THE MINISTRY OF RENUNCIATION.
The _Times_ Reveals a Secret of State--Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mrs.
Norton and the _Times_--A Court Scandal--Peel’s Resignation--Lord
John Russell’s Failure to Form a Ministry--Peel Resumes Office--The
Ministry and the Queen--The Duke of Wellington and
Peel--Disintegration of the Tory Party--Croker’s Correspondence
with Wellington--Peel’s Instructions to the _Quarterly Review_--A.
Betrayed Editor--Peel and the Princess Lieven--Guizot’s Defence of
Peel--The Queen’s Conduct in the Great Crisis--How she Strengthened
the Position of the Crown--Her Popular Sympathies--Why Peel Changed
his Policy--The Potato Rot--Impending Famine--Distress in
England--The Campaign of the Free Traders--Scenes at their
Meetings--The Protectionist Agitation and the Agricultural
Labourers--Sufferings of the Poor--The Duke of Norfolk’s Curry
Powder--Meeting at Wootton Bassett--The Queen and the Sufferers.
It was on the 4th of December, 1845, that the _Times_ startled the world
by its celebrated leading article, beginning “The doom of the Corn Laws
is sealed.” This was the very earliest disclosure of that great act of
political renunciation which impending famine in Ireland had forced on
Sir Robert Peel. How the _Times_ came to discover, on the 4th of
December, that the Cabinet had broken up on the previous day, through
the obstinacy of Lord Stanley and the Duke of Buccleuch, was for a long
time a political mystery. It inspired what Lord Beaconsfield once called
“the babble of the boudoirs,” and the tittle-tattle of many clubs. It
was whispered that one very near the Royal person had divulged this
profound secret of State, a knowledge of which would have been worth a
king’s ransom on the Corn Exchange. Such surmises were entirely wrong.
So far as the Court knew, or guessed at the secret, it was kept
inviolate. It was understood that Mr. Sidney Herbert, the youngest of
Sir Robert Peel’s colleagues, on the evening of the 3rd of December
conveyed to Mrs. Norton (afterwards Lady Stirling Maxwell, of Keir) an
idea of what had happened in the Cabinet, and that she, in turn, carried
her gleanings from Mr. Herbert’s conversation to Mr. Delane, the editor
of the _Times_. The affair, it may be said in passing, has furnished Mr.
George Meredith with a striking incident in his story, “Diana of the
Crossways,” for the heroine of that romance has much in common with the
gifted _intrigante_, “whose bridal wreath was twined with weeds of
strife.” A more prosaic explanation, however, is supplied by Mr.
Greville. He asserts that Lord Aberdeen gave Mr. Delane a hint that the
Corn Law was doomed, his object being to conciliate America (which was
deeply interested in the export of corn) in view of the Oregon dispute,
which he was anxious to settle. It is hard to believe that a man of Lord
Aberdeen’s high sense of honour would, from such an inadequate motive,
violate his Ministerial oath, and betray the secrets of his chief.
Lord John Russell had failed, as has been said, to form his
Administration when the Cabinet of his rival broke up. Here it may now
be convenient to explain the reason of that failure, which he laid
before his disappointed Sovereign. On the morning of the 20th of
December, when Sir Robert Peel waited on the Queen at Windsor, and was
asked to withdraw his resignation, her Majesty had been disturbed by a
letter from Lord John Russell, stating that he must abandon all hopes of
forming a Ministry, because he had been unable “in one instance” to
secure indispensable support from his more prominent followers. Who were
the “prominent followers”? and who, “in one instance,” thwarted the
Leader of the Opposition in his effort to extricate the Queen, from the
difficulty in which she was entangled? The pragmatic “instance” was Lord
Grey, and his refusal to serve the country in the hour of need was a
matter not of principle but of personal feeling. Writing to Mr. J. F.
Macfarlan, Chairman of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, on the 22nd of
December, 1845, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Macaulay told the whole story.
“You will have heard,” he says, “of the termination of our attempt to
form a Ministry. All our plans were frustrated by Lord Grey.... On my
own share in these transactions I reflect with unmixed satisfaction.
From the first I told Lord John that I stipulated for one thing only,
total and immediate Repeal. I would be as to all other matters
absolutely in his hands; that I would take any office, or no office,
just as it suited him best; and that he should never be disturbed by any
personal pretensions or jealousies on my part. If everybody else had
acted thus there would now have been a Liberal Ministry.” We now know
that Macaulay was mistaken. It was perfectly well known, not only to the
Queen, but to the chiefs of the great parties, that Lord John Russell
could never have carried Repeal, for two reasons. He was distrusted by
Free Traders like Cobden. It was impossible to expect that the House of
Lords, who threatened to revolt against Wellington, would accept Free
Trade from the Whigs, many of whom were eager to maintain a small fixed
duty on corn. All this was quite well understood at Court, and it
partially accounts for the unconcealed delight with which the Queen
asked Sir Robert Peel to withdraw his resignation. It was, moreover,
suspected at the time that the Court--always distrustful of Lord
Palmerston--privily sympathised with the feelings of Lord Grey, who
thought that the only office which Lord Palmerston was willing to
accept, was precisely the one in which he would do irretrievable
mischief. He had been Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and
naturally he could not, with self-respect, serve another Whig Government
in an inferior capacity. But Lord Grey, though quite ready to serve with
Palmerston if he took some other Department, held that, if he went to
the Foreign Office, his pugnacity, combined with the hostile animus
which he had inspired in France, must, sooner or later, lead to a
disturbance of the peace of Europe. Lord Palmerston was, in truth, the
Mordecai sitting at the gate of the Whig Oligarchy, and then, as ever,
Lord Grey could only co-operate comfortably with a Ministry of Greys.
It was on the 20th December that Sir Robert Peel summoned his late
colleagues in Downing Street, to inform them that he had resumed office,
and to invite their assistance in abolishing the duties on foreign corn.
The conclave was depressed and downcast, for the situation was unique
and embarrassing. Lord Stanley, true to his imperious impulses,
persisted in resigning. He refused to believe that the destitution in
Ireland was so bad as it was painted by Peel, and it is but just to say
that his main reason for deserting his leader had no direct connection
with the effect of the Corn Laws on the price of food. The real interest
of the country, Lord Stanley contended, was to have a flourishing rural
population. That could only exist under the shadow of a territorial
aristocracy, maintained by a Corn Law which kept up rents, because it
kept up prices. No conscious self-interest seems to have tainted Lord
Stanley’s motives, and the same may be said of Cobden and the Free
Traders, who, on the other hand, believed that the world would gain by
the substitution of a commercial for a territorial aristocracy. The aim
of the Free Traders, in fact, was to rule the English people by an
oligarchy of rich manufacturers, thus “thrusting aside the nobles,” and
creating “a new policy specially adapted to the life of a great trading
community.”[18] Lord Stanley’s idea, however, was that the landed
interest had made England; that it gave her social stability and
military power; that it had won her battles by sea and land, and built
up her mighty fabric of empire. The Corn Laws he believed, quite
honestly, to be the
[Illustration: THE IRISH FAMINE: STARVING PEASANTS AT A WORKHOUSE
GATE.]
outworks of a great system of landlordism which gave the State a solid
basis. His firm conviction was that Mr. Cobden and the Leaguers were
eager to capture the outworks, that they might the more easily storm the
citadel. And this idea, too, was common to the Whigs, who were advocates
of a duty on corn, which, though small, was to be fixed. Through Lord
Melbourne they had taught the country and the Queen that a man must
[Illustration: LORD GEORGE BENTINCK.]
be mad who would dream of abolishing the Corn Laws--and they showed no
sign, as a Party, of wavering in that conviction till the 22nd of
November, 1845, when Lord John Russell sent the famous “Edinburgh
Letter” to his constituents in the City of London, abandoning Protection
once and for ever. It is but fair to remind a later generation of the
relation in which the two great Parties stood to the Corn Law, because
partisan writers often present an inadequate conception of the arduous
task which Peel set himself, when he undertook to abolish the Corn
Duties, in defiance of beliefs long rooted in the minds not only of the
people, but of the governing classes of England.
There is no denying the fact that the admirable behaviour of the Queen
throughout the epoch-marking Ministerial crisis of 1845-46 did a great
deal to restore the influence of the Crown as an operative factor in
English politics. Since the death of George IV. that influence had been
waning. Under William IV. it had been exercised, but without subtlety of
tact or breadth of sympathy; and therefore, when exercised, it was
somewhat rudely “abated” by the popular Party. Nothing was further from
Lord Melbourne’s heart than to turn the Queen into a Whig, for it is on
record that it was he who urged her to conciliate the Tories, and put
confidence in Peel, against whom she bore a grudge for opposing the
Parliamentary grant to the Prince Consort. Yet, in the early days of the
Queen’s reign, the influence of the Crown was not a popular influence,
because it was supposed that Melbourne had become a sort of Mayor of the
Palace, and had made the Sovereign the tool of Party. In the beginning
of 1846, however, we notice a remarkable change in public feeling on
this subject. There was then a growing belief, even among the Tories,
that their suspicions of Melbourne had been unwarrantable, and the
people ceased to fear that the Queen intended to base her Government on
a system of favouritism. It is of the utmost importance, says Edmund
Burke, “that the discretionary powers which are necessarily vested in
the monarch, whether for the execution of the laws or for the nomination
to magistracy or office, or for the conducting of the affairs of peace
and war, or for ordering the revenue, should all be exercised upon
public principles and national grounds, and not on the likings or
prejudices, the intrigues or fooleries, of a Court.”[19] This was really
the sound teaching which Melbourne had impressed on the Queen, and her
bearing in the crisis, which ended in Sir Robert Peel’s reassumption of
office, showed that she had been an apt pupil.
The Prince Consort was quick to notice the effect which her Majesty’s
unswerving fidelity to public interests at this time had produced on the
country. It was therefore with pardonable pride that he wrote to Baron
Stockmar[20] a curious letter, shrewdly pointing out that the crisis now
past had been of signal advantage to the Crown. The Queen had been seen
to remain calm and unmoved in the fierce and strident strife of
factions--the one stable element in the Constitution at a moment when no
other rallying point was visible to the nation. Albany Fonblanque, the
wittiest of the Radical journalists of that day, ridiculed, to the top
of his bent, the chiefs of the two great parties, whose petty rivalries
and personal jealousies had thrown public affairs into sad confusion.
They were, it must be confessed, rather like Rabelais’ giant, who,
though he habitually fed on windmills, choked on a pat of butter
swallowed the wrong way. But on behalf of the Radicals, Fonblanque, it
is interesting to notice now, had nothing but praise to bestow on the
Queen’s behaviour in the midst of the tragi-comedy of politics, which
was being enacted before the eyes of a famished people. “In all the
pranks and bunglings of the last three weeks,” he wrote, “there is one
part which, according to all report, has been played most
faultlessly--that of a Constitutional Sovereign. In the pages of history
the directness, the sincerity, the scrupulous observance of
Constitutional rule, which have marked her Majesty’s conduct in
circumstances the most trying, will have their place of honour. However
unused as we are to deal in homage to Royalty, we must add that never,
we believe, was the heart of a monarch so warmly devoted to the
interests of a people, and with so enlightened a sense of their
interests.”[21] The Continental tour of the Queen in 1845 had suggested
to the people that the personal influence of the Sovereign might, if
adroitly used, be of great service to the State in conciliating foreign
nations, whose goodwill it would be advantageous to secure. Her conduct
in the Ministerial crisis of 1845-46, however, convinced them that, if
intelligently directed, the personal influence of the Queen, in domestic
politics, might also be rendered not less beneficial to her subjects and
her empire.
But at the meeting in Downing Street which terminated this momentous
crisis, Lord Stanley, whose place was on his resignation promptly filled
by Mr. Gladstone, was the only ex-Minister who had the courage of his
opinions. The Duke of Buccleuch ceased to resist the logic of facts. The
Duke of Wellington, who had wavered very much, finally cast in his lot
with Peel--to the amazement of all his old friends, especially of Mr.
John Wilson Croker. Mr. Croker had been induced by Sir Robert Peel,
whilst on a visit to Drayton Manor in September, 1845, to attack the
Anti-Corn-Law League in the _Quarterly Review_, and, angry at what he
deemed his betrayal, he somewhat peremptorily demanded explanations from
the Duke. His Grace simply wrote to him saying that he felt it his duty
to stand by the Queen. This, in his view, implied that he must support
the Minister who alone seemed able to carry on her Majesty’s Government,
which he (Wellington), as “a retained servant of the Crown,” could not
bring himself to hand over to “the League and the Radicals.”[22] Croker,
however, retorted, in a letter to Sir Henry Hardwicke, that Peel had
done something quite as bad as that: “he has,” wrote the indignant
reviewer, “broken up the old interests, divided the great families, and
commenced just such a revolution as the Noailles and Montmorencies did
in 1789.” But the Iron Duke was proof against all such appeals. He
entrenched himself behind his favourite doctrine that he was primarily a
servant of her Majesty. Her interests, he told the House of Lords, were
of more importance than the opinion of any individual about the Corn Law
or any other law. At the same time, he did not pretend to relish the
situation. As he said--with a rough soldier’s oath--to Lord Beaumont,
“it _is_ a ---- mess, but I must look to the peace of the country and the
Queen.”[23] In private he told Lord Stanley that he was against the
policy which Peel had adopted. In public, however, referring to Peel’s
conversion, he said, in the House of Lords:--“I applauded the conduct of
my right hon. friend. I was delighted with it. It was exactly the course
I should have followed under similar circumstances, and I therefore
determined to stand by him.” The Duke’s strong personal loyalty to his
young Queen had, in fact, first transformed him into a Conservative
Opportunist, and then his own common sense led him to recognise the
necessity for abandoning laws that made bread dear to an enfranchised
but starving populace.
From the sketch now given of the ferment of public opinion, produced by
a war between two powerful classes for political predominance in 1846,
one thing must be self-evident. In view of the authority and influence
of the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords, it was fortunate for
Sir Robert Peel that the quick and generous sympathies of the Queen,
whose tender heart was touched by the sufferings of the poor, were
entirely with him all through this trying time. Her Majesty may
therefore claim some share in the great work that crowned her Minister’s
career with honour--for she strengthened his hands by the confidence she
displayed in his judgment, when his oldest friends forsook him. The
Queen knew well that it was with no light heart, and for no trivial
cause, that Peel abandoned, not the creed--for, like Mr. Huskisson, he
had always been a Free Trader in principle[24]--but the policy of
levying exceptional duties on foreign corn. Much blame has been cast on
Sir Robert Peel for giving up that policy almost immediately after he
had won place and power by pledging himself to maintain it. Certainly,
after the revelations made in the Croker Papers, it is difficult in some
respects to justify his conduct. It is indeed regrettable that those to
whom his memory ought to be precious, have not deemed it expedient to
explain away the instructions which he gave Mr. Croker, as editor of the
_Quarterly_, in September, 1845. M. Guizot[25] has, however, defended
Peel from the charges of base tergiversation which, to the annoyance of
the Queen, were pressed against him in the fierce and fiery invectives
of Mr. Disraeli, and in the passionate but somewhat incoherent harangues
of Lord George Bentinck. As the French statesman was on terms of
intimacy not only with Peel, but with many of his colleagues, his
opinion must be received with respect. According to M. Guizot, all
through 1845 Sir Robert Peel was in a condition of painful and “touching
perplexity” as to his duty in view of the spread of destitution. This
perplexity, M. Guizot contends, was that not of a sordid placeman, but
of “a sincere and conscientious mind carried forward in the direction of
its own inclination by a great flood of public opinion and passion, and
struggling painfully against its adversaries, its friends, and itself.”
When the Queen met Sir Robert Peel with a smile on the 20th of December,
and said “she was glad to be able to ask him to withdraw his
resignation,” she was, according to this theory, really lifting a cloud
of gloom from his anxious head, and congratulating him on the ending of
that state of suspense in which his troubled mind had been painfully
poised. It may be a
[Illustration: THE DEPUTATION FROM LONDON AND DUBLIN CORPORATIONS BEFORE
THE QUEEN. (_See p. 216._)]
coincidence, but in corroboration of M. Guizot’s view we must note that
a sigh of relief echoes through the letter in which the careworn
Minister, six days after he resumed office, informed the Princess Lieven
of the fact. “However unexpected is the turn which affairs have taken,
it is,” he writes, “for the best. I resume power with greater means of
rendering public service than I should have had if I had relinquished
it. But it is a strange dream!”[26]
Yet, if one considers for a moment the great process of political
evolution over which the Queen was from her girlhood called on to
preside, one finds nothing really miraculous in the dream. It was merely
a phase of the beatific vision of a partially enfranchised democracy,
which for the moment dazed all sorts and conditions of men. The late
Lord Dalling, who lived through this stirring epoch of bloodless
revolution, says that “previous to the Reform Bill and the Municipality
Bills, everybody in England _looked up_: the ambitious young man looked
up to the great nobleman for a seat in Parliament; the ambitious
townsman to the chief men in his borough for a place in the Corporation.
Subsequently to these measures, men desirous to elevate their position
_looked down_. The aristocratic tendency of other days had thus become
almost suddenly a democratic one. This democratic tendency, which has
gone on increasing, had made itself already visible at the period when
the Corn Law agitation began. It had been natural until then to consider
this subject relative to the interests of the upper classes; it was now
becoming natural to consider it in relation to the interests of the
lower classes. The question presented itself in a perfectly different
point of view, and politicians found, somewhat to their surprise, that
all former arguments had lost their force. It was this change in the
spirit of the times which had occasioned within such a very few years a
total change in the manner of looking at matters affected by the
Legislature.”[27] Lord Beaconsfield’s apologists sometimes say that what
embittered him against the capitalists of the Anti-Corn-Law League, was
his conviction that though they had the cry of cheap bread on their
lips, the whisper of low wages was at their hearts. The wage-rate, no
doubt, had a potent influence in recasting public opinion at this time.
But it did not recast it in the Disraelitish mould. The working classes
discovered, through the lucid teaching of Cobden, that wages did not
fall because the Corn duty was low, and that they did not rise because
it was high. When they made that discovery, the only argument that could
protect Protection in a reformed Parliament vanished from the minds of
men who were not partisans of the patrician order. Politicians of calm
and enlightened judgment felt, as they felt the air they breathed, that
public opinion in 1845-46 was becoming more and more hostile to the Corn
Laws. The Queen and the _entourage_ of the Court, then greatly under the
influence of Baron Stockmar, who was in constant communication with
Prince Albert, were evidently among the first to become sensitive to the
change, but like Peel, Wellington, and Russell, they frankly
acknowledged what must follow from it.
England was in truth all through 1845 moving fast to that “total and
immediate repeal” of the Corn Laws which Cobden demanded, and the county
gentry, Whig as well as Tory, equally dreaded. When Russell and Peel
were in fact waiting for what Prince Bismarck calls “the psychological
moment” to proclaim the new departure, the “psychological moment” came
with the terrible incident which caused the spectre of famine to stalk
over Ireland. That incident was the failure of the potato crop, and it
removed the question of the Corn Laws far away from the battle-ground of
rival political or economic theories. The problem was no longer one of
maintaining or abandoning a territorial system. At the beginning of 1846
it became a question of deciding whether so many hundred thousand of our
fellow-creatures in Ireland should perish in the agonies of hunger, or
whether, by removing the Corn duty, her Majesty’s Government at one blow
would strike down the barrier that prevented bread from reaching the
lips of a starving peasantry. For the wretched cotters in Ireland the
winter of 1845-46 was, truly, one of extreme privation. “Those who had
savings,” writes Mr. Greg,[28] “lived off them, but among the really
poor there was widespread destitution.” Forced to sell their clothes for
food, the Irish peasantry refused to pay rent, and when rent was
extorted by harsh process of law, retaliatory outrages immediately
followed. The ghastly outlook in Ireland gave the Anti-Corn-Law
agitators welcome leverage for their movement in England, and they
increased their activity every day. Lord John Russell, on the 22nd of
November, 1845, wrote the Edinburgh Letter to the electors of the City
of London, warning them that the Whig Party, in view of the state of the
country, were ready to put an end to a system which had been proved to
be the blight of commerce and the bane of agriculture. This, we have
seen, forced Peel’s hands. As Mr. Bright said to Lord John, whom he met,
after the issue of his manifesto, on the platform of a railway station
in Yorkshire, “Your letter has made total and immediate repeal
inevitable; nothing can save it” (the Corn Law).[29] Peel himself did
not conceal from the Queen that he could perhaps keep the Whigs at bay
for three years, and shortly before his death he told Cobden the same
thing. But neither the monarch nor her Minister dared to procrastinate
in the face of popular destitution, and they felt compelled to obey, no
matter at what cost or sacrifice, the dictates of reason and humanity.
For it was not from Ireland only that the moan of a suffering people
broke upon the ear of a sorrowing Queen. It is true that the venal and
factious press of that country at first attempted to deceive the world
by denying the existence of wide-spreading potato-rot in the island.
With the cries of the dying ringing in their ears, Irish journalists
disputed with each other as to whether there actually was any famine in
the land. But the facts could not long be concealed, either from the
people or from the Queen. At the end of September, 1845, it had to be
generally admitted that the staple food of Ireland had suddenly
disappeared, and that even in England only the northern counties had
escaped from the potato-disease. To such an extent did the rest of
England suffer, that Professor Lindley declared there was hardly a sound
potato to be found in Covent Garden Market.[30] As Lord Beaconsfield has
observed, “This mysterious but universal sickness of a single root
changed the history of the world.”[31]
The Corporations of London and Dublin, on the 3rd of January, 1846,
memorialised the Queen on the subject. Their deputations, who waited on
her at Windsor, received from her a gracious and sympathetic reply to
their statements, which she heard with manifest interest. The
Anti-Corn-Law League felt that it would be good policy to turn the
prevailing distress to account, and it immediately renewed, with
redoubled vigour, its agitation against the duties that kept up the
price of bread. Its leaders organised a series of meetings all over
England and Scotland, and although the Chartists rather held aloof from
them, the Free Trade speakers at last fairly touched the heart of the
nation. Extraordinary scenes of enthusiasm took place at these meetings.
In the last week of 1845, at a meeting in Manchester, it was suggested
to raise a quarter of a million pounds sterling to help the agitation
that must strengthen Peel’s hands,[32] and Mr. John Morley has described
how men jumped up from their seats and cried out, one after the other,
“A thousand pounds for me!” “A thousand pounds for us!” and so on, till
in less than two hours £60,000 were subscribed on the spot.[33] Of
course, all this fervour provoked a movement on the other side. The
Protectionists organised a counter agitation, but it was very badly
managed. The speakers selected were persons, of high rank and ample
fortune. But they lacked sympathy and sense, and this defect was fatal
to their cause. Their favourite argument was that there was no famine at
all to fear, and they revelled in demonstrating to people who had
nothing to eat, that their continued prosperity depended on the
maintenance of a Corn Law which made bread dear. The Duke of Norfolk
covered the Protectionist agitation with odium and ridicule, by
suggesting that if haply here and there a labouring man felt hungry, he
might derive great benefit by taking at night, just before bed-time, a
pinch of curry-powder as a comforting stomachic. The satirists of the
Radical party made affluent use of this egregious imbecility, and the
_Examiner_[34] promptly printed a poem headed “Comfort and Curry,” in
which the Duke and Duchess were cruelly quizzed.
What contributed most to strengthen Sir Robert Peel was the agitation
among the agricultural labourers. It was very difficult to resist such
an appeal as theirs, when they pointed to their gaunt forms, and wan and
haggard faces, and said, “Behold this is the result of the Protection
that is kept up for our benefit.” They held meetings, in the beginning
of 1846, in various parts of the country, and from the speeches at these
we get a vivid idea of the sad condition of the English people at this
time. One gathering may be cited as typical. It was held by some two
hundred starvelings, who met in fear--for the gentry frowned upon the
movement--on a bleak winter’s night, by the light of a clouded moon and
a few flaring candles at a cross-road near Wootton Bassett. The chairman
said he had six shillings a week, on which he
[Illustration: MEETING OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS AT WOOTTON BASSETT.
(_See p. 216._)]
had to keep his wife and two children, and he complained that it was not
half enough for them to live on. Another speaker, one William Burchall,
said, “that though their wages had risen within the last few months a
shilling a week, bread had risen two shillings, so that the difference
was against them. He was past forty years of age, and he could say that
he had never purchased a pound of good slaughtered beef fit to be
carried into the market. As to mutton, he had purchased a little of
that, but never as much as would average a pound a year in forty years.
He knew what veal was, but never had any at all.” Another man said that,
during thirty-nine weeks, ending 10th of June, 1844, he had earned only
£5 19s. 8d., or 3s. 1d. a week; and that but for getting a little land
to rent from Lord Carnarvon, he and his wife and eight children would
have starved. His house rent came to £4 a year, and his bread bill alone
came to from 7s. 7d. to 8s. 8d. a week. Another man said that he had so
little bread to eat that he got weak, and was then discharged as unfit
for service. James Pegler complained he had been “hunted down” under the
Poor Laws, having been, with his wife and family, forced into the
workhouse, and separated from them for eleven months. At last, he was
turned away to get work, and because he went out of the district to find
it, he was taken before the magistrate, charged with desertion, and sent
to prison for a month. “God bless my heart and life,” exclaimed this
poor creature, “I never see’d such a go, to be sure, as how I was
served. I know enough of starvation and misery to make me say ‘God send
us Free Trade.’” At this meeting the labourers declared they were
thankful that Providence had put it out of the power of Government “to
write taxation on the bosom of the streams and rivulets that were so
bountifully spread around their neighbourhood.”[35] They were
unconsciously illustrating the wisdom of Paul Louis Courier, who once
said that the rich are grateful to Providence for what it gives--the
poor, for what it leaves them.
The Queen, it has been reported, was deeply affected by these
demonstrations of suffering. It is said that she will never forget, as
long as she lives, that she began her reign when the wealth and power of
England were waning. She was, on her accession to the throne, the object
of the most chivalrous devotion that any Queen could inspire. Yet, when
crowned, the tears fell from her eyes, as she thought of her own
responsibility in the midst of a nation sinking deeper and deeper into
destitution, and plunging deeper and deeper into debt. Mrs. Browning,
when she read the account of her Majesty’s coronation, gave apt
expression to the popular hopes that were raised by the significance
which the people instinctively attached to this incident of the
ceremony.
“God save thee, weeping Queen!
Thou shalt be well beloved;
The tyrant’s sceptre cannot move
As those pure tears have moved!
The nature in thy eyes we see
Which tyrants cannot own;
The love that guardeth liberties,
Strange blessing on the nation lies,
Whose Sovereign wept;
Yea, wept to wear a crown.”
As if in fulfilment of the hopes which the Queen’s conduct and bearing
since her accession had inspired, a happier day was now dawning. There
was every prospect that content would now gladden the reign that began
in sorrow and in tears. The partial relaxation of the Protective tariff
during the last three years had brought hope to the heart of the
Sovereign, for it was certainly followed by some amelioration in the lot
of her subjects. Her Majesty was profoundly impressed by Sir Robert
Peel’s inferences from the success of this experimental loosening of the
shackles on commerce. She was, therefore, naturally inclined to give the
weight of her artless sympathies and “sweet counsel” to a new departure
in fiscal policy, that promised to “make Plenty smile on the cheek of
Toil.” The opening of the Parliamentary Session of 1846 was, therefore,
to the Queen no mere formal or ordinary ceremony of State. It was, in
her opinion, and in the opinion of the Prince Consort, the initiation of
a “bloodless revolution,” and the closing of a distinct epoch in the
history of Party Government.
[Illustration: DOG’S HEAD.
(_Drawn and Etched by the Prince Consort._)]