THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (_continued_).
Mr Lowe's Budget--The Surplus disappears--Mr. Lowe creates a
Surplus and proposes Remissions of Taxes--Cost of the Abyssinian
Expedition--Sir Stafford Northcote's Explanation--The Endowed
Schools' Bill--Speech of Mr. Forster--The Commissioners--Religious
Tests at the Universities--Sir John Coleridge's Bill--Sir Roundell
Palmer's Speech--The Bill passes through the Commons--It is
rejected by the Lords--The Mayor of Cork--The O'Sullivan Disability
Bill--Mr. O'Sullivan resigns--The Bill dropped--Life Peerages--Lord
Malmesbury's Speech--Fenianism in Ireland--Deaths of Lord Derby and
Lord Gough--European Affairs: the Emperor prophesies Peace--The
General Election--The _Senatus Consultum_--Official Candidates--The
Revolution in Spain--Wanted a King--General Grant the President of
the United States--The _Alabama_ Convention rejected.
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Lowe, brought forward his Budget,
in a speech of great ability, on the 8th of April, 1869. The state of
the revenue, he said, was moderately flourishing, although the receipts
for the past financial year had fallen somewhat short (to the extent of
about half a million) of Mr. Ward Hunt's estimate. His predecessor had
calculated upon a revenue of £73,180,000, but the actual amount received
did not quite reach £72,600,000. Passing now to the current year, Mr. Lowe
estimated the expenditure at £68,223,000, and the revenue at £72,855,000,
which would leave an available surplus of £4,632,000 at the end of the
year. Nothing could be more satisfactory than such a prospect. Visions
of a lowered income tax, of enlarged grants for special purposes, of
general easiness in money matters, must have flitted before the minds of
the assembled legislators. But Mr. Lowe had no sooner raised the hopes
of his hearers than he dashed them to the ground. The whole of this
large surplus, it appeared, except the trifling sum of £32,000, would be
required to defray the cost of the Abyssinian expedition. The real cost
of that expedition was now for the first time made known. Mr. Disraeli
had asked for and obtained a vote of £3,000,000, in November, 1867, and
a further sum of £2,000,000 had been voted for the expedition in the
early part of the Session of 1868. During 1868 every one supposed that
£5,000,000 would cover the cost; but this was found to be by no means the
case, and a third vote of £3,600,000 was taken in March, 1869. The total
cost, Mr. Lowe feared, would hardly fall short of £9,000,000. Now, of the
£8,600,000 that had been voted, ways and means had been found only for
£4,000,000, so that £4,600,000 had still to be provided for. This sum
would just be covered by the anticipated surplus, leaving a balance of
£32,000.
Here an ordinary financier would have stopped, content to have balanced
the revenue, and to have defrayed out of current receipts, so as not
to add a penny to the National Debt, the heavy and unforeseen charges
entailed by the Abyssinian expedition. But Mr. Lowe was not an ordinary
financier, and, as a surplus did not exist, he resolved that one should
be created. He proceeded to unfold a plan for the more economical
collection of the revenue, by concentrating in one payment, to be made
in January, the income tax and the assessed taxes, instead of dividing
the former into two instalments, payable in April and October. This plan
he proposed to bring into operation for the first time in January, 1870;
so that (no collection being made in October, 1869) the taxes for three
quarters, ending the 31st of March, 1870, should be paid next January,
in which month the whole of the income tax and the assessed taxes would
have to be paid in future years. That is to say, Mr. Lowe proposed to
collect five quarters' taxes within twelve months. The reader will think
that it is not difficult to create a surplus in this way. Nevertheless,
Mr. Lowe showed that the proposed change in the mode of collecting these
taxes was based on common sense and sound economy, and that a sum of
£100,000 would be saved merely by having one collection instead of two,
and employing the Excise officials instead of amateur collectors. He
also discussed the assessed taxes with great force and acuteness, and
proposed to convert most of them into licence duties, following the
successful precedent of the dog tax, and that they should be payable for
the future at the beginning of each year, instead of by two instalments in
April and October. Assuming that the House adopted his scheme, Mr. Lowe
calculated that before the end of the financial year (March 31st, 1870)
there would have been paid into the Exchequer, £600,000 of the Excise
licences, £950,000 of the land tax and assessed taxes, and £1,800,000 of
the income tax--in all £3,350,000--which, with the £32,000 surplus of
revenue over expenditure, would put the Government in possession of a
surplus of £3,382,000. How was this surplus (which Mr. Lowe might well
describe as a "windfall") to be disposed of? As the chief inconvenience
attending the transition from the half-yearly to the annual method of
payment would fall on the income tax payers, Mr. Lowe thought that they
had the first claim to relief from the surplus; he therefore proposed to
take off a penny from the income tax. Next he proposed to abolish the
import duty of one shilling on every quarter of corn, left by Sir Robert
Peel when he repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. This duty, though it produced
£900,000 a year, combined in Mr. Lowe's opinion all the bad qualities
which a tax could possibly have, and prevented England from becoming a
great entrepôt of corn. The fire insurance duties were also to be given
up, though this reduction would not take effect till after Midsummer. The
total remission of taxes thus foreshadowed would amount to £2,940,000,
leaving, when deducted from the estimated surplus, a balance of £442,000.
Mr. Lowe admitted that his plan was attended by certain drawbacks. Under
its operation the Treasury would be in a state of plethora at one part
of the year and starved at another; and there might be taxpayers to whom
the concentration and unification of the State's demands on their purses
might be inconvenient. But he had various expedients to meet the first
objection, the chief among which was that during the non-productive months
of the year Government should be empowered to borrow at their discretion
from the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt; while with
regard to the second objection, the taxpayer, like the eel in the adage,
would find the change nothing when he had become used to it. Mr. Lowe's
Budget was of course sharply criticised, and the delusive character of a
surplus obtained by a financial trick was loudly insisted upon; but the
real merits of the scheme, which were obviously great, carried it through.
The statement made by Mr. Lowe, _en passant_, with regard to the
aggregate expenditure on the Abyssinian expedition naturally attracted
much attention. The Conservative Government had estimated that the
total cost would not exceed £5,000,000; how then, when no unforeseen
circumstance had occurred, none but the most shadowy opposition been
encountered, and no reinforcements been needed, could the expenses have
shot up to the enormous figure of £9,000,000? It appeared that by far
the greater portion of the money--more than £7,000,000--had been spent
by the Bombay Government. The duty of explanation accordingly fell on
Sir Stafford Northcote, Secretary for India in the late Government. Sir
Stafford Northcote stated that when the first estimate was framed (that
for £3,000,000, laid before the House by Mr. Disraeli, in November, 1867),
the expedition had not left India; and that the second estimate (for
£2,000,000, additional) was necessarily vague and loose, and exceeded, in
fact, the information furnished by the departments. He pointed out, among
the reasons for the insufficiency of the estimate, our entire ignorance
of the country into which the expedition was despatched, its actual
barrenness of supplies, and the necessity of taking precautions against
events that never occurred. Much of the excess, he added, had arisen since
the period up to which the estimate extended, and in conveying the troops
from Abyssinia to India after the expedition was over. These explanations
failed to remove the suspicion that there had been culpable laxity on the
part of the Bombay Government. The suddenness of the last rise in the
estimate was quite mysterious. Mr. Ward Hunt stated, in the discussion
that took place in March, 1869, when the supplementary vote of £3,600,000
was demanded, that so recently as the 8th of December, 1868, the Indian
Government had telegraphed that they had only spent £5,000,000.
Although the time of Parliament was too much taken up with discussions
arising out of the Irish Church Act to allow of any comprehensive
educational measure being brought forward in this Session, yet an
important Act was passed, by which a machinery fitted to grapple with the
long-standing abuses connected with the endowed schools of the country
was successfully established. The condition of these schools had lately
been inquired into by a Royal Commission, the report of which had been
laid before the House. Upon the basis of this report Government were
now prepared to legislate, and the duty of preparing a Bill fell into
the hands of Mr. W. E. Forster, the Vice-President of the Council.
The recommendations of the commissioners had been of a very sweeping
character; besides advising that full power of inquiring into the
efficiency of every endowed school, and of putting an end to waste and
abuse of trust funds, should be taken by Government, they had recommended
the formation of a central examining council, and of provincial boards
throughout the country under the control of the central authority. But
Government did not see their way to the appointment of provincial boards
for the present; and the Select Committee to which the Bill was referred,
after the second reading, struck out all the clauses that proposed to
constitute an examining council. What remained, however, of the Bill was
sufficient to make a useful working measure of reform.
[Illustration: THE QUADRANGLE, SOMERSET HOUSE.]
In moving the second reading of the Bill, Mr. Forster took occasion to
explain in general terms the principal conclusions at which the Commission
of Inquiry into Secondary Education, of which he had been himself a
member, had arrived. In estimating the provision already existing in the
country for the education of the "middle classes," the commissioners found
that the schools that came under their observation naturally fell into
three groups--denominated by them respectively first grade, second grade
and third grade schools, according to the age at which the scholars whom
they instructed usually left them. In the first grade schools the average
age of leaving was between eighteen and nineteen; in the second grade
schools, between sixteen and seventeen; while in those of the third grade,
constituting the immense majority in point of numbers, the age of leaving
was about fourteen years. As a rule, the parents of boys in the first
grade schools were persons of wealth, to whom money was little, if at
all, an object in the education of their children The schools themselves
were pretty much on a par with the Public Schools, whose condition had
been inquired into by a separate commission; and, as in the case of
these, a considerable proportion of the scholars left school for the
universities. Schools of the second grade were attended chiefly by the
sons of professional persons, and of those engaged in commercial pursuits,
whose sons were destined to follow similar vocations. In the third grade
schools the scholars were found to be for the most part the sons of small
farmers, small tradesmen and shop-keepers, and superior artisans. In the
schools of all three grades a thorough education was found to be hardly
ever imparted, except in Latin and Greek; and efficiency even in these
branches was chiefly confined to schools of the first grade. Mr. Forster
quoted the evidence of many competent witnesses who had been examined
by the commission, to the effect that secondary education in England,
considered as a preparation for any of the learned professions or for an
industrial career, laboured under grievous deficiencies; yet there was
probably no country in Europe in which the bounty of individuals in past
ages had provided such liberal endowments for secondary education as was
the case in England. Taking these two facts together,--the low standard
of actual education and the liberal provision made for it in endowed
schools--Mr. Forster drew the obvious conclusion that these schools,
under their existing management, failed both to fulfil the intentions
of their founders, and to satisfy the needs of society. In support of
this conclusion, he adduced some curious evidence from the report of the
commission. The head-master of a certain endowed school told an assistant
commissioner that "it was not worth his while to push the school, as
with the endowment (about £200 a year) and some other small source of
income, he had enough to live on comfortably without troubling to do so."
In the case of another school, with an endowment of £651 per annum, the
master put his nephew and son into the posts of second and third masters.
The assistant commissioner "found the discipline most inefficient and
the instruction slovenly, unmethodical, and unintelligent; there was
no one subject in which the boys seemed to take an interest, or which
had been taught with average care or success." At another school, where
the endowment was £613 a year, there were thirteen pupils. At another,
enjoying an income of £792 from the charity, the head-master taught three
boarders and no others and the under master attended when he chose. In a
school where the endowment was £300 a year and a house, one boy was found
under instruction, while there was a private school with eighty boarders
close by. To facts of this kind--lamentable as they were--Mr. Forster
did not desire to attach undue weight; he did not conceal from the House
that among the endowed schools of every grade many excellent and useful
institutions might be found; but he maintained that a case had been made
out for interference on the part of the State, in order that where,
through negligence or worse, the charitable intentions of a founder were
defeated, the endowments might be restored to the beneficial use from
which they had been diverted. Since the plan of provincial boards had
been given up, the organisation which the Bill proposed to create was
exceedingly simple. A small commission, consisting of only three persons,
would be appointed; this commission would send round inspectors to inquire
into the local circumstances of the endowed institutions, and on receiving
their report, would, if change were necessary, draw up schemes for the
future government and conduct of the schools. The schemes, when prepared,
were to be communicated to the trustees of the different endowments, that
they might suggest alterations or modifications; they were then to be
submitted to the Education Department, and that department would, after
approval, lay them before Parliament. After having lain for a certain time
on the table of each House, and not been objected to, a scheme would _ipso
facto_ come into operation.
In the course of the fuller explanations which were required of Mr.
Forster by various members during the debate, he stated that the Bill
dealt with nearly three thousand schools, viz. 782 grammar schools and
2,175 foundations, mostly elementary, with a gross income of £592,000,
and a net income for education of £340,000, a sum which, well applied,
might effect much; but the money was to a great extent wasted. Requested
to name the commissioners to whom he proposed to entrust the preparation
of the schemes, Mr. Forster gave the names of Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Arthur
Hobhouse, and Canon Robinson. After being passed in the Commons, the
Bill was subjected to a searching examination in the House of Lords.
Lord Salisbury proposed to exempt from the jurisdiction of the new
commissioners all endowed schools founded within the last hundred years,
the period named in the Bill being fifty years. But the amendment was lost
on a division, and this valuable measure soon afterwards became law.
A Bill for the abolition of religious tests in the universities and
colleges of Oxford and Cambridge was brought in in February by the
Solicitor-General, Sir John Coleridge. With regard to the universities,
the Bill rendered unlawful not only the requirement of any subscription
or other test from the candidate for any university degree, but also the
exaction of any declaration in the nature of a religious test from any
professor, teacher, lecturer, or university officer of any kind, as a
condition of his taking or holding office. With regard to the colleges,
the Bill only removed all restrictions upon their freedom of action
that had been imposed on them from time to time by the authority of
Parliament itself. "It leaves the colleges," said the Solicitor-General,
"controlled by their statutes; it leaves them controlled by the feelings
of their members; it leaves them controlled by all the associations which
gather round them, and which are, after all, upon most men's minds as
effective as any Parliamentary action can be; and it relieves them only
from those restrictions which have been imposed from time to time by Acts
of Parliament." He mentioned the case of a Jew who had come out Senior
Wrangler at Cambridge that very year, but was deprived by his religion of
that natural culmination and reward of great academical distinction which
a fellowship usually conferred. Other cases, he added, had come under his
knowledge of Oxford men who had renounced fellowships and other offices of
emolument sooner than subscribe their belief unreservedly to every part of
the Thirty-nine Articles. In cases such as these, should a college desire
to open its doors more widely, it would no longer, should his Bill become
law, be impeded in doing so by the operation of any law of the land. Its
own statutes might still hamper its action in the direction of liberty,
but a method of altering these, should the great majority of the governing
body desire it, had already been provided by the University Reform Act of
1854. It was true that there were certain colleges the statutes of which
could not be altered without the consent of their respective visitors,
and that these visitors were sometimes bishops, who were professionally
unlikely to be willing to extend the benefit of the foundation to
Nonconformists. This defect the present Bill did not deal with, but the
Solicitor-General pretty clearly intimated that it would be made the
subject of future legislation.
Mr. Mowbray, the Conservative member for the University of Oxford (who
had lately been elected to the seat held for many years by Sir William
Heathcote), spoke in opposition to the Bill; but the general feeling
of the House was strongly in its favour. It even received the powerful
support of Sir Roundell Palmer, who announced that, since the question
was last discussed in the House, reflection had induced him considerably
to modify the point of view from which he had formerly regarded it. He
was now opposed to tests, partly because they were ineffective for the
purpose intended; partly because, even if effective, they were impolitic.
They were ineffective to keep out the unprincipled atheist or sceptic, who
was ready to swallow with a philosophic smile the toughest theological
formula that might be presented to him. Nor were they of the slightest use
in the case of a man who was orthodox at the time of taking the test,
but had afterwards become a free-thinker, since neither law nor custom
permitted that a man who had once become a member of Convocation should
be liable to any further questioning. But even if they were supposed to
operate effectually to the exclusion of all but orthodox Churchmen, Sir
Roundell Palmer was now disposed to doubt the policy of retaining them. It
was vain, he thought, to endeavour to keep the universities up to a level
of churchmanship essentially higher than that which prevailed in society
at large. In proportion as members of the Nonconformist body forced their
way to the front in all departments of political and social life, in that,
or nearly in that, proportion it was desirable that they should be found
also among the governing and representative men of the universities. If
Churchmen had no cause to dread the competition of Nonconformists on the
former fields, neither need they dread it on the latter. At the same
time, in order to guard the principle of religious education, and give
to it more prominent expression in the language of the Bill itself, Sir
Roundell Palmer proposed a slight alteration in the preamble, and the
introduction of two new clauses. By the first, the established system
of religious worship, education, and discipline within the colleges was
expressly reserved intact. By the second, it was provided that every
professor, tutor, or lecturer in an English university should, after his
appointment, and before entering on the duties of his office, make and
subscribe a declaration before the Vice-Chancellor, or before the head of
his college, that he would "never endeavour, directly or indirectly, to
teach or inculcate any opinion, opposed to the divine authority of the
Holy Scriptures, or to the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England
as by law established." A test similar to this, but omitting of course
all reference to the Church of England, was substituted in 1853 in lieu
of the old and rigid Calvinistic test for lay professors in the Scottish
universities. After an admirable speech from Dr. Lyon Playfair, in support
of the Bill, it was considered in committee. Sir Roundell Palmer carried
the first of his two clauses without difficulty, but abandoned the second,
mainly, it would seem, in consequence of an appeal from Dr. Lyon Playfair,
whose long and intimate acquaintance with the Scottish universities
enabled him to speak with authority. The corresponding declaration
required of lay professors in Scotland was, he admitted, not felt nor
objected to, because it was considered to be, on the whole, "innocent
and irrelevant;" but it had degenerated into a mere formality, and could
not be supposed to exercise the slightest preservative effect on the
religious belief of either professors or students. "It is not that test,"
added the honourable gentleman, "which preserves religion in our Scottish
universities, but the inherent truths of religion itself." The Bill then
passed through committee, and was read a third time.
When, however, the University Tests Bill reached the Lords, it was
treated with little ceremony. It was past the middle of July, and the
Peers were still smarting under the sense of the disrespectful treatment
which their amendments to the Irish Church Bill had met with in the other
House, and indignant at the menacing comments of the press. Farther in
the road of Liberalism they were resolved not to be pushed this Session.
Lord Carnarvon, when the Bill came on for the second reading, moved the
previous question, and, after a short and unimportant debate, his motion
was carried on a division by a majority of 91 to 54.
The attention of Parliament was taken up on many nights during this
Session by a singular incident, half painful, half ludicrous, which
occurred in the sister island. Mr. Daniel O'Sullivan had been elected by
the corporation mayor of Cork for the year 1869. Under the Municipal Act
for Ireland the Mayor is a justice of peace for the city of Cork during
his year of office, and cannot be removed either by the Lord-Lieutenant
or by Government. Soon after the beginning of the year Mr. O'Sullivan
commenced to sit as a magistrate in the police court of Cork. From
almost the first day that he took his seat on the bench down to the
beginning of May his conduct was systematically devoted to lowering the
administration of the law and bringing it into contempt, and in using
insulting and abusive language towards his brother magistrates. But all
this was a trifle compared with what followed. On the 27th of April the
mayor presided at a banquet given in Cork in honour of two discharged
Fenian prisoners, called Colonel Warren and Costello. In proposing the
toast of "Our Exiled Countrymen," the mayor said that "he believed a
spirit of concession had been aroused on the part of the dominant race.
He did not say whether it was owing to Fenianism or to the barrel placed
outside the prison at Clerkenwell; but he believed he paid a solemn act
of justice to his own countrymen--as solemn an act of justice as if he
were a high priest--when he said those noble men, Allen, Barrett, Larkin,
and O'Brien, who sacrificed their lives for their country, ought to be
remembered and respected as good Catholics and good patriots. There was
at this moment in the country a young prince of the Irish nation. When
that noble Irishman, O'Farrel, fired at the Prince in Australia, he
was imbued with as noble and patriotic feelings as Larkin, Allen, and
O'Brien were." (Here the speaker was interrupted by great cheering, and
cries of "He was.") This foolish and criminal rant was received with
loud demonstrations of applause by Mr. O'Sullivan's audience. Government
were soon informed of what had happened, and the conduct of the mayor
formed the subject of more than one interpellation in Parliament. The
hands of Government were presently strengthened by receiving a memorial
addressed to the Irish Executive by more than thirty magistrates of
the city of Cork, presided over by the Lord-Lieutenant of the county,
Lord Fermoy, in which complaint was made of the seditious language and
disorderly behaviour of the mayor, as tending to spread disaffection and
throw contempt on the administration of justice. There was not much time
to be lost, for the Mayor of Cork is entitled by his office to sit as
first commissioner in any commission to be executed within the county
of Cork; so that, unless promptly deposed or disenabled, Mr. O'Sullivan
would be associated with her Majesty's judges in the Commission of Assize
during the ensuing summer. There was no resource but legislation; a
general law might be passed, placing the mayors of all Irish corporations
under the control of the Crown; or else a short Act, disqualifying
Mr. O'Sullivan by name, but affecting the rights of no other person.
Government preferred the latter course, and the O'Sullivan Disability
Bill was prepared accordingly, and leave to introduce it was moved for by
the Irish Attorney-General (Mr. Sullivan) on the 5th of May. A long and
animated discussion followed; but in the end leave was given to bring in
the Bill, a copy of which, and of the order for the second reading, was
ordered to be forthwith served on Mr. O'Sullivan. But on the day appointed
for the second reading, when counsel in support of the Bill were about
to be heard, and witnesses examined, Mr. Maguire, one of the members for
Cork, rose and produced a letter, which he read, from Mr. O'Sullivan,
placing his resignation of the mayoralty in the hands of Mr. Maguire and
the O'Donoghue. In fairness to the mayor, one or two sentences from this
letter ought to be quoted. He declared, in the most solemn and emphatic
manner, that the language attributed to him did not in any way express
or represent his real meaning; and, further, he solemnly declared that
he would himself be the first person to rush to the protection of human
life if he knew it to be in danger. "I may also state that I look to the
regeneration of my country through constitutional and remedial measures
such as that [the Irish Church Act] now passing through the House of
Commons, and my belief that the battle of my country is to be fought
on the floor of that House." Mr. O'Sullivan must surely have held with
the cynic philosopher, that "language was given to man to conceal his
thoughts;" for if these were indeed his sentiments, no language could have
been devised better calculated to disguise them than that which he used at
the Fenian banquet. After hearing the letter, Mr. Gladstone rose and said
that, assuming Mr. O'Sullivan's resignation to be, though not technically,
yet really and substantially complete, Government would proceed no further
with the Disability Bill.
[Illustration: SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE (AFTERWARDS EARL OF IDDESLEIGH).]
A fresh attempt was made this year, and was very nearly successful, to
obtain legislative sanction for the creation of life peerages by the
Crown. The subject had slept since the celebrated resolution of the
House of Lords in the case of Lord Wensleydale, to the effect that he,
having been created a peer for the term of his natural life only, was
not entitled to sit and vote in that House. Lord Wensleydale's patent of
creation was then altered into the usual form, and everything remained
as before. Now the subject was revived by Lord Russell, and the Bill
which he introduced was at first received with much favour on both sides
of the House. The Crown was to be authorised to create peers for life,
subject to certain restrictions, the chief of which were, that not more
than twenty-eight such peers should sit in the House at the same time, and
that not more than four should ever be created in the same year. The Bill
made slow but sure progress; it was read a second time; its mover showed
an open and conciliatory spirit in reference to various amendments that
were proposed, and accepted one, limiting the creation of life peers to
two in one year; and even the ordeal of committee was safely passed. The
last stage was at hand; but when (July 8th) Earl Russell moved that the
Bill be read a third time, Lord Malmesbury moved, as an amendment, to add
the words "that day three months." The noble lord ably paraded the reasons
which made it, in his opinion, unnecessary and undesirable to admit life
peers to the privileges of the Upper House. It was unnecessary, because
that House did not, as was asserted, require to be "popularised," since it
possessed, besides great landowners, numerous representatives of the great
commercial, manufacturing, mining, and banking interests of the country,
and also many distinguished officers of the army and navy, besides fifty
peers, at the very least, who had formerly sat in the House of Commons,
so that there could be no pretence that on any subject on which they
were called upon to deliberate with a view to legislation, numbers of
persons would not be found in that House possessed of every qualification
for offering an opinion that experience, ability, and personal interest
could supply. It was undesirable, because those who held these transitory
dignities would not be really the "peers" of the older members of the
House,--because they would be destitute of that which was the very essence
of nobility, the power to transmit their rank and privileges to their
descendants,--and because, since those whom the House would gladly see
added to their numbers would decline to accept so equivocal a position,
the life peers whom the influence of a Ministry might cause to be created
would probably be such persons as the House would not deem a desirable
accession, and would therefore, instead of adding to, impair the lustre of
that assembly, and weaken its influence in the country. This unexpected
attack was feebly met by Earls Russell and Granville, and on a division
Lord Malmesbury's motion was carried by a majority of thirty (Contents,
76; Non-contents, 106), and the Bill was consequently lost.
This year was one of considerable suffering to large masses of the
population, as the increase of pauperism too plainly showed. Trade was
in a state of stagnation, but partially revived towards the close of
the year, and gave indications of a more prosperous future. Although
Fenianism had been so far suppressed in Ireland that Government ventured
to allow the Act for the suspension of Habeas Corpus to expire, the temper
of disaffection was as widely spread as ever, and now took the form of
an agitation to obtain the release of the Fenian prisoners. The same
revolutionary spirit, though under strangely different forms, which caused
sympathy to be widely felt in Italy for the conspirators who blew up the
Serristori barracks, filled thousands of Irish hearts with a wild desire
to obtain the liberation of the heroes of Clerkenwell. Agrarian discontent
also was rife, and several agrarian murders were committed in the latter
part of the year. Some of the Fenian convicts who were less deeply
implicated than the rest were released by Government; but so far was this
lenity from having any good effect, that the first use which the liberated
prisoners made of their freedom was to proclaim their unabated hostility
to the British Government, and, so far as in them lay, before taking
their departure for America, to stimulate the minds of their countrymen
whom they left behind with exhortations to undying animosity. There was
an election for the county Tipperary in the autumn, with the following
result:--O'Donovan Rossa, a Fenian, who was at the time in prison, was
returned at the head of the poll, beating Mr. Heron, a distinguished
Queen's Counsel and a Roman Catholic, by 103 votes. As a matter of course,
the election was declared null and void, and the returning officer
required to make a fresh return.
In October, 1869, a noble and commanding figure, which had occupied for
many years a prominent place in the eyes and thoughts of Englishmen,
disappeared from the scene, namely Edward Geoffrey Stanley, fourteenth
Earl of Derby. The author of the sketch of his life given in the _Times_
thus eloquently sums up the enumeration of his eminent qualities: "We have
spoken of Lord Derby chiefly as a statesman. But, after all, it was the
man--ever brilliant and impulsive--that most won the admiration of his
countrymen. He was a splendid specimen of an Englishman; and whether he
was engaged in furious debate with demagogues, or in lowly conversation on
religion with little children, or in parley with jockeys while training
Toxophilite, or rendering 'Homer' into English verse, or in stately Latin
discourse as the Chancellor of his University, or in joyous talk in a
drawing-room among ladies, whom he delighted to chaff, or in caring for
the needs of Lancashire operatives--there were a force and a fire about
him that acted like a spell. Of all his public acts none did him more
honour, and none made a deeper impression on the minds of his countrymen,
than his conduct on the occasion of the cotton famine in Lancashire. No
man in the kingdom sympathised more truly than he with the distress of the
poor Lancashire spinners, and perhaps no man did so much as he for their
relief. It was not simply that he gave them a princely donation; he worked
hard for them in the committee which was established in their aid: he was
indeed the life and soul of the committee; and for months at that bitter
time he went about doing good by precept and example, so that myriads in
Lancashire now bless his name. He will long live in memory as one of the
most remarkable, and indeed irresistible, men of our time--a man privately
beloved and publicly admired; who showed extraordinary cleverness in many
ways; was the greatest orator of his day, and the most brilliant, though
not the most successful, Parliamentary leader of the last half-century."
The death of the gallant Irishman, Lord Gough, recalled the thoughts of
many to the tumultuous scenes of the Peninsular War in which the earlier
portion of the veteran's life was passed. To Sir Hugh Gough was entrusted
the command of the land forces in the opium war with China in 1842, when
he took Canton, Amoy, Ning-po, and Chin-Kiang-Foo, forced his way, in
conjunction with Admiral Sir W. Parker, for a hundred and seventy miles
up the Yang-tse-Kiang, and dictated peace to the Emperor of China at
Nankin. After this he was appointed Commander-in-Chief in India, and held
that office during the Sikh War in 1845, though to the tactics of Sir
Henry Hardinge, the Governor-General, who consented to serve under Gough,
the decisive victories of Moodkee, Ferozeshah, and Sobraon are usually
ascribed. When the Sikhs rebelled at the beginning of 1849, Gough marched
against them, and, though he met with a severe check at Chilianwallah,
inflicted such a crushing blow on the enemy at Goojerat, a few weeks
later, that the war was practically brought to an end. A grateful country
did not fail to recognise and reward his military achievements. He was
created a Viscount, received a pension both from the Crown and from the
East India Company, and was raised, in 1862, to the dignity of a Field
Marshal.
All through the year 1869 France remained at peace with all her
neighbours, and the Emperor and his Ministers vied with each other in
making pacific declarations on every suitable occasion. Yet there was a
different ring about a speech which he made to the soldiers at the camp at
Châlons. He told them always to keep alive in their hearts the remembrance
of the battles fought by their fathers, and those in which they had been
themselves engaged, "since the history of our wars is the history of
the progress of civilisation." According to this doctrine, though all
things now wore a peaceful appearance, yet if France were to go to war
for whatever cause (for the justice of a war was superbly ignored by the
speaker), the interests of civilisation would necessarily be advanced.
But for the present the French Government was content to live quietly.
In Italy, according to an announcement made by the Foreign Minister, the
Marquis de Lavalette, though the Pope's Government was making progress in
the organisation of its forces, the time had not yet arrived for France to
return purely and simply to the September Convention, and to evacuate the
Pontifical territory. With regard to Prussia, the language of the Emperor
and of the French Foreign Office was uniformly friendly.
The Chambers which had been elected in 1863 were dissolved in April
of this year, and new elections were ordered. This was a favourable
opportunity for the Emperor's Government to put in practice the
aspirations towards greater liberty and a more constitutional system with
which the Emperor had declared himself to be animated. If the Government
had left the people alone, and allowed them to return the representatives
of their choice, it might have been believed that there was some sincerity
in those aspirations. But, on the contrary, there never were elections at
which the system of official candidates was more unsparingly resorted to,
nor where the freedom of the electors was more unblushingly interfered
with. The elections were going on all through May. Thiers and Jules Favre
were returned for Paris, and Gambetta, Picard, Jules Simon, and other
Liberals for the department of the Seine; yet so Conservative were the
instincts of the general population, and so assiduously did the Government
by its action labour to encourage and reward these instincts, that the
number of Opposition candidates returned for the Legislative Body did not
much exceed thirty. Napoleon seems to have felt that his government was
too successful. Though the Imperial system was founded on the crime of
the 2nd of December, the Emperor, to do him justice, earnestly desired to
make its origin forgotten by conforming it to the march of ideas and to
the needs of French society. It may be questioned whether, in thus acting,
he was really consulting its stability. Perhaps if he had carried on the
government silently and resolutely, keeping the army in good humour by
bribes and flatteries, and not trying to make compromises either with
Liberalism or with the honest patriotism of men like Guizot, he might
have given to it a longer duration. But he wished to be two things at the
same time--a ruler supported on bayonets and a ruler supported on ideas;
and this was not a feat easy of accomplishment. Besides his strength
was being undermined by a wasting and painful disease, and he wished to
preserve the Imperial crown for his son. In the summer he announced his
intention of introducing the system of the responsibility of the Ministers
to the majority in the Chambers, together with various other privileges
and liberties which the French Legislature had been deprived of since
the _coup d'état;_ he declared that the system of personal government
was distasteful to him and that he desired to abandon it. A _Senatus
Consultum_ embodying these reforms was introduced into and discussed in
the Senate with great parade in the month of September. It was received
with something of coldness and reserve by the majority of the Senators,
for which they were rebuked by Prince Napoleon, in a speech which, while
expressing gratitude to the Emperor for what he had conceded, disgusted
by its broad Radicalism the Emperor's best friends and supporters in both
Chambers. Several of the Ministers--among whom were Rouher, Lavalette, and
Baroche--unable to see their way to a practical reconciliation between
the Empire and the maxims of constitutional government, resigned their
posts on the introduction of the _Senatus Consultum_. It was, however,
carried, and with a good effect, doubtless, so far as foreign opinion was
concerned; in France, the measure and motives of the Emperor's liberalism
were so well understood that the new project awakened little interest.
The Corps Législatif, as soon as it was assembled, proceeded to examine
questions connected with election returns. Illegalities and abuses of
power were reported from all parts of the country. That odious tool of
despotism, the "official candidate," had never been so generally and
so offensively put forward. One election in particular, that for the
Haute Garonne, in which the Government nominee, an obscure marquis, had
defeated the illustrious M. de Remusat, attracted special attention from
the impudent illegalities that had been resorted to in order to secure
the seat. In one parish 141 electors had deposited their voting-papers
in the electoral urn, which the mayor then put away in his bedroom! When
the votes came to be examined, 133 were found to be for the official
candidate, and only five for M. de Remusat. But forty-one of the electors
went before a notary and signed a solemn declaration that they had voted
for M. de Remusat. But in spite of corrupt practices of all kinds, which
a scrutiny brought to light in this and other elections, the servile
majority in the Chamber usually sustained their validity. Nevertheless,
the position of the Minister of the Interior, after all these disclosures,
was not an agreeable one; and M. Forcade de la Roquette, together with his
colleagues, resigned office. The Emperor accepted their resignations and
addressed himself (December 27th) to M. Émile Ollivier, formerly a member
of the Opposition, requesting him to form an Administration and submit for
his approval the names of those who were to fill the different offices.
In Spain the revolution continued its desolating course. Early in the year
a republican insurrection broke out at Malaga, and was not suppressed
without much bloodshed. The constituent Cortes, for the election and
assembling of which careful preparations had been made by Serrano and Prim
in the preceding year, met at Madrid on the 11th of February. In a House
of 350 members, about 240 (of whom nearly two-thirds were Progresistas
and the rest Unionists) were found to be supporters of the Government, 70
or 80 were Republicans, and about 20 Carlists. A committee was appointed
to prepare a new Constitution. Its report was read on the 31st of March;
it proposed the retention of monarchy and of the principle of hereditary
succession, the adoption of the system of two Chambers, and of Ministerial
responsibility; the Catholic religion to continue to be the religion of
Spain, but all other forms of belief and worship to be tolerated, subject
only to the laws of universal morality. The article of the Constitution
establishing a monarchy was finally carried (May 20th) by 214 to 71 votes.
But the difficulty of finding a monarch remained for the time insuperable.
Till an eligible candidate could be found, it was thought desirable, in
order to give greater solidity to the Government, to raise Serrano to the
Regency. The ceremony of his installation was performed with great pomp
and circumstance on the 13th of June. Divergences of opinion manifested
themselves among the prime movers of the September revolution. Prim, the
ablest and most daring among them, publicly declared that the late dynasty
should never reascend the throne of Spain, and that he would never,
directly or indirectly, aid in any endeavours in favour of the Prince of
the Asturias. Serrano was more cautious; he was generally supposed to be a
secret adherent of the said Prince. Topete was an avowed supporter of the
Duke of Montpensier. The crown was first offered to the King of Portugal,
but he declined to accept it. Prim then conceived the strange notion of
offering it to the Duke of Genoa, a boy of fifteen, then being educated
at Harrow. With his usual energy Prim overcame all opposition among his
colleagues to this extraordinary scheme, except so far as Topete was
concerned. The sturdy Admiral thought it absurd and quitted the Ministry
rather than have a hand in carrying it out. But the opposition of the King
of Italy and of the young Duke's mother caused this plan to fall to the
ground. In the autumn republican risings took place in many of the large
towns. The insurgents at Valencia proclaimed the democratic and federal
Republic in a high-flown and flowery manifesto, the chief parts of which
consisted in an infatuated and ridiculous eulogy on their own brilliant
virtues. But the troops remained faithful to the Government; Valencia was
reduced after a three hours' bombardment, and in the other cities revolt
was ultimately put down. A law was passed in October, similar in its
object to a Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in England, for the suspension of
individual guarantees.
[Illustration: STREET FIGHTING IN MALAGA. (_See p._ 516.)]
General Grant was inaugurated President of the United States on the 4th of
March, 1869. The convention for the settlement of the _Alabama_ and other
claims, which had been agreed to by Lord Stanley and Mr. Reverdy Johnson,
was rejected by the Senate in the course of the year, and an important
diplomatic correspondence on the subject passed between Mr. Fish, the
American Secretary of State, and Lord Clarendon.