The British possessions in India had been more than doubled in
extent since the opening of the century. In 1833 the trade
monopoly of the East India Company had been broken, but its civil
and military servants continued to administer the government.
Their ability was displayed especially in the rapidity with which
they were extending British authority over the native states when
the outbreak came. A conspiracy was laid among the Sepoys, the
native soldiers in the regiments of "John Company." as the great
corporation was called in Asia. To their private grievances was
added the false report that the company intended to force them
into Christianity by serving out to them cartridges which would
defile them, neat's tallow for the Hindoo venerator of the sacred
cow, and hog's lard for the Mohammedan hater of swine! In May,
1857, the mutiny burst into flame. The Sepoys slaughtered their
officers and many other Europeans, and restored the heir of the
ancient race of kings to the throne of his fathers at Delhi. Here
and there, at Cawnpore and Lucknow, a few British troops defended
themselves and the refugees against the hordes of bloodthirsty
rebels. The "Massacre of Cawnpore" and "the Relief of Lucknow,"
phrases which have passed into history, suggest the fate of the
two beleaguered garrisons. The rebellion was over in a twelve-
month, smothered in its own blood. Close upon its suppression
came the death of the East India Company, abolished by act of
Parliament in 1858. Since that year the crown has ruled the
Indian realm through a Secretary of State for India, residing in
London, and a Viceroy holding court at Calcutta. From the defeat
of the mutineers, in 1859, to his own death, in 1865, Lord
Palmerston managed to save the nation from being embroiled to the
fighting-point in the perpetual quarrels of Europe. Italy fought
and won her liberty from the Austrian; Poland rose against the
Russian; Denmark had her damaging Schleswig-Holstein War with
Prussia and Austria. English sympathies were strongly enlisted in
all these troubles, but Palmerston would not allow her to proceed
to the point of breaking the peace. From 1861 to 1865, while the
Civil War was being fought out in America, his government was
prompt to recognize the belligerent status of the Confederacy,
and to favor the South by allowing privateers like the "Alabama"
to be built and manned in English ports. But the actual break
with Mr. Lincoln's government did not come, and the old Whig
statesman lived to see the South overpowered.
Through the middle reaches of the century the political power in
England remained for the most part in the hands of the Whig,
latterly called Liberal, ministries. The impulse for reform--
political, economic, and social--had spent itself before 1850,
and the older statesmen who guided the public policies had no
sympathy with the demands for radical legislation, church
disestablishment, universal suffrage, and what not, which came up
from many parts of the nation. With the death of Palmerston, and
the retirement of Russell, a new era was inaugurated, and new
actors stepped to the front of the stage.