[78] Times, May 11, 1874.

[79] Spectator, May 23, 1874.

[80] Mr. Carlyle refused the offer, though he had accepted the Prussian Order of Merit.

[81] England Under Lord Beaconsfield, by P. W. Clayden, p. 120.

[82] Mr. Disraeli was blamed for ungenerous discourtesy to Lord Hartington on his first appearance as Opposition Leader. But there was a good justification for the Premier’s contemptuous reply. Lord Hartington’s taunts were foolishly factious, because he had, in a speech at Lewes (21st of January), already defended the Tory Government for not attempting to undo Liberal work, which was, as he put it, “irrevocable.”

[83] The Bill had these defects: (1), It was permissive and not compulsory. (2), It forced local authorities to compensate owners of insanitary dwellings doomed to destruction. The worse the rookeries the higher the rents, and the more extravagant the compensation, so that the Bill put a premium on the creation of rookeries. (3), It enacted that workmen’s houses must be rebuilt on the cleared land. This rendered it impossible to sell the sites at prices covering the cost of clearing them, so that local authorities had (a) to keep the land on hand in the hope of getting their price, during which time the displaced inhabitants were pushed into adjoining neighbourhoods already overcrowded; or (b) after five years to sell the sites by auction at a loss. On the 4th of July, 1879, the Metropolitan Board of Works sold some of their sites to the Peabody Trustees at a loss of £600,000 to the ratepayers of London.

[84] This Act deprived the Peers of their Appellate Jurisdiction.

[85] Hansard, Vol. CCXXIII., p. 1458.

[86] See Hansard, Vol. CCXXVIII., p. 1488. Mr. Heywood got £3,000 compensation.

[87] He complained that the Government had gone to Messrs. Rothschild for the purchase-money instead of to their regular financial agents, and paid them a commission equal to 15 per cent. a year on the advance. He declared that the Khedive would probably fail to pay his 5 per cent. on the purchase-money, and that England, in any dispute as a shareholder, would have to sue and be sued in a French court. As trustee for the nation the Government ought, he said, to insist on low tariffs. As a shareholder it must, however, insist on high dividends. The purchase, he held, would give England no real influence at the Board of Direction.

[88] Mr. Gladstone once cited the Channel as “the silver streak,” which was the best defence of England against the Continent, and a justification for a Foreign Policy of isolation.

[89] When a Bill was approaching one of the stages at half-past twelve, Mr. Biggar or Mr. Parnell would get up and speak so as to protract debate till the hour came when opposed business must be postponed.

[90] The Parnell Movement, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P. Popular Edition, p. 157.

[91] See Hodder’s Life of Lord Shaftesbury, Vol. III., pp. 367, 371.

[92] Hansard, Vol. CCXXX., p. 1182.

[93] See Macgahan’s Letters and Consul-General Schuyler’s Report to the United States Minister at Constantinople, cited in the Appendix, pp. 22 et seqq.

[94] It was not possible that the Czar could have seen a telegraphic summary of Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall speech when he spoke to the nobles at Moscow.

[95] 160,000 men, and 648 guns.

[96] Sir S. Northcote spoke at Bristol on the 13th of November, and Mr. Cross at Birmingham a week later.

[97] It was at this time that Tory partisans and Ministerial organs, in order to encourage the Turks to resistance, began to denounce Lord Salisbury as a traitor.

[98] A fashionable skating-rink did poor business in 1876 if it did not return a profit of 300 per cent., and a good patent for a rinking-skate was worth at least £150,000 to a popular inventor.

[99] See Parliamentary Papers, Turkey (1877), No. 78.

[100] Even in 1877 some of the Tory squires were practising the old stupid method of obstruction, e.g., Mr. Orr Ewing and Sir William Anstruther put down 250 Amendments to the Scotch Roads and Bridges Bill—most of which, when not frivolous, were unpopular and reactionary. Such obstruction was, of course, easy to deal with.

[101] On the 26th of March the House got one of its earliest lessons in the new art of scientific obstruction. Mr. Parnell had, owing to the popular lines on which some of his amendments were drawn up, got about eighteen members at this time to act with him. But even they deserted him when, at one in the morning, Mr. Biggar moved to “report progress.” The division showed—Ayes, 10, Noes, 138. Mr. Biggar and his friends then kept up a series of see-saw motions—for adjournment and reporting progress, till at three in the morning Mr. Cross succumbed, and having struck his flag, assented to the rising of the House. Then Mr. Biggar and his friends pathetically wailed over the scandalous manner in which the House had had two hours of its valuable time wasted by the Home Secretary, whose surrender was cited as a justification of their opposition.

[102] This was fifteen minutes earlier than the hour at which it rose in the Debate on the Address in 1783. See Clayden’s England Under Lord Beaconsfield, p. 302.

[103] This was a popular move, for it was generally felt that Ireland not only had too many Judges, but that they were extravagantly overpaid.

[104] Mr. F. H. O’Donnell actually put down seventy-five amendments to it.

[105] The motion was moved by Sir George Campbell.

[106] It was never known what Sir Stafford Northcote meant to do. But it was supposed he would, with the support of Lord Hartington, move the expulsion of the “obstructives.”

[107] The Estimates for the past year had been closely realised. For the coming year (1877-78) the revenue was taken at £78,794,000, and the expenditure at £79,020,000.

[108] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 343.

[109] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIX.

[110] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 357.

[111] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., pp. 206, 273.

[112] See a letter from Mr. Hayward to Mr. Sheridan, dated 3rd November, 1876. Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., p. 271.

[113] See Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., pp. 266 and 268.

[114] Mr. Carlyle presumably got his information from the highest German authorities.

[115] Carlyle’s Life in London, by T. A. Froude, Vol. III., p. 441.

[116] Consols fell three-eighths.

[117] Mr. George Jacob Holyoake was the first to characterise these patriots as “Jingoes,” deriving the epithet from their own anthem. See his letter in the Daily News, March 13, 1878.

[118] These were (1), Bulgarian autonomy north of the Balkans; (2), guarantees of good government for the other Turkish provinces; (3), cession of Batoum, and retrocession of Bessarabia to Russia.

[119] Nobody gave a more vivid picture of the divided state of the nation at this time than Mr. Trevelyan, who had been one of the most active of those who forced Mr. Gladstone to withdraw his Resolutions. Speaking at Galashiels on the 10th of December he said, the desire to fight “is almost universal amongst idlers, and gossips, fashionable aspirants, and the habitual frequenters of the London burlesques and music-halls. The determination to keep at peace is almost universal among the great mass of the population which produces the wealth of this country, and which makes us respected and powerful among nations. My experience is that the division is not, as is generally described, one of class, but of personal habits and character. If you meet a man who does an honest stroke of work on every week-day, whether he be manufacturer, or artisan, or tradesman, or barrister, it is ten to one that he wishes his country to leave this quarrel to be fought out by those whom it concerns. If you meet a man who amuses himself for fifteen hours out of the twenty-four, and sleeps the rest, it is ninety-nine to one but he thinks we should send an ultimatum to Russia as soon as she crosses the Balkans, and that he regards Lord Beaconsfield as a second Chatham, who is robbed of his opportunities by his more timid colleagues.” It ought to be said that the Liberals had also their “idlers” and sentimental crochet-mongers, who were eager to join Russia in fighting the “anti-human” Turk, and who had the advantage of Mr. Gladstone’s personal leadership. Of course the partisans of Lord Beaconsfield vied with the partisans of Mr. Gladstone in pouring forth contempt on the English people, for their sordid determination to tie the restless and mischief-making hands of these two enterprising politicians.

[120] One finds in the advertising columns of the Era, strangely enough, a side-light on the Eastern policy of the Court at this period. A Mr. Charles Williams, who advertised himself as singing “the greatest war song on record” at four music-halls, added to his advertisement the following letter:—“Lieutenant-General Sir T. M. Biddulph has received the Queen’s commands to thank Mr. Charles Williams for the appropriate verses contained in his letter of the 18th inst., and her Majesty fully appreciates his motives.” One of the verses ran thus:—

—Vide Era, February 20, 1878. The song was sung at the Metropolitan Music Hall, in connection with a ballet called “Cross and Crescent War.” When the Royal letter was pointed out to Count Schouvaloff, that easy-tempered diplomatist merely shrugged his shoulders. It may be mentioned incidentally that a study of the popular songs cf the period reflects faithfully the shifting moods of the London mob during the Eastern Controversy.

[121] Turkey III. (1878), No. 1.

[122] Russia in July had pledged herself not to meddle with the Suez Canal, or with Egypt, or to menace the Persian Gulf. As to the Dardanelles, the position of the Straits “should,” said Prince Gortschakoff, “be settled by a common agreement upon equitable or efficiently guaranteed bases.” Constantinople, in his opinion, “could not be allowed to belong to any of the European Powers;” and on the 20th of July the Czar further enforced this pledge by telling Colonel Wellesley that he would not occupy Constantinople merely for military prestige, but only if events forced him to do so.—See Russia II. (1877), No. 2; and Turkey III. (1878), No. 2.

[123] Hansard, Vol. CCXXXVII., p. 31.

[124] Sir Stafford Northcote gave another reason. Mr. Layard, on the 24th, telegraphed that the question of the Bosphorus was to be settled between the Czar and a Congress. Next morning, the 25th, it was found that by a blunder the clerk had written “Congress” instead of “Sultan.” It was on this account, said Sir S. Northcote, that the orders to the Fleet were withdrawn. In other words, when on the 24th the Government believed—if by this time they really believed any of Mr. Layard’s telegrams—that the question of the Bosphorus was to be settled in accordance with Russia’s pledges to England, the Fleet was sent to Constantinople. But when they found this to be a mistake, and that the Czar was going to settle the question in defiance of his pledges to England, the Fleet was ordered back to Besika Bay!

[125] His place at the Colonial Office was filled by Sir M. Hicks-Beach, Mr. James Lowther becoming Irish Secretary.

[126] Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone were, however, among those who voted against the Grant.

[127] See Sir Stafford Northcote’s statement in the House of Commons, Times, 29th April, 1878.

[128] It is, however, but fair to Lord Derby to say that though all the Tory speakers and writers assumed this to be his object, his obstinacy might be due to another and more honourable motive. He probably persuaded himself that the refusal of Russia implied that she meant to object to the discussion of Articles that in the opinion of the Powers affected their interests as well as hers.

[129] Mr. Charles Greville dwells on one of these ebullitions of patrician rowdyism with much anger. (See Memoirs, Part III.). At the same time, it is but fair to say that the Peelites had given the Tories just provocation. Lord Aberdeen had led the Tory leaders to believe that, whenever they abandoned Protection, they (the Peelites) would return to the Tory fold, and reunite the Conservative Party. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli did abandon Protection, incurring great obloquy from their followers. But the Peelites declined to fulfil their part of the implied bargain, and, having got all they wanted out of the Protectionists—a recantation of their principles—not only refused to join them, but attacked them with the Whigs. Mr. Gladstone was supposed to have inspired what Lord Hardwicke, in a letter to Mr. Croker, denounced as a “disgraceful” manœuvre due to “personal pique and hatred.”—See Croker Papers; also an article in the Observer, Feb. 13, 1887, p. 3.

[130] It ought to be said that Lord Derby’s ablest apologist, Mr. T. Wemyss Reid, in an article in Macmillan’s Magazine for June, 1879, advanced a fair defence for his hesitancy to work zealously with the European Powers. Mr. Reid asserts, and in a manner which commands respectful attention, that Lord Derby knew that as far back as 1873 Russia, Germany, and Austria had entered into a secret agreement to upset the status quo in Turkey. No historian can presume to pass a final judgment on Lord Derby’s career at the Foreign Office without carefully studying this remarkable article. It explains much that is otherwise inexplicable in Lord Derby’s policy, and had it been an official communiqué it would have been almost conclusive.

[131] Lord Salisbury said, in reply to Lord Grey, in the House of Lords, that the statements in the Globe were “wholly unauthentic.” Lord Grey said he could not have believed it to be true that Lord Salisbury had agreed to the retrocession of Bessarabia. “It appeared,” he said, “to be too monstrous to be believed that her Majesty’s Government could have made such a stipulation as was agreed to”—an observation which Lord Salisbury ratified by his silence.—Hansard, Vol. CCXL., p. 1061.

[132] The words of Bismarck’s Circular were:—“While addressing this invitation to the —— Government, the Government of his Majesty [the German Emperor] supposes that the —— Government, in accepting the invitation, consents to allow free discussion of the contents of the Treaty of San Stefano in their totality, and that it is ready to take part in it.” It is curious to notice how persistently Russia refused to yield even verbally, and after signing the Secret Agreement, to the English demand. As the Vienna correspondent of the Times said, “the formula of invitation is a compromise. While doing full justice to the full demand of England for free discussion of the Treaty of San Stefano in its totality, it contrives to spare the susceptibilities of Russia. Germany steps in and supposes that none of the Governments invited will object to a free discussion. In issuing invitations on this hypothesis, Germany gives a moral guarantee that it will be so; and Russia, who has hitherto objected to such a course, is not distinctly asked to withdraw this opposition, but only gives her consent, like the other Powers, to a Congress convoked by Germany for the purpose.”—Times Vienna Correspondent, 4th June, 1878. The effect of this formula was to make Prince Bismarck absolute master of the Congress after acceptance of his invitation. He alone had given a guarantee that the Treaty should be fully discussed. He alone was therefore entitled at every stage to define what he meant by the phrase, “in its totality.”

[133] Sir M. Hicks-Beach, on the 12th of June, gave his Party and the country further assurances on this head in a speech at Cheltenham, in which he said that the main points in Lord Salisbury’s Circular of the 1st of April would be adhered to by the British representatives at the Congress. This statement, of course, recoiled on him in the most damaging manner when, on the 14th, it was found that what the Ministerialists considered to be main points had been bargained away to Russia in Lord Salisbury’s Secret Agreement of the 30th of May.

[134] Lord Houghton, as a supporter of the Ministerial Foreign Policy, said:—“Even if the surrender which we are required to make according to this document is one to which the country would give its consent, it would have been better that the fact should have appeared at the Congress than that it should have been made known by this paper [the Globe]. It now stands before the world that England did not go into the Congress with free hands, but before going into it had made a contract, and had, in the main, abandoned some of the most important points which I and other Members of the House considered it was the duty of this country to insist upon.”—Hansard, Vol. CCXL., p. 1569 et seq.

[135] The proceedings against Mr. Marvin were withdrawn. He pleaded that copying on paper did not amount to theft, and his legal advisers threatened a cross-examination of the Foreign Office officials (whose laxity of administration was obvious), which determined the Government to retreat.

[136] Afghan Correspondence I., pp. 242, 243.

[137] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 375.

[138] The death of the child here alluded to was that of her little son Fritz, who accidentally fell from one of the palace windows on the 29th of May, 1873.

[139] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 385.

[140] Dr. Sell, a good clergyman of Darmstadt, who was entrusted with her papers and her correspondence with the Queen, and who knew the Princess well during the greater part of her Darmstadt life.

[141] See South African Correspondence (C 2220), pp. 136-320.

[142] Nineteenth Century, March, 1879.

[143] Sir M. Hicks-Beach censured Frere for not sending his ultimatum home for approval before delivering it. In fact, Frere’s claim was virtually that a Colonial Governor had the right to declare war without consulting the Crown or Parliament. The majority that supported the Government in the Lords was 61. In the Commons Sir C. Dilke’s motion was defeated by a majority of 60.

[144] Mr. Parnell was not formally elected leader. After Mr. Butt’s retirement, in 1878, the Irish party elected, not a leader, but a Sessional Chairman. The office was filled by Mr. Shaw during 1879.

[145] Hansard, Vol. CCXLVII, p. 53.

[146] It must be mentioned that Lord Hartington had in a previous speech haughtily repudiated all responsibility for the action of Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Hopwood, and other Radicals who had now allied themselves with the Parnellites.

[147] These warnings were published at Lahore from Persian newswriters in Cabul. They showed that even as far back as the 16th of August the Ameer had implored Cavagnari not to ride about the streets, as he ran the risk of being murdered. At this time Lord Lytton was assuring the Government, on the authority of messages which he alleged he had received from Cavagnari, that all was going on well in Cabul.

[148] Colonel Osborn, in an article in the Contemporary Review for October, 1879, estimated that a British army 40,000 strong would be needed to occupy Afghanistan.

[149] His “settlement” of Zululand organised the country into thirteen provincial governments, a British Resident controlling them all. Native rights, laws, and customs were to be respected, and Europeans prohibited from emigrating into native territory.

[150] This is clear from the censure passed by the Duke of Cambridge on Colonel Harrison, Assistant Quartermaster-General. The Duke blamed Harrison for not impressing on the Prince “the duty of deferring to the military orders of the officer who accompanied him.” Of course, if Carey had been in command, there would have been no need to have impressed on the Prince (who had graduated in the military school at Woolwich) the necessity for obeying the orders of Carey, who would, in that case, have been his superior officer.

[151] The gap torn out of the bridge—the whole length of which was 10,612 feet—measured 3,300 feet. Of the eighty-five spans, the first twenty-seven from the Fife coast were left intact. Then came thirteen of which only the stonework remained, everything else being swept away. This left forty-five spans on the northern side standing. The bridge had been tested and certified as safe by Government inspectors. An inquiry was ordered into the disaster, which showed that the bridge was, in the words of Mr. Rothery, one of the Court of Inquiry, “badly designed, badly constructed, and badly maintained.” For the mishap the engineer—Sir Thomas Bouch—was held “mainly to blame.” The bridge, which from a distance looked like a long plank set up on pipe-shanks, cost £500,000. It was opened on the 30th of May, 1878.

[152] There were seventy-five adults, and from ten to fifteen children. The bodies were nearly all washed away by the tide.

[153] Dr. Köller, a Church of England clergyman, employed by the Church Missionary Society in Constantinople, had engaged Ahmed Tewfik, a Mohammedan schoolmaster, to help him to translate the Scriptures into Turkish. Ahmed and the MSS. were seized, and the former adjudged worthy of death by the Sheik-ul-Islam. For three months Sir Henry Layard had vainly demanded his release, and the dismissal of the Minister of Police, Hafiz Pasha, from his post.

[154] Hafiz was one of the savages, whose share in the Bulgarian atrocities was so patent, that Lord Derby had demanded his punishment. The answer to this demand by the Turks was the appointment of Hafiz as Minister of Police at Constantinople, where he and Sir Henry Layard suddenly fell out.

[155] He had given the Lord-Lieutenancy of a county to Colonel King-Harman.

[156] Loans to Baronial Sessions for improvement works were virtually loans to the landlords.

[157] Nobody knew better than Lord Beaconsfield, from his experiences of 1846, that the potato is the barometer of Famine in Ireland, and it is impossible to suppose that he would have been satisfied with Mr. Lowther’s Bill if he had looked into the facts. For these all pointed to a dreadful failure of the potato crop. In 1876 its value was £12,464,382. In 1878 it was only £7,579,512. In 1879 it fell to £3,341,028. In England a crisis like this would have compelled the Government to take strong measures of relief, and yet in England such a state of affairs is always eased by the landlords abating or wiping out rent. But the distress in Ireland was aggravated because the worse it grew the fiercer became the demand of the landlords for rent. “Evictions,” writes Mr. J. Huntley McCarthy, “had increased from 463 families in 1877 to 980 in 1878, to 1,238 in 1879; and they were still on the increase, as was shown at the end of 1880, when it was found that 2,110 families were evicted.” Moreover, the Irish peasantry paid part of their rent out of wages earned as migratory labourers during part of the year in England and Scotland. But English and Scottish farmers were themselves cutting down their labour bills, and the loss to the Irish on migratory labour alone in 1877 was £250,000 (Hancock). See Healy’s “Why is there a Land Question?” pp. 71, 72; O’Connor’s “Parnell Movement,” pp. 166-7. J. H. McCarthy’s “England under Gladstone,” p. 103.

[158] The new Rule was to the effect that a Member “named” by the Speaker or Chairman for obstruction might be suspended for the rest of the sitting on a motion voted without debate; and if he repeated the offence three times, he might be suspended for an indefinite period till pardoned by the House.

[159] These were Barnstaple, Liverpool, and Southwark. At Barnstaple the Liberal (Lord Lymington) increased the Liberal majority by 60 votes. But Sir R. Carden increased the Tory minority by 99. In Liverpool Mr. Whitley was returned by a majority of 2,221, though Lord Ramsay, the losing candidate, polled 3,000 more votes than the winning candidate had ever polled before. Southwark (vacated by the death of Mr. Locke, a strong Radical) was carried by Mr. Edward Clarke, a strong Conservative, by a large majority. Lord Beaconsfield’s calculations were here faulty. The verdict of Barnstaple, being a corrupt constituency, went for nothing on either side. In Liverpool the Tories maintained their ascendency, but not at all with the proportionate majority they obtained in 1874. Southwark was dominated by the publican vote, and the Liberal candidate (Mr. Dunn) was not only a bad speaker, but especially hateful to the working-class, because he had, by insisting on standing at a former election, ruined the candidature of Mr. Odger, and, by splitting the Liberal vote, had handed over the second seat in Southwark to Colonel Beresford, the Conservative candidate. The bye-elections to which Lord Beaconsfield trusted afforded no true guidance as to the drift of opinion.

[160] Mr. Cross created a Water Trust, partly representative and partly nominated, for taking over the business of the water companies. He had in the previous Session promised Mr. Fawcett that he would not give the companies a “fancy” price for their property. He now proposed to hand over a Three and a Half per Cent. Stock to the companies as compensation for their property. The actual value of that property was about £19,000,000; but the Standard and the critics of the scheme complained that Mr. Cross gave the companies £30,000,000 compensation. Water shares rose 75 per cent. when Mr. Cross’s Bill was produced.

[161] The contest in Midlothian excited the keenest interest. When the poll had been counted it was found that Mr. Gladstone had obtained the seat by a majority of 211 votes, the figures being Gladstone 1,579, Dalkeith 1,368. As soon as the result became known the utmost enthusiasm was aroused throughout the country. In Edinburgh the excitement was intense and Mr. Gladstone had to address the shouting crowd, under a fall of snow, from the balcony of Lord Rosebery’s House in George Street.

[162] Mr. Hayward’s Letters, Vol. II., p. 307.

[163] Mr. Hayward’s Letters, Vol. II., p. 308.

[164] Hansard, Vol. CCLIII., p. 1663.

[165] The origin of the term was as follows:—Captain Boycott, an agent of Lord Earne, and a farmer at Lough Mask, had served notices of eviction on the Earne tenantry. Suddenly he found himself “marooned,” as it were, on his farm. Nobody would work for him, speak to him, do business with him, or even supply him at any price with the necessaries of life. Police guards watched over him and his family whilst they did their own farm and household work. At last some of the Orange lodges in the North sent down a gang of armed labourers to help him out of his difficulties. These were called “Emergency men.” Subsequently the dispute between Lord Earne and his tenants was arranged, and all of a sudden Captain Boycott found that the leper’s ban had been removed from his household, and he himself treated as if he had been all his life the most popular person in the neighbourhood.

[166] The Rifle regiments were not supplied with colours, because in the old days they were supposed to fight in more extended order than the Infantry of the Line. Now there is no difference in this respect between the rifleman and the linesman. Of the cavalry, only the heavy dragoons carried colours, but they always left them at home when they went to war.

[167] The Rifle Brigade was originally formed out of detachments from fourteen different line regiments, and was long known as “Manningham’s Sharpshooters.” From 1800 to 1802 it was known as the Rifle Corps. Down to 1816 it got the name of the “Old 95th,” after which year till now it has been called the Rifle Brigade. The Prince Consort was its colonel, and in his portraits he is often seen wearing its sombre green heavily-braided uniform. Hence it got the title of the Prince Consort’s Own Rifle Brigade. The Prince of Wales became its Colonel-in-Chief till he was appointed Colonel of the Household Cavalry. He was succeeded by the Duke of Connaught, who began his meritorious though modest career as a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion.