a compromise which would have legalised formal Bible-reading and hymn-singing during school-hours, divorced from any distinctive religious instruction, whereas Mr. Mill and Mr. Fawcett would have preferred compulsory secularism, to permissive sectarianism. Bible-reading, without note or comment, it was felt, might be unobjectionable in the case of children reared in religious families. But it was obviously useless to the “wastrels” of the gutter whom it was the primary object of the Bill to instruct. The great majority of Englishmen believed that moral teaching was a powerful agent for civilising this class of children, and that though catechisms and formularies should be excluded from new rate-built schools, it was not wise to fetter the discretion of the teacher, in explaining the Bible to the best of his judgment and ability. But as to the old denominational schools, it was generally admitted that Parliament could not do more than ask them to separate their sectarian, from their secular instruction by a “Time-table Conscience Clause.” It would not have been just to insist that they should submit to be virtually secularised,[324] under pain of forfeiting their share in the school-rate or the Imperial Grant in Aid. Mr. Forster was willing to concede vote by ballot for the Boards, and the Time-table Conscience Clause. But he refused to give effect to the national feeling in favour of excluding from rate-built schools denominational creeds and formularies, and leaving religious teaching to the discretion and good taste of schoolmasters and school managers. Moreover, he failed to meet the reasonable demand that a School Board should by law be established in every parish, so as to provide a competent authority for keeping the education of the district up to the proper standard of efficiency. At length the Government bent before the tempest of agitation which the Secularists and Dissenters raised. Mr. Gladstone accepted an amendment of Mr. Cowper Temple’s, excluding from all rate-built schools denominational catechisms and formularies. But instead of limiting the power of denominational managers to control religious teaching in cases where they did not supply a large moiety of the school funds, he entirely severed the connection between these schools and local authorities elected by the ratepayers. They were to depend on the Imperial Grant alone, but then this Grant to all schools was to be raised so as to cover not one third, but about one half of their expenses. Mr. Disraeli, with an eye to the Radical Secularist “Cave,” scoffed at the compromise as a scheme for endowing “a new sacerdotal caste.” Lord John Manners lamented that it would ruin denominational schools. The Dissenters averred it would encourage them by doubling their Grants in Aid. They seemed to argue that parents who preferred denominational education should themselves pay a special price for it, whereas, parents who desired secular education should get it at the expense of the State. Mr. Gladstone’s compromise, however, was accepted, and the Bill was passed by both Houses. But it created a feud between the Dissenters and the Liberal Party, which irretrievably weakened the Government.

With the exception of a Bill to enable persons in Holy Orders to get rid of Clerical Disabilities when they desired to quit the ministry of the Church, and a Coercion Bill for Ireland, the legislative results of the Session were not of much importance. Mr. Lowe’s second Budget, introduced on the 11th of April, showed the amazing surplus of £7,870,000 on the accounts for 1869-70. He had spent out of this sum £4,300,000 for the Abyssinian War,[325] £1,000,000 in retiring Exchequer bills, and the remainder in swelling the Exchequer balances in hand at the Bank, which stood at £8,606,000—a sum which, he admitted, was excessive. He had sold £3,000,000 of new Consols privately to the public, and £4,000,000 of them to the National Debt Commissioners, which enabled him to pay the cost of buying up the telegraphs. To wipe out this fresh debt of £7,000,000, he had created terminable annuities which would cease in 1885. For the coming year he estimated a revenue of £71,450,000 and an expenditure of £67,113,000, so that, if taxes were not altered, he would have a surplus of £4,337,000. Of this he disposed by reducing the Income Tax to fourpence in the £, halving the sugar duties, and altering the tax of 5 per cent. on the passenger receipts of railway companies to 1 per cent. on their gross receipts. After these remissions, Mr. Lowe still kept in reserve a probable surplus of £311,000. He proposed, however, with the consent of the Committee, to increase the rigour of tax-collection, to substitute for game licences, licences to carry guns, and to abolish hawkers’ licences and several other trade licences. The Budget was well received, but it was not one that strengthened the Government politically. With such a large surplus, Mr. Lowe might have conciliated the farmers by dealing with the Malt Tax, more especially as he admitted he owed much of his surplus to the fall in wheat. In three years it had dropped from 72s. to 42s. a quarter, and cheap food had produced an increased consumption of dutiable articles, i.e., an “elastic revenue.” Still he was credited with having influenced one decision of the Ministry which was extremely popular in the country—their decision to throw the whole Civil Service, with the exception of the Foreign Office, open to competition, like the Civil Service of India. This heavy blow at privilege was struck on the 4th of June, when the Queen signed the Order in Council which gave rich and poor alike the same passport to the service of the State, and relieved members of Parliament from the annoyance of being pestered for “nominations” by aggressive constituents.

The management of the defensive services of the country in 1870 further illustrated the susceptibility of the Ministry to democratic pressure. Mr. Cardwell, however, failed to get credit for that portion of his work which was good, mainly because he gave the House of Commons the impression that he strove to evade inconvenient questions by cloudy verbosity, that he was too much at the mercy of his official subordinates, and had not the knowledge or the vigour to check the accuracy of the soothing and roseate

statements which they poured through his facile lips into the House of Commons. His estimates (£13,000,000) showed a reduction of £2,000,000, and, with Reserves and Auxiliaries, he asserted that he had a force of 322,000 men in the nine military districts of the United Kingdom. He proposed that recruits should serve for six years in the Line, and six in the Reserve, and he reduced the number of subaltern officers. These estimates and figures were, however, vitiated by the suspicion that the strength of the Army was mainly on paper, that it lacked efficient transport and artillery, and that even when Mr. Cardwell said, as he did towards the end of the Session, when the Franco-Prussian War created a panic as to national defences, that he could detach for active service a perfectly-equipped force of 30,000 men, he had an inadequate conception of national wants. The Ministerial policy raised up two different classes of opponents. To conciliate the Radicals, the Government cut down the Estimates by reducing the fighting power of the Army. The militant Radicals, however, declared that they desired to increase, rather than reduce the strength of the Army, and complained that the money for this purpose was not obtained by checking waste at the War Office and Horse Guards. The Party of “the Colonels” in the House of Commons were incensed against the Government for making reductions, that interfered with their professional interests. In midsummer, however, Mr. Cardwell effected one reform, by sanctioning which the Queen won great popularity at the time. Her Majesty, by signing an Order which made the Duke of Cambridge, Commanding-in-Chief, subordinate to the Secretary of State for War, ended a conflict which had been waged for years between the War Office and the Horse Guards. Every Sovereign of the House of Hanover had fought with stubbornness for the direct control of the Army, and Parliamentary influence over it was still indirect. To make it absolute, it would have been necessary to refuse supplies, and the Secretary of State, as the agent of Parliament, could only address requests, and not orders, to the Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Gladstone’s ears were quick to hear the first murmurings of the democracy against exempting this Department of the State, from Parliamentary control and supervision. There was also a suspicion abroad that no reform could be forced on the Army, whilst the Queen’s cousin held absolute power over it as the Queen’s agent. Rather than give enemies of the Monarchy a pretext for a Republican agitation based on a popular cry, Mr. Gladstone advised the Queen to surrender to the Secretary of State that part of the Royal prerogative by which the internal discipline of the Army was entirely regulated by her direct action.

Mr. Childers, not being hampered by a rival authority like that which the Duke of Cambridge wielded over the army, was able to adopt a vigorous policy of Reform at the Admiralty. His estimates amounted to £9,000,000, and for that sum he promised to strengthen the fleet by fifty of the most powerful iron-clads in the world, and to build at the rate of 13,000 tons a year till twenty more first-class iron-clads were afloat. He reduced the clerical staff of his office, effected sweeping reductions in the dockyards, and instead of keeping vessels in dock, sent as many to sea as were fit for service. Mr. Baxter, the Secretary to the Admiralty, abolished the old system of making purchases by contract, and instead, bought stores in the open market after the manner of private firms. The outcry raised against both Ministers from the vested interests which they assailed was loud and deep. Their policy was unscrupulously misrepresented, and it created for the Government a host of active and irrepressible enemies. The fatigues of office and the harassments of the attacks which were made upon him in the House of Commons for saving the taxpayers’ money, undermined Mr. Childers’ health in June, and for a month he had to abandon all work. The loss of the turret-ship Captain, one of the most powerful iron-clads in the Navy, which was capsized off Cape Finisterre in a gale in September, with all her crew—including her designer, Captain Coles, and Mr. Childers’ son, who was serving on board as a midshipman—clouded the naval administration of the Government. The ship went down because she was overmasted and overweighted, and had not enough freeboard. It was, moreover, unfortunate that naval experts who had in vain pointed out these defects to the Admiralty had warned them that she was unsafe before she was sent to sea.

Lord Granville’s Colonial policy, it has been stated, was directed to further the severance of the Colonies from the Mother Country. The controversy was chiefly fought out over New Zealand, which had been seriously grieved by the withdrawal of Imperial troops when she was engaged in Maori warfare. After much irritating discussion, Lord Granville attempted to conciliate the colonists by a niggardly offer of a guarantee for a loan of £500,000, which was rejected by the Colonial Commissioners. But in May he became alarmed when he found out that his policy was forcing separation on the colony, and that the idea of separation was hateful to the English people. He then offered to guarantee a loan of £1,200,000, and this was accepted as a token that the scheme he was supposed to favour—that of cutting the Colonies adrift—was, for a time, abandoned.[326] But the death of Lord Clarendon on the 27th of June enabled Mr. Gladstone to transfer Lord Granville to the Foreign Office, and Lord Kimberley reigned in his stead over the discontented Colonies.

Lord Clarendon’s death happened at an evil time, for Europe was distracted by the war between France and Prussia which had at last broken out. It is a curious fact that at the beginning of the year none of the diplomatists—not even Von Bismarck himself—had the faintest suspicion that ere six months had passed, this war would be declared. The Emperor of the French was watching in July, 1869, with straining eyes the election of a new Legislature. This election, as we have seen, ended in the return of a strong Opposition, headed by M. Thiers, M. Jules Favre, and M. Emile Ollivier, whose criticism of personal Government drove Napoleon to make popular concessions. A Parliamentary Constitution was granted, and at the end of the year the Emperor had induced M. Ollivier and a few moderate Liberals to form a Cabinet charged with the mission of reconciling Parliamentary Government with Universal Suffrage and the claims of the Imperial dynasty. The Emperor discarded the old friends who had been the servile instruments of his will, but shrewd Liberals still held aloof from the Imperial Court and Government, apparently distrusting his sincerity. And they were right. The Emperor considered that his new Liberal Constitution should be revised by the Senate, and the ever-subservient Senate accordingly inserted in it a provision authorising the Emperor to “go behind” his Parliamentary Ministry, and submit any question to a plébiscite. This of course meant that whenever Parliament thwarted the Emperor, he could set aside its decision and appeal on a confused issue to a hasty vote of an ignorant democracy, whose verdict was pre-arranged by subservient Prefects. The new Constitution itself was submitted to such a vote, and though M. Ollivier remained in office, most of his abler colleagues resigned. By a majority of five and a quarter millions against a million and a half, the people cast their suffrages for the Emperor. The issue on which they voted was nominally whether they approved of the Constitution reforms which he and the Senate had effected. In reality, it was whether Napoleon III. should, in spite of Parliament, be allowed still to rule France from above. The first result of the vote was the appointment of a Ministry in which M. Ollivier was the sole representative of Liberal feeling, or Constitutional instincts. The Duc de Gramont became Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Marshal Lebœuf, the Minister of War. But fifty thousand soldiers had voted against the Emperor in the plébiscite, and Napoleon III. was accordingly warned that to conciliate the army something must be done by France to eclipse the fame which Prussia had won at Sadowa. His envoys and agents in Germany assured him that the German States hated Prussia, and in their hearts looked to France for deliverance. As a matter of fact, it was German hatred of France and the German terror of a French occupation, that was binding them closer to Prussia. French intrigues might have delayed the union of Germany, but French aggression was certain to precipitate it, and yet Napoleon resolved to adopt an aggressive policy. As for the means, they were ready to his hand. Did not Marshal Lebœuf report that the re-organised army of France could go anywhere and do anything? There was not even a button wanting, and the new chassepot and mitrailleuse must annihilate any troops that faced their fire. The pretext for the quarrel was soon found. Spain had long been looking for a King. She offered her crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. On the 6th of July the Duc de Gramont angrily declared in the Legislature that if Prussia permitted a Prussian Prince to accept the Crown of Spain, France would consider his acceptance as a cause of war. In vain did the Opposition warn the Emperor and his Ministers that such a war would be unjustifiable and disastrous. Paris went into a frenzy of delight at the prospect of a march to Berlin. Ever anxious to promote the cause of peace, the Queen personally strove to avert hostilities, and so far as Prussia was concerned with some success. The English Court and the English Cabinet induced King William to advise Prince Leopold to refuse the Spanish Crown. King William’s magnanimity and moderation in making this concession to the arrogant demands of France were ill-requited. M. Ollivier, it is true, announced to the Legislature that the dispute was at an end, and Europe breathed freely. But to the amazement of everybody it soon appeared that M. Ollivier had been duped, for instead of crossing the golden bridge of retreat which the King of Prussia generously built for him, Napoleon put forward a fresh demand. It was not enough, said he, that Prince Leopold’s candidature should be withdrawn. King William, as head of the Hohenzollerns, must give a pledge that he would never in all time coming permit a Hohenzollern to aspire to the Crown of Spain. The insolent claim was rejected. A sensational and mendacious statement in the French Ministerial Press, to the effect that King William had rudely refused even to grant an audience to the French Ambassador, lashed the Parisians into a warlike mood. This insult, the Duc de Gramont, amid a tempest of cheering, told the French Chamber could only be avenged by a war—a war into which M. Ollivier airily observed he went “with a light heart.” On the 16th of July the French Declaration of War was delivered at Berlin, and French armies were moving towards the Rhine, with Parisian screams of “À Berlin!” ringing in their ears.

Napoleon commanded in person, with Lebœuf as his lieutenant; Marshal Macmahon led the right wing, or Army of Strasbourg; Bazaine, with Frossard, Douay, and De Failly, commanded the corps that held the line northward as far as Metz and Thionville. The aggressiveness of France had flung the German States into the arms of Prussia, and Napoleon delayed his march so long, that he lost his only chance of thrusting himself between the

hosts of Prussia and her South German allies. The administration of the French army was soon seen to be in confusion, and its strength only on paper. Its transport and commissariat broke down, and almost from the outset it acted on the defensive, while the Imperial Staff seemed ignorant of the geography of their own country. In the meanwhile Von Bismarck biassed the opinion of England against France by publishing, on the 25th of July, the draft of a secret Treaty which our ally Napoleon III. had proposed to the King of Prussia, by which France was to consent to the union of Prussia, or North Germany, with the States of South Germany, in consideration of Germany helping France to seize Belgium. As England stood pledged to defend Belgium, such a proposal revealed a depth of perfidy which disgusted Europe with Bonapartism.[327] It was a plot to make war on England, concocted by Napoleon at the very time (August or September, 1866) when he was pretending to be her ally.[328] North and South Germany swiftly mobilised their armies under the supreme command of the King of Prussia, with Von Moltke as Chief of the Staff. The Crown Prince of Prussia, with Blumenthal as his Chief of Staff, led the South German troops. His cousin, Prince Frederick Charles, and General Steinmetz, commanded the corps that marched on the valley of the Moselle. When the Parisians were vaunting the success of the French troops in a slight skirmish at Saarbrück, the Crown Prince defeated the French at Weissenburg on the 4th of August, and on the 6th shattered Macmahon’s army at Wörth, while Steinmetz—the “blood spendthrift,” as Bismarck called him—crushed Frossard on Spicheren heights. A German corps was sent to invest Strasbourg, whither part of Macmahon’s army had fled. The Crown Prince started after the rest of that ill-fated force, then retreating on Châlons. The relics of Frossard’s army had fled to join Bazaine near Metz, whose design was to unite with Macmahon at Châlons. The Emperor of the French had appointed the Empress as Regent when he took command in person of the army near Metz. This command he now resigned to Bazaine. The Legislative Body, infuriated by the defeats on the frontier, turned the Ministry of Ollivier out of office, and General Montauban, Duke of Palikao,[329] was called to power. To secure the Emperor from the political consequences of retreat, Bazaine had delayed his departure from Metz to Châlons for a fortnight after the rout at Wörth. This obviously enabled the Germans to come up in time to prevent him from joining hands with Macmahon. On the 14th Steinmetz held him for a day at Courcelles. Then Prince Frederick Charles advanced and harassed Bazaine with impetuous cavalry charges till reinforcements arrived, which drove the French back on Gravelotte St. Privat. On the 18th the Germans fought and won the battle of Gravelotte, but at the cost of one-seventh of their effective strength,[330] and finally shut Bazaine up in Metz. Von Moltke immediately made arrangements to crush Macmahon’s reorganised army at Châlons. It is due to Macmahon to say that he himself and the Emperor desired to fall back on Paris, but the Empress-Regent, fearing that the Emperor’s appearance in Paris, with an army in retreat, might have bad political results, foolishly insisted on Macmahon hastening eastwards to Metz to relieve Bazaine. Macmahon obeyed these orders, and, as might have been expected, was intercepted and surrounded by the Germans at Sedan, where the Emperor and his army, after a disastrous fight, surrendered to the King of Prussia as prisoners of war on the 1st of September. The Second Empire was consumed in the circle of fire at Sedan. On the 4th of September the Imperial dynasty was deposed, and a Republic proclaimed. The Empress and the Ministry fled for their lives, the Empress making good her retreat to England. A Provisional Government was formed under General Trochu, Commander of the garrison of Paris, M. Jules Favre, M. Gambetta, and M. de Rochefort, and M. Thiers undertook to roam over Europe in the futile attempt to get some of the European Powers to mediate between France and Prussia.[331] Germany now demanded the cession of Alsace and Lorraine, and on the 19th of September Paris was invested and practically cut off from all communication with the rest of France. M. Jules Favre opened up pacific negotiations with Von Bismarck, but, as he refused to admit that some transfer of strongholds and territory to Germany was necessary, they were broken off. “Not an inch of our territory nor a stone of our fortresses,” was the reply of M. Favre to the Prussian Minister’s proposals. Bazaine might have escaped from Metz and relieved Paris, but then the result of his skill and the valour of his army would have been to strengthen the new-born Republic. He delayed too long, and he also opened up negotiations with Von Bismarck through a secret envoy, General Boyer. Bismarck had only one object—to conclude peace with some kind of French Government which would be strong enough to keep its pledges. Hence he had been willing to consent to an armistice, so that the Government of the Republic might, by means of a General Election, obtain an authoritative mandate from the people. This project having failed, he was quite willing to conclude a peace with the Imperial Government covered by Bazaine’s bayonets. He was willing to let Bazaine leave Metz and proceed with his troops to some place where they might form a rallying-point for the defeated dynasty.[332] The Empress-Regent in England was consulted, but she declined to consent to any proposals which made cession of territory a basis of peace. On the 25th of October the King of Prussia wrote to the Empress that negotiations were at an end, and on the 28th the great army of Metz—the last hope of the Bonapartes—surrendered unconditionally. Bismarck’s policy was now to foster the Third Republic till it became authoritative enough to undertake and uphold Treaty obligations.

Though Paris was invested, a delegation of the Government of National Defence, headed by M. Gambetta, a brilliant and eloquent young advocate, who leapt into popularity by his attacks on the Emperor during a political trial, escaped to Tours in a balloon, and on the 9th of October he set up a civil and military administration for provincial France. M. Gambetta displayed astounding courage, irrepressible energy, and the highest practical administrative ability. Armies rose at his word as if by magic, and a force of from 150,000 to 200,000 men, with 506 guns, under D’Aurelle de Paladines, was concentrated on the Loire. Had Bazaine only held Metz for another month the siege of Paris must have been raised. But the fall of Metz liberated the investing army of Prince Frederick Charles, and Gambetta’s legions were for the most part raw militiamen. Hence, when D’Aurelle de Paladines drove Von der Tann out of Orleans he could not follow up his victory. Prince Frederick Charles came up with the army of Metz, and Manteuffel stood between the besiegers of Paris and any relief from the south-west. In vain did D’Aurelle de Paladines and Trochu by concerted movements endeavour to break the ring of steel which encircled Paris. Their rough, raw peasants and improvised officers fought with the utmost gallantry, as if in contrast to the Imperial troops at Sedan and in the battles before Metz, where the rank and file in too many cases shrank from closing with the enemy. But they could not stand against the superb troops of the German States led by the ablest generals in Europe. After the recapture of Orleans by the Germans on the 4th of December, D’Aurelle de Paladines was superseded. His army was broken up into two corps, and under Bourbaki and Chanzy retreated to the south-east and south-west of the right bank of the Loire. The “Red Prince” (Frederick Charles) pursued Bourbaki, and the Duke of Mecklenburg, after a series of obstinate conflicts, pushed Chanzy slowly but surely from his positions near Marchenoir. The French Government had now to quit Tours and remove to Bordeaux, whereupon Chanzy retreated westwards. In the north-west, Faidherbe, the only strategist of signal ability whom the war brought to the front on the French side, had many toughly contested engagements with Von Goeben and Manteuffel, in which the Germans usually had the advantage. But after Christmas the French leader fairly claimed to have beaten his German antagonists at Noyelles, where he held his main position in spite of the attacks of the enemy, though he voluntarily evacuated it next day, and fell back on his old line at Lille.[333] Werder was not fortunate in the east. He could not hold Nuits, and he had to let Dijon fall into the hands of Garibaldi, who, in a fit of Republican enthusiasm, had given his sword to France after the Empire fell. The net result of the war at the end of the year was this: Paris was

completely invested. But, thanks to M. Gambetta’s fiery genius and practical organising power, France, after the surrender of the regular troops of the Third Empire, with their trained officers at their head, had actually more troops in the field than she possessed when Napoleon III. advanced to Saarbrück. These improvised armies of the infant Republic consisted of the rawest recruits. But they freed Normandy and Picardy, and all accounts showed that on the whole they fought with more pluck than the Imperial legions who surrendered at Metz and Sedan.

The effect of the war on English public opinion was curious. At the outset Englishmen of the better sort without distinction of class seemed to sympathise with Prussia. But the Roman Catholics both in Ireland and England became partisans of France. After Sedan a change took place. The enthusiasm of the Roman Catholic party rather cooled, whereas the working-classes and the advanced democrats in England transferred their moral support from Prussia to France. The Queen, though she felt the deepest personal sympathy for the fallen Emperor and his consort, was naturally drawn to the German cause. It was freighted with those high aspirations after German unity, which had been the central idea of her husband’s foreign policy. The brilliant victories of the South German armies had been won under the leadership of her favourite son-in-law, in whom the romance and chivalry of mediæval Teutonic Knighthood seemed to live again. The husband of her favourite daughter and constant correspondent (the Princess Louis) was a Divisional commander in the great host, whose iron grasp held Bazaine in Metz. Writing in July to the Queen, the Princess says, “How much I feel for you now, for I know how truly you must feel for Germany; and all know that every good thing England does for Germany, and every evil she wards off her, is owing to your wisdom and experience, and to your true and just feelings. You would, I am sure, be pleased to hear how universally this is recognised and appreciated. What would beloved papa have thought of this war? The unity of Germany, which it has brought about, would please him, but not the shocking means.”[334] Unfortunately the personal relations of friendliness which often bind Courts have in these days but slight influence on the relations that subsist between Governments. The Prussian Government was not contented with English sympathy. England, said the Prussians, might by timely diplomatic action have prevented the outbreak of the war.[335] But she had a selfish motive in eliminating Imperial France from Europe as a dominating force. Prussia, in crushing France, was incidentally doing the work of England in defending Belgium, and hence England made no effort to keep the peace. Then there had been some trivial exports of arms from England to France, and the Prussian Minister—forgetting how Prussia had supplied Russia during the Crimean War—pretended to consider these exports a breach of neutrality. Oddly enough, though the Americans had engaged much more extensively in this traffic, Prussia made no complaint against them. The German case, as argued by Count Bernstoff, was obviously weak. So long as a country carries on its trade with belligerents, not as a partisan but as a neutral, it is impossible for diplomacy to stop that trade. Count Bernstoff, however, argued that as Prussia did not need to buy arms from England, whereas France did, the English trade in arms with France must be necessarily one-sided or partisan. His despatches laying down his eccentric doctrine of “benevolent neutrality” simply amounted to the assertion of a new principle. The usage had been that the neutral was free, subject to the usual risks, to trade with either of two belligerents just as if there were no war at all. The new principle asserted by Count Bernstoff was that the neutral, before selling a belligerent anything, must consider carefully whether the transaction will confer a benefit on him which it is beyond anybody’s power to confer on the other belligerent on the same terms. Neutral traffic must, according to the Prussian Foreign Office, cease whenever its results give one belligerent certain advantages direct and indirect over the other. Lord Granville had little difficulty in disposing of a chimerical doctrine which would have cast on a neutral the burden of weighing his lawful trade with belligerents to see that each got exactly the same fair share of it. But the absurd paradox was advanced merely to give Von Bismarck an excuse for conniving at an act of diplomatic hostility to England, on the part of Russia, his connivance being the price he had to pay the Czar, who held back Austria, for “benevolent neutrality” in 1870-71.

In the middle of November the Russian Government suddenly issued a Circular repudiating the clause in the Treaty of Paris which prevented Russia from keeping a fleet in the Black Sea. Lord Granville protested with high spirit against the claim of Russia to repudiate any clause in a Treaty she had signed, save with the consent of the cosignatories. Austria, Turkey, and Italy supported England, but Bismarck told Mr. Odo Russell, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to the King of Prussia at Versailles, that Prussia had always thought the Treaty needlessly harsh to Russia, and that, as German interests were not involved, he had no intention of taking any notice of the Russian Circular. “Resolved, as Bismarck therefore was,” says Mr. Lowe, “to let the Russians have their own way, and even help them to attain it, his only care was how to do this in the manner least objectionable to England. The Black Sea Clause had been knocked on the head, and was already as dead as a door-nail; but there was no reason why it should be flung into a ditch like a dog, and not interred with the decent ceremony of undertakers’ woe.... Thus too, doubtless, thought Bismarck when he proposed that the Powers should meet and wail a doleful dirge over the lamented body of their lifeless offspring. Ingenious idea! A coroner’s inquest in the shape of a diplomatic Conference to sit on the murdered body of the Black Sea Clause!”[336] Lord Granville’s position was an embarrassing one. It has already been pointed out that the Black Sea Clause was in many respects indefensible, and it was not possible to offer the English people any adequate return for the money and blood that must be spent in waging a futile war with Russia to maintain the Treaty. Yet the manner in which Russia had “denounced” it was meant to be humiliating to England, and it needed some adroit manœuvring to extricate the country from the situation which had been created for it by the foolish diplomacy of 1856. When the Conference met on the 17th of January, 1871, the representatives of the Powers kept their gravity when the President (Lord Granville) said that it met without any foregone conclusions. To save the honour of England and put on record a formal avowal of theoretical belief in the sanctity of Treaties, the Conference unanimously agreed to declare that no State could recede from its engagements with other States, save with the consent of these States. Then Russia was released from the obligations of the Black Sea Clause, which she had already declared she had no intention of respecting.

For a time the revolutionary forces in Spain were stilled by the election of the Prince Amadeus of Italy (the Duke of Aosta), second son of Victor Emmanuel, to the throne of the Cortes. The collapse of the French Empire naturally led to the annexation of Rome by Italy, and it was a strange coincidence that the year which saw the extinction of the temporal power of the Pope, saw his spiritual power asserted more firmly and extensively than ever. The Assembly of Roman Catholic prelates at Rome known as the Œcumenical Council, met at the beginning of the year to proclaim the dogma of Papal Infallibility. The opposition to this proclamation was organised by the most eminent of the English, American, German, and Hungarian bishops, and at one time it was feared they would triumph. The Pope had, however, secured a majority of votes by the somewhat sublunary method of creating new bishops governing mythical sees. The doctrine of Infallibility was accordingly proclaimed a few days after the declaration of war by France against Germany, a war which had been vigorously promoted by the secret agents of the Vatican, who had acquired a controlling spiritual influence over the French Empress. After the annexation of Rome by Victor Emmanuel on the 20th of September, the Pope refused to hold any intercourse with the Italian Government. Immuring himself in the Leonine City as a voluntary prisoner, he pathetically appealed for sympathy to the blunted sensibilities of a wicked world.

As the year wore on, and the German armies strengthened their hold on France, it became clear that German unity under Prussian leadership was an accomplished fact. The autumnal negotiations for the absorption of the South German States in the North German Confederation ended well, mainly because Bismarck made generous concessions, reserving the sovereign rights of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and abandoning on the part of Prussia an exclusive right to declare war. The King of Bavaria, the Grand Duke of Baden, and the other Sovereign Princes, then invited King William of Prussia to assume the Imperial Crown, and on the 18th of January, 1871, he was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Kings at Versailles.[337]

During 1870 the Queen emerged from her seclusion on the 11th of May to open the splendid hall and offices of the University of London in Burlington Gardens. The ceremonial was conducted with a pomp and dignity worthy of the occasion. The senate and graduates wore their academic costume, Mr. Lowe being the only dignitary who appeared in any other garb. He, however, had donned for the occasion the official robes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a sumptuous garment for which it was whispered he had been so extravagant as to pay £130. The Queen was accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Louise, and a brilliant train of distinguished persons. The Chancellor (Lord Granville) read an address to the Queen. Her Majesty handed him a reply, and having declared the building open the silver bugles blew a blast of joy. When the Queen retired, Lord Granville, in distributing the prizes, referred felicitously to Queen Elizabeth’s visits to Oxford and Cambridge—those visits during which she is described as “questioning and answering and scolding not only in Latin but also in Greek.”

In the autumn of the year the Queen in Council gave her consent to the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lorne, the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. When it became known that the Queen had violated the exclusive traditions of the House of Brunswick, and reverted to old precedents set by the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, who all contracted marriages with subjects, society was greatly excited. The marriage was regarded as a triumph of aristocratic and democratic ideas over the monarchical principle—that is to say, of the triumph of the two ideas that have ever been most popular in England. The Queen with great tact had consciously or unconsciously responded to the instinctive feeling that had silently grown among her people. They had always disliked, though they had never dared to repeal, the Royal Marriage Act. It was felt to be a sacrifice to expediency—and it was passed mainly because Englishmen did not desire to see Mrs. FitzHerbert crowned as Queen of England. The Act bound all the descendants of George III. who wished to marry to obtain the written consent of the Sovereign,[338] and it was felt that as Princes and Princesses were very apt to form mésalliances, it would be difficult to maintain the prestige of the monarchy, save under some such restrictions as the Act imposed.[339] But when the Royal Family increased and multiplied, so that the Princess Louise only stood twentieth in the line of succession to the Queen, it was time to relax the usage. No State interest could, in such a case, be practically endangered, by permitting a daughter of England to indulge her personal preferences in the selection of a husband.

The death of General Grey in the spring of the year was deeply felt by the Queen. The Princess Louis in one of her letters to her mother says, “Lady Car (Barrington) wrote to me how very grateful Mrs. Grey was to you for your great kindness and consideration. In trouble no one can have a more true and sympathising friend than my beloved mamma always is. How many hearts has she not gained by this, and how many a poor sufferer’s burdens has she not lightened!” General Grey’s services as Private Secretary to the Sovereign, indeed, were such as to render his death a matter of serious political interest. At this time the Queen exercised a personal supervision over every department of State, more especially over the Foreign Office, War Office, Admiralty, and Poor Law Board. On all matters of importance connected with the administration of these offices it was her custom to send to the Government of the day her own views, and such notes of precedents and of the opinions of former Ministers, as her carefully-kept series of State commonplace books supplied. It was the duty of General Grey to take the rough drafts of memoranda as they came from the Queen’s hand, and give them the form of State papers. In fact, he did the work which the Prince Consort had been in the habit of doing, and his position was really that of a supernumerary Minister in attendance at Court, but without a seat in the Cabinet, and without any responsibility to Parliament. After General Grey’s death it was suggested that a new Cabinet office should be created, to be held by a Minister who should have no other duty than that of residing in personal attendance on the Queen, and acting as her Private Secretary. The suggestion was happily not pressed, because it would obviously have led to Constitutional difficulties. The new Minister must have become either the Queen’s clerk, in which case he would have been an encumbrance to the Cabinet, or he must have become a real Minister of State confidentially representing the Sovereign, in which case he would have become its master. Colonel Ponsonby was therefore selected to succeed General Grey, and the revival of Government by favourites, which was the bane of the early years of George III.’s reign, was prevented.

The death of Charles Dickens on the 9th of June robbed England of a great humourist, whose genius was consecrated not only to the delight, but to the service of the English people. It was his mission to soften the harsh contrasts of society, and quicken the consciences, and touch the hearts of the governing classes, to whose apathy and ignorance of life among the poor he traced most “of the oppression that is done under the sun.” Whether Dickens will survive as an English classic has been doubted. But no doubt exists as to the qualities which gave him an unique position among men of letters in the Victorian period. His sense of humour was singularly keen and delicate. His faculty of observation exceeded that ever given to mortal man; in fact, what he saw, he saw so vividly that by his descriptive method he could print it on his reader’s mind with photographic fidelity. His power of characterisation, it is true, was limited, but that was because his characterisation was invariably idiosyncratic. It was always an isolated phase of a character that impressed him—a single trait to which he gave corporeal reality. On the other hand,

there was no limit to his power of producing fresh illustrations of this phase or trait under an infinite variety of circumstances and conditions. If he rang the changes on one theme, his capacity for producing variations on the original air with unfailing freshness, and seductive spontaneity, imparted some semblance of the roundness and many-sidedness of Nature even to the oddest of his oddities. But his sense of colour was faulty, and his passion for melodramatic effect, and his habit of harping too much on one string of feeling, gave to his pathos, a false note of theatrical sentimentality. None of his

readers in England, it may fairly be said, was a more consistent and devoted admirer of the genius of Dickens than the Queen. Next to Scott and George Eliot, Dickens was her favourite novelist. It had been her desire in the early days of her married life to make his acquaintance personally, but the touch of false pride which marred Dickens’s character, and rendered him morbidly sensitive as to “patronage,” prevented their meeting. In 1857, the Queen had been compelled to refuse her name for the dramatic performance of the Frozen Deep, given for the benefit of Douglas Jerrold,[340] but she offered to allow Dickens and his company of players to select a room in the Palace and perform the play there before her and the Court. Dickens begged leave to decline the offer, as he could not feel easy about the social position of his daughters at a Court under such circumstances. He suggested that the Queen might come to the Gallery of Illustrations a week before the subscription night, with her own friends, and witness a private performance of the play. “This,” writes Dickens, “with the good sense that seems to accompany her good nature on all occasions, she resolved within a few hours to do.” So delighted was the Queen with the performance that she sent round a kind message to Dickens asking him to come and see her and receive her thanks personally. “I replied,” says Dickens, in his account of the affair, “that I was in my farce dress, and must beg to be excused. Whereupon she sent again, saying that the dress ‘would not be so ridiculous as that,’ and repeating the request. I sent my duty in reply, but again hoped her Majesty would have the kindness to excuse myself presenting myself in a costume and appearance that was not my own. I was mighty glad to think, when I awoke this morning, that I had carried the point.” This incident occurred in 1857.

In 1858 the Queen made another attempt to bring the great novelist to Court. “I was put into a state of much perplexity on Sunday” (30th March, 1858), writes Dickens. “I don’t know who had spoken to my informant, but it seems that the Queen is bent upon hearing the ‘Carol’ read, and has expressed her desire to bring it about without offence, and hesitating about the manner of it, in consequence of my having begged to be excused from going to her when she sent for me after the Frozen Deep. I parried the thing as well as I could, but being asked to be prepared with a considerate and obliging answer, as it was known the request would be preferred, I said, ‘Well, I supposed Colonel Phipps would speak to me about it, and, if it were he who did so, I should assure him of my desire to meet any wish of her Majesty, and should express my hope that she would indulge me by making one of some audience or other, for I thought an audience necessary to the effect.’ Thus it stands, but it bothers me.” This difficulty could not be got over, though the Queen, by buying a copy of the “Carol,” embellished with the author’s autograph, at the sale of Thackeray’s library, testified to her interest in the two great humourists of the Victorian age.[341] Indeed, it was not till 1870, shortly before Dickens’s death, that the novelist met the Queen. He had brought from his American tour a great many large photographs of the battle-fields of the Civil War. Having taken a deep interest in that struggle, and having followed its details closely, her Majesty, who heard of the photographs through Mr. Arthur Helps (Clerk of the Privy Council), expressed a desire to see them. Dickens, on hearing of this from Mr. Helps, at once sent the photographs to Buckingham Palace, and then received a message from the Queen inviting him to see her, that she might thank him in person. “The Queen’s kindness,” says Mr. Forster, “left a strong impression on Dickens. Upon her Majesty expressing regret not to have heard his readings, Dickens intimated that they had become now a thing of the past, while he acknowledged gratefully her Majesty’s compliment in regard to them. She spoke to him of the impression made upon her by his acting in the Frozen Deep, and, on his stating, in reply to her inquiry, that the little play had not been very successful on the public stage, said this did not surprise her, since it no longer had the advantage of his performance in it. Then arose some mention of some alleged discourtesy shown to Prince Arthur in New York, and he begged her Majesty not to confound the true Americans of that city with the Fenian portion of its Irish population, on which she made the quiet comment that she was sure the people about the Prince had made too much of the story. He related to her the story of President Lincoln’s dream the night before his murder. She asked him to give her his writings, and could she have them that afternoon? but he begged to be allowed to send a bound copy. Her Majesty then took from a table her own book on the Highlands, with an autograph inscription to ‘Charles Dickens,’ and saying that the ‘humblest of writers’ would be ashamed to offer it to ‘one of the greatest,’ but that Mr. Helps, being asked to give it, had remarked that it would be valued most from herself, closed the interview by placing it in his hands.” Though Dickens refused a baronetcy, which the Queen would have gladly conferred on him, he was persuaded to go to Court. In March, 1870, he writes to a friend:—“As my Sovereign desires that I should attend the next levee, don’t faint with amazement if you see my name in that unwonted connection. I have scrupulously kept myself free for the 2nd of April, in case you should be accessible.” His name is among those who attended the levee, and his daughter’s name appears among those who were at the Drawing Room that followed. “I never saw Mr. Dickens more agreeable,” says Lady Houghton in a letter to Mr. Forster, “than at a dinner at our house about a fortnight before his death, when he met the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales, at the special desire of the latter.”[342]

The chief social function of the season of 1870 was the Garden Party at Windsor, which took place on the 25th of June. Great preparations were made for the event. A series of tastefully arranged tents had been erected on the lawn under the East Terrace, and in the grounds of the Home Park towards Frogmore, and the State Apartments of the Castle were also thrown open for the reception of guests, who were conveyed from the station by forty carriages. They began to arrive about four o’clock, and the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the Royal Family came on the scene later on. The street and road to the Castle were kept by a large body of the Metropolitan Police; a guard of honour of the Scots Fusilier Guards was posted in the quadrangle of the Castle, and the Yeomen of the Royal Body Guard were on duty inside. The Queen, who looked well and cheerful, received her visitors in a tent near the wall of the East Terrace, and was surrounded by members of her family, and attended by the Lord Chamberlain, the Duchess of Sutherland, and the Marchioness of Ely. The London Glee and Madrigal Union and her Majesty’s private band supplied the music that delighted the gay and brilliant crowd of promenaders, who did not break up and return to town till about seven o’clock in the evening. It had been expected that the Queen would be able to attend and open the Thames Embankment early in July, and her appearance at the Garden Party at Windsor strengthened popular anticipations. Unfortunately, when the time came round, her Majesty felt herself unable to endure the strain of the public ceremony, and the consequence was that, when it was performed on her behalf by the Prince of Wales (13th July), at least a thousand seats were vacant for which tickets had been issued.

Ere the year ended the rebellion in the Red River Settlement, or the “Revolt of the Winnipegers,” as the Americans called them, was quelled. The history of the rising was as follows:—The Hudson’s Bay Company had enjoyed powers of proprietorship and exclusive trade in the vast region extending from the American frontier to the Frozen Ocean. Early in the century Lord Selkirk had established in the extreme south of this region, and close to the American line, a colony of mixed blood, descended from French, Canadian, English, and Scottish parents, servants of the Company. They squatted on a strip of fertile land on the Red River, which flows from Minnesota into Lake Winnipeg. These people increased to the number of 10,000, and they inhabited, perhaps, the most secluded spot ever reached by European colonists, in the centre of the North American Continent. They had been ruled by the Company under a “Governor of Assiniboia,” and a Recorder. In 1869 the Company agreed to sell all their territorial and sovereign rights in Rupert’s Land to Canada for £300,000. This cession included the Red River Settlement. The “Winnipegers” however, objected to be transferred to what they called a “foreign power,” and they split into two parties—the Canadians, almost all half-breeds, speaking French and professing the Catholic religion, and who rose in rebellion, and a minority of English and Scots who remained loyal. The rebels refused to admit into the district Mr. Macdougal, who was sent by Canada as Governor. A leading agitator, Louis Riel, was proclaimed (in February) “President of the Republic of the North-West,” and the insurgents appealed to the United States for protection. A contingent under command of Colonel Wolseley was despatched to suppress the insurrection. The expedition reached Fort Garry, the headquarters of Riel and his rebel followers, on the 23rd of August. They were welcomed by the loyal party, and found that Riel himself had disappeared, with a considerable amount of plunder, into the neighbouring American territory. The British force was admirably handled, and did not lose a single man, despite the enormous difficulties of its march over a rough and broken country. For from its point of disembarkation in Lake Superior, it had to travel through 600 miles of an unknown wilderness of water, rocks, and forests, where no supplies were obtainable. The whole expense was under £100,000, of which one quarter only was to be paid by England. Order was re-established on the Red River at the end of 1870, and, as the “province of Manitoba,” it was added to Canada.