[98] Others, like the Prince Napoleon, promulgated the theory that in pursuance of the Imperial policy of tearing up the treaties of 1815 it would be desirable to conciliate Italy. She would be a second-rate naval power, and the second-rate naval powers would naturally consolidate round France, who could thus overmaster even England on the seas. Such views, though officially disavowed by the Emperor, increased the distrust between England and France.
[99] Mr. Gladstone disapproved of this threat. It is, indeed, very hard to say how much truth there was in the rumours then afloat as to the cession of Sardinia. Vitzthum writes, “hitherto he (Napoleon) had only talked of giving that island to the Pope as an equivalent for the States of the Church. It was with this view that Pietri, the well known entrepreneur du suffrage universel in Savoy, had been busy in that island, and had sent private reports to Napoleon during his visit to the baths at Vichy.”—Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 157.
[100] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 140.
[101] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 145.
[102] Sir George Cornewall Lewis succeeded Lord Herbert at the War Department. Sir George Grey went to the Home Office, and was succeeded by Mr. Cardwell as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir R. Peel succeeded Mr. Cardwell as Irish Secretary. Lord Campbell’s death elevated Sir R. Bethell to the Lord Chancellorship.
[103] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 211.
[104] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIII.
[105] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIV.
[106] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIV.
[107] The rule originated with Queen Elizabeth, who said she objected to her dogs wearing anybody else’s collars. Lord Clarendon himself, as Foreign Minister, had prohibited English servants of the Crown from accepting Foreign Orders. Lord Clarendon at the Coronation of the Czar Alexander, the Duke of Northumberland at the Coronation of Charles X., and Lord Beauvale at that of the Emperor Ferdinand, had to refuse Foreign Orders. The Duke of Devonshire was allowed to accept one from the Czar Nicholas at his Coronation, on the ground that, like many distinguished Englishmen, he was a personal friend of his Imperial Majesty.
[108] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXVI.
[109] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXVI.
[110] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 182.
[111] A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 65.
[112] This, says Lord Clarendon in a letter to Mr. Hayward, was “charmingly characteristic;” but he adds, thinking of the effect on the mind of the Queen, “they” (the green gloves and blue studs) “will not have been unobserved, or set down to the credit side of his account.”—Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 72.
[113] Malmesbury Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 266.
[114] The Hayward Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 67.
[115] Malmesbury Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 267.
[116] The faithful Coburger, Löhlein, was the only member of the Royal household who seems to have given advice that would have saved the Prince’s life had it been acted on.
[117] It is only fair to say that Lord Palmerston was the first to make these representations. For his views on the Prince’s illness and the Queen’s doctors, see his letter to Lord Shaftesbury, of 11th December.—Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder. Vol. III., p. 130.
[118] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 178-185.
[119] Edmund Burke, by Augustine Birrell. Contemporary Review, July, 1866, p. 41.
[120] The Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, by Edward Barrington Fonblanque, p. 247.
[121] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters. London: John Murray, 1884, p. 360.
[122] See Memorandum by the Grand Duchess of Baden quoted in Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 18-19.
[123] The allusion here to the “revival” of Wilberforce’s old affection may seem curious. The Bishop of Oxford enjoyed more influence and favour at Court than ever fell to the lot of any ecclesiastic in our time. He was one of the extremely small group of prominent public men—Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Clarendon, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis—who enjoyed the Prince’s close personal friendship. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Prince Consort dropped him, and in one of his letters to Miss Noel the Bishop gives utterance to his sorrow over his fall at Court. Knowing Lord Aberdeen’s intimacy with the Prince, he begged his son, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, to induce his father to intercede for him. The incident curiously illustrates the Prince Consort’s character. When Lord Aberdeen opened the subject with his customary tact and delicacy, the Prince detected his object at once, and stopped him by observing, “He (the Bishop) does everything for some object. He has a motive for all his conduct.” Lord Aberdeen replied, “Yes, sir, but when a bad motive?” which, however, did not lead the Prince to continue the discussion. Again Lord Aberdeen seized an opportunity of serving the Bishop, and this time the Prince Consort frankly said he had occasion to doubt the Bishop’s sincerity—a suspicion that invariably forfeited the Prince’s confidence. Being pressed by Aberdeen still further, the Prince said that in early life he detected Wilberforce intriguing for the preceptorship of the Prince of Wales. Nor was that all. In a discussion with the Prince on a certain miracle about which he had preached, the Bishop had unduly modified his views to suit those of the Prince. It is only fair to Wilberforce to say that, in a letter to the Hon. Arthur Gordon, he denies the assertion about the preceptorship, but admits there was some colour in the other part of the Prince’s case. “The swine sermon,” writes Wilberforce, “was preached in days when he (the Prince Consort) was most friendly, long before I was Dean or Bishop; the conversation followed, and a long one it was. He did not say how entirely he disbelieved in spirits of evil, but raised all possible objections, which I combated; and the only thing like ‘convenient’ averment I said was that it was far best to believe in a devil who suggested evil to us; for that otherwise we were driven to make every man his own devil; and I thought that this view rather touched him.” It did touch him, but not in the way intended. See Life of Wilberforce, by his son, Reginald G. Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 226. For reference to the Prince’s funeral, see Vol. III., pp. 41-45.
[124] It gave Federal Commissioners power, without judge or jury, to return fugitive slaves to justice; prohibited State Courts from testing, on writ of habeas corpus, the rights of the person who claimed the slave in a Free State.
[125] The minority of the Judges seem to have taken a less pedantic view, and one more in accordance with the policy of the Republic, which had always been one of compromise with regard to slavery. They held that it was not by Federal but State law that a negro was made property. They contended that neither the laws of nature nor of nations, nor the Constitution of the United States, recognised him as property, so that the rights of owners over this species of property must logically be limited to the Territory where, by municipal law, it was recognised as property.—See The Constitutional History of the United States, by Simon Stern, of the New York Bar (Cassell and Co.), p. 190.
[126] According to it, slavery was prohibited north of parallel 36° 30´, but south of this it was to be recognised and never interfered with by Congress, and the Federal Government would pay for all slaves rescued from officers after arrest.
[127] There had always been a more or less tacit understanding that whilst the Northern States were to be allowed to have their manufactures protected, the Southern States, as a set-off, were to have slavery tolerated and safeguarded.
[128] Life of Lord Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder. Vol. III., p. 136.
[129] At the time, credit was given to M. Thouvenel, the Foreign Minister of France, for bringing the American Government to reason. Count Vitzthum, however, states that “the French Ambassador at Washington knew that at the eleventh hour the American Cabinet would yield, and had advised his Government to this affect. When Thouvenel, therefore, in his despatch of December 3rd, represented strongly the justice of the English demands, he risked little, and only gave a fresh proof that the Tuileries prefer siding with the gods to Cato.”—Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 177.
[130] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 146.
[131] It was decided by the House of Commons that the liability to a rate-in-aid of the other parishes of a Union should arise when the rate came to 3s. in the £, and that Guardians, subject to the sanction of the Local Government Board, might raise loans on the security of the rates, when the aggregate expenditure of the whole Union reached 3s. in the £ of its rateable property.
[132] Prior to 1860 there were four duties—1s., 1s. 9d., 2s. 5d., and 2s. 11d.—on wines, with varying degrees of alcohol, from 18 up to 42 degrees. In 1862 Mr. Gladstone substituted for these two duties—1s. a gallon on wines below 26 degrees and 2s. 6d. on wines above 26 and below 42 degrees.
[133] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 172.
[134] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 278 (Cassell and Co.).
[135] It is well known that Count Ferrol, in “Endymion,” was drawn from Prince Bismarck. The novel was written in Lord Beaconsfield’s old age, and there is a passage in it which curiously confirms Count Vitzthum’s report of Count von Bismarck’s conversation with Mr. Disraeli. It is as follows:—“The Count of Ferrol about this time made a visit to England. He was always a welcome guest there, and had received the greatest distinction which England could bestow upon a foreigner—he had been elected an honorary member of White’s. ‘You may have troubles here,’ he said to Lady Mountfort, ‘but they will pass.... We shall not get off so cheaply. Everything is quite rotten throughout the Continent. This year is tranquillity to what the next will be. There is not a throne in Europe worth a year’s purchase. My worthy master wants me to return home and be Minister; I am to fashion for him a new Constitution. I will never have anything to do with new Constitutions; their inventors are always their first victims. Instead of making a Constitution, he should make a country, and convert his heterogeneous domains into a patriotic dominion.’ ‘But how is that to be done?’ ‘There is but one way—by blood and iron.’ ‘My dear Count, you shock me:’ ‘I shall have to shock you a great deal more before the inevitable is brought about.’”
[136] Pope at first pretended that he had discovered the line of Beauregard’s retreat, and had captured his rearguard. This turned out to be an impudent fabrication, put about to divert attention from the almost inconceivable incapacity of Halleck, who let his enemy slip through his fingers after wasting the season in looking at him.
[137] This was difficult to arrange. Even the Sultan did not dare to do more than recommend Suraya Pasha to admit the Prince to the Sanctuary of the Patriarchs. For a long time the Pasha refused, but the Prince’s anger at being balked was so great that Suraya at last consented, accompanying the party himself with a strong armed escort to protect his Royal guest from assassination.
[138] General Bruce was the second son of Thomas, Seventh Earl of Elgin, and brother of the celebrated Governor-General of Canada and India.
[139] The medical evidence showed that the miners in the pit had died painlessly from poisoning by carbonic oxide gas. The Coroner’s jury recommended that all mines should have two shafts instead of one only, and that engine-beams should be made of wrought, and not of cast iron.
[140] Dr. Macleod’s ministrations at this time extended to other members of the Royal Family, and appear to have been conducted with the supple tact characteristic of the true-born Celt. “Your Royal Highness knows,” he said to one of them, “that I am here as a pastor, and that it is only as a pastor I am permitted to address you. But as I wish you to thank me when we meet before God, so would I address you now.” Again, in his letter to Mrs. Macleod, dated 12th of May, 1862, he writes:—“Prince Alfred sent for me last night to see him before going away. Thank God I spoke fully and frankly to him—we were alone—of his difficulties, temptations, and of his father’s example; what the nation expected of him; how, if he did God’s will, good and able men would rally round him; how, if he became selfish, a selfish set of flatterers would truckle to him and ruin him, while caring only for themselves. He thanked me for all I said, and wished me to travel with him to-day to Aberdeen, but the Queen wishes to see me again.”—Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., by his brother, Rev. Donald Macleod, B.A., 2 vols. London: Daldy, Isbister, and Co., 1876. Vol. II., p. 123.
[141] The Queen’s parish kirk.
[142] Life of Norman Macleod, Vol. II., pp. 123, 124.
[143] Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse: Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 27 and 29.
[144] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 37.
[145] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 207.
[146] Ibid.
[147] The history of the Protectorate is as follows:—After the downfall of Napoleon I. in 1815, England held six of the Ionian Islands. Austria offered to undertake their government, because she said that their position enabled their population to disturb her Adriatic coast. Count Capo d’Istrias, on behalf of Russia, objected, and at the time the voice of the Czar Alexander was all-powerful. He was a strong partisan of Greece, and avowedly so because he believed that the spirit of Greek nationality would be repressed under Austria, whereas it would be fostered under England. He insisted on the Ionians being placed under a British protectorate, so that they might have the benefit of free institutions.
[148] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 228.
[149] In 1795 the Prince of Wales was voted £138,000 a year. In the reigns of the Queen’s predecessors the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall were absorbed by the Crown. But when the Prince of Wales was born, the Prince Consort, finding these revenues sadly encumbered, set them apart for the use of the Heir-Apparent. During his minority they had been so ably administered by Prince Albert that in 1862 they yielded a free income of £60,000 a year. This enabled the Government to cut down the Parliamentary vote to £40,000.
[150] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 294.
[151] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 294
[152] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 86.
[153] This letter did not satisfy all the clergy. Several of them challenged sharply Wilberforce’s doctrine of the Archepiscopal dispensing power, and indeed entangled him in controversial correspondence on the subject. Those interested in the matter will find Wilberforce’s argument more fully elaborated in a letter quoted in his “Life,” Vol. III., p. 87. He says he had discovered in his muniment box at Lavington such a dispensation to one of his own predecessors granted by Archbishop Laud.
[154] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., Vol. II., p. 132.
[155] Miss Tucker, of Branscombe, near Sidmouth, was the designer.
[156] Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold, who, as usual on such occasions, wore the picturesque Highland dress.
[157] Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 88. In this letter Wilberforce says he was quite charmed with the manner in which the Crown Prince of Prussia spoke of his wife. “Bishop,” said he, “with me it has been one long honeymoon.”
[158] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 215.
[159] For a curious account of Mr. Oliphant’s Secret Mission, see Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 240, 241.
[160] English writers often draw an analogy between Ireland and Poland. There is the greatest difference between the position of the two nationalities. In Poland the Imperial Government has crushed the nobility, by taking sides with the peasantry. In Ireland the Imperial Government has striven to hold the country by allying itself with the territorial aristocracy. Had the peasants joined the nobles in Poland, Russia could not have resisted the demand for autonomy.
[161] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 308.
[162] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 261.
[163] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 221.
[164] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 322.
[165] The position of the chief claimants in the Succession may be illustrated in this way.
[166] This is calculated on the basis of the oats, wheat, and potato crop, with one-third the actual value of the total: the live stock added to represent the value of stock for the given current year.
[167] Customs and Income Tax showed an increase, but there was a decrease on Excise.
[168] This cost the revenue a loss of £216,000.
[169] Quoted by Sir T. Martin in his Life of the Prince Consort, Ch. CVIII.
[170] When the British ship Prince of Wales was wrecked in June, 1861, on the coast of Rio Grande, it was reported that the crew had been murdered. A demand was made by the English Foreign Office on Brazil for compensation. Mr. Christy, the British Minister, happened to be an imitator of Palmerston’s hectoring manner of negotiating with weak Powers. His demands were rejected by Brazil because the compensation claimed was monstrous, and because he sought to impose conditions which were not compatible with the dignity and honour of an independent State. Reprisals were then ordered to be made. In the first instance it seems the Brazilian Government had been guilty of negligence. But Mr. Christy’s high-handed action soon put England in the wrong.
[171] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXI.
[172] Sir Stafford was denounced as one of the Exhibition clique. He moved the reduction of the vote by £25,000—the amount estimates for altering the building—as a compromise.
[173] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 299-300.
[174] The strength of the City Police was 1,000 men.
[175] Sir Francis Hastings Doyle tells a curious story which he obtained from an American officer, whose authority he vouches for as good, which throws some light on Lee’s failure, which was one of the turning-points of the war. One of his subordinate generals—“a hot-tempered, impetuous man”—received a document from Lee containing the plan of invasion, and giving him orders to carry it out. Something in these irritated him. He tore up the letter in a rage, and flung the pieces on the ground. The moment his troops moved on, the pieces were all picked up by a Northern partisan, pasted together, and conveyed to the enemy.—Reminiscences and Opinions of Sir F. H. Doyle, p. 340.
[176] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse, Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 58.
[177] The Registrar-General, in his Quarterly Report of 30th April, 1863, says: “On comparing the returns of the deaths in the eleven divisions with one exception the deaths were more numerous last quarter than in the March quarter of 1862; and the single exception is found in that division where the staple industry, on which half-a-million of persons are dependent, is overthrown, and for a twelvemonth four-fifths of that number have subsisted, unless the pittance has been aided by previous earnings, or sale of household stock, on less than 4d. a day.”
[178] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXXI.
[179] Lord Malmesbury, who, like most of the Tories, did his best to urge the Government to go to war, at this time makes an observation in his “Diary,” which is refreshing in its frigidity. “It is,” he remarks, “perhaps as well that we did not enter into this contest, as our army was not armed at that time like the Prussians, with the breechloader, and we should probably have suffered in consequence the same disaster as the Austrians did two years later.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 3-5.
[180] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 285.
[181] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 248.
[182] In criticising Palmerston’s policy of intervention, it is but just to remember that he was fatally encumbered by his imprudent declaration in the House of Commons on the 23rd of July, 1862, that if the Germans attacked the Danes “it would not be with Denmark alone they would have to contend.”
[183] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 341.
[184] Sir A. Malet’s Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation, p. 96.
[185] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 315.
[186] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 296.
[187] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 297.
[188] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 286.
[189] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 286.
[190] Speech of the 21st of January, 1864.
[191] Lowe’s Life of Prince Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 335.
[192] At Southampton on the 3rd of April.
[193] As a matter of fact, there was no comparison possible between the crowds in either case. The receptions of the French Emperor and the Danish Princess were poor and cold compared with that extended to Garibaldi. It will enable readers of the rising generation to understand what his welcome was when it is stated that as regards street crowds and popular enthusiasm, it far surpassed that given to the Queen on the 21st of June, 1887, when she celebrated her Jubilee in London.
[194] Lord Malmesbury, in his Diary, has the following entry:—“We dined at Stafford House to meet Garibaldi. The party consisted of the Palmerstons, Russells, Gladstones, Argylls, Shaftesburys, Dufferins, &c., and other Whigs, the Derbys and ourselves being the only Conservatives, so I greatly fear we have made a mistake, and that our party will be disgusted at our going. Lady Shaftesbury told me after dinner, in a méchante manner, that we had fallen into a trap, to which I answered I was very much obliged to those who laid it, as I should be very sorry not to have seen Garibaldi.” And on the 15th of April Lord Malmesbury adds:—“Our party are furious with us and Lord Derby for dining with the Sutherlands last Wednesday, and Lord Bath has written to Lord Colville to resign his office of Whip, and says he will not spend a farthing upon elections. Lord Derby has written him a very temperate letter.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 320, 321.
[195] With Palmerston in favour of Denmark.
[196] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 289.
[197] Lord Shaftesbury, says his biographer, became Garibaldi’s most constant companion in London, “never leaving him, in fact, except when Garibaldi would go to the Opera.”—Hodder’s Life of the Earl of Shaftesbury, Vol. II., p. 172.
[198] It is curious to note that five days after Lord Shaftesbury assured the Duc de Persigny that there was no “notion of politics” in Garibaldi’s visit, and that “had Garibaldi’s appearance here anything to do with touching that alliance [the alliance between France and England], I am sure that the people of England would refuse to give him a welcome,” Garibaldi was entertained at a magnificent popular demonstration at the Crystal Palace. A sword of honour was presented to him, of which he said, “I will never unsheathe it in the cause of tyrants, and will draw it only in support of oppressed nationalities. I hope yet to carry it with me to Rome and Venice.” Lord Shaftesbury was one of the brilliant company of Palmerstonian partisans under whose auspices this unique non-political ceremony was conducted.
[199] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 322.
[200] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 289-290.