fluent, stimulating, passionate speaker, with a style at once incisive, stately, and sonorous, he ranked as one of the last of the rhetoricians among the Peers of England.

On the 11th of September the Queen lost a good friend, in whose widowed life she had frequently displayed her sympathetic interest. That friend was Lady Palmerston, who had long reigned as the leader of Whig society in London, and who died at Brocket Hall in her eighty-third year. She was the last of four great ladies of quality whose social influence did much to shape the fortunes of their country and the course of politics—Lady Jersey, Lady Willoughby, Lady Tankerville, and herself—and who, by a curious coincidence, not only began life together, and married at the same time, but were firm allies and friends to the end, and died at the same age.[315] She was, when Countess Cowper, one of the first six patronesses of Almack’s. She kept at Panshanger the most brilliant political salon of the time when the Princess de Lieven, the Duchess de Dino, Talleyrand, Pozzo, Alvanley, Luttrell, and Lord and Lady Holland were among her closest and most confidential friends. She was Lord Byron’s patron in 1814, and as the sister of Melbourne, and the wife of Palmerston, she was the social centre of Whiggery till within four years of her death. Mr. Hayward has done ample justice to the pure refinement and sweetness of her disposition, to the constancy of her friendships, and the easy placability of her resentments. “For myself,” writes her son-in-law, Lord Shaftesbury, “I may say that until I lost her, I hardly knew how much I loved her.”[316] And again in his Diary, Lord Shaftesbury writes, “forty years have I been her son-in-law, and during all that long time she has been to me a well-spring of tender friendship and affectionate service.... Few great men, and no women, except those who have sat on thrones, have received after death such abundant and sincere testimonies of admiration, respect, and affection. The Press has teemed with articles descriptive of her life and character, all radiant with feeling and expression of real sorrow.”[317] Lady Palmerston, in fact, reaped the reward of a long career, which she spent for the sole purpose of making everybody with whom she came in contact, happy. Her second husband, Lord Palmerston, who to his last hour treated her with the tender gallantry of a lover, was the hero of her career, and one of the prettiest stories told of her is to the effect that she once said his death had prolonged her own existence. Her explanation of the paradox was, that latterly she had been pursued by the fear that his strength would give way without his being conscious of it, and that she looked with horror to the possibility of the man she worshipped sinking into senility.[318]

On the 6th of November the Queen visited the City of London for the purpose of opening the new bridge over the Thames at Blackfriars and the new Viaduct over the Fleet Valley, from Holborn Hill to Newgate Street. When it was announced in October that this visit would take place, a rumour was spread abroad to the effect that the unemployed poor of London were to be organised by agitators so as to line the route which was to be traversed by the Queen. Curiously enough, the representatives of the unemployed, greatly to their honour, discouraged this proposal on the ground that the spectacle would pain the Sovereign deeply at a moment when she was striving, in spite of her shattered nerves and sorrowing heart, to do her public duty to the best of her power. Then it was rumoured that Fenians would interfere with the Royal procession, but, as a matter of fact, no mishap marred the double ceremony. The great concourse of people who received the Queen was unusually enthusiastic, and she herself was obviously charmed with the warmth of her reception.

The year closed with gloomy news from Ireland. The electors of Tipperary, acting under Fenian intimidation,[319] had returned the Fenian “convict” Jeremiah O’Donovan, or “O’Donovan Rossa,” as he called himself, to Parliament, an election which was of course void, and which was alleged, by opponents of the Ministry, to demonstrate the futility of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy of conciliation. Dark rumours also flew round to the effect that the Government had in contemplation the summoning of Parliament and the suspension of Habeas Corpus in Ireland. The Orangemen, who had resented the disestablishment of the Irish Church by menaces of rebellion, now threatened to stand aloof in any conflict between the Crown and the Fenians.[320] At a time when Englishmen were being persuaded to adopt a conciliatory Irish policy, when, after having disestablished the Church, they were meditating the disestablishment of the rack-renting landlords, the Irish people deemed it wise to increase their demands. They raised the old agitation against the Union. By the Tipperary election, however, they showed that Repeal was meant to be a stepping-stone to an Irish Republic, and it was in vain that English Liberals, who feared lest this extravagance might create a violent anti-Irish feeling in England, remonstrated with the Nationalist leaders. They remained—

CHAPTER XV.

FALL OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.

If the social condition of Ireland when the year 1870 opened was gloomy, that of England could not be considered bright. Trade was still bad, and desponding critics began to hint that it would not for many years recover from the disaster of 1866. Raw cotton was still scarce and dear, and high prices had rendered the demand for manufactured goods stagnant. The feud between the capitalists and the trades unions was still disturbing the peace of the industrial world, and the political horizon of the Continent was heavy with the bodeful war cloud that broke during the latter half of the year in the sudden storm that wrecked the Second Empire. Irish land tenure, the establishment of a national system of elementary public instruction in England, and the admission of candidates to the Civil Service by competitive examination, were the topics that were most keenly canvassed in the early weeks of the year. From this discussion it was clear that public opinion was set against what was derisively called “the one-horse system of legislation”—that is to say, the exhaustion of the Session by one great measure like the Irish Church Bill. At least four measures were expected from Parliament ere the year closed—the Irish Land Bill, the Primary Education Bill, the Bill abolishing University Tests, and a Bill introducing Election by Ballot. In the end of 1869 a few changes had occurred in the composition of the Ministry. Mr. Layard had been appointed Minister to Madrid. To him Mr. Ayrton succeeded as First Commissioner of Works, while Mr. Stansfeld took Mr. Ayrton’s place as Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Lord Cairns resigned the leadership of his Party in the House of Lords, and it seemed likely that the Duke of Marlborough or the Duke of Abercorn would be his successor. But from this calamity the Tories were saved by the self-denial of Lord Cairns, who withdrew his resignation and resumed his post. Speculation was busy as to the Ministerial programme, and Mr. Bright’s speeches at Birmingham, in which he dwelt on the difficulties of legislation, had a depressing effect on the country. “You cannot drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar,” was the phrase with which Mr. Bright endeavoured to moderate the expectations of the people. On the other hand, Mr. Forster, addressing his constituents at Bradford, endeavoured to neutralise Mr. Bright’s pleas for delay. It was true, he said, that it was hopeless to drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, but that was no reason why they should not go through one after the other. The “Irish Land Omnibus” said Mr. Forster, must go through first, after which the “Education Omnibus,” driven by himself and Lord de Grey, must follow.

Parliament was opened by Commission on the 8th of February with a Queen’s Speech, from which, at the last moment, paragraphs congratulating France on the re-establishment of constitutional government, and rejoicing over the reception of the Duke of Edinburgh in India, had been mysteriously excised. The Royal Speech promised reduced estimates, an Irish Land Bill, an Education Bill, a Licensing Bill, a Land Transfer Bill, an Intestacy Bill, a Bill to legalise Trades Unions, and a Merchant Shipping Bill. The Ballot Bill was ignored, and the Bill for the abolition of University Tests dimly alluded to, rather than definitely promised. In the House of Lords Opposition criticism was in the main a complaint that the Government had abdicated its functions of maintaining order in Ireland. In the House of Commons Mr. Disraeli admitted that the Irish policy of the Cabinet was not per se the cause of Irish disturbances. But it had been so susceptible to misapprehension that it had sent Ireland into “spontaneous combustion” and “riotous hallucination.” It was a policy which had excited the wildest of false hopes, both as to the Repeal of the Union, and the transference of the landlords’ property to the tillers of the soil. But both Lord Cairns and Mr. Disraeli avoided committing their Party either to a demand for coercive legislation in Ireland, or to any position on the Land Question that would prevent them from attacking or supporting the Ministerial Bill when it was produced. On the Liberal benches, however, it was felt that the only weak point in Mr. Gladstone’s policy touched by his Tory critics was what he called “the discriminating amnesty” to the Fenian prisoners. It was generally admitted that if Ministers had only clearly said at the outset that they did not intend to extend their amnesty, the hopes that had unsettled and agitated the Irish people during the recess would never have been raised.

On the 14th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced his Land Bill, which legalised all Ulster customs of selling tenant-right, gave the tenant a right to compensation for his improvements and for capricious eviction, and provided means for peasants buying their holdings through advances made out of the Irish Church surplus, in cases where the tenant deposited one-fourth of the purchase-money. Mr. Disraeli was, on the whole, generous in his treatment of the Bill. Irish landlords, like Lord Granard, recognised its moderation, and, though they did not quite approve of its principles, they deprecated all factious opposition. It was soon seen that the Tory leaders meant to let the measure pass. But Mr. Disraeli, ever mindful of the great secret of successful leadership, resolved, with masterly strategic skill, to show his followers “sport” by advising them, at a meeting held in Lord Lonsdale’s house, to attack three points. On each of these they were in full accord with him. On one of them they had a chance of winning; on another they might safely yield, and yet get great credit for the highest patriotism; whilst on the third, though defeat was probable, it could not be attended with dishonour. The first point was that police-cess—incurred to protect landlords from assassination—which the Bill divided between landlord and tenant, should be paid by the latter alone. The second was that where there was doubt about an improvement, the law should presume it was made by the landlord, and not, as stipulated, by the tenant. The third was to cut out of the Bill everything that interfered with freedom of contract. In other words, Mr. Disraeli desired to leave landlords and tenants free to contract themselves out of the Bill in a country where the landlord, and not the tenant, was really the only one of the two contracting parties who could be plausibly called free. Upwards of three hundred amendments to the Bill were, however, put down before Easter, and the first clause, legalising Ulster customs, took twelve hours’ debating before it passed the ordeal of Committee. The Government soon found it necessary to modify the measure so as to separate compensation for improvements, from compensation for eviction. Then they struck out a clause which enabled landlords to get rid of all claims by offering a tenant a thirty-one years’ lease. These changes, Mr. Disraeli alleged,

formed a breach of the terms on which he had promised the Government conditional support, and for a time factious obstruction prevailed.[321] For the clause enabling landlords to nullify the Bill by offering leases, Ministers substituted a clause permitting landlord and tenant to come to a voluntary arrangement for a thirty-one years’ lease, but allowed the Courts to take this offer of a lease, if it were refused, into consideration in assessing compensation for eviction. Mr. Disraeli’s argument here was far-seeing. He said these changes would tempt the landlords to use ruthlessly the only power left to them by the Bill—that of eviction for non-payment of a rent which, however, they were permitted to raise, till it was impossible for any tenant to pay it. This, indeed, was what happened. At first the Bill, as has been explained, compensated eviction by the offer of a thirty-one years’ lease. The moment that clause was withdrawn, and eviction was compensated by damages, it was recognised that occupancy, per se, gave the occupier certain rights in the soil; in other words, the dual-ownership of landlord and occupier was then recognised as a principle. A long and weary struggle in Committee, in which the defence of the Bill was brilliantly conducted by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chichester Fortescue, followed, and the Opposition, aided by some crotchety Liberals, attempted to smother its principle by loading it with incompatible details. As Easter drew near, it was despondently whispered that the measure would have to be abandoned. Under unseen pressure from the constituencies, however, the action of the House was quickened after the Easter Recess, and all attempts at re-opening the controversy over the principles of the Bill under the pretext of improving it in detail, were crushed. Considerable concessions were made to the Tories. Mr. Gladstone’s original scheme provided that no tenant who paid under £100 a year of rent could contract himself out of the Bill. The Government lowered the limit to £50 of rental. The clause creating the presumption that improvements were made by the tenant, was limited as regards those made before the Act took effect. In Committee nothing was done for tenants who were evicted after it was known the Land Bill would be brought in. Nothing was done for reclaiming occupiers under middlemen, whose own tenancies expired with their leases from superior landlords. But before Parliament adjourned for Whitsuntide the Bill had passed through the House of Commons substantially unchanged. The landlords’ friends preferred to accept it as an alternative to further agrarian agitation, though Mr. Hardy threatened that the House of Lords would abrogate the penalty on evictions.

Lord Cairns had by this time been compelled through ill-health to finally resign the leadership of the Tory Party in the Peers, which he had reluctantly resumed, and the Duke of Richmond had been chosen as his successor. The new chief’s first speech on the Irish Land Bill was moderate and business-like, and his proposed amendments were to exempt all landlords from the Bill if they offered twenty-one instead of thirty-one years’ leases, to fix a date beyond which no tenant’s claim for improvements would be considered, to let landlord and tenant settle their disputes privately, without going into court, and to cut out a clause limiting distress for rent to persons who had contracted to submit to it. Though he disapproved of the Bright clauses creating a peasant proprietory, they were defended by Lord Salisbury and Lord Cairns. Lord Athlumney, as an Irish proprietor, said the Bill contained nothing which a humane landlord would object to accept, and the Duke of Abercorn gave the measure a general support. Lord Derby’s criticism was more subtle. The Bill did not apply to large farms. That was offering landlords an inducement to clear out small tenants, for it gave landlords what the custom of the country had denied them—a moral right to evict on paying damages for the privilege. Lord Lurgan on the Second Reading said the Bill no more hurt him than would a Bill legalising his debts of honour, but Lord Leitrim objected to it “from the title downwards,” and thought that disputes between landlords and tenants should be settled by Quarter Sessions—a tribunal composed of landlords alone. In Committee amendments were passed cutting down the scale of compensation, denying compensation to assignees not approved by the landlord (Duke of Richmond), enacting that no tenant paying more than £50 a year was in any circumstances to get compensation for eviction (Lord Salisbury), asserting that the presumption of law was to be that all improvements were made by landlords (Lord Clanricarde), prohibiting tenants from letting gardens to their labourers (Duke of Richmond), in fact, with the exception of the Bright clauses, the Peers mangled the Bill so as to make it utterly useless to the tenants. The excitement usually stirred up by a conflict between the two Houses grew every day, and men began to talk of an autumn session, the rapid passing of the Bill again through the Commons, and a creation of new Peers to force it through the House of Lords. For this dead-lock Lord Salisbury was chiefly responsible, for he practically ousted the Duke of Richmond from the leadership. After a day’s reflection, however, the Peers, influenced by Lord Cairns and Mr. Disraeli, retreated from the perilous position they had taken up. They withdrew their amendments on report, accepting instead a few plausible but transparently illusory compromises suggested by Lord Granville by way of saving their dignity. The result was that, for a time, Lord Salisbury was discredited, and the position of the Duke of Richmond, whose hand he had admittedly forced, was strengthened in the leadership. The Commons accepted all the amended amendments of the Peers except three,[322] and so the Bill passed. It marked an epoch in the political development of England. It was the first great constructive measure which recognised the right of the poorest class as distinguished from the middle class, to participate in beneficial legislation. It recognised the justice of legislating for the interests of the masses on the principle that it was not safe to leave them to the mercy of Supply and Demand, and of the economic Moloch of laissez-faire.

The other great measure of the Session—Mr. Forster’s Education Bill—illustrated the change in the drift of English legislation during the Victorian age still more strikingly. On the 17th of February Mr. Forster introduced his Education Bill. The problem to be solved, as Mr. Forster said, was “how to cover the country with good schools.” The conditions under which it must be solved were two: (1), the interests of the parents and children must be harmonised with those of the ratepayers; and (2), the new system must not be so built up as to destroy the old one where it was efficient. England was mapped out by Mr. Forster into school districts.[323] If in any of these more schools were needed, the people would have a year of grace in which to provide them, by voluntary subscription. If not, an elected local School Board would provide them compulsorily, and maintain them out of fees, rates, and the usual Government “Grants in Aid.” Religious teaching was not proscribed—the kind and quantity of it to be given, subject to a Conscience Clause, being left to the Boards. The Boards might also assist existing schools, or adopt compulsory education if they chose, and the Bill dealt with children between the ages of five and twelve. Where districts or Boards refused to provide efficient schooling for the people, the Education Department was to have power to force them to do so. The opposition to the Bill centred round the religious question. As Mr. Lowe said in his speech on the Second Reading, the House agreeing on the general principle, fixed their whole attention on one narrow point, like a “fierce herd of cattle in a large meadow deserting the grass which is abundant about them, and delighting themselves by fighting over a bed of nettles in a corner of the field.” The opposition of the Anglican clergy was anticipated. They naturally objected to any system that gave the parish schoolmaster something approaching the endowed status of the parish priest, and which released him from abject servitude to the Church. They could not conceal their hostility to a scheme of education which was National without being Anglican, and in which the principle of religious equality, so fatal to the claims of an Established Church, was not only recognised, but endowed by the State. But what had not been foreseen was the opposition of the Dissenting ministers and churches—an opposition that culminated in personal animosity to Mr. Forster. Representative Dissenters, like Mr. Winterbotham, told the House that they would prefer to delay the settlement of the whole question, till the country was prepared to accept secular education pure and simple. Their belief was that the Bill would tempt the different religious bodies to fight for control over the School Boards, so as to influence their decision on the question of religious teaching, and that in this struggle the Established Church, from the prestige of its connection with the State, would again assert its ascendency. The Party of Free Thought, led by Mr. Mill, joined the Dissenters in their attacks on Mr. Forster, Mr. Mill’s objection to the Bill being, that under it the whole body of the ratepayers might be taxed to pay for teaching a particular religion to the majority. Lord Russell, who also pleaded for delay, advocated