Dismissal of Lord Palmerston.--Theory of the Relation between the
Sovereign and the Cabinet.--Correspondence of the Sovereign with French
Princes.--Russian War.--Abolition of the Tax on Newspapers.--Life
Peerages.--Resignation of two Bishops.--Indian Mutiny.--Abolition of the
Sovereign Power of the Company.--Visit of the Prince of Wales to
India.--Conspiracy Bill.--Rise of the Volunteers.--National
Fortifications.--The Lords Reject the Measure for the Repeal of the
Paper-duties.--Lord Palmerston's Resolutions.--Character of the Changes
during the last Century.
The frequency of ministerial changes at this time has already been
mentioned, and the first of them took place at the beginning of 1852,
under circumstances which throw some light on a question which has never
been exactly defined--the duty of the different members of a cabinet to
one another, to the Prime-minister, and to the sovereign.
Queen Victoria had a high idea of her duties and responsibilities. From
any legal responsibility she was aware that she was exempt; but she did
not the less consider that a moral responsibility rested on her not to
be content to give her royal sanction as a mere matter of form to every
scheme or measure which might be submitted to her, but to examine every
case for herself, to form her own opinion, and, if it differed from that
of her ministers, to lay her objections and views fairly before them,
though prepared, as the constitution required, to act on their decision
rather than on her own, if, in spite of her arguments, they adhered to
their judgment. And in carrying out this notion of her duty she was
singularly aided by the Prince, her husband, a man of perfectly upright
character, of great general ability, and who, from the first moment of
his married life, regulated his views of every question, domestic and
foreign, by its bearing on English interests and English feelings, to
which he early acclimatized himself with a remarkable readiness of
appreciation.
In the administration of Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston was Foreign
Secretary, and during its latter years foreign affairs occupied more of
the attention of the country than matters of domestic policy.
The revolution of 1848, which overthrew the Orleans dynasty, had
produced in France a state of affairs but little removed from anarchy,
which was scarcely mitigated by the election of Prince Louis Napoleon to
the Presidency of the new republic for four years, so constant was the
opposition which the Republican party in the Assembly offered to every
part of his policy. They even carried their opposition so far as to form
a deliberate plan for the impeachment of his minister and himself, and
for his arrest and imprisonment at Vincennes. But he was well-informed
of all these dangers, and on the morning of the 2d of December, 1851
(the day, as was commonly believed, having been selected by him as being
the anniversary of his uncle's great victory of Austerlitz), he
anticipated them by the arrest of all the leading malcontents in their
beds; which he followed up by an appeal to the people to adopt a new
constitution which he set before them, the chief article of which was
the appointment of a President for ten years.
No one could avoid seeing that what was aimed at was the
re-establishment of the Empire in his own person. And so arbitrary a
deed, as was inevitable, produced great excitement in England and
anxious deliberations in the cabinet. Their decision, in strict
uniformity with the principle that rules our conduct toward foreign
nations, was to instruct our ambassador in Paris, Lord Normanby, to
avoid any act or word which could wear the appearance of an act of
interference of any kind in the internal affairs of France. But, on Lord
Normanby reporting these instructions to the French Foreign Secretary,
M. Guizot, he learned, to his surprise and perplexity, that Lord
Palmerston had interfered already by expressing to the French ambassador
in London, M. de Walewski, his warm approval of the President's
conduct;[276] and Lord Normanby, greatly annoyed at being directed to
hold one language in Paris, while the head of his department was taking
a widely different tone in Downing Street--a complication which
inevitably "subjected him to misrepresentation and suspicion"--naturally
complained to the Prime-minister of being placed in so embarrassing a
situation.
Both the Queen and the Prime-minister had for some time been
discontented at the independent manner in which Lord Palmerston
apparently considered himself entitled to transact the business of his
department, carrying it so far as even to claim a right to send out
despatches without giving them any intimation of either their contents
or their objects. And the Queen, in consequence, above a year
before,[277] had drawn up a memorandum, in which she expressed with
great distinctness her desire to have every step which the Foreign
Secretary might recommend to be taken laid clearly before her, with
sufficient time for consideration, "that she might know distinctly to
what she had given her royal sanction;" and "to be kept informed of what
passed between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions
are taken," etc., etc. And, after such an intimation of her wish, she
not unnaturally felt great annoyance at learning that in a transaction
so important as this coup d'etat (to give it the name by which from the
first it was described in every country) Lord Palmerston had taken upon
himself to hold language to the French Ambassador "in complete
contradiction to the line of strict neutrality and passiveness which she
had expressed her desire to see followed with regard to the late
convulsions at Paris, and which was approved by the cabinet."[278] The
Prime-minister seems to have taken the same view of the act, and
remonstrated with Lord Palmerston, who treated the matter very lightly,
and justified his right to hold such a conversation, which he
characterized as "unofficial," in such a tone and on such grounds that
Lord John considered he left him no alternative "but to advise the Queen
to place the Foreign Office in other hands."
A careful and generally impartial political critic has recently
expressed an opinion "that Lord Palmerston made good his case;"[279] but
his argument on the transaction seems to overlook the most material
point in it. Lord Palmerston's own defence of his conduct was, that "his
conversation with Walewski was of an unofficial description; that he had
said nothing to him which would in any degree or way fetter the action
of the government; and that, if it was to be held that a Secretary of
State could never express any opinion to a foreign minister on passing
events except as the organ of a previously consulted cabinet, there
would be an end of that easy and familiar intercourse which tends
essentially to promote good understanding between ministers and
government;" and he even added, as a personal justification of himself
as against the Prime-minister, that three days afterward Lord John
Russell himself, Lord Lansdowne (the President of the Council), and Sir
Charles Wood (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had all discussed the
transaction with M. de Walewski at a dinner-party, "and their opinions
were, if anything, rather more strongly favorable than his had been."
This personal aspect of the case it is impossible to discuss, since
there are no means of knowing whether the ministers mentioned would have
admitted the correctness of this report of their language. If it were
confessed to be accurate, it would only show them to have been guilty of
equal impropriety, and to a great extent justify him as against the
Prime-minister, whose condemnation of his language, if he were conscious
that he had held the same himself, would be inexplicable. But it
certainly does not justify him in respect of her Majesty or the cabinet
collectively, since the Queen's complaint was, not that he held
unofficial conversations as a private individual, and not as "the organ
of a previously consulted cabinet," but that the tenor of the
conversation which he had held was in direct contradiction to the tone
which the cabinet had decided should be taken on the subject; that his
language was calculated to draw the government into a course of action
which it had been deliberately resolved to avoid. And, in spite of the
deference due to Lord Palmerston's great experience, it is hard to see
how a conversation between our Foreign Secretary and the French
Ambassador on an action, the result of which is as yet undecided, can be
wholly unofficial, in the sense of having no influence on the conduct of
affairs, or, as he expressed it, "in no degree or way fettering the
action of the government."
The result was, as has been mentioned before, that the Prime-minister
recommended the removal of Lord Palmerston from his office, and that he
was removed accordingly. And this conclusion of the case seems to show
that the statement of the position of the Prime-minister in the cabinet
is rather understated by Mr. Gladstone in one of his essays,[280] where
he says: "The head of the British government is not a Grand Vizier. He
has no powers, properly so called, over his colleagues; on the rare
occasions when a cabinet determines its course by the votes of its
members, his vote only counts as one of theirs." He admits at the same
time that "they are appointed and dismissed by the sovereign on his
advice." And surely to have the right of giving this advice is to have
the greatest possible power over his colleagues; not power, perhaps, to
change their opinions (though it possibly at times has had power to
prevent the expression of them), but power to compass their immediate
removal from the administration, as was exercised in this instance, and
as had been exercised by Pitt with regard to Lord Thurlow. That a
difference of opinion, even on an important subject, is not always
regarded as a sufficient cause for such a dismissal; that a
Prime-minister, especially if conscious of his strength, occasionally
consents to retain colleagues who differ from him on some one subject,
the same work to which we are partly indebted for our knowledge of the
details of this affair--the "Life of the Prince Consort"--furnishes two
remarkable instances in which the Prime-minister, then Lord Palmerston
himself, submitted to be overruled. We read there that on one occasion,
when "Count Persigny sought the active intervention of England by the
way of 'moral support' to a demand" which France proposed to address to
Austria, "Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell (then Foreign Secretary)
were disposed to accede; but a different view was taken both by her
Majesty and by the cabinet, and Count Persigny's request was accordingly
declined."[281] On this occasion, it is true, he was yielding to an
overwhelming majority of his colleagues (her Majesty's approval must, of
course, have been expressed subsequently to their decision). But in
another instance we find the same Prime-minister consenting to the
introduction of a bill by one of his colleagues, Mr. Gladstone, then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which he disapproved so highly that,
after it had been passed by a very slender majority of the House of
Commons,[282] he expressed to the Queen a hope that the closeness of the
division "might encourage the House of Lords to throw out the bill when
it should come to their House, and that he was bound in duty to say
that, if they should do so, they would perform a good public service;"
and after they had rejected it by a majority of eighty-nine, he
pronounced that "they had done a right and useful thing," reporting to
her Majesty, as a corroboration of this opinion, and as a proof that it
was largely shared by the public out-of-doors, that "the people in the
gallery of the House of Lords are said to have joined in the cheers
which broke out when the numbers of the division were announced."[283]
And on a third occasion also he bore with the same colleague's
opposition to a measure which he and all the rest of the cabinet justly
thought of vital importance to the best interests of the country, the
fortification of our great seaports, allowing him to object for a time
in private, and even to threaten public opposition to it the next year,
since he felt assured that his opposition, if carried out, which he
doubted, would be wholly ineffectual.[284]
The personal interest in politics which this laudable habit of judging
of everything for herself naturally engendered in the Queen's mind led,
however, to the adoption by her Majesty, in more than one instance, of a
course at variance not only with all historical precedent, but, with
deference be it said, with constitutional principle, sanctioned though
it was by more than one ministry. When the First Napoleon, after his
elevation to the head of the French government as First Consul,
proposed, by an autograph letter to George III., to treat with that
sovereign for the conclusion of peace between the two nations, Pitt, to
whom his Majesty communicated the letter, had no difficulty in deciding
that it would be unseasonable for the King "to depart from the forms
long established in Europe for transacting business with foreign
states,"[285] and, under his guidance, the cabinet instructed Lord
Grenville, as Foreign Secretary, to address the reply to the First
Consul's letter to the French Foreign Secretary, M. de Talleyrand.
But this reign has witnessed several departures from the old and
convenient rule. Its violation was not begun by her Majesty, but by the
Emperor Nicholas of Russia in the year preceding the Crimean war. He
wrote to the Queen herself to discuss some of the points in dispute, and
she answered his letter with her own hand.[286] The outbreak of war
which soon ensued prevented any continuation of that correspondence; but
the close alliance which that war for a time produced between England
and France, strengthened as it was by an interchange of visits between
the royal and imperial families, which led to the establishment of a
strong mutual friendliness and regard, led also to an occasional
interchange of letters on some of the gravest questions affecting the
policy of the two nations. The correspondence was sanctioned by
successive English cabinets, every letter which the Queen either
received from, or sent to, any foreign prince on political affairs being
invariably communicated by her either to the Prime-minister or to the
Foreign Secretary; and they, in one instance, even suggesting to her
Majesty to write to Louis Napoleon[287] with an object so delicate as
that of influencing the language with which he was about to open his
Chambers.
But we must think the line recommended by Pitt to George III. both more
constitutional and more safe. A letter from one sovereign to another on
political subjects cannot be divested of the character of a state-paper,
and for every state-paper some one must be responsible. The sovereign
cannot be, but for every one of his actions the ministers are. And it
follows, therefore, that they are thus made responsible for documents of
which they have not been the original authors; of which, were it not for
the courtesy of the sovereign, they might by possibility be wholly
ignorant; and with parts of which, even with the knowledge which that
courtesy has afforded them, they may not fully coincide, since they
could hardly venture to subject a composition of their royal mistress to
a vigorous criticism. Such a correspondence, therefore, places them so
far in a false position, and it runs the risk of placing the sovereign
himself in one equally false and unpleasant, since, if the opinions
expressed or the advice given fail of their effect, the adviser is so
far lowered in the eyes of his correspondent and of the world.
As has been incidentally mentioned, in the spring of 1854 war broke out
with Russia, nominally on account of the Sultan's refusal to concede
some of the Czar's demands concerning the condition of the Greek Church
in Palestine, but more really because, believing the Turkish empire to
be in the last stage of decay, he hoped by hastening its destruction to
obtain the lion's share of its spoils. And for the first time for two
centuries an English and French army stood together in a field of battle
as allies. In the field our armies were invariably victorious,
inflicting severe defeats on the enemy at Alma and Inkerman, and
wresting from them the mighty fortress of Sebastopol, in the Crimea,
which hitherto they had believed to be absolutely impregnable. Our fleet
was, if possible, still more triumphant, destroying Bomarsund and
Sweaborg, in the Baltic, without the Russian ships daring to fire a
single gun in their defence, while their Black Sea fleet was even sunk
by its own admiral, as the only expedient to save it from capture. And
in the spring of 1856 the war was terminated by a treaty of peace, in
which, for the first time since the days of Peter the Great, Russia was
compelled to submit to a cession of territory. But (it may almost be
said) to the credit of the nation these successes, glorious and
substantial as they were, made at the time scarcely so great an
impression on the people as the hardships which, in the first winter of
the war, our troops suffered from the defective organization of our
commissariat. Want of shelter and want of food proved more destructive
than the Russian cannon; presently our gallant soldiers were reported to
be perishing by hundreds for lack of common necessaries; and the news
awakened so clamorous a discontent throughout the whole of the United
Kingdom as led to another change of ministry, and Lord Aberdeen was
succeeded by Lord Palmerston. While a war on so large a scale was being
waged there was but little time to spare for the work of the legislator,
though it is not foreign to our subject to relate that in 1855 the last
of those taxes which the political economists denounced as taxes on
knowledge, the tax on newspapers, was abolished. Originally it had been
fourpence; in 1836 Mr. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
Melbourne's ministry, had reduced it to a penny; and now, with a very
general acquiescence, it was abolished altogether.
The entire abolition of a tax is not properly to be called a financial
measure, that epithet belonging rather to those which aim at an
augmentation of revenue by an increase in the number of contributors to
a tax, while lessening the amount paid by each. But the abandonment of
the tax in question should rather be regarded as a sacrifice of revenue
for the instruction of the people in political knowledge; a price paid
to enable and induce the poorer classes to take a well-instructed
interest in the affairs of the state and the general condition of the
country. And, viewed in this light, the abolition of this tax must be
allowed to have been a political measure of great importance, and to
have contributed greatly to the end which was aimed at. Till 1836 a
daily paper, costing sevenpence, was the luxury of the few; and the sale
even of those which had the largest circulation was necessarily limited.
But the removal of the tax at once gave birth to a host of penny
newspapers, conducted for the most part with great ability, and soon
attaining a circulation which reached down to all but the very poorest
class; so that the working-man has now an opportunity of seeing the most
important questions of the day discussed from every point of view, and
of thus acquiring information and forming a judgment on them which the
subsequent extension of the franchise makes it more than ever desirable
that he should be able to form for himself. Every movement in that
direction renders it the more necessary to raise the intelligence of the
great mass of the people to a level which may enable them to make a safe
and salutary use of the power placed in their hands. And no mode of
implanting a wholesome political feeling in the masses can equal candid
political discussion: discussion one ruling principle of which shall be
to teach that the greatest differences of opinion may be honestly
entertained; that, with scarcely an exception, the leading men of each
party, those who have any title to the name of statesman, are animated
with an honest, patriotic desire to promote the best interests of the
nation; and that the elucidation of truth is not aided by unreasoning
invective and the undeserved imputation of base motives.
One of the last topics discussed by Mr. Hallam was the introduction of a
bill to limit for the future the prerogative of the crown in a field in
which its exercise had previously been unrestrained, the creation of
peers;[288] and among the last which we shall have to examine was one of
an exactly opposite character, though relating to the same subject, the
creation of a life peerage. In the winter of 1855 Sir James Parke, one
of the Barons of the Exchequer, was created Lord Wenslydale, by
letters-patent which conferred the title limiting it also to the new
peer's own life. The professed object of the measure was to strengthen
the judicial power of the House of Lords. But it was not denied that the
limitation of the peerage conferred on him for his own life (a
limitation which made no practical difference to Sir James himself,
since he had no children) was intended to raise the question whether the
crown could or could not create a life peerage with a seat in the House
of Lords. A creation so limited was so novel, or at all events so long
disused a proceeding, that it inevitably provoked examination and
discussion. And, as it was found that the lawyers in general regarded it
as indefensible, at the beginning of the session of 1856 Lord Lyndhurst
brought the matter before the House of Lords by a motion for the
appointment of a committee of privileges to investigate and report upon
it. There were two aspects of the case which naturally came to be
considered in the debates on it which ensued: the advantages or
disadvantages, in other words, the political expediency, of such a form
of letters-patent, and their legal or constitutional propriety. It was,
of course, with the latter alone that the committee of privileges had to
deal. And this part of the question was examined with great legal and
antiquarian learning, though, as was almost inevitable, it was argued as
a party question, except, indeed, by the lawyers. They, with the
exception of the Chancellor, Lord Cranworth, who had advised the
measure, were unanimous in their condemnation of it; the Whig peers,
Lord Brougham and Lord Campbell, then Chief-justice, being as positive
in their denial of the right so to exercise the prerogative as those on
the Opposition side of the House, Lord Lyndhurst or Lord St.
Leonards.[289]
The arguments against the measure were chiefly these: The objectors drew
a distinction between what was legal according to the strict letter of
the law, and what was constitutional; contending that there might be
exercises of the prerogative which could not be affirmed to be illegal,
but which no one would deny to be altogether inconsistent with the
principles and practice of the constitution, since a great part of the
constitution rested on unwritten law, on long-continued usage, _Lex et
consuetudo Parliamenti_. And they affirmed that this measure was so
opposed to that usage, that "no instance had occurred within a period of
four hundred years in which a commoner had been raised to a seat in the
House of Lords by a patent of peerage containing only an estate for
life;"[290] one most essential, if not the most essential character of
the peerage being that it was an hereditary dignity, and one which
combined with its rank an hereditary seat in the House of Lords. That
one or two instances of life peerages were to be found in the annals of
the Plantagenet kings was not denied, though none exactly similar in
character.[291] But Lord Lyndhurst argued that precedents which had
occurred "at a time when the constitution of the country was neither
understood nor fully formed" were entitled to but little respect; and
Lord Derby, limiting the age of valid precedents a little more strictly,
"said frankly that he had no respect for any precedent affecting the
prerogatives of the crown that dated farther back than the year 1688."
And since that time, or indeed since the time of Henry VIII., it was
certain that no life peerage had ever been granted, except by Charles
II., James II., and George I. and II., to some of their mistresses,
instances wholly beside the present case, since, of course, none of
those ladies could claim seats in the House of Lords. Indeed, it was
believed that both Mr. Pitt, at the time of the Union, and Lord Grey, in
1832, had considered the question, and had both decided against the
propriety of advising a creation of life peerages.
In defence of the measure Lord Granville refused to admit the
distinction between what was legal and what was constitutional; if a
measure were both legal, that is, warranted by the letter of the law,
and also expedient, these two concurrent qualities, he contended, made
it constitutional. He denied, also, that any legal prerogatives of the
crown could be held to have lapsed through disuse; _nullum tempus
occurrit Regi_; and he challenged any peer to assert that the sovereign
had lost the right of refusing his royal assent to a measure passed by
the two Houses, merely because no sovereign since William III. had so
exercised his royal prerogative. And against the authority of Mr. Pitt
and Lord Grey he quoted that of Lord John Russell, who, in 1851, had
offered a life peerage to an eminent judge, who, though he had declined
the offer, had been influenced in his refusal by no doubt of the right
of the crown to make it.
On the expediency of the measure its opponents had urged that it would
effect a remodelling of the House of Peers, a total change of its
constitution, by the introduction of a second and distinct class of
peerages; and Lord Campbell, with a not unbecoming jealousy for what he
regarded as the interests of his brother lawyers, argued that it would
"henceforth prevent any lawyer, however eminent he might have been as an
advocate, whatever services he might have rendered to the state in the
House of Commons, whatever fame or fortune he might have acquired, from
aspiring to an hereditary peerage, or to becoming the founder of a
family, since, to make a distinction between the Chancellor and the
Chief-justice, between one Chancellor or Chief-justice and another, when
coming into the Upper House, as to the tenure of their honors, would be
intolerable; all must be under the same rule, 'no son of theirs
succeeding.'" And Lord Lyndhurst closed his argument by drawing a
comparison between the House of Lords and the French Senate: "It was but
a few weeks since he had read an official comment in the _Moniteur_,
coming from the highest source, on the inefficiency, the want of
patriotism, energy, and the backwardness to fulfil the high destinies to
which they were called, that characterized that illustrious body, the
Senate of France. He had no disposition to cut down our tribunal to that
life interest on which the Senate of France is based, as he believed the
hereditary character of the House of Lords to be one from which great
and important advantages are derived.... The hereditary principle," he
added, "is intwined in every part of our constitution; we in this House
enjoy our hereditary rights in common with the crown; we mutually
support and assist each other, and we form a barrier and defence to
protect both those branches of the constitution against any by whom they
may be assailed."
As Lord Granville had made the expediency of any measure the quality
which, combined with legality, was sufficient to establish its
constitutional character, he naturally labored this point with especial
diligence. He dwelt upon the great importance of strengthening the
judicial element in the House, since it was the great ultimate court of
appeal. He produced a letter of the great Chancellor, Lord Eldon, which
quoted instances in which various administrations had found difficulties
in the way of introducing eminent lawyers into the House, because their
want of adequate fortune to support the rank had disinclined them to
encumber their descendants with an hereditary peerage. He showed also
that that difficulty had made so great an impression on their own
Chairman of Committees, Lord Redesdale, that on one occasion he had
intimated a feeling in favor of allowing "the Law, in the same way as
the Church, to be, to a certain extent, represented in the House by the
holders of certain offices, who should be admitted to that House as
Peers of Parliament during the continuance of holding such office" (to
which argument Earl Grey added another, that the instance of bishops,
who were but life peers, proved that the holders of life peerages were
not considered inferior to hereditary peers).
He dwelt, too, on the evil consequence of the Lords "placing themselves
before the country as seeking to limit the prerogative of the crown,
when that prerogative was exercised with a view to remedy something that
was weak, and to remove a certain imminent danger." What the danger was
he certainly did not explain. But Lord Grey, in supporting him, took
wider ground, and, applying the argument derived from Lord Eldon's
letter to other professions, extolled the idea of instituting life
peerages as one whose effect would be "more easily to open the doors of
the House to men whom it was desirable should be admitted--to
distinguished officers; to eminent writers; to members of the House of
Commons, who in their different lines might have rendered good service
to the state, but who, though possessing means amply sufficient to
support their rank during their own life, yet, from having only a life
income, or a numerous family to be provided for, might be unable to
accept an hereditary peerage without injury to their family. In such
instances," he contended, "it would be most desirable to grant peerages
for life only. Such a proceeding would, he was convinced, by no means
disincline others in different circumstances to accept hereditary
titles, nor indispose the ministry to confer them. Nor did he see any
reason for fearing that the practice of creating life peerages would be
more likely to be abused for the purpose of increasing the power of the
minister than the creation of hereditary peerages."
The committee of privileges was appointed, and reported it as the
opinion of the members that "neither the letters-patent by themselves,
or with, the addition of the usual writ of summons, could entitle the
grantee to sit and vote in Parliament." And the House, by a majority of
ninety-two to fifty-seven, adopted their report. The ministers yielded
to its judgment, and ennobled Lord Wenslydale by a new patent in the
usual form, as Lord Derby had suggested. But Lord Derby desired to show
that his objection had been founded on principle only; and, as he was
willing to admit that, apart from the principle involved, "some
advantages in certain cases, and under certain modifications, might
arise from peerages for life," he proposed the appointment of a select
committee "to consider the expediency of making provision for the more
efficient discharge of the duties of the House as a court of appeal."
The committee was appointed, and, after careful consideration,
recommended the creation of two new offices, to be held by two law
lords, as "Deputy Speakers of the House of Lords," who should be judges
of at least five years' standing, and should be enabled "by authority of
Parliament to sit and vote in the House, and enjoy all the rights and
privileges of a peer of Parliament under a patent conferring a peerage
for life only, if the crown may have granted or shall grant the same to
such persons in preference to an hereditary peerage, provided always
that not more than four persons shall have seats in the House at one
time as peers for life." Such an arrangement would have introduced a new
practice, but not a new principle, since the annexation of a seat in the
House of Lords to certain offices had existed from time immemorial in
the case of the bishops. And the bill was carried in the House of Lords,
but defeated in the Commons by a motion to refer it to a committee,
which was adopted by a small majority, in a not very full House,[292]
toward the end of the session.
Those who look at the question apart from all preference of one minister
or one party to another will, probably, be of opinion that the decision
of the committee, that a life peerage thus created by the crown could
not confer a seat in Parliament, was conformable to the most legitimate
view of the constitution. It was, indeed, matter of history that in the
Middle Ages the crown had exercised its prerogative in many ways which
it had since abandoned. Boroughs had been enfranchised, and again
disfranchised, apparently from no motive but pure caprice; writs of
summons had been withheld from peers.[293] But no one would have
justified the repetition of such acts now. And common-sense, as well as
recognized usage, favored the doctrine that long disuse was a sufficient
and lawful barrier against their revival. That the power of conferring
life peerages with a seat in Parliament--of which, perhaps, the only
undeniable instances were the cases of the brothers of Henry V., whose
royal blood would in those days, probably, have been held to warrant an
exception in their favor--had not been exercised for full four hundred
years, was admitted; and the assumption that so long a disuse of a power
was tantamount to a tacit renunciation of it, is quite compatible with a
loyal and due zeal for the maintenance of other parts of the prerogative
which have suffered no such abatement.
If, however, we consider the expediency of the measure, or, in other
words, the possible advantage that might ensue from the existence of a
power to create life peerages with a seat in Parliament, opinions will
probably be more divided. We have seen that Lord Derby allowed that
there might be advantages in such an exercise of power under certain
limitations; and the existing system does, undoubtedly, appear open to
improvement in certain cases. At present the only mode of rewarding
naval or military commanders who have performed brilliant and useful
service, or a Speaker of the House of Commons, whose public career,
though less showy and glorious, may at times have been scarcely less
valuable, and has certainly been by far more irksome, is the grant of a
peerage with a pension for lives. Without the peerage they cannot have
the pension.[294] And, consequently, many most distinguished officers,
whose conspicuous merits well deserved conspicuous honors, have gone
unrewarded except by some promotion of knighthood, which carries with it
no substantial benefit; while the descendants of some of those who have
been ennobled have openly lamented that the only mode which could be
found of honoring their fathers proves a punishment to their heirs, by
encumbering them with an empty title, which they are unable adequately
to support, and practically closing against them avenues to possible
wealth and distinction which custom pronounces derogatory to their rank.
So, not to mention the names of living worthies, no reward could be
found for Sir W. Parker, that brave and skilful seaman who conducted a
British fleet two hundred miles up a Chinese river, and crowned his
exploits by the capture of a mighty city, which had never before beheld
a European flag; nor for Inglis, who, when the safety of our Indian
Empire hung upon his gallantry, successfully sustained a siege whose
hardships and dangers are surpassed by none in ancient or modern
history. Many will, probably, be of opinion that it is not for the honor
of England that such services should want due recognition; and that for
men like those life peerages with liberal pensions would be an
appropriate recompense. It would, of course, be impossible to limit the
number of them beforehand, but it would also be needless, since the
nature of the services by which alone they could be deserved would act
of itself as a sufficient limitation.
One of the expedients which had been mentioned in this discussion had
been the annexation of peerages to certain offices, to which it had been
regarded as an unanswerable objection that this would be the creation of
an absolutely unheard-of tenure, the peer thus created being able at
pleasure to lay down his peerage, or even, it might be, being removable.
But before the end of the session an emergency arose which induced
Parliament to sanction the principle, novel though it was, that an
official peerage, if a bishopric may be so called, might be laid down
with the sanction of Parliament when the holder was no longer able to
discharge its duties. Two of the most eminent members of the Episcopal
bench, Dr. Blomfield, Bishop of London, and Dr. Maltby, Bishop of
Durham, had become wholly incapable of discharging their duties, the one
having been struck down by paralysis, and the other being almost blind.
And they now proposed to the Prime-minister that he should make some
arrangement by which they might be allowed to relinquish their offices,
retaining a certain portion of the income of their sees as a retiring
pension. There was no precedent for such an arrangement, but the
necessity of the two cases was so manifest, the injury which the Church
must suffer if the superintendence of two such important dioceses were
to be neglected, was so palpable, and the conditions of the retiring
pensions asked were so moderate and equitable, that Lord Palmerston had
no hesitation in sanctioning the introduction of a bill to give effect
to the arrangement proposed.
It did not pass without vigorous resistance from more than one quarter.
The Bishop of Exeter complained of it as incompatible with the great
Church principle, that a bishop could only resign his office to the
archbishop of his province; others opposed it as a violation of the
common law, which forbids any bargain being made for the resignation of
an office; while some, referring to the prohibition of simony (a word,
perhaps, as much misunderstood and as often misapplied as any in the
language), denounced the arrangement that the retiring prelates were to
have pensions as simoniacal.[295] The most reasonable objection made to
the proceeding was, that such exceptional legislation to meet an
isolated case tended to establish a dangerous precedent, and that, as
there were other men of great age on the bench, it would be better to
effect the end now aimed at by a large general measure providing means
for the retirement of all clergymen, those of inferior rank as well as
bishops, whom age or infirmity might incapacitate. But the general
feeling was against delay. The bill passed, and served in some degree as
a model for that general measure which was soon afterward introduced,
and which, as was suggested on this occasion, provided for an
arrangement similar in principle being carried out whenever a priest
holding any kind of ecclesiastical preferment should become disabled for
the performance of its duties.
There can be no doubt that such legislation was absolutely necessary in
the interests of the Church, taking that expression to include, not the
clergy alone, but the whole congregation of Churchmen. But it introduced
a remarkable change into the system of ecclesiastical peerages, and, so
far, into the constitution of the House of Lords. What was resigned by
the two prelates was not the peerage (they had still the right to be
styled "my lord"), but the seat in the House of Lords, which was a part,
and which had hitherto been regarded as an inseparable part of it, or,
at least (as it should, perhaps, rather be said, since the recent
regulation that the junior bishop should not have a seat was a clear
violation of that principle), which hitherto no one had been able to
dissociate from the peerage after it had been once enjoyed.
The treaties which terminated the war with Russia were not concluded
till the spring of 1856; and it was well, indeed, that the country had
no longer a foreign war on her hands, for a twelvemonth had scarcely
elapsed when the very continuation of her existence as a great Eastern
power was suddenly imperilled by what, regarded in one aspect, was a
mutiny of her troops on a most extensive scale; in another, a civil war,
waged by a combination of native princes, Hindoo as well as
Mohammedan,[296] for the total extinction of our power, and the
expulsion of the British race from Bengal. As early as the first week of
February several commanders of regiments and other authorities received
warnings of the organization of a wide conspiracy against our power; and
in the second week of May the troops at Meerut broke into open mutiny,
set fire to the public buildings, murdered their officers, and even
their wives and children, and then marched off to Delhi, where the
garrison was prepared to receive them with open arms, and to imitate
their atrocities. The contagion spread, and in a few weeks nearly all
Bengal was in arms. In one or two instances the native chiefs stood by
us, but the greater number joined the insurgents, some from the desire
to throw off our yoke, but others, probably, from constraint and through
fear. Whatever were their motives, before the end of June nearly all the
principal cities and fortresses of Bengal, up to the very gates of
Calcutta, were in the hands of the insurgents, the chief exception being
at the great city of Lucknow, where, though the mutineers got possession
of the city, a British garrison held the Residency, in the centre; and,
maintaining themselves with heroic fortitude, unsurpassed in all the
history of war, for nearly nine months, contributed more than any other
body of men to the final suppression of the revolt. It would be beside
our purpose here to dwell upon the great deeds by which in that terrible
year our army, in all its branches, maintained its old renown; upon the
recapture of Delhi; the deliverance of the incomparable defenders and
preservers of Lucknow; the exploits of Lawrence, and Inglis, and
Havelock, and Outram, and Peel, and Campbell; and, if we are forced to
deny ourselves the proud gratification of dwelling on their combined
heroism and wisdom, we may for the same reason be spared the pain of
recounting the horrid cruelties wreaked in too many instances not only
on the officers who fell into the rebels' hands, and on the civil
magistrates, but on the helpless women and children. In the first
excitement of fear and horror those cruelties were, no doubt, greatly
exaggerated, but still enough remains proved to stamp the insurrection
as one branding with the foulest disgrace the race which perpetrated and
exulted in them.
It was not till the last week of 1858 that the last sparks of rebellion
were finally extinguished by the defeat in Oude of the last body of
rebels who remained in arms, and the flight of the remnant of their
force across the frontier of Nepaul; but, even before that day came, the
ministry at home had been led to see the necessity of putting the
government of the country for the future on a different footing. It
could hardly be doubted that the prompt suppression of a revolt of so
unprecedented a magnitude, and the proof given in the course of our
operations that the British soldier still maintained the same
superiority over the native trooper as in the days of Clive, had
heightened our reputation and the belief of our power among the native
tribes. But, speedily and decisively crushed though it had been, the
revolt had given too terrible a proof of the inconstancy and treachery
of the native tribes not to act as a warning to our statesmen; and the
reflection that was thus forced upon them showed that a company of
merchants, however distinguished by general courage and sagacity they
had shown themselves, was no longer qualified to exercise imperial
dominion over a territory which now extended over more than a million of
square miles, and more than a hundred and fifty millions of native
subjects.
Accordingly, in the first week of the session of 1858, Lord Palmerston,
as Prime-minister, introduced a bill to transfer the government of
British India from the East India Company to the crown. It was natural
that the principle of such a measure should be opposed by the Directors
of the Company, though it was supported by more than one person who had
held high civil office in India; and equally natural that the
arrangement of its details should call forth a minute and rigorous
examination, and on many points a very determined opposition. We need
not, however, say more about this bill, since circumstances prevented
its being proceeded with; and the history of those which succeeded it is
now only worth referring to as showing the extreme difficulty of the
task of framing a government on new principles for a dependency of such
vast magnitude and importance.[297]
Lord Palmerston's bill was dropped, in consequence of the fall of his
ministry, before the time came for its second reading; but the
discussion on it had to some extent smoothed the way for that of his
successor, Lord Derby. A great impression on the Parliament, and on the
country in general, had been made by a very able speech of Sir G.C.
Lewis, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He traced the whole history of the
Indian government from the day of Plassy, and substantiated the right of
the home government and Parliament to remodel it as they might judge
best, by proving that ever since the passing of Pitt's first bill, in
1784, the Company had been constantly subject to Parliamentary control.
He showed, too, most convincingly, that a petition which the Company had
presented to the House of Commons, deprecating any change in the
existing system which should tend to diminish the authority of the
Directors, was based on one great fallacy--speaking, as it did, of the
Company as one and indivisible, and unchanged in character, functions,
and influence, down to the date of the last renewal of its charter, only
five years previously; whereas the truth was, that in the one hundred
years since Plassy the system had undergone as many changes as the
English constitution between the Heptarchy and the reign of Queen
Victoria.
He had thus removed some of the obstacles out of the way of the measure
of the new government, though Lord Derby would have preferred postponing
it till tranquillity should have been restored to the country by the
complete suppression of the revolt, had not the large majority[298]
which had sanctioned the introduction of Lord Palmerston's bill, in his
opinion, "placed the Company in such a situation that they could no
longer command the same amount of public confidence and public support
as they were entitled to receive previously to that vote of the House of
Commons." It may be added that the first bill on the subject which was
introduced by his government bore evident marks of the difficulties
under which it was framed--difficulties existing from the unexpected
suddenness of his accession to office; so that, after a not very short
discussion, it was eventually withdrawn, and it was not till the end of
June that the measure which was finally adopted was introduced.
The leading enactments of the measure[299] provided that for the future
the government of India, described as having been hitherto vested in, or
exercised by, the Company in trust for her Majesty, should be vested in
her Majesty, and exercised in her name; that one of her Majesty's
principal Secretaries of State should have and perform all such powers
and duties relating to the government or revenues of India as had
formerly belonged to the Court of Directors, as the Court of Proprietors
of the Company; that a Council of the Governor-general should be
established, consisting of fifteen members, seven of whom should be
appointed by the Court of Directors, being persons who were, or had
formerly been, Directors of the Company, and eight should be nominated
by the crown. And as to both classes, it was provided that the majority
should consist of persons who had served or resided in India for ten
years at the least, and should not have left India more than ten years
when appointed. They were to hold their offices during good behavior, to
receive salaries, and to be entitled to retiring pensions, but to be
incapable of sitting in Parliament. The appointment of Governor-general
and Governor of each Presidency was to belong to the crown. The
expenditure of the revenues of India, both in India and elsewhere, was
to be subject to the control of the Secretary of State in Council; other
clauses provided for the dividends of the Company, for the admission of
persons into the civil service; and, with reference to existing
establishments, one clause provided that "the Indian military and naval
forces should remain under existing conditions of service."
This last clause was strongly objected to by the Queen,[300] as
"inconsistent with her constitutional position as head of the army,
which required that the Commander-in-chief should be put in
communication with the new Secretary of State for India, in the same
manner in which he is placed with regard to the troops at home or in the
colonies toward the Secretary of State for War.... With regard to the
whole army, whether English or Indian, there could, with due regard to
the public interest, be only one head and one general command." She
yielded her opinion, however, to the resolute objections of the
Prime-minister, with whom on this point his predecessor,[301] Lord
Palmerston, agreed; but the result proved the superior soundness of her
Majesty's view. It was not only a most anomalous arrangement, since the
supreme control of all the warlike forces was one of the most
inalienable prerogatives of the crown, but it had the strange fault of
preserving the double government in the case in which, above all others,
unity of system and unity of command were most indispensable. And, what
weighed more than either consideration with the generally practical
views of English statesmen, it was from the beginning found to work
badly, creating, as it did, great and mischievous jealousies between the
two divisions, the Royal and the Indian army. It was found that all the
generals then in the highest commands in India--Lord Clyde (Sir Colin
Campbell having been ennobled by that title), Sir Hugh Rose, and Sir
William Mansfield--strongly disapproved of it, and recommended a change;
and consequently, in the summer of 1860, Lord Palmerston, who in the
mean while had returned to the Treasury, came round to the Queen's view
of the subject, and a new act was passed which amalgamated the two
armies into one Imperial army, taking its turn of duty throughout all
parts of the British empire.[302]
A letter addressed by Lord Palmerston to the Queen in the autumn of
1857, which appears to have been his first statement to her Majesty of
the opinion which he had formed of the necessity of abolishing the
governing authority of the Company, states the principal arguments in
favor of such a measure with great clearness, as arising from "the
inconvenience and difficulty of administering the government of a vast
country on the other side of the globe by means of two cabinets, the one
responsible to the crown and Parliament, the other only responsible to
the holders of Indian stock, meeting for a few hours three or four times
a year, which had been shown by the events of the year to be no longer
tolerable." His disapproval of parts of Lord Ellenborough's policy
probably prevented him from alluding to his recall from India by the
Directors, in direct defiance of the opinion of the government,[303]
though that strange step can hardly have been absent from his mind. But,
in fact, the case for taking the whole rule of so vast a dominion wholly
into the hands of the Queen's government at home was so irresistible,
that it did not require to be strengthened by reference to any
individual instances of inconvenience. When the double government was
originally established, the English in India were still but a small
mercantile community, with very little territory beyond that in the
immediate neighborhood of its three chief cities. Of the conduct of the
affairs of such a body, still almost confined to commerce, the chief
share might not unreasonably be left to the merchants themselves,
subject to such supervision on the part of the government at home as was
implied in the very name of the department invested with that
supervision, the Board of Control, which, as Pitt explained the name,
was meant to show that it was not to be, like the measure proposed by
the Coalition Ministry, a board of political influence.[304] But the
case was wholly altered when British India reached from Point de Galle
to the Himalayas, and spread beyond the Ganges on the east, to beyond
the Indus on the west; when the policy adopted in India often influenced
our dealings with European states, and when the force required for the
protection of those vast interests exceeded the numbers of the royal
army. India, too, is a country the climate of which prevents our
countrymen from emigrating to it as settlers, as they do to Canada or
Australia, and where, consequently, the English residents are, and
always must be, a mere handful in comparison with the millions of
natives. In such a case their government must at all times rest mainly
on opinion, on the belief in the pre-eminent power of the ruler; and it
was obvious that that belief would be greatly fortified by the sovereign
of Britain becoming that ruler.[305] The great rajahs cordially
recognized the value of the transfer of power considered in this light,
and felt their own dignity enhanced by becoming the vassals of the
sovereign herself.
Turning to French affairs, a brilliant French writer has remarked, that
his countrymen are, of all peoples, the least suited to be conspirators,
since none of them can ever keep a secret. But it was the ill-fortune of
Louis Napoleon that he had provoked enmities, not only among his own
countrymen, but among the republican fanatics of other nations also, who
saw in his zeal for absolute authority the greatest obstacle to their
designs, which aimed at the overthrow of every established government on
the Continent, and shrunk from no crimes which they conceived to be
calculated to promote their object. To free themselves from such an
antagonist, the most wholesale murders seemed by no means too large a
price. And in the middle of January, as the Emperor and Empress were
going to the Opera, a prodigious explosion took place almost beneath the
wheels of their carriage, from the effect of which they themselves had a
most narrow escape, both being struck in the face by splinters, the
aide-de-camp in their carriage also being severely wounded on the head;
while their escort and attendants were struck down on all sides, ten
being killed and above one hundred and fifty wounded.[306] It was soon
found out that the authors of this atrocious crime were four Italians,
of whom a man named Orsini was the chief, and that he, who had but
recently escaped from a prison in Mantua, had fled from that town to
England, and had there concocted all the details of his plot, and had
procured the shells which had been his instruments.
It was not unnatural that so atrocious a crime, causing such wide-spread
destruction, should awaken great excitement in France, and in many
quarters violent reclamations against England and her laws, which
enabled foreign plotters to make her a starting-place for their
nefarious schemes. Even in the French Chambers very bitter language was
used on the subject by some of the most influential Deputies, for which
our ministers were disposed to make allowance, Lord Clarendon, the
Foreign Secretary, writing to the Prince Consort that "it was not to be
expected that foreigners, who see that assassins go and come here as
they please, and that conspiracies may be hatched in England with
impunity, should think our laws and policy friendly to other countries,
or appreciate the extreme difficulty of making any change in our
system."[307]
But a different feeling was roused by a despatch of the French Secretary
of State to the ambassador here, which seemed to impute to this country
that it deliberately sheltered and countenanced men by whose writings
"assassination was elevated into a doctrine openly preached, and carried
into practice by reiterated attacks" upon the person of the French
sovereign, and asked, in language which had rather an imperious tone,
"Ought the English Legislature to contribute to the designs of men who
were not mere fugitives, but assassins, and continue to shelter persons
who place themselves beyond the pale of common right, and under the ban
of humanity? Her Britannic Majesty's Government can assist us in
averting a repetition of such guilty enterprises, by affording us a
guarantee of security which no state can refuse to a neighboring state,
and which we are justified in expecting from an ally. Fully relying,
moreover, on the profound sagacity of the English Cabinet, we refrain
from indicating in any way the measures which it may seem fit to take in
order to comply with this wish. We confidently leave it to decide on the
course which it shall deem best fitted to the end in view." Still,
though the charge that our Legislature contributed to the designs of
assassins was some departure from the measured language more usual in
diplomatic communications between friendly powers, under the
circumstances this remonstrance might have been borne with. Unluckily,
it was not all, nor the worst, that we were called upon to bear. A few
days afterward some addresses to the Emperor from different military
corps were published in the _Moniteur_, which not only poured forth
bitter reproaches against the whole English nation, but demanded to be
led to an invasion of the country, "as an infamous haunt for the
carrying out of infernal machinations." Political addresses seem to our
ideas inconsistent with military discipline; but the army had been
permitted, and even encouraged, to make them ever since the days of the
Consulate, though such addresses never received the recognition of a
publication in the official journal till they had been subjected to
careful revision, and, if necessary, expurgation. On this occasion,
however, that supervision had been carelessly performed, and the
offensive passages were left standing, though, when the Emperor learned
the indignation which they had excited even among his well-wishers in
England, he instructed his ambassador to apologize for their retention
and publication, as an act of inadvertence on the part of the officials
whose duty it had been to revise such documents. So far all was well.
And had the English ministers replied to the despatch of M. de Persigny
in firm and temperate language, they would have escaped the difficulties
which eventually overthrew them. There was no doubt that, according to
diplomatic usage, a written despatch formally communicated to the
Secretary of State required a written reply.
Unfortunately, a written reply was not given. Lord Clarendon was too
apprehensive of the mischief which might possibly arise from a
protracted discussion, leading, perhaps, to an angry controversy; and
under the influence of this feeling contented himself, when the despatch
was presented, with giving the ambassador a verbal answer, that "no
consideration on earth would induce Parliament to pass a measure for the
extradition of foreign political refugees; that our asylum could not be
infringed, and that we adhered to certain principles on that subject
which were so old and so sacred that they could not be touched;"[308]
adding, however, at the same time an assurance that the Attorney-general
was already, at his request, examining our law of conspiracy, to see
whether it was sufficiently comprehensive or stringent. The purport of
this answer was all that could have been desired; but there was a very
general impression that the omission to reply by a written despatch was
a sacrifice of the national dignity, if not an unworthy submission to
scarcely disguised menace; though at the same time there was also a
feeling among both parties in Parliament that our laws with respect to
the conduct of foreigners residing among us were, perhaps, susceptible
of improvement. On the very first night of the session, in allusion to
the attack on the French Emperor, Lord Derby had said that "he could
wish to hear the opinion of the ministers whether the existing laws of
this country were adequate to afford security for the lives of foreign
princes against plots contrived in this country; and, if they were not,
whether they might not be amended, so as to meet the case of such crimes
as had recently been perpetrated, which were so heinous and revolting to
every feeling of humanity." And even before that speech the ministers
had applied themselves to frame a measure to amend the law, which in the
second week of February the Prime-minister himself introduced to the
House of Commons.
It was read a first time, though not without some opposition; but before
it arrived at the second reading, though only a week afterward, the
feeling of the country, reflected in this instance by the House, had
become so inflamed, that the measure was not discussed on its own
merits, but on the point whether, since no other answer had been given
to the French despatch, this must not be regarded as the ministerial
answer, and therefore whether it were such an answer as it befitted
England to send. Had it been examined on its own merits solely, it could
hardly have provoked much adverse criticism. It was entitled, "A bill to
amend the law with relation to the crime of conspiracy to commit
murder," and it merely proposed to establish in England a law which had
long existed in Ireland. Hitherto, as Lord Palmerston explained the
matter, England had treated conspiracy to murder as a misdemeanor,
punishable with fine and imprisonment. In Ireland it had long been a
capital crime; and, though he did not propose to assimilate the English
to the Irish statute in all its severity, he proposed to enact that
conspiracy to murder should be a felony, punishable with penal
servitude, by whomsoever the conspiracy might be concocted, or wherever
the crime might be designed to be committed.
The principle of such a law, supported as it was by the precedent of
Ireland, could hardly be resisted. And Mr. Walpole, who had been
Home-secretary in Lord Derby's ministry, avowed his determination to
support the bill, "as being right in principle." But even he limited his
promise of support by a condition "that the honor of England should be
previously vindicated;" arguing that the French despatch bore the
character of a demand, based upon allegations which were contrary to
truth, and which, therefore, the ministers were bound to repudiate; and
that to pass such a bill without putting on record a formal denial of
those allegations would, in the general view of Europe, imply a
confession that to them we had no answer to give. And it was this
consideration which eventually determined the decision of the House, Mr.
Disraeli, who closed the debate on his side, condemning the conduct of
the ministers as "perplexed, timid, confused, wanting in dignity and
self-respect. In not replying to the despatch, they had lost a great
opportunity of asserting the principles of public law." The House,
taking his view of their conduct, threw out the bill by a majority of
nineteen;[309] and the ministry resigned, and was succeeded by one under
the presidency of Lord Derby.
Many of those who on this occasion combined to form the majority had
denounced the bill, as an infringement of the principles of our
constitution. It is, however, evident that, had it passed, it would not
have deserved such a description. It would in no degree whatever have
deprived a foreign resident of safety and the protection of English law,
so long as he should obey that law; and that is all the indulgence that
the constitution ever gave or ought to give. Foreigners had always been
amenable to our courts of justice for any violation of the law. And Lord
Palmerston's bill not only went no farther than removing a certain class
of offences from the category of misdemeanors to that of felonies, but
it also imposed no liability in that respect on foreigners which it did
not at the same time impose on all the Queen's subjects. Indeed, the
bill was so moderate, and the improvement it proposed so desirable,
that, in a subsequent discussion in the House of Lords, Lord Campbell,
the Chief-justice, expressed a hope that Lord Derby's government would
take it up; though Lord Derby, in view of the existing feeling of the
country on the subject, prudently forbore to act on that suggestion.
But, as one of Orsini's most guilty accomplices, a man named Bernard,
was still in London, he caused him to be indicted for murder, as having
incurred that guilt as accessary to the death of some whom the explosion
had killed. The excitement on the question had, however, not died away
when the trial came on; and, though it will, probably, be generally
admitted that the evidence was sufficiently clear, Bernard was
acquitted.
Lord Derby, however, did not long retain his office. Indeed, the Earl
was so conscious that, on questions of general policy, the House of
Commons was inclined to views differing from his own, that he would have
preferred declining the task of forming a ministry, had he not conceived
that, in the difficulty in which the Queen was placed by recent
circumstances, he was bound by his duty to make the attempt, even if the
result of it were merely to obtain a kind of respite for his sovereign
and the country, which might give time for the present excitement of
feeling to calm down. He was not deceived in his forebodings of his
inability to maintain his position. In the course of the next spring he
was twice defeated in the House of Commons--once by the House which he
found in existence, and a second time in one which was the fruit of a
general election. And in the summer of 1859 Lord Palmerston returned to
office, with power increased by the junction of many of those who had
helped to overthrow him in 1858, but who now combined with him to strike
a similar blow at his Conservative successor.
Yet, brief as was Lord Derby's tenure of power, it was made memorable by
the commencement of a movement which cannot be regarded as devoid of
constitutional importance, since, though originally it was only designed
to supply a temporary re-enforcement to our ancient constitutional
forces, the regular army and the militia, it has eventually created a
force which, to the great honor of those who constitute it, has become a
permanent addition to them. In the great war against Revolutionary
France, when it was generally believed that those who held rule in Paris
were contemplating an invasion of these islands, Pitt, as we have seen,
had encouraged the formation of corps of volunteers, which continued to
be of great use till the very end of the war, by performing, in
conjunction with the militia, a great portion of the home duties which
must otherwise have fallen on the line regiments, and thus disengaging
the regular army for service on the Continent. There was now no such
formidable enemy to be dreaded as the first Napoleon, but in every part
of Europe affairs were in a state so unquiet that every kingdom seemed
at times on the very brink of war; and since, if it should once break
out, no one could feel confident that we should not be involved in it,
or, if we should be, who would be our allies or our enemies, measures of
precaution and self-defence seemed as needful now as they had been sixty
years before. Our boldest statesmen were disquieted and anxious; and the
nation at large, sharing their uneasiness, kindled with the feeling that
it was a time to show that the present generation inherited the
self-denying patriotism of their fathers. Leaders were not wanting again
to prompt the formation of a volunteer force. The government at once saw
the value of the scheme. Fortunately, the Secretary for War, Colonel
Peel, happened to be an old soldier, a veteran who had learned the art
of war under Wellington himself; and he, having great talents for
organization, placed the force from its infancy on a sound footing. How
thoroughly the movement harmonized with the martial spirit of the
nation--to which, indeed, it owed its birth--is shown by the history of
the force, which now, above twenty years after its original formation,
maintains its full numbers and yearly improves its efficiency. Though
there has not for many years been any apprehension of war, above one
hundred and twenty thousand men still annually devote no small portion
of their time to the acquisition of military discipline and science, and
that so successfully, that, by the testimony of the most experienced
judges, they have attained a degree of efficiency which, if the
necessity for their services should ever arise, would render them
valuable and worthy comrades to the more regularly trained army. Lord
Derby retired from office while the force was still in its infancy; but
Lord Palmerston was equally sensible of its value, and gave a farther
proof of his appreciation of the vast importance of measures of national
defence by the vigor with which he carried out the recommendations of a
royal commission which had been appointed by the preceding ministry to
investigate the condition of our national defences. Its report had
pointed out the absolute necessity of an improved system of protection
for our great dockyards and arsenals, which, from their position on the
coast, were more liable to attack than inland fortresses would have
been, had we had such. And, in accordance with that warning, in the
summer of 1860, Lord Palmerston proposed the grant of a large sum of
money for the fortification of our chief dockyards. It was opposed on a
strange variety of grounds; some arguing that the proposed
fortifications were superfluous, because our navy was the defence to
which the nation was wont deservedly to trust; some that they were
needless, because no other nation was in a condition to attack us;
others that they were disgraceful, because it was un-English and mean to
skulk behind stone walls, and because Lycurgus had refused to trust to
stone walls for the safety of Sparta; and one member, the chief
spokesman of a new and small party, commonly known as the
"peace-at-any-price party," boldly denounced the members of the
commission as a set of "lunatics" for framing such a report, and the
ministers as guilty of "contemptible cowardice" for suggesting to the
nation that there was any danger in being undefended. But the ministry
prevailed by a large majority;[310] the money was voted, and the nation
in general warmly approved of the measure. As Lord Palmerston
subsequently expressed it, "the government, the Parliament, and the
nation acted in harmonious concert"[311] on the subject.