[201] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 289-290.

[202] Perhaps this consideration had something to do with the curious reluctance of France to co-operate with England in the Conference—a reluctance hitherto attributed to Lord Russell’s curt refusal to take part in the Napoleonic Conference of 1863.

[203] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 291.

[204] Of the Conference.

[205] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 341.

[206] Father of the present Lord Salisbury.

[207] It is interesting to note how the Tory leaders in the House of Lords at that time dictated to the whole Party its strategy and policy at critical moments.

[208] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 327, 328.

[209] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 292.

[210] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., pp. 254, 255.

[211] Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p 370.

[212] As a matter of fact, while the Conference was going on and the war party was rampant in London drawing-rooms, the Germans were greatly alarmed lest England should interfere. Count Vitzthum, writing on the 5th of May, says: “A peer who is very favourably disposed to Germany, said to me yesterday, ‘Take care, for God’s sake, to secure an armistice as soon as possible. If the question of war or peace were put to-day in the House of Commons to vote, three-fourths of the members would vote for war.’ Similar hints have been given to the Prussian Ambassador from a less unprejudiced quarter. We must not forget that England, by a blockade of the German and Austrian coasts, at a comparatively small expense, could exert a serious pressure on Vienna and Berlin, particularly if the revolution were let loose at the same time in Italy and Hungary.” Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 357. See on this point Palmerston’s own account in his letter of 1st of May to Lord Russell of the interview, in which he menaced Count Apponyi with naval intervention. Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 249. It is only just to say, that if Palmerston was eager to strike at the German Powers, he knew perfectly well where to plant a telling blow on a vulnerable point. Cobden’s argument was that a blockade of the German coast would be futile because railways had rendered blockades innocuous, unless, as in America, the blockading Power could command the internal communications of the enemy.

[213] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 258.

[214] The Confederate cruisers that had escaped from British ports—the Florida, Alabama, Virginia, and Rappahannock—had taken 187 ships and destroyed property exceeding in value £3,000,000. There was only one thing distinguishing them from English privateers—namely, that their chief officers carried Confederate commissions. Some of them got away because the Courts, from the ambiguous state of our law, could not condemn them. Others escaped through the delay and negligence of the authorities.

[215] In England the Queen’s taxes are collected by sending petty local officials round from door to door. In Scotland the Collector of Taxes is a high Imperial official, and the people on a specified date go to his office and pay their taxes. The result is, that though defalcations are too common in England, they are unknown in Scotland. Whilst in England a vast fabric of arrears accumulates from year to year and the revenue comes in driblets, the whole Imperial taxation of Scotland, including that of the poor Islanders, is paid promptly to the Treasury within the first fortnight of every January. There are no arrears except from poverty, and these are trivial.

[216] As the law stood, Government could only grant life insurances to the amount of £100 to persons who purchased deferred annuities. Mr. Gladstone abolished that restriction. It is curious that, though the Bill met with much opposition in the House of Commons, in the Lords it was welcomed as a boon to the working-classes, who urgently desired the measure to pass.

[217] One was Dr. Rowland Williams, whose essay on Bunsen’s Biblical Researches—affirming that the Bible was “an expression of devout reason, and therefore to be read with reason in freedom”—was supposed to deny that it was the actual word of God. It also affirmed that “the doctrine of merit by transfer is a fiction.” The other defendant was the Rev. H. B. Wilson, whose essay on “Séances Historiques de Genève” was said to deny that the Holy Scriptures were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and to challenge the doctrine of final judgment and eternal punishment.

[218] Wilberforce’s popular nickname was notoriously “Soapy Sam”—hence the malignity of Westbury’s attack.

[219] Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 143.

[220] It was said that at the outset he might have embarked his army from Washington and transported them without the loss of a single man to the point he had now reached, after prowling like a wolf for many weeks round the Confederate lines to the south of Richmond.

[221] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 309.

[222] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 318.

[223] He was executed on the 14th of November, 1864.

[224] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 74, 75.

[225] Life of Dr. Norman McLeod, Vol. II., pp. 176, 177.

[226] Crown Princess of Germany.

[227] Prince Alfred.

[228] The anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death.

[229] Writing to Mr. T. B. Potter on the 23rd of February, Mr. Cobden says, “Shall I confess the thought that troubles me in connection with this subject? I have seen with disgust the altered tone with which America has been treated since she was believed to have committed suicide, or something like it. In our diplomacy, our Press, and with our public speakers, all hasten to kick the dead lion. Now in a few months everybody will know that the North will triumph, and what troubles me is lest I should live to see our ruling class—which can understand and respect power better than any other class—grovel once more, and more basely than before, to the giant of democracy. This would not only inspire me with disgust and indignation, but with shame and humiliation. I think I see signs that it is coming. The Times is less insolent, and Lord Palmerston is more civil.”—Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXXIV.

[230] Sterne’s Constitutional History of the United States, p. 199.

[231] A note may be here added with some details of one of the most startling and tragic events that marked the history of the English-speaking race during the Queen’s reign. President Lincoln was assassinated while the play called “Our American Cousin,” memorable for the late Mr. Sothern’s impersonation of Lord Dundreary, was going on. The assassin was John Wilkes Booth, a native of Maryland. He was an actor, and a relative of the celebrated American tragedian, Junius Brutus Booth. He was a half-crazy partisan of the Southern States, and had often threatened to kill the President. He fled to St. Mary’s County, and was ultimately discovered hiding in a barn about three miles from Port Royal. He and his companions refused to surrender, and the barn was set on fire. Sergeant Corbet, of the 16th New York Cavalry, fired his carbine through one of the windows and shot Booth in the head. He died two hours and a half after he was wounded. His three companions were tried by court-martial and executed.

[232] “The Civil Rights Bill,” says Mr. Sterne, “declared freedmen citizens of the United States. The reasons against this declaration were sound in themselves, because it admitted to the rights of citizenship a large number of persons whose prior conditions of servitude and enforced labour made them dangerous citizens. As the right to vote implies not only the right of the voter to protect himself against the aggression of others, but also involves the power, through the instrumentality of taxation, which is placed in the official hands created by the voters, to confiscate the property of others, it was apprehended by many that demagogues and adventurers would win the freemen by illusory promises of personal benefits to give them their votes, and that by the creation of public debts and the exercise of the power of taxation, they would mercilessly confiscate the property of citizens subjected to their sway.”—Constitutional History and Political Development of the United States, by Simon Sterne, of the New York Bar. Cassell and Co., pp. 202, 203.

[233] “Bismarck in the Franco-German War,” quoted in Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 347.

[234] For the conflicting accounts of this interview, see Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 352.

[235] This scandal, which was one of the sensational events of the Session of 1865, was made the most of by the Churchmen, to whom Westbury had been studiously insolent. Some little time after his fall Westbury met his old antagonist, the Bishop of Oxford, in the lobby of the House of Lords. He held out his hand, saying, “My Lord Bishop, as a Christian and a Bishop, you will not refuse to shake hands.” Wilberforce generously shook hands with him, but that did not put an end to the war of wit between them. Westbury said, “Do you remember where we last met?’ “No,” replied Wilberforce. “It was in the hour of my humiliation, when I was leaving the Queen’s Closet, having given up the Great Seal. I met you on the stairs as I was coming out, and I felt inclined to say, ‘Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?’” Wilberforce retorted, “Does your lordship remember the end of the quotation?” to which Westbury answered, “We lawyers, my Lord Bishop, are not in the habit of quoting part of a passage without knowing the whole.” But, as Wilberforce used to say in telling the story, Westbury no doubt looked it out in his family Bible when he went home, and found that the end of the quotation was, “Yea, I have found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to iniquity.”—See Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 144.

[236] Life of Lord Palmerston, by the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, Vol. II., p. 273.

[237] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 335.

[238] Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 111.

[239] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 345.

[240] Forty Years’ Recollections, Literary and Political, by Thomas Frost, p. 291.

[241] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 347.

[242] When Lord Grosvenor divided the House on an amendment to the Second Reading of the Bill, he gathered round him a body of nondescript Liberals—many of whom had been disappointed in their quest of office—whom Mr. Bright likened to those who took refuge in the cave of Adullam.

[243] Forty Adullamites had promised to support him.

[244] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 358.

[245] The speech of Mr. Mill struck terror into the hearts of the reactionary landlords, who had all thought that their rents would go on rising for centuries to come. For further references, see Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his Wife, pp. 203, 216, 218, 223, and 224, London: Macmillan (1886).

[246] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 124.

[247] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 127.

[248] Ibid., pp. 127, 131.

[249] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 142, 144, 147, 148. 149.

[250] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 148.

[251] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 365.

[252] The History of Reform, by Alexander Paul, p. 199. Routledge, 1884.

[253] Correspondence of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 158.

[254] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 242.

[255] Memoirs of an ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 365.

[256] This was a year fruitful in Cabinet meetings. On the 22nd of January Lord Malmesbury writes, “Cabinets every day to the end of the month; some at Lord Derby’s, who was ill with the gout.”—Memoirs of an ex-Minister, ibid.

[257] Mr. Dudley Baxter, who prepared Mr. Disraeli’s figures for him.

[258] See on this subject a curious letter from Mr. Hayward to Mr. Gladstone written on the 15th of August, 1866. Mr. Hayward says:—“I entirely agree in what you say of the House of Commons and the Liberal party, which is neutralised by the individual crotchets of its members.”—Correspondence of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 147.

[259] Mr. Alexander Paul’s History of Reform, pp. 201-203.

[260] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 371.

[261] The National Budget, by A. J. Wilson, p. 95. Macmillan and Co.

[262] The Parnellite Movement, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P., chap. vii.

[263] Ibid., p. 137. Popular Edition, Ward and Downey, 1887.

[264] Some of the witnesses under cross-examination broke down and fainted when confessions of guilt were extorted from them.

[265] It is instructive to look back on the speeches delivered at this meeting. They give one a vivid idea of the humiliating status of the British workman at that time. The complaints of the speakers may be summed up thus: (1), whereas the masters’ associations were free to send circulars to each other urging the dismissal of “marked” unionists, workmen were, by a recent legal decision, guilty of an indictable offence if they “picketed” or endeavoured to dissuade each other from serving a master whose men had struck work; (2), the law of conspiracy had been so strained as to make an act which when done by an individual was legal, illegal when done by two or more individuals in combination; (3), masters who broke contracts were only fined, whereas breach of contract by workmen was punished by imprisonment.

[266] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 166.

[267] Afterwards Sir Howard Elphinstone, K.C.B. He was the Prince’s governor from 1859.

[268] The pet family name of the Princess of Wales—obviously a contraction of Alexandra.

[269] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 373.

[270] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., by the Rev. Donald Macleod, B.A., Vol. II., p. 252.

[271] The Barony parish of Glasgow was the one of which Macleod was minister. In one of his sermons, he had told his people that Scripture commanded them to sing the praises of God, not to grunt them. “But,” he added, “if you are so constituted physically that it is impossible for you to sing, but only grunt, then it is best to be silent.”

[272] Scots for dandle.

[273] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., Vol. II., pp. 208, 209.

[274] Now Duke of Connaught.

[275] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 185.

[276] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 186, 187.

[277] Willem, who had died a few months before, was a well-known figure at Balmoral. He was given to the Princess Louis by the Baron Schenk-Schmittburg, who brought him from Java. Willem was the offspring of a negro father and a Javanese mother, and was a favourite with the Queen and her daughter.

[278] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 227.

[279] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 242.

[280] Mr. Bernal Osborne had suggested one. It was to cut down the Irish Church establishment to five hundred ministers and four bishops.

[281] Writing to Wilberforce on the 9th of September on the subject, Mr. Disraeli says, “In the great struggle in which I am embarked, it is a matter of great mortification to me that I am daily crossed, and generally opposed by the High Church Party. Only think of Dean Hook opposing Henry Lennox at Chichester.” The Bishop’s answer was that Mr. Disraeli must expect to lose the High Church vote, seeing that he did not, in dispensing ecclesiastical prestige, sufficiently consider the claims of High Churchmen.—Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 260.

[282] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p 381.

[283] The last had been altered to make it clear that the House merely asked the Crown for leave to discuss a Bill suspending the exercise of its patronage till the 1st of August, 1869. A new one was added by Mr. Whitbread affirming the necessity of discontinuing the Maynooth Grant and the Presbyterian Regium Donum.

[284] This was in his 1844 speech, when he advocated Home Rule for Ireland and the Disestablishment of “an absentee aristocracy and an alien church.” Mr. Disraeli had been taunted with this phrase early in the Session, during the first debate on the Irish Question. His reply was infinitely humorous and audacious. He said of the phrase, with an exquisite touch of mournful reminiscence, “it appeared to me at the time I made it that nobody listened to it. It seemed to me I was pouring water on sand—but it seems now that the water came from a golden goblet.”

[285] In 1864-65 the Government had kept expenditure within the estimates by £370,000. They did so the following year by £92,000. But in 1866-67 the Derby-Disraeli Government let expenditure exceed estimates by £669,000, and in 1867-68 by £537,000. This rather told against Mr. Disraeli in the General Election.

[286] The Cabinet was composed as follows:—Mr. Gladstone, Prime Minister; Sir C. Page Wood, Lord Chancellor, with the title of Lord Hatherley; Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Austen Bruce, Home Secretary; Lord Clarendon, Secretary for Foreign Affairs (with Mr. Otway as his Under-Secretary); Lord Granville, Colonial Secretary; the Duke of Argyll, Secretary for India (with Mr. Grant Duff as Under-Secretary); Mr. Cardwell, Secretary for War; Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Irish Secretary; Mr. Childers, First Lord of the Admiralty; Mr. Goschen, President of the Poor-Law Board; Mr. Bright, President of the Board of Trade; Lord Hartington, Postmaster-General; Lord Kimberley, Privy Seal; Earl de Grey, President of the Council.

[287] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 267.

[288] For Canterbury.

[289] It was said that Dr. Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester, was referred to here.

[290] It is a curious fact that his appointment of Dr. Magee, Dean of Cork, to this see brought the Government almost as much credit as the appointment of Dr. Tait to Canterbury. Dr. Magee was erroneously supposed to be Mr. Disraeli’s favourite candidate. But in this case also he seems to have got credit for the Queen’s skill in selection.

[291] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., pp. 265-269.

[292] Letters and Journals of W. J. Stanley Jevons. Edited by his Wife, p. 246.

[293] Yet at the time the Queen was personally opposed to Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Church policy, so that his statement was somewhat misleading. Perhaps he made it to minimise the evil effects that might be produced by rumours of her Majesty’s hostility to the verdict of the elections. These rumours were then current.

[294] It described the reductions for the first time in the records of Queen’s Speeches as having been already made, not as reductions that were only in contemplation.

[295] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 214.

[296] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 200.

[297] Ibid., p. 191.

[298] It may be well to summarise Mr. Gladstone’s financial statement:—

Thus there was a surplus fund for distribution of, say, £7,500,000, the interest on which, £311,000, Mr. Gladstone distributed as follows:—(1), Lunatic Asylums, £185,000; (2), Deaf and Dumb Institutions, £30,000; (3), Idiot Asylums, £20,000; (4), Nurses for the Poor, £15,000; (5), Reformatories and Industrial Schools, £10,000; (6), County Infirmaries, £51,000.

[299] It would seem that Dean Swift anticipated Mr. Gladstone’s notion. When Vicar of Laracor Swift presented the vicarage with nineteen acres of land. He had endowed it with certain tithes, which he left in trust for the established episcopal religion. But he stipulated that in case of Disestablishment the tithes should be administered “for the benefit of the poor.” Stella (Esther Johnson), in her will, dated 30th October, 1727, also anticipated Disestablishment. In leaving £1,000 to endow a chaplaincy in Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, she provided that if the Church were disestablished the bequest should be null and void.

[300] Sir Roundell Palmer’s argument was the only one that disturbed the conscience of the majority. Indeed, the only conceivable answer to it was that local church endowments, which were really useful in doing good parochial work, were instituted not for local but for national reasons. For national reasons such as Mr. Gladstone adduced, they might be justly resumed by the State to be applied to national purposes.

[301] Mr. Disraeli’s argument was, that a church, to be established, must have a temporal Sovereign as its head. The Church of Rome was “established” in Ireland, because the Pope was a temporal Sovereign. On grounds of religious equality, said Mr. Disraeli, it was necessary to retain the Queen’s supremacy over the Irish Church, so that it might enjoy the same status as its Roman rival. His theory of Royal supremacy over Church discipline and doctrine horrified his High Church supporters.

[302] There was a majority of all orders for the Bill, except among Bishops and Viscounts. The vote of the new families was much more Conservative than that of the old ones.

[303] It is worth noting that the Roman Catholic Peers voted against all plans for concurrent endowment of Catholicism in any shape or form.

[304] Wilberforce was subsequently promoted to the See of Winchester. But Chelmsford’s sneer was unjust. Wilberforce thought honestly that the nation having decided the question of immediate Disestablishment and Disendowment, delay would simply damage the interests of the Irish Church, and provoke a futile conflict with the people. Hence he voted against this amendment.—See Life of Wilberforce, Vol. III., pp. 287-289, and Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 408.

[305] It is not generally known that the repeal of the shilling duty on corn, as indeed many of the ideas on which Mr. Lowe based his Budget were suggested to him by the late Mr. Stanley Jevons. “Having been consulted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer,” writes Mrs. Jevons, “as to the pressure of taxation upon different classes of the people, Mr. Jevons sent to him on the 13th of March a report which he had prepared with much care. The result of his inquiries was, that the artisan, with only a moderate use of beer and tobacco, was less heavily taxed than the classes above or below him, but that the labourer, if he only moderately indulged in stimulants, was rather the most heavily taxed of any class in proportion to his income. Mr. Jevons, therefore, recommended the repeal of the remaining duty of a shilling a quarter on corn, which he believed formed an appreciable burden of about one per cent. of income upon the very poorest class on the borders of pauperism.” Another proposal of Mr. Lowe’s for re-coining the gold currency, owing to the defective weight of the coins in circulation, was also suggested by Mr. Jevons.—See Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, edited by his Wife (Macmillan, 1886), pp. 245-248.

[306] According to Lord Hartington’s measure the purchase-money came to £6,750,000.

[307] They even retreated from the position of Lord Russell, who very properly refused to admit to arbitration any question as to the right of England to recognise the South as a belligerent Power—a concession which was not only an abject surrender of Sovereign rights, but ultra vires on the part of any Minister.