April, when Sir Stafford Northcote made his statement. In spite of Mr. Lowe’s remission of taxes, his payment of the Alabama Claims, his disbursement of £800,000 on the Ashanti War, the year 1873-74 ended with a surplus in hand of £1,000,000. On the basis of existing taxation Sir Stafford Northcote for the coming year estimated his revenue at £77,995,000, to which he added £500,000 from interest on Government advances for agricultural improvements heretofore added to Exchequer balances and never reckoned in the revenue. His expenditure was taken at £72,503,000, so that he had the magnificent surplus of £6,000,000 to play with. Never did a Finance Minister use a great opportunity more tamely. With such a sum at his disposal he might have re-cast the fiscal system of England and won a reputation rivalling that of Peel. But Northcote had not the heart to climb ambition’s ladder. He pleaded lack of time as an excuse for attempting no great stroke of financial policy, and he frittered away his six millions as follows:—He gave £240,000 in aid of the support of pauper lunatics; £600,000 in aid of the Police rate; £170,000 in increased local rates on Government property, and this sum of £1,010,000 was to be raised in succeeding years by further payments for pauper lunatics to £1,250,000 as an Imperial subvention to local taxation.[71] He devoted £2,000,000 to the remission of the Sugar Duties; he took a penny off the Income Tax, which absorbed £1,540,000, and he remitted the House Duties, which cost him £480,000. The half-million of interest on loans which he had included in revenue Sir Stafford Northcote used to create terminable annuities, which would in eleven years extinguish £7,000,000 of National Debt. The fault of the Budget was that nothing historic was done with a surplus such as rarely occurs in the history of a nation. Even if Sir Stafford Northcote felt unequal to the task of re-casting the whole financial system, and giving relief to the poorer taxpayers, he could easily have earned for his Government the enduring gratitude of the nation. He might, for example, have created terminable annuities to pay off twenty or thirty millions of National Debt before 1890.

Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill was introduced early in May, when the publicans, who had worked hard to put the Government in power, expected Mr. Austin Bruce’s restrictions on the hours of opening public-houses to be swept away. Mr. Cross, however, found that the magistrates and police, and more respectable inhabitants of every town and parish, were of opinion that these restrictions had done good. He was, therefore, forced to disappoint his clients. He left the Sunday hours untouched. On week-days he fixed the hours for closing at half-past twelve in London, half-past eleven in populous places, and eleven in rural districts.[72] He cancelled the permission given by Mr. Bruce to fifty-four houses to remain open till one in the morning, in order to provide refreshments for playgoers and theatrical people. Inasmuch as the Government were at the mercy of the publican vote in a great many constituencies, the Bill was most creditable to Mr. Cross. It was, in truth, a Bill not in extension but in further restriction of the hours of opening, and in passing it he risked giving offence to Ministerialists who had won their seats under a pledge that the existing restrictions would be relaxed.[73]

Quite unexpectedly the Ministry plunged into the stormy sea of ecclesiastical legislation, and as was hinted at broadly, not without encouragement from the Queen. This much might also have been inferred from two facts. The churchmen who had most strongly influenced the Court in matters of ecclesiastical government were Dr. Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Norman Macleod, Minister of the Barony Parish in Glasgow. The Bill dealing with the English Church represented the ideas of Tait. That dealing with the Kirk of Scotland embodied the policy of Macleod. Indeed, pressure of an unusual character must have been applied to the Prime Minister to support the former measure, which he knew only too well must provoke dissensions in his Cabinet. It was on the 20th of April that Dr. Tait introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill in the House of Lords, and the best and briefest description of it was that which was subsequently given by Mr. Disraeli, who said, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, that it was a Bill “to put down Ritualism.” At first Ministers did not give it warm support, in fact, Lord Salisbury opposed it vigorously. After it had passed through the House of Lords the fiction that it was a private Member’s Bill was still kept up, the Second Reading being moved in the House of Commons by Mr. Russell Gurney. Mr. Hall, the new Tory member for Oxford, moved an amendment to Mr. Gurney’s motion, and Mr. Gladstone opposed the measure as an attack on congregational liberties, which had been consecrated by usage. The three great divisions of the Established Church, the Evangelical, Broad, and High Church Parties, had each been allowed a large scope of liberty. Why single out the last for an invidious assault? Mr. Gladstone, however, did not deny that some Ritualistic practices were offensive, and he moved six resolutions which would sufficiently protect congregations from priestly extravagances, and yet leave the clergy ample freedom in ordering their church service. These resolutions disintegrated both parties in the State. Sir William Harcourt led a Liberal revolt against Mr. Gladstone. The Secretary for War (Mr. Gathorne-Hardy) replied hotly to Sir William Harcourt’s ultra-Erastian harangue. Mr. Disraeli here cast in his lot with the supporters of the Bill; which, despite the opposition of Mr. Hardy, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Lord John Manners, accordingly became in a few days a Cabinet measure. In the House of Lords matters grew still more serious. When the House of Commons sent the Bill back to the Peers, one of Mr. Gladstone’s defeated amendments was speedily inserted in it, and Lord Salisbury “utterly repudiated the bugbear of a majority in the House of Commons.” A few days afterwards Mr. Disraeli replied with caustic humour to the taunts of Lord Salisbury, whom he ridiculed as “a great master,” so he called him, “of gibes, and flouts, and sneers.” Still, the Commons accepted the Lords’ Amendments, which were for the most part in favour of individual freedom, and so the Bill passed. But Mr. Disraeli paid a great price for his complaisance to the Court and its confidential ecclesiastical adviser. The High Church Party, who had ever marched in the van of his supporters, became disaffected, and in every future electoral contest those of them who did not fall sulking to the rear went over to the enemy. Mr. Disraeli’s tactical blunder in identifying his Cabinet with the Public Worship Regulation Bill of 1874 was notoriously one of the causes of the collapse of the Tory Party in the General Election of 1880. His other adventure into the perilous region of ecclesiastical legislation was not so disastrous to his Party as to the institution it was his desire to protect and strengthen. In 1869 Dr. Macleod had headed a deputation which waited on Mr. Gladstone, asking him to abolish lay Patronage in the Scottish State Church. Mr. Gladstone asked if Macleod and his colleagues had considered what view was likely to be taken of the proposal by the other Presbyterian churches of Scotland, “regard being had to their origin.” This phrase struck the deputation dumb. It was as if Mr. Gladstone had asked whether they thought it right that the clergy of the Free Church, who sacrificed their endowments in 1843 because the Party whom the deputation represented successfully prevented the abolition of lay Patronage, should be ignored now, when this very Party proposed that the price they agreed to pay for the enjoyment of their benefices should no longer be exacted. The project, according to Dr. Macleod, excited no great enthusiasm in Scotland,[74] but the Courts of the Scottish Established Church supported it strongly. In 1874 Mr. Disraeli, yielding to pressure, which it was admittedly difficult to resist, permitted Lord Advocate Gordon to introduce his Scottish Patronage Bill. It abolished the rights of lay patrons, and vested presentations to livings in the hands of the congregations of the Established Church of Scotland. When the patron was a private individual he was compensated, but when the patronage to a benefice was held by

a Corporation it was confiscated without compensation. The idea of the Government was that Presbyterians outside the Established Church were deterred from joining it by the existence of lay Patronage. When this was abolished it was supposed that they would immediately go over to the State Church, whose services they could command gratuitously, and leave their own pastors, whose stipends they had to pay out of their own pockets, to starve. Mr. Disraeli did not understand that lay Patronage, by bringing the Church courts and civil courts into collision, was merely the occasion and not the cause of the Disruption, and that what separated the Free Churchmen from the State Church was a difference of opinion on the relative position of Church and State, as wide as that which separated Dr. Pusey from an Erastian like Sir William Harcourt. But the Patronage Bill was passed in spite of Mr. Gladstone’s opposition, though, like the Public Worship Regulation Bill, it failed in its object. The congregations of the non-established Presbyterian churches refused to justify Mr. Disraeli’s cynical estimate of their character, and therefore did not desert their pastors. The powerful Free Kirk of Scotland, representing the principle that the Church should be established and endowed but left free from State control, had been debarred from joining in the Disestablishment movement. It now, however, cast in its lot with those Presbyterian dissenters who clamoured for Disestablishment in Scotland, which thus for the first time came within the range of practical politics. Perhaps, if Mr. Disraeli had insisted on the rights of patrons being transferred to all parishioners his policy might have been more successful. But by transferring these rights to the congregations in actual attendance at established churches, he gave the Free Churchmen a pretext for arguing that he had sectarianised the national ecclesiastical endowments, and that, therefore, the State Church could no longer be defended on principle. These endowments were not sectarianised, but secularised, when controlled by private patrons and civil courts, for patron and judge could alike be regarded in theory as legal trustees for the nation. They were bad trustees according to the Free Churchmen, but then they represented the nation officially, and did not, like their successors, the congregations of the parish churches, constitute a sect.

Academic debates on Parliamentary Reform and Home Rule varied the monotony of ecclesiastical controversy which Ministers seemed to take a morbid delight in stirring up. Their next achievement in this direction led to a defeat. Lord Sandon unexpectedly introduced in July an Endowed Schools Bill, which virtually undid the work of 1869. It restored the ascendency of the Church of England in Grammar Schools, and substituted the authority of the Charity Commissioners for that of the Endowed Schools Commission. The Bill would probably have done much to conciliate the clergy who had been offended by the Public Worship Regulation Act, but, on the other hand, it closed the ranks of the Opposition, and recalled the Dissenters to the Liberal colours. The result was that, after fierce controversy in both Houses, Mr. Disraeli professed himself satisfied with the appointment of the Charity Commission to superintend the working of Mr. Forster’s Act, and postponed the contentious clauses till the following year. They were never heard of again. Mr. Stansfeld’s Rating Bill, which the Lords had rejected in the previous Session, was adopted by the Ministry and passed. Mr. Mundella’s Bill for consolidating the Factory Acts, which had been shelved in 1873, was adopted by Mr. Cross and carried.

The popular verdict on the Ministry, when the Session closed on the 8th of August, was, that as administrators they had done nothing brilliant, and as legislators they were timidly reactionary, when they did not adopt the ideas and measures of their predecessors. The Premier, perhaps, suffered most in reputation. It was impossible to admire the strategy that brought into prominence Church questions which divided his Cabinet, and were uninteresting to the populace, or which, like the Endowed Schools Bill, when they were of great popular interest, were dealt with in an offensively reactionary spirit. On the other hand, the success with which the famine in Bengal and Behar was arrested, and indeed the whole tone of the administration at the India Office, greatly increased Lord Salisbury’s prestige. Lord Carnarvon’s management of the Colonies was sympathetic and popular. Foreign affairs had been conducted by Lord Derby with admirable prudence. This was aptly illustrated by his skill in avoiding entangling engagements committing England to approve of changes in international law which would have greatly extended the powers of invading armies in an enemy’s country. These changes were proposed at a Conference at Brussels, which had been promoted by Russia and Germany ostensibly to mitigate the evils of modern warfare.

Only one cloud shadowed the Foreign policy of the Cabinet during this uneventful year. The contest between Prince Bismarck and the Roman Catholic Church was raging in Germany, and the personal rivalry of the German Chancellor and Count Harry Arnim—who had been German Ambassador at Paris—had ended in the arrest of the latter on the charge of embezzling State documents. This arrest had been effected after Count Harry Arnim’s house had been ransacked by the police, and the Continent rang with the scandal. Mr. Disraeli, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, on the 9th of November, congratulated the country on the Conservatism of the British working classes, who, he said, enjoyed so many liberties that they were naturally loyal to the institutions under which their freedom was safeguarded. “They are not,” said he, “afraid of political arrests or domiciliary visits.” The Queen was somewhat pained at an utterance which the German Government regarded as an impertinent interference with its domestic affairs, but a few days afterwards the wrath of Prince Bismarck was appeased by an official explanation in the Times to the effect that Mr. Disraeli had not meant to refer to the affairs of Germany, or to the arbitrary conduct of the Berlin police. In this unfortunate speech Mr. Disraeli, however, struck a popular note when he referred to the extension of the Empire by the annexation of the Fiji islands, in terms that foreshadowed a policy of Colonial expansion.

As for the Opposition, it remained in a state of disorganisation, under Mr. Gladstone’s desultory leadership. Its prospects were not improved by his publication of two pamphlets, in which he attacked what he called “Vaticanism,” and attempted to prove that good Catholics, who were mostly Liberals, must be incapable of reasoning, if they were not traitors. That was the sum and substance of his amazing tirades against the extravagant pretensions of the Papacy under Pius IX.

During the year the Queen seldom appeared in public, which was, perhaps, one reason why a marked deterioration in the moral tone of society was discernible. A curious languor crept over the upper classes. They were consumed with a quenchless thirst for amusement, and the genius who could have invented a new pleasure would have had the world at his feet. Frivolity seemed to prey like a cancer on the vitality of the nation. When the Prince of Wales gave a State Fancy Ball in July, the Times actually devoted three columns of space to an elaborate description of the dresses. Sport became a serious business to all classes of society, and even grave and earnest men of affairs like Mr. Gladstone wasted their lives in the laborious idleness of ecclesiastical controversies. The more vigorous youth of the aristocracy now began to make their “grand tour,” not as did their ancestors to study foreign affairs and institutions, but merely to kill big game. Fashionable life became so costly that rents had to be exacted with unusual rigour, and the strikes among the agricultural labourers that mitigated the advantages of a good harvest, were accordingly spoken of in West End drawing-rooms as if they had revived the horrors of the Jacquerie. Though prices had begun to fall, the mercantile classes vied with the aristocracy in the ostentatious extravagance of their personal expenditure, and in the City the old and substantial Princes of Commerce were pushed aside by gamblers who termed themselves “financial agents,” and who had suddenly grown rich by “placing” Foreign Loans and floating fabulously successful Joint-Stock Companies. The pace of life was too rapid even for the Prince of Wales, whose financial embarrassments during a dull autumn formed the subject of some discussion. It was publicly stated that he had incurred liabilities to the extent of £600,000, and that the Queen, disgusted with Mr. Gladstone’s refusal to apply to Parliament for money to discharge them, had paid them herself. From what has already been said on this delicate subject it is hardly necessary to point out here that this statement was not quite accurate. It was true that the debts of the Heir Apparent amounted to one-third of his income, but it was equally true that on the 1st of October his Controller’s audit showed that he had a balance to his credit sufficient to meet them. At the same time there could be no doubt that the Prince’s expenditure far exceeded his resources, for sums varying from £10,000 to £20,000, taken from the great fund accumulated for him by the Prince Consort’s thrifty administration of the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, were sacrificed every year to prevent his debts from becoming unmanageable.[75]

His brothers were more fortunately situated. Prince Arthur, who had been created, in May, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of Sussex,[76] was able to devote himself quietly to his military studies, and lead a life of dignified simplicity. “Many thanks,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to the Queen (May 4th, 1874), “for your last dear letter, written on dear Arthur’s birthday, of which, though late, I wrote you joy. Such a good, steady, excellent boy as he is! What a comfort it must be to you never to have had any cause of uneasiness or annoyance in his conduct! He is so much respected, which for one so young is doubly praiseworthy. From St. Petersburg, as from Vienna, we heard the same account of the steady line he

holds to, in spite of all chaffing, &c., from others, which shows character.”[77] Prince Leopold was equally fortunate; indeed, his delicate health would of itself have compelled him to shun the exhausting gaieties of London seasons, when Society was worn out with ennui every year ere the rosebuds burst into bloom. When Parliament voted him an income of £15,000 a year, Mr. Disraeli described Prince Leopold as an invalid student of “no common order,” and to the Queen it was an increasing source of delight to watch in her youngest son the growth of the same pensive nature, the same studious habits, and the same refined and cultured tastes which, in the Prince Consort, Mr. Disraeli averred somewhat effusively, “gave a new impulse to our civilisation.”

With the exception of the grant to the Duke of Edinburgh on his marriage, this was the only Royal grant voted by Parliament which was not made a matter of controversy. But it must be noted that in 1874 the spirit of Republicanism in the country was almost dead. Mr. Chamberlain, by his writings and speeches, made an ineffectual effort to keep it alive, but even he had to bow his austere knee to the popular idols of the time, who were undoubtedly the Prince and Princess of Wales. As if to throw out a jaunty challenge to the enemies of the Monarchy, the Prince and Princess paid a visit to Birmingham in November, where it was the duty of Mr. Chamberlain as Mayor to receive them, and where they met with a welcome from the populace, the significance of which he was quick to recognise. Mr. Chamberlain, who had not been expected to make pleasant speeches to his guests, behaved to them with the tact of an astute if not an accomplished courtier. His undisguised appreciation of the Prince’s visit to his mansion, and of the Princess’s delight in his conservatories, famed for their priceless exotics, recalled the devotion of the Lady Margaret Bellenden in “Old Mortality,” when Charles II. accepted the hospitalities of her castle.

One marked feature of the London season in 1874 was the sudden withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court ceremonials. An attempt was made to account for this by explaining that as her Royal and Imperial Highness was expecting to become a mother she deemed her retirement from Society necessary.[78] According to statements current at the time, however, her absence was due not exactly to a dispute, but to a difficulty about her precedence, which must have considerably embarrassed the Queen. As the daughter of a powerful Emperor, the Duchess of Edinburgh not unnaturally thought that she had a right to take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who was but the daughter of a petty king. An Imperial Highness should, in her opinion, take precedence of a Royal Highness. On the other hand, it was intolerable to the English people that even by implication should the inferiority of the English Monarchy to that of any Imperial House in Europe be recognised—in fact, the kings of England had never admitted that any of the Continental Emperors had a title to precedence over them. The country, therefore, heard with interest a report that the Russian Czar was about to come to England, not merely to visit his daughter, but if possible to settle with the Queen the question of precedence that had disturbed her family. Her Majesty was understood to be willing to assent to any arrangement which did not confer on the wife of her second son, the right to take precedence over the wife of the Heir Apparent, and so matters stood when the Czar arrived at Dover on the 13th of May. He was received with the utmost cordiality by the Queen in person at Windsor. The first effect of his visit was to replace the Duchess of Edinburgh in the Court Circular among the ladies of the Royal Family next to the Princess of Wales, and to cause her to be described as “Her Royal and Imperial Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh (Grand Duchess of Russia).”[79] The Czar was well received by the people, among whom he was popular as the Liberator of the Serfs, and after a dreary week of sightseeing and State banquets, he left England on the 22nd of May.

On the 30th of March the Queen proceeded to Windsor Great Park to review the troops who had been engaged in the Ashanti War. The force, 2,000 in number, went through their evolutions in gallant style, and her Majesty with her own hands awarded the Victoria Cross to Lord Gifford for personal bravery in the campaign. On the 13th of April the Queen also inspected the sailors and marines of the Royal Navy who had fought in the Ashanti War. The review took place at Gosport, and many of the officers were, by the Queen’s desire, personally presented to her.

The controversy then raging over Vivisection seemed to have interested her Majesty greatly, for at the Jubilee meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals there was read a letter written by Sir Thomas Biddulph by the Queen’s instructions, which ran as follows:—

On the 23rd of November her Majesty was present, with the Empress of Russia, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and other members of the Royal Family, at the christening of the infant son of the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh—Prince Alfred of Edinburgh; and on the 3rd of December she received a deputation from France to present her with an Address of thanks for services rendered by Englishmen to the sick and wounded in the war of 1870-71. The Address was contained in four large volumes, which were placed on a table for the purpose of being shown to her Majesty. M. d’Agiout and Comte Serrurier explained the nature of their contents. Having accepted the volumes, the Queen said to the deputation in French, “I accept with pleasure the volumes which you have presented, and which will be carefully preserved by me as records of the interesting historical events which they commemorate. They are beautiful as works of art, but their chief value in my eyes is that they form a permanent memorial of the gratitude of the French people for services freely and spontaneously rendered to them by Englishmen acting under a simple impulse of humanity. Your recognition of those services cannot fail to be appreciated by my subjects, and it will increase the friendly and cordial feeling which I am happy to believe exists between the two nations.” The volumes were placed in the British Museum.

On the 3rd of December her Majesty at Windsor personally presented several seamen and marines with the medals which they had won for conspicuous gallantry in the Ashanti War. A few days after this ceremony the attention of the country was absorbed in the first volume of the biography of the Prince Consort, which had been compiled with sedulous care, delicate tact, and refined feeling by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Theodore Martin. The verdict of the public was one of immediate and unreserved approval. They were delighted with Mr. Martin’s idyllic picture of Prince Albert’s domestic life, and of the tender companionship in which he and the Queen lived lovingly together. Glimpses, too, of the Queen’s own strength of character and of her shrewd judgment in politics, such as, for example, her letters and memoranda on the affair of the Spanish marriages, and her keenly-etched portrait of the Czar Nicholas after his visit in 1844, suggested very plainly that the Sovereign was not exactly a cipher in the State. If in some of its lines Mr. Martin’s portrait recalled memories of William III., it reminded the people that, like William III., the Prince, though unable from his intellectual detachment to inspire the people with love, won their confidence and respect through his unpretending, but unswerving fidelity to the interests of his adopted country. But the frankness and absence of reserve with which the book was written displeased a few of the Queen’s foreign relatives; indeed, this feature of the biography had been commented on by some who thought it was derogatory to the dignity of the Royal Caste. The Princess Louis of Hesse, if she did not share this opinion, felt it her duty to convey it to the Queen. In a letter to her mother at the beginning of 1875, the Princess says, “It is touching and fine in you to allow the world to have so much insight into your private life, and allow others to have what has been only your property, and our inheritance.... For the frivolous higher classes how valuable this book will be if read with real attention, as a record of a life spent in the highest aims, with the noblest conception of duty as a leading star.” To this letter the Queen replied from Osborne, 12th of January, 1875:—“If,” she wrote, “you will reflect a few minutes, you will see how I owed it to beloved papa to let his noble character be known and understood, as it now is, and that to wait longer when those who knew him best—his own wife, and a few (very few there are) remaining friends—were all gone, or too old and too far removed from that time, to be able to present a really true picture of his most ideal and remarkable character, would have been really wrong. He must be known for his own sake, for the good of England and of his family, and of the world at large. Countless people write to say what good it does and will do. And it is already thirteen years since he left us! Then you must also remember that endless false and untrue things have been said about us, public and private, and that in these days people will write and will know; therefore the only way to counteract this is to let the real full truth be known, and as much be told as can be told with prudence and discretion, and then no harm, but good, will be done. Nothing will help me more than that my people should know what I have lost!... The ‘Early Years’ volume was begun for private circulation only, and then General Grey and many of papa’s friends and advisers begged me to have it published. This was done. The work was most popular, and greatly liked. General Grey could not go on with it, and asked me to ask Sir A. Helps to continue it; and he said that he could not, but recommended Mr. Theodore Martin as one of the most eminent writers of the day, and hoped I could prevail on him to undertake this great national work. I did succeed, and he has taken seven years to prepare the whole, supplied by me with every letter and extract; and a deal of time it took, but I felt it would be a national sacred work.”

CHAPTER XX.

EMPRESS OF INDIA.

The year 1875 opened less gloomily for the Ministry than for the Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had sanctioned the despatch of a Polar Expedition, and in a curious letter, since published by Mr. Froude, he had tendered Mr. Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Bath on the ground that “a Government should recognise Intellect.”[80] He had also offered Mr. Tennyson—“if not a great poet, a real one,” to use his own phrase—a baronetcy. Both offers had been refused, but the scientific and literary classes—potent agencies for influencing public opinion—sang loud the praises of a Ministry that was so obviously in sympathy with them. As for the Opposition, Mr. Gladstone’s definite refusal to lead them any longer, compelled them to elect a successor, whereupon an infinite amount of dissension, heartburning, and jealousy was stirred up in their ranks. Mr. Goschen, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. W. E. Forster were the candidates who had most partisans, and the last was undoubtedly the one on whom the public choice would have fallen, if the public had been permitted to arbitrate between the rivals. The Nonconformists, however, had not yet forgiven Mr. Forster, and Mr. Bright put him out of the field by using his powerful influence in favour of Lord Hartington, who was finally selected. According to one of the ablest of Liberal political critics, Lord Hartington “succeeded in making the whole party content, if not enthusiastic, with their choice.”[81] Lord Hartington had, in the course of the Session, virtually nothing to do, and, like the Peers in Mr. Gilbert’s opera, he “did it very well.” The Queen’s Speech outlined a temperately progressive policy, and when the Opposition leader taunted Ministers with failing to carry out the scheme of reaction to which they stood pledged on the hustings and in the Conservative Press, Mr. Disraeli, with demure gaiety, protested against his “grotesque reminiscences.” Lord Hartington, he complained, sought out “the most violent speeches made by the most uninfluential persons in the most obscure places, and the most absurd articles appearing in the dullest and most uninfluential newspapers,” and took these as the opinions of “the great Conservative Party.”[82] The opinions of the Conservative Ministry, he added, were now expressed from the front Ministerial Bench, and for these alone did he hold himself responsible.

Mr. Cross was the popular Minister of the Session. His Artisans’ Dwellings Bill embodied a resolution which Mr. U. Kay-Shuttleworth and Sir Sidney Waterlow had induced Mr. Gladstone’s Government to accept, and though in practice it proved disastrous to local ratepayers, it was taken as a kindly recognition of claims which Liberal Cabinets had too often ignored.[83] Mr. Cross was much more successful with his Labour Bills, drafts of which, it was said, had been prepared by Mr. Lowe. The Home Secretary had framed his Bills to conciliate Tory members who had eloquently denounced Trades Unions during the General Election. But in Committee he accepted amendments which removed from the law every trace of the evil spirit that punished breach of contract by a workman, not as a civil offence, but as a crime. Though he fought hard against the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, he finally surrendered to Mr. Lowe, and not only accepted his definition of “molestation” or “picketing,” but further agreed to his proposal to make that offence punishable when committed by anybody—be he master or servant. The growth of a Conservative spirit among the Trades Unions dates from the passing of Mr. Cross’s Employers and Workmen Bill, and his Conspiracy Bill. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s Regimental Exchanges Bill was a reactionary concession to “the Colonels,” for it gave rich officers facilities for bribing poor ones to relieve them from arduous foreign service. Lord Cairns, however, did much more harm to the Government by withdrawing his Judicature Bill under the menaces of a secret Junta of Peers, headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, who had resolved to restore to the House of Lords its Appellate Jurisdiction. Whilst independent Peers protested against this course as a slight to the Upper House, the country considered that it indicated a deplorable want of courage. For when Lord Cairns’ new Bill, postponing till the 1st of November, 1886, the provisions of Lord Selborne’s Act (1873),[84] and establishing an Intermediate Court of Appeal as a kind of judicial makeshift, came before the House of Commons, Sir John Holker, with indiscreet frankness, explained why the Government had dropped their own measure. The Peers, he said, meant to retain their jurisdiction in spite of the House of Commons, and it was, therefore, futile to resist them. This admission that the Cabinet, which ought to be responsible only to the Queen and to Parliament, was really controlled by a small caucus of Peers, whose very names were kept secret, was one which Government could now-a-days survive. The Bill, however, passed before the Session closed.

Ministers also lost much of their popularity through Mr. Disraeli’s tenderness towards owners of unseaworthy ships. Mr. Plimsoll had stirred

up public opinion against the “ship-knackers,” as he called them, who, having over-insured vessels that were rotten, sent them away to founder at sea with their crews, and then put the insurance money in their pockets. The Board of Trade had rather frowned on his efforts to get it to detain unseaworthy ships for survey, but in deference to popular pressure the Government had promised to bring in a Merchant Shipping Bill to check the evil which Mr. Plimsoll had discovered and denounced. The Bill was read a second time in the Commons without opposition, and it was one in which the Queen was said to be as much interested as Mr. Plimsoll himself. But Mr. Disraeli had brought forward a measure permitting farmers to receive compensation for unexhausted improvements, and enabling landlords to deny them this compensation by contracting themselves out of the Bill. He had contrived to get Government business into confusion by trying to push on Ministerial measures abreast instead of in single file, and in a fatal moment he shelved the Merchant Shipping Bill, in order to make way for the perfectly worthless Agricultural Holdings Bill. He announced the fact on the 22nd of July, when Mr. Goschen entered a mild protest.

Mr. Plimsoll, however, rose quivering with rage and passion, and moved the adjournment of the House. He not only protested against the Government postponing a Bill that interfered with “the unhallowed gains” of the “shipknackers,” but said that some of them sat in the House, and mentioned by name one of “the villains” he was determined to “unmask.” In vain the Speaker called him to order. Louder and louder grew the turmoil, and in the midst of it Mr. Disraeli grew visibly pale when Mr. Plimsoll rushed up the floor of the House with his clenched fist extended in front of him. However, he did not strike the Premier or Sir Charles Adderley—who was officially in charge of the Bill—as had been dreaded. He merely stood on one leg, placed a written protest on the table, and then, having shaken his fist in the Speaker’s face, marched out of the Chamber amidst a scene of terrible disorder. Mr. Disraeli lost his temper and, with it, touch of the House for a moment. In angry accents he moved that Mr. Plimsoll be reprimanded there and then, whereupon the Speaker interfered, and said that before a motion of that sort could be put Mr. Plimsoll, who was now standing below the bar, must be heard in his place. Mr. Plimsoll, however, preferred immediate withdrawal, and the House was on the eve of entering into conflict with a defiant Member, supported by an irresistible force of democratic passion in the country, a conflict from which it must have emerged with impaired authority, when suddenly Lord Hartington came to the rescue. His frigid accents, in strong contrast with Mr. Disraeli’s tremulous tones of wrath, immediately cooled the temper of the House. Mr. Plimsoll was, said Lord Hartington, merely suffering from “overstrain acting on a very sensitive temperament, and before taking any strong measures against a man so universally respected, it would be more consonant with the dignity of the House to give him reasonable time to put himself right.” Mr. Disraeli instantly saw that Lord Hartington’s phlegmatic sense had suggested the course that would extricate him from the dangerous position into which he was leading the House, and he consented to adjourn the matter for a week. Mr. Plimsoll made an honourable apology to the Speaker, and the matter ended happily, but the incident, to the gratification of the country, revealed in Lord Hartington a capacity for cool and adroit leadership, the existence of which had hitherto been unsuspected. The day after the scene in the House of Commons a storm of agitation broke over the country on behalf of Mr. Plimsoll. From every constituency remonstrances couched in terms of strong indignation poured in upon the House of Commons. Tory Members warned the Whips that they did not dare to run athwart the wave of passion that swept over the land. The Cabinet accordingly held a meeting in a panic, and resolved to bring in a temporary Bill empowering the Board of Trade to detain rotten ships and to prohibit grain cargoes from being carried in bulk. The measure was passed, even the Peers shrinking from the responsibility of rejecting it.

Another blunder damaged Mr. Disraeli’s leadership. In April Mr. Charles Lewis moved that the printer of the Times be summoned to the Bar and dealt with for printing a letter reflecting on a Member of the House of Commons, in a report of evidence given before the Foreign Loans Committee. It was an attempt to carry out the old Standing Order, which made it an offence for newspapers to report Parliamentary proceedings. Mr. Disraeli first spoke against the motion, and then voted for it. It was carried. But next day he moved that the Order be discharged, and when Mr. Sullivan asked him if he intended to put the relations of the Press and Parliament on a less anomalous footing, he answered “No.” Thereupon Mr. Sullivan warned him he would insist on carrying out the ridiculous old Standing Order, and clearing the House of reporters every night till Mr. Disraeli yielded. Lord Hartington induced Mr. Sullivan to refrain, but Mr. Biggar next stepped in, and with elfish humour, one night when the Prince of Wales was listening to a debate, rose and said he “espied strangers in the House,” which was duly cleared of every one—including the Prince—save Members. The two leaders then carried a motion suspending the ridiculous Order for that evening. Mr. Disraeli, however, still refused to alter the rule or accept a proposal from Lord Hartington for altering it. Mr. Sullivan accordingly retorted by again “espying strangers,” clearing the House, and compelling the Government to adjourn an important debate. Mr. Disraeli now saw he had no choice but to surrender. He therefore carried a new Standing Order, enabling the Speaker to exclude strangers when he saw fit, but submitting the attempt of a private Member to clear the House, to the check of an immediate and undebateable vote.

Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget was ominous of hard times coming. Prices were beginning to fall, and unsound Foreign Loans, in which rich people had invested, were beginning to collapse. Sir Stafford Northcote, therefore, though he received half a million more revenue than he expected, wisely made no sanguine estimate for the ensuing year. His anticipated expenditure he put at £75,268,000, an increase of £939,000, and his revenue at £75,685,000, showing a probable surplus of £417,000, which was ultimately converted by supplementary estimates into an estimated deficit of £300,000—a bad contrast to the miraculous surplus of £6,000,000, which in the previous year he inherited from Mr. Gladstone. There was no special feature in the Budget, save the scheme fixing the charge for the paying up the interest and the principal of the National Debt in future at £28,000,000 a year, and making it obligatory to meet this sum before any surplus could be declared. It was, in fact, a plan for establishing a rigid Sinking Fund to discharge the National Debt, and though it was popular at the time, it failed, as all such plans fail, because whenever a difficulty arises Ministers of Finance always confiscate a Sinking Fund in preference to imposing new taxes.