[308] It was to some extent ignored at the time that for much of the damage done to American commerce the Federal Navy was to blame. It afforded the most meagre protection to the American mercantile marine. Though it was known a few days after its escape that the Sumter was roaming in West Indian waters, yet off none of the ports it visited during the next two months was there a Federal war-ship waiting to sink it. The Alabama did most damage at the points which one would have thought would be swarming with prowling Federal cruisers, namely, the Azores, the crossing of the Gulf Stream, the Brazilian Coast, the “calm belts,” where ships from the South cross the tropics at the Cape, and in the China seas. Yet in none of these quarters was Captain Semmes attacked or waited for. Captain Semmes admits in “My Adventures Afloat,” that but for the gross negligence and incompetence of the United States Naval Department he could not have done the damage he did. The admission discounts much of the argument in favour of supplying swift, unarmoured cruisers in war time.

[309] The Senate was to be assembled to pass Bills which the Opposition had demanded. The Legislative Body was to control the Budget. Independent Members were to be allowed to initiate Bills. Ministers, though not responsible actually to the Legislature, would be allowed to sit in it.

[310] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 211.

[311] Carlyle’s Life in London, by J. A. Froude, Vol. III., p. 380.

[312] The speeches on this occasion were all good or eccentric. Mr. Motley, the United States Minister, for example, said of Mr. Peabody, “That fortunate as well as most generous of men has discovered a secret for which misers might sigh in vain—the art of keeping a great fortune for himself through all time. For I have often thought in this connection of that famous epitaph inscribed on the monument of an old Earl of Devonshire commonly called the Good Earl of Devonshire—‘What I spent I had, what I saved I lost, what I gave away remains with me.’” When Mr. Story’s turn came to address the company he pointed to his statue, and merely said “That is my speech.”

[313] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 221. For a detailed description of the excursions, see More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands, pp. 116-147.

[314] It was objectionable, he said, because it was a Bill of pains and penalties for mere words. Government had released the Fenians. Why, then, object to Irishmen honouring them? He also complained that the House was asked to act on the ipse dixit of “an Irish Attorney-General.” Mr. Beresford Hope promptly rebelled against his leader, and approved of the Bill as a “manly step.” Mr. Gathorne-Hardy also deserted his chief, and said he would stand by the Government.

[315] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 411. The best sketch of Lady Palmerston that has appeared was the obituary notice in the Times of the 15th of September, from the pen of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C.—See Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 201, also Hayward’s Selected Essays, Vol. II. (Longmans, 1878.)

[316] Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 202.

[317] Hodder’s Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., Vol. III., pp. 251-252. (Cassell and Co., 1886.)

[318] It may be interesting to record that the most brilliant Queen of Society in the Victorian period was a hard-working, thrifty house-manager. During her reign she managed personally not only the sumptuous hospitalities, but the accounts of Cambridge House, Brocket Hall, and Broadlands, and kept Palmerston’s private affairs in admirable order. Even her visiting cards were filled up by her own hand till within a very few years of her death. There was one other trace of old-fashionedness about her. She was the last lady of quality who pronounced the word oblige as if it were spelt “obleege.”

[319] Two-thirds of the electors abstained from voting. Jeremiah Donovan prefixed the aristocratic “O’” to his surname to give himself social importance. To distinguish him from other O’Donovans the place of his birth, Rossa, was now added to his name, thus: “Jeremiah O’Donovan (Rossa).” In England it soon came to be written as if “Rossa” were actually his surname.

[320] On the 7th of December Mr. W. Johnston, M.P., one of the Orange leaders, told an Orange Lodge at Derry that between Fenians and Papists he chose Fenians, and added, amidst enthusiastic cheers, that “it is no part of the duty of an Orangeman to fire a shot or draw a sword as between the English Government and the Fenians.”

[321] Mr. Disraeli did not object to compensation for disturbance when it meant compensation for unexhausted improvements, or for the “interruption of a course of good husbandry.”

[322] The Commons restored the original scale of compensation for eviction, the original duration of the lease exempting holdings from the Bill, and they restricted the permission to settle disputes between landlord and tenant to cases where they acted in concert, and not to those in which the offer came from one party alone.

[323] These were (1), in towns, the municipal boroughs; (2), in the Metropolis, workhouse school districts, or failing these, vestry areas; and (3), in counties, the civil parishes.

[324] Mr. Winterbotham said that the Dissenters must insist on every rate-aided school giving no religious instruction except Bible-reading without note or comment, and that, too, only in terms of “The Time-table Conscience Clause,” i.e., at specified hours before or after those for secular instruction, so that parents might use the Conscience Clause without sacrificing the educational interests of their children.

[325] This left £500,000 still to pay.

[326] Lord Granville had refused New Zealand military aid on the general principle that the sooner colonies took care of themselves and became independent the better. To save his dignity, he now said that the loan was to be advanced for public works, &c. But no device could conceal his change of front, for obviously advances to help a colony to build public works, set free its local resources to meet its military expenditure.

[327] The publication of the Treaty might have damped German enthusiasm had Germany suspected she was asked to fight France in order to save Belgium. But Napoleon dissipated that suspicion by proclaiming that the object of the war was to “maintain Austria in her elevated position” in Germany, and make the South German States independent.

[328] Von Bismarck, in his despatch of the 28th July, 1870, to Count Bernstoff, said the Draft Treaty (which also stipulated for the sale of Luxembourg to France) was communicated to him after the Luxembourg Question was settled in 1867. But M. Benedetti, in whose handwriting it was, said it was discussed by Bismarck in 1866, just after Sadowa. The facts favour Benedetti’s statement of the date. See Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 423 et seq.

[329] He was called “Duke of Pillage” after he looted the Summer Palace of the Chinese Emperor.

[330] The French lost one-eighth.

[331] According to Mr. T. H. S. Escott’s brilliant sketch of the late Mr. Hayward in the Fortnightly Review for March, 1884, the first person M. Thiers sounded in England on the subject was Mr. Hayward. “My friend,” said Hayward, when M. Thiers began to argue about the balance of power, “put all that stuff out of your head. We care for none of these things.” Writing to his sister on the 17th of September, 1870, Mr. Hayward says:—“I passed yesterday evening with the Thiers party, and breakfasted with them this morning. They are himself, his wife, sister-in-law, and secretary. His mission seems to be to persuade England to interfere on behalf of France, which England won’t do. I saw Gladstone yesterday, who told me he could not mediate, as he knew neither what Prussia meant to demand nor France to concede.”—Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 217.

[332] This proposal he carried against Von Moltke, who sternly demanded the complete and unconditional surrender of the army of Metz.

[333] It was difficult to say which side won this battle, but on the whole the balance of advantage rested with Faidherbe. The Germans appreciated his ability very highly, and their two best generals next to Von Moltke, were detached to crush him.

[334] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 243.

[335] Lord Granville has himself admitted that the weak point in the policy of neutrality adopted by the Government was its starting-point. The war was plainly and deliberately aggressive on the part of France. If England had offered to head a league of neutral Powers in joining Prussia to repel unprovoked French aggression, France would not have drawn her sword. A great precedent would have been created for the establishment of an international police of neutrals for keeping the peace of Europe. At the Lord Mayor’s Banquet on the 9th of November, Lord Granville discussed this view very honestly and very candidly. His reply was that the peevish jealousy with which France regarded the growing power of Germany rendered the outbreak of war inevitable, and that the menace of the neutral Powers would at best have postponed the fray for a brief period. But these menaces might have failed, and then the area of war would have been widened, the combatants multiplied, and the struggle could not have been conducted, as it was, under the restraining neutral criticism which did much to temper the passions and mitigate the horrors of the strife. No doubt this was the national conviction, and after it had been decided not to join Germany in preventing France from perpetrating a crime, it was absurd to depart from neutrality, in order to help France to escape the logical and just punishment of her own turpitude. The organs of the Tory Opposition, however, rather unpatriotically tried to make political capital out of the policy of the Government by teaching the people that the neutrality of the Cabinet was due to Ministerial cowardice and incapacity.

[336] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 606.

[337] King William had doubts as to whether he should be called Emperor of Germany or German Emperor. At last he decided in favour of the latter, which is his legal and correct title, though the wrong one—“Emperor of Germany”—is actually used on passports issued through the British Embassy at Berlin. To have called him “Emperor of Germany” would have meant that the territories of the German Sovereign Princes were in a country which belonged to him, whereas no part of Germany belonged to him save Prussia. The title “German Emperor” was a concession to the sentiments of autonomy and independence cherished by the small States. Indeed, the Hohenzollerns, when they became kings, were in a somewhat similar difficulty. They ought to have been Kings of Brandenberg. But Brandenberg was part of the old Empire, in which there could be only one King of the Germans and Holy Roman Emperor. Hence they took their title from Prussia, a new German colony, but not an integral part of the German Empire.—For a careful discussion of this quaint point of punctilio, see Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., pp. 613-618.

[338] But it was so clumsy in wording that it did not bind the Sovereign. This fact explains the anxiety of Melbourne to see the young Queen Victoria well married. So far as the law went, after her accession she might, if she had chosen, have married a lacquey. William IV., for example, could not have married Mrs. Jordan, who bore a large family to him, when he was Duke of Clarence. But he could have done so when he became King.

[339] The restrictions are not of course absolute, for a Prince may refuse to be bound by them. He may defy the Act and marry a subject without the consent of the Sovereign. The marriage is then quite valid for him as a private individual. He could not after it marry anybody else whilst his wife lived, save at the risk of a prosecution for bigamy. But the marriage confers no Royal status on his wife, and no Royal rights of inheritance on his children. The wife of the Duke of Sussex was simply Lady Augusta Murray, and took merely her own rank as an earl’s daughter. The wife of the Duke of Cambridge is not Duchess of Cambridge, but merely Mrs. FitzGeorge, and the Duke’s family take the name of FitzGeorge, and the rank of Commoners. Yet it would be impossible for the Duke to marry any one else, even with the consent of the Queen.

[340] Being for the benefit of an individual, if the Queen had consented to “bespeak” them she would have been compelled to assent to an endless number of similar applications, or give a great many people bitter offence by refusal.

[341] Thackeray’s attacks on the Queen’s family and ancestors apparently had not rendered him a persona grata, like Dickens.

[342] See Forster’s Life of Dickens.