REVOLUTION.
At Osborne--Beginnings of Revolution--The Reform Banquets in
Paris--Lola Montes and the King of Bavaria--Downfall of Louis
Philippe’s Government--Flight of the King--Establishment of the
Second Republic--The Queen and the Orleans Family--The Chartist
Movement--Its Secret History--Its Leaders--The Queen Retreats to
Osborne--The Chartist Meeting at Kennington--London in Terror--The
Duke of Wellington’s Precautions--Abortive Risings at Bonner’s
Fields and in Seven Dials--Riots in the Large Towns--Collapse of
Chartism--Ireland and the “Young Irelanders”--The Rebellion of
“’48”--The Battle of the Cabbage Garden--Arrest of Smith O’Brien
and the “Young Ireland” Leaders--Austria and Prussia in
Anarchy--Flight of Metternich--The Berlin Mob and the King--Anxiety
of the English Court--The Queen’s Correspondence with her
Half-Sister--The Anglo-Spanish Quarrel--Sir H. Bulwer Expelled from
Madrid--The Queen’s Indignation at Lord Palmerston--Conversation
between the Queen and Lord John Russell--Palmerston’s Victory--The
“Three Budget” Session--The Anti-Income-Tax Agitation--Blundering
in Finance--“Scenes” in Parliament--Irish and Colonial
Controversies--The Encumbered Estates Act--Repressive
Legislation--Dawn of the Reform Agitation.
During the autumn Session of Parliament, while the Irish Coercion Bill
was under debate, the Queen and her family retired to Osborne. Pleasant
experiments in landscape gardening there formed an agreeable diversion
from the distracting anxieties of foreign politics in London. And truly
by this time affairs on the Continent began to assume a more threatening
aspect than ever. In Switzerland the rebellion of the seven Catholic
cantons of the Sonderbund had been crushed by General Dufour, who
commanded the forces of the other fifteen cantons. The rising was
suppressed before the Cabinets of England, Austria, France, Russia, and
Prussia had time to intervene. But in Italy the popular party, excited
by rumours of Lord Minto’s sympathy with their movement, were stirring
up the people against their Austrian masters. The Pope was growing
afraid of his own diluted Liberalism. France was rapidly becoming
demoralised. Sensational trials in the law courts revealed a shocking
amount of corruption in official circles in Paris. The deficit in the
Budget was greater than had been anticipated. Louis Philippe was accused
of debauching the electorate and the Representative Chamber by bribery;
his quarrel with England, and his futile attempt to win compensatory
alliances elsewhere, destroyed his prestige; the Liberal Party, secretly
encouraged by his enemy, Lord Palmerston, attacked his Government with
every weapon of invective and ridicule; his Ministers had lost the
confidence of the people, and the demand for a wide extension of the
franchise accordingly became loud and deep. To this demand, perfectly
reasonable in itself, the King and his Minister, M. Guizot, offered the
most dogged and infatuated opposition.
The movement in North Italy against Austrian domination also created an
agitation for reforms in the Two Sicilies, to which the King would make
no concessions whatever. The Royal troops, in January, 1848, were beaten
in an attempt to quell a revolt in the island of Sicily, and a futile
compromise was scornfully rejected by the insurgents, who insisted on
nothing less than the Constitution of 1812, and the assembly of a
Parliament at Palermo. Naples in turn became restive, whereupon the
terrified King dismissed his autocratic advisers, formed a Liberal
Ministry, and granted a Constitution, with an amnesty, on the 12th of
February. Even Lord Minto, Palmerston’s unofficial emissary to “Young
Italy,” failed to persuade the Sicilians to accept it. But these
concessions, barren as they were, forced the hands of the Pope and of
the rulers of Tuscany and Sardinia, who in turn granted Constitutions.
In fact, the tide of revolution was rising fast, and threatened to sweep
everything before it in the Italian Peninsula.
Opinions differ as to what was the spark that lit the conflagration
which made 1848 the _annus mirabilis_ of Revolution. It has been
customary to say it was the stupid opposition of Louis Philippe and M.
Guizot to the Reform banquets in France, which were fixed for the 22nd
of February. Lord Malmesbury, however, traces the origin of the outbreak
to the popular disturbances in Munich early in the month. The people of
Munich, it seems, were incensed against the King, who had dismissed his
Prime Minister, Prince Wallenstein, for advising him to expel his
mistress, Lola Montes, from Bavaria after her infamous influence had
become paramount in the Royal councils.[88] Lola Montes had a most
extraordinary career. She first appeared in society in London in Lord
Malmesbury’s house, where she sang ballads--Spanish ballads--and was
spoken of as the widow of a certain Don Diego Leon, who had been shot by
the Carlists. His lordship, an easy, good-natured man, had made her
acquaintance in a railway carriage coming up from Southampton, and that
was the story she had told him. She was permitted to sell laces, veils,
trinkets, and “curios” to Lord Malmesbury’s guests at his private
concerts, so that she might earn a little money, while trying to dispose
of some
[Illustration: THE REVOLUTION IN PARIS: CROWDS SINGING “MOURIR POUR LA
PATRIE.”]
“property,” about which there was much mystery. Then she went on the
stage at the Opera House as a dancer, but was a failure. It ultimately
turned out that she was a rank impostor, for instead of being the widow
of a Spanish Don, she was a “Spaniard” from Cork, who had married an
Irish officer called James, in the Company’s service in India. It was
after her failure at the Opera House that she captivated the King of
Bavaria, who used to permit her to review the Royal army, and amuse him
by slashing the faces of his veteran generals with her riding-whip, when
their troops failed to reach her standard of smartness. On the 19th of
February she was driven from Munich--the troops refusing to fire on the
people. Her house was sacked, and her collection of pictures destroyed.
M. Guizot, on the 21st of February, prohibited the Reform banquet in
Paris. On Tuesday the 22nd the National Guard had revolted, and the mob
from behind barricades attacked the troops. On Wednesday not one-tenth
of the National Guards answered the roll-call. The Government was
paralysed with panic; Ministers resigned, and M. Odillon Barrot
impeached M. Guizot. The insurrection rapidly made headway, and on the
24th Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his son, the Comte de Paris,
and fled from his capital.
[Illustration: LANDING OF LOUIS PHILIPPE AT NEWHAVEN.]
As soon as the Royal Family had left the Tuileries, the mob gutted the
Palace, smashing everything in it but the throne, which they carried
through the streets, amidst shrieks of derision. M. Lamartine formed a
Provisional Government, which proclaimed a Republic. The King and Queen,
it seems, made their way to Dreux, where, thanks to a friendly farmer,
they procured disguises. After wandering to Trouville and Honfleur, they
ultimately embarked in a fishing-boat, and were picked up by the
Southampton steamer, _Express_, which had been hovering off Havre to
meet the fugitives. On the 3rd of March, about midnight, his Majesty,
under the name of “Mr. Smith,” was shivering in a little public-house at
Newhaven, called the “Bridge Inn.” On the 4th they reached London, and
immediately drove to Claremont. Other members of the Royal Family of
France arrived by devious ways, after much variety of perilous
adventure, and were received by the Queen with a generous hospitality,
the warmth of which was indeed far from pleasing to the English people.
England had neither forgotten nor forgiven the hostile duplicity of
Louis-Philippe’s foreign policy, and even Prince Albert had to beg her
Majesty--whose heart has always been easily touched by the spectacle of
sorrow or misfortune--to moderate her expression of sympathy for the
dethroned monarch. In the House of Commons some of the Radicals, alarmed
at the Ministerial proposals to increase the military expenditure of the
country, professed to see in these courtly demonstrations of compassion
additional proofs of hostile designs, on the part of England, against
the French Republic. Cobden, in a letter to his friend, Mr. George
Combe, of Edinburgh, said he dreaded the revival of the Treaty of
Vienna, for he suspected that the Court and the aristocracy were eager
to make war on the Republic. So far as Prince Albert was concerned this,
as we have seen, was an unjust suspicion. But it was equally unjust to
the Queen. “We do everything we can for the poor family,” she wrote to
King Leopold, “who are indeed sorely to be pitied. But you will
naturally understand that we cannot make common cause with them, and
cannot take a hostile position to the new state of things in
France.”[89] In truth, Louis Philippe--who complained to the Queen that
Palmerston’s intrigues with the Liberals in France had upset his
Government--deserved his fate. The outbreak which followed the foolish
prohibition of the Reform banquet was only that of a turbulent mob. The
King had a large and loyal army at his back, and the proverbial “whiff
of grapeshot” would at the outset have quelled the rising. Louis
Philippe, however, lacked the courage to defend his crown, and his
flight transformed a riot into a revolution. At the same time the French
people acquiesced in the Revolution of ’48 for various reasons, which
have been very fairly stated by two of the shrewdest observers of the
day, Sir Robert Peel and M. Alexis de Tocqueville. When Mr. Hume crossed
the floor of the House of Commons one evening, and carried the news of
Louis Philippe’s fall to Peel, the latter whispered to Hume:--“This
comes of trying to govern the country through a narrow representation in
Parliament, without regarding the wishes of those outside. It is what
the Party behind me wanted me to do in the matter of the Corn Laws, and
I would not do it.”[90] M. de Tocqueville, three weeks before the
Revolution, predicted the catastrophe in a speech in the Chamber, in
which he warned the Government that it was trembling on a volcano of
Socialism.[91] In a letter to Mr. Senior he says that the real cause of
the Revolution was “the detestable spirit which animated the Government
during this long reign; a spirit of trickery, of baseness, and of
bribery, which has enervated and degraded the middle classes, destroyed
their public spirit, and filled them with a selfishness so blind as to
induce them to separate their interests entirely from those of the lower
classes, from whence they sprang,” who were thus delivered over to the
quacks of Communism, and the tyranny of ideas, destructive not merely of
ministries and dynasties, but of moral order and civil society.[92] An
elected legislature, springing from a narrow franchise, and a strong
centralised Government, were both manipulated for dynastic, as
distinguished from national, purposes, by a selfish monarch, who had not
the courage to defend his throne. The vast increase in material wealth
which Louis Philippe’s reign brought to France, held as it was by a
limited class, who had forfeited the respect of the nation, failed in
these circumstances to avert the calamity that gave birth to the Second
Republic.
England, more fortunate than France, was but lightly touched by the edge
of the Revolutionary cyclone. It caused a few Chartist riots in Great
Britain, and the rising of the Nationalist Party in Ireland, headed by
Mr. Smith O’Brien.
On the 6th of March, whilst the Budget controversy was raging in the
House of Commons, Mr. Cochrane, a defeated candidate for the
representation of Westminster, organised a popular demonstration against
the proposal to increase the Income Tax. A misguided mob, who had no
incomes to tax, converted the meeting into a riot in Trafalgar Square,
which the police suppressed. On the 5th of March Glasgow was surprised
by a mob of unemployed workmen, and it took three days ere the police
and the military forces, reinforced by special constables, restored
order. Riots were also suppressed in Edinburgh, Manchester, and
Newcastle. In London, however, the Chartists threatened to assemble on
Kennington Common 150,000 men. Under the leadership of Feargus O’Connor
they were to march to Westminster, ostensibly for the purpose of
presenting to the House of Commons a monster petition, explaining their
grievances, and demanding reform.
The grievance of the Chartists was really the grievance of the working
classes. Their alliance and support enabled the middle classes to wring
from the Crown and the Peers the Reform Bill of 1832. But the middle
class alone profited by that Bill, which transferred political power
from the aristocracy to the shopocracy, leaving the artisans and manual
toilers unenfranchised. Why their persistent agitation for political
privileges since 1832 should have led people to believe that revolution
was impending in 1848, has been considered a mystery, especially as the
outbreak on Kennington Common was a _fiasco_. Yet there was good reason
for this panic. From Lord Grey’s correspondence it is now clear that the
country was on the brink of civil war in 1831, when the King resisted
Reform. But from 1831 to 1848, the resistance to an extension of the
franchise had come not from the Crown, but from the House of Commons.
When, however, the House of Commons obstructs progress in England--and
it is apt to do so whenever it gets the chance--the situation becomes
serious. Obstruction from the Sovereign, if unreasonable and malignant,
can always be met by the power of the Commons to stop supplies.
Obstruction by the Upper House can be met by the power of the Crown to
create new Peers. For obstruction by the House of Commons,
[Illustration: BRIDGE AND CASTLE, NEWPORT, MON.]
however, it was felt that there was no real remedy but argument or
revolution--argument if the people were comfortable and patient,
revolution if they were hungry and impatient.
The Chartist organisation of 1839--which collapsed with the Newport
riots--was really a gigantic secret society. It was organised by Major
Beniowski, a Polish teacher of mnemonics, three working men--Cardo, a
shoemaker, Warden, a gardener, one Westropp (occupation unknown)--and a
mysterious individual, said to be a foreign police spy. On a given hour,
on a given day, twenty cities were to be burned to the ground, and a
reign of terror was to be inaugurated. The late Mr. David Urquhart
claimed to have discovered the conspiracy, and to have broken it up by
demonstrating to some of the leading workmen implicated that two of its
chiefs were Russian agents, who had some time before planned a similar
outbreak in Greece. Suspecting they were being used as tools of a
Foreign Power, the English conspirators countermanded the order for a
simultaneous rising, and thus it came to pass that the outbreak in
Wales, where Beniowski was in command, was the sole result of the
movement. There is good reason to believe that the Chartists were
working
[Illustration: JOSEPH STURGE.]
with Continental revolutionists, but it must not be forgotten that Mr.
Urquhart suffered from a monomania, which took the odd form that
everybody who differed from him was a Russian spy.[93] The political
position of the Chartists was rather curious. The Tories were the only
Party who showed them any sympathy, for they shared their antagonism to
the Reform settlement of 1832, which was essentially a Whig settlement.
Then the Chartists were always suspicious of the Free Trade movement as
a capitalists’ agitation, the real object of which was not to give the
people cheap bread, but to get them to work for low wages on the
strength of reducing the price of food. Mr. Cobden’s friends often
complained that the Anti-Corn-Law League meetings were broken up by
Chartist roughs, who were incited to violence by Tory Protectionists.
After the collapse of the conspiracy at Newport, the Chartists formed a
purely political organisation, whose objects were admirably described in
the able and moderate speech in which Mr. Sharman Crawford, in 1842,
attempted, without success, to pledge the House of Commons to take the
People’s Charter into consideration. The motion was contemptuously
rejected by 226 to 67. The Chartists were then divided into two
parties--the London Convention, representing the “physical force”
Chartists, and the smaller Birmingham Convention, identified with Mr.
Joseph Sturge. He aimed at reconstructing the alliance between the
working and middle classes, that had carried Parliamentary Reform in
1832, and at starting an agitation for an extension of the Franchise,
and for triennial Parliaments. Both factions joined in bringing the
pressure of agitation on Parliament in 1848, an agitation which it now
seems was quite peaceful in its intent, though the revolutionary
excitement in France naturally induced the well-to-do classes to see in
it an anarchical conspiracy. The first check the Chartists received was
the intimation that their meeting and their procession would be
prohibited because both were likely to lead to disturbances.
It is amusing to look back now on the panic that smote the upper and
middle classes at this time. On Friday, the 7th of April, Lord Campbell
wrote to his brother, declaring that “many people believe that by Monday
we shall be under a Provisional Government.” It is only fair to say that
the Duke of Wellington scoffed at all these alarmist rumours--in fact,
he told Lady Jersey that there was no reason to be alarmed, and he
advised ladies who consulted him to drive about as usual.[94] “I
suppose,” writes Lord Campbell again, “we shall all fly to Hartrigge--if
I can escape in disguise.” On the 9th of April Campbell again
writes:--“(Yesterday) we were considering in the Cabinet how the
Chartists should be dealt with, and when it was determined that the
procession should be stopped after it had moved, we agreed that the
particular place where it should be stopped was purely a military
question. The Duke of Wellington was requested to come to us, which he
did very readily. We had then a regular council of war, as upon the eve
of a great battle. We examined maps and returns and information of the
movements of the enemy. After long deliberation, plans of attack and
defence were formed to meet every contingency. The quickness,
intelligence, and decision which the Duke displayed were very striking,
and he inspired us all with perfect confidence by the dispositions which
he prescribed. There are now above 7,000 regular troops in London,
besides a train of artillery. The special constables are, as you will
see, countless. We are most afraid of disturbances after the procession
is dispersed, and of the town being set fire to in the night.” This was
a memorable Cabinet meeting, and Macaulay said he should remember it to
his dying day.[95]
The demonstration, which frightened everybody except the Duke of
Wellington, took place on Monday, the 10th of April--a hot spring
morning favouring the objects of the agitators. The delegates first of
all met in convention at 9 a.m. in the Literary and Scientific
Institution, John Street, Fitzroy Square, and received an intimation
from the Commissioners of Police that the “Monster” Petition might be
taken to the House of Commons, but that no procession would be allowed
to accompany it. Mr. Feargus O’Connor gave the delegates prudent and
pacific advice, but they resolved to adjourn to Kennington Common, hold
their meeting, and then proceed in procession with the petition to
Westminster in spite of all opposition.
Gradually the ever-increasing mass of agitators marched on, crossing the
Thames at Blackfriars Bridge, and reaching Kennington Common at 11.30
a.m. A communication was then made to Mr. O’Connor by the police
authorities, the result of which was that a compromise was arrived at.
Mr. Mayne, the Commissioner of Police, agreed to permit the prohibited
meeting to be held, and Mr. O’Connor agreed to abandon the idea of a
procession, and to pass his word that the demonstration would be
conducted in an orderly manner. The authorities had arranged to block
the bridges with police and, if need be, troops. Even “physical force”
Chartists like Mr. Ernest Jones could only accept the situation, whilst
regretting that the meeting had not been held on the other side of the
river, in which case they would not have had to recross the bridges to
march on the House of Commons. Mr. Jones admitted, however, that they
were not prepared to fight the authorities, and he, too, advised the
meeting to disperse peacefully. Spasmodic outbreaks of horseplay and
demonstrations of displeasure from isolated groups of agitators took
place. A man called Spurr, supported by Mr. Cuffey, insisted on going on
with the procession until they were stopped, whereupon they could
withdraw the petition on the ground that they had met with illegal
resistance.
During the day the streets presented the appearance of a holiday. The
police were withdrawn from their beats, and concentrated on special
points, the town being patrolled by special constables--among whom, by
the way, Prince Charles Louis Bonaparte, afterwards Napoleon III., was
enrolled--who wore white bands on their arms, and carried truncheons as
emblems of authority. These patriotic citizens were mercilessly
ridiculed by their ungrateful fellow-citizens, who passed rude remarks
on their awkward appearance and their incongruities of stature and
costume. People were extremely unfeeling in their comments on the
appearance of certain “specials” who wore spectacles or eyeglasses, and
who carried umbrellas in addition to their staves. All the public
buildings were garrisoned with troops; the clerks in the public offices
formed special corps of defence, and many gentlemen of rank brought up
their gamekeepers from the country, armed them, and prepared their
mansions for a regular siege.[96] Trafalgar Square was occupied by 200
police. The parks were closed; a corporal’s guard of the Household
Troops held each entrance to them, and patrols of the Guards
[Illustration: FEARGUS O’CONNOR.]
marched up and down the Mall. Apsley House was barricaded, and Mr.
Carlyle says Piccadilly was almost deserted, the Green Park shut, “even
the footpaths of it;” and “in the inside stood a score of mounted
Guardsmen, privately drawn up under the arch--dreadful cold, I daresay.
For the rest, not a single fashionable carriage was in the street, not a
private vehicle, but, I think, two surgeons’ broughams all the way to
Egyptian Hall, omnibuses running, a few street carts, even a mud-cart or
two; nothing else; the flag pavements also
[Illustration: THE CHARTIST DEMONSTRATION ON KENNINGTON COMMON.]
nearly vacant, not a fifth of the usual population there, and those also
of the strictly business kind.”[97] Buckingham Palace was protected by a
strong force under arms at Wellington Barracks, ready to march on it the
moment it was threatened. The Bank was fortified by a company of Sappers
and Miners, who built on the roof platforms for cannon, and guarded them
with loopholed breastworks of sandbags, &c., so that a mob could be
swept away by grapeshot at a moment’s notice. Special constables,
organised by Aldermen of the wards, guarded the City. Hardly a single
red-coat, however, was to be seen anywhere, but at various strategic
points troops were in readiness, to be let loose if the mob showed signs
of fighting. There was a fight between the police and the mob at
Blackfriars Bridge. But the police who guarded Waterloo Bridge were able
to amuse themselves as they pleased. No Chartists came near it--the
bridge being guarded by something much more formidable to them than
troops, namely, the man who kept the toll-bar.
When the events of the 18th ended with the contemptuous treatment which
the House of Commons gave to the Chartist petition, two things happened.
The upper middle class burst into a chorus of triumph over their
successful suppression of anarchy. The working classes who joined the
Chartist movement were flung into the arms of the “physical force
party,” who pointed to the failure of the petition and the
demonstration, as a proof that the methods of agitation favoured by Mr.
Sturge and the Birmingham Convention were futile. It is important to
keep these facts in view, for the transformation of the Chartist
movement into a movement of violence after the 10th of April, has led
many writers to assume that the peaceful agitation which culminated in
the Kennington meeting was truly a revolutionary conspiracy, which was
put down by the courageous demonstration made by the Party of Order. The
facts that the meeting at Kennington was unarmed, that its numbers, so
far from reaching 100,000, did not exceed 20,000, that the existence of
a toll-bar on one of the bridges was sufficient to determine the
direction which the “revolutionary” procession should take, and, above
all, the fact that the meeting was held on the Surrey side of the river,
thus leaving the police and troops in complete command of the bridges in
rear of the Chartists--all indicate that up to the 10th there was no
serious idea of appealing to arms. It was absurd to argue that the event
was dwarfed by the preparations which were made to meet it, for these
preparations were kept secret. On the other hand, a good effect was
subsequently produced by these preparations, for they showed that the
Party of Order, though quite willing to give Mr. Feargus O’Connor full
liberty to play the braggart and the fool, were also determined to
maintain the law against any mob of law-breakers, however strong or
however turbulent. They gave agitators fair warning that in England, at
least, the resources of civilisation against anarchy were by no means
exhausted. The Queen had with some hesitation yielded to the advice of
the Cabinet, and had removed the Court to Osborne during this anxious
period. But she and Prince Albert both kept a vigilant eye on events as
they unfolded themselves in the metropolis. Writing to King Leopold on
the 11th of April, she says:--“Thank God, the Chartist meeting and
procession have turned out a complete failure! The loyalty of the people
at large has been very striking, and their indignation at their peace
being interfered with by such wanton and worthless men immense.”[98]
Albany Fonblanque had the fairness to admit that it was “clear that the
bulk of the London Chartists have no disposition to commit themselves to
the chances of involving it in outrage;”[99] and Mr. Cobden says, in one
of his letters:--“In my opinion the Government and the newspapers have
made too much fuss about it (the Chartist rising).”[100]
The two men who got and deserved most credit for the happy termination
of the Chartist meeting were Sir George Grey, the Home Secretary, and
the Duke of Wellington, whose opinions on the affair had the greatest
weight with the Queen. On the 11th of April, when all was quiet, the
Duke of Wellington met Lord Campbell, and the following conversation
took place between them:--“I went up to him,” writes Lord Campbell, “and
said, ‘Well, Duke, it has all turned out as you foretold.’ _Duke_--‘Oh,
yes, I was sure of it, and I never showed a soldier or a musket. But I
was ready. I could have stopped them wherever you liked, and if they had
been armed it would have been all the same.’ _Campbell_--‘They say they
are to meet next on the north side of the town, and avoid the bridges.’
_Duke_--‘Every street can be made a bridge. I can stop them anywhere.’
_Campbell_--‘If your Grace had commanded Paris on the 25th of February,
Louis Philippe would still have been on the throne.’ _Duke_--‘It would
have been an easy matter. I should have made the Tuileries secure, and
have kept my communications open.’ Then, _more suo_, laying hold of my
arm, and speaking very loud, and pointing with his finger, he
added--‘Always keep your communications open, and you need have nothing
to fear’”[101]
When the _fiasco_ of the 10th of April put the Chartist organisation
under the control of the “physical force” party, the first step was
initiated by Mr. Ernest Jones in the National Convention. It was to
reconstruct the whole Chartist body as a secret society, on the pattern
of the United Irishmen. Moderate men were removed from the Executive
Council, and agitators like Dr. Macdowall, who had taken a prominent
part in the troubles of ’39 and ’42, were elected in their places. The
change in their methods was first illustrated by the sudden assemblage,
without warning, of a vast meeting of 80,000 men on Clerkenwell Green
and Stepney Green, on the evening of the 29th of May, when processions
from all parts of London also moved by converging routes to Smithfield,
and then marched along Holborn, Oxford Street, Pall Mall, the Strand,
Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, to Finsbury Square, where they dispersed.
This was a demonstration arranged to test the working of the new secret
organisation. Rifles and pikes began to appear in the lodgings of the
Chartists. An alliance was formed with some of the turbulent leaders of
the “Young Ireland” Party. Spies were swarming in every city, and a
[Illustration: CHARTIST AGITATION: THE POLICE FORCE ON BONNER’S FIELDS.
(_Reduced, by permission, after the Engraving in “The Illustrated London
News.”_)]
Secret Committee, consisting of seven men, named Cuffey, Ritchie, Lacey,
Fay, Rose, Mullins, and a man named Powell, _alias_ Johnson, who, though
pretending to be a workman, was really a professional pedestrian, known
in sporting public-houses as the “Welsh Nurse,” began to plot a regular
insurrection. Powell joined the Committee to betray it, and his counsels
breathed of fire and slaughter. Ernest Jones had by this time been
imprisoned for proclaiming to a meeting that the green flag would soon
wave over Downing Street; and another man had also been imprisoned--one
Williams--because in a speech he had insinuated that the Government was
brutalising the people by letting the police beat them with truncheons,
when they came into collision with Chartist meetings on Clerkenwell
Green. Whit Monday, the 12th of June, was the day fixed on for the
Revolution, and on that day the Metropolitan branches of the Society
were to assemble on Blackheath and Bishop Bonner’s Fields--meetings
which were prohibited by the police as illegal. When warrants were
issued for the arrest of Macdowall and the leaders, the Blackheath
meeting was abandoned, and orders were given to concentrate a Chartist
gathering on Bonner’s Fields, so as to divert a large police force from
the
[Illustration: WILLIAM SMITH O’BRIEN.]
City. On the evening of the 12th the Chartists resolved to abandon the
meeting on Bonner’s Fields, not because the authorities at Scotland Yard
prohibited it, but because it was raining, comforting themselves with
the reflection that they had detained a large force of police and troops
there to watch them. They were then in hopes, as Rose, one of the
leaders, said to Mr. Frost, that in London by that time “they are at it
hammer and tongs.”[102] But when the time came for striking, the
conspirators were unprepared, and nothing was done. Some of the
leaders--like Cuffey--now felt that it was hopeless to attempt an armed
revolt, yet the forces behind them were too strong to be controlled, and
they were compelled to go on when they would have drawn back. They
accordingly fixed the 15th of August for the grand effort; but on that
day, when waiting in the “Orange Tree” public-house, in Orange Street,
Bloomsbury, they were suddenly arrested by a small body of armed police.
“A sword,” writes Mr. Frost, “was found under the coat of one, and the
head of a pike, made to screw into a socket, under that of another. One
had a pair of pistols in his pocket, and the fourth was provided with a
rusty bayonet, fastened on the end of a stick. Some were without other
weapons than shoemakers’ knives. A pike, which no one would own, was
found under a bench.”
At this moment groups of surly-looking labourers were lounging in the
streets and at the bars of public-houses in the Seven Dials. Suddenly a
man with haggard eyes and a face pale with fear was seen to rush into
the midst of a group at the corner of St. Andrew’s Street, and whisper a
few hurried words to a labourer, who with a pickaxe was fumbling about a
loose stone in the causeway. He was then seen darting from group to
group, from public-house to public-house, and very soon the police began
to hover in the distance. In a few minutes the groups of loungers had
almost entirely disappeared, and the public-houses were mysteriously
emptied. There is reason to believe that the flag of revolution was to
have been first raised in the Seven Dials, where the first barricades
were to have been flung up, the spot, says Mr. Frost, who was a leading
Chartist, being chosen “on account of its contiguity to Whitehall, and
the facilities offered by its narrow streets, radiating in so many
directions from a common centre, for a rapid advance.” The pale-faced
man, whose appearance was the signal for the dispersal of the loungers
round the Seven Dials, was an emissary from the “Orange Tree,” bringing
tidings of the arrests there. Cuffey, Ritchie, Lacey, and Fay were tried
for sedition, and sentenced to transportation for life. Mullins received
a long term of imprisonment. Powell, the spy, instead of a handsome
reward, only got a free passage to Australia, where, being an idle
fellow, he did not remain long. What became of him is not known. The
other spy, a constable named Mullins, was subsequently dismissed from
the police force for misconduct, and after a career of crime was hanged
for murdering an old woman called Elmsley, at Hackney, for the sake of a
few pounds she had in her house. The Chartist organisation broke up. Its
members, finding that the working classes alone could effect nothing,
sensibly reverted to the programme of Mr. Sturge and the Birmingham
Convention. They accordingly joined the Parliamentary Reform
Association, which was launched into existence by the middle-class
Radicals, under the auspices of Mr. Joseph Hume and his political
associates.
Writing to Baron Stockmar about the collapse of the Chartist meeting at
Kennington, Prince Albert says, in one of his letters--“I hope this will
read with advantage on the Continent. Ireland still looks dangerous.” It
had looked so “dangerous” at the end of 1847 that its condition,
together with the commercial panic in England, had caused Parliament to
be summoned in the November of that year. Now the country, under the
misguidance of the “Young Irelanders,” was drifting into civil war.
It is not difficult to be generous to a “lost cause,” and in the “Young
Ireland” movement, which ended in the disaster of ’48, there is much
that enlists the sympathies of liberal-minded liberty-loving men. It
sprang from a reaction among the youth of the educated and literary
classes, against the coarse vulgarity of O’Connell’s methods of
agitation. His favourite weapon was race-hatred. This he roused by
passionate appeals to bitter memories of the past, when “the base,
bloody, and brutal Saxon” trod the Celt under foot, tortured his
priests, desecrated his altars, and proscribed his faith. The “Young
Irelanders,” especially after Catholic Emancipation, felt that no
practical good was done to the rack-rented peasantry by denunciations of
Cromwell’s tyranny. Moving diatribes against Elizabethan oppression, in
their opinion, did still less to reform the bad government, the weak
executive, and alien bureaucracy of Ireland in the Victorian era.
O’Connell’s aim was to pit the Celtic Catholics against the Protestant
Anglo-Irish. The “Young Ireland” Party aimed at uniting all Irish
patriots, irrespective of creed or caste, in a purely political and
secular movement for emancipating the peasantry from landlordism, and
Ireland from English government. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy,[103] one of
the founders of the movement, says that its leaders favoured
constitutional agitation, but, if compelled to adopt stronger measures,
they were ready to accept the arbitrament of the sword. Their mistake
lay in committing themselves to this latter part of their programme,
without possessing the means of carrying it out. When they did that,
success could alone distinguish their policy from treason.
The “Young Irelanders” were led by Thomas Osborne Davis, Charles Gavan
Duffy, John Blake Dillon, and several other young men of enthusiasm and
talent, and their movement was literary as well as political. They
became an organised party in 1842, when the _Nation_ newspaper was
started, under Duffy’s editorship--a paper, says the late Mr. P. J.
Smyth,[104] which was “filled with a spirit of intense nationality.” Its
articles, political and historical, its ballads and lyrics, both
pathetic and humorous, were all devoted to glorify the achievements of
Irishmen in the past, or give voice to their passions, aspirations, and
demands in the present. All hereditary feuds, the “Young Irelanders”
said, must be forgotten. Ireland was to be Irish--not Anglo-Irish or
Celtic. All men who loved her were to be ranked as Irishmen. Hereditary
party spirit they regarded, wrote Sir C. Gavan Duffy, as an _ignis
fatuus_ in a country “where the lineal descendants of the O’Neils,
O’Briens, and O’Connors were Ministers, and where Philpot Curran, Wolfe
Tone, and Theobald Mathew sprang from Cromwellian soldiers.” The
agitators were a little hazy and vague and self-contradictory as to the
precise amount of
[Illustration: CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY (1848).]
allegiance which they would yield to the Imperial Government; and Davis,
in his correspondence with Daniel Owen Maddyn, rails as much at English
_ideas_--English Utilitarianism, Materialism, and “Sensualism”--as at
the supremacy of the Pope or Protestant ascendency. Just before the
outbreak of ’48, too, Mr. Smith O’Brien’s avowed object, as leader of
the “Young Irelanders,” was to set up in Ireland an independent
Republic. On the land question, however, they were sound and moderate.
They demanded security of tenure, fair rents, free sale of tenant-right,
and reasonable facilities for the natural growth of peasant
proprietors. But, said they in their manifesto in the _Nation_, “we are
not ready to jump into a servile war for this purpose,” and, as Mr. P.
J. Smyth has observed, they taught that “expropriation, if it could be
realised, would be disastrous.” Davis, who was poet-laureate of the
movement, was a Protestant of Welsh descent, Duffy and Dillon were
Catholics.
“Young Ireland” soon fell out with O’Connell and the patriots of
Conciliation Hall. O’Connell’s organ, the _Pilot_, attacked the _Nation_
for its
[Illustration: THE IRISH REBELLION OF 1848: FORGING PIKES.]
atheism. The _Nation_ retorted that O’Connell betrayed Ireland by
abandoning the “divine right of Revolution” for Whig alliances. In 1845
Davis died, and the leadership of the Party passed into the hands of
William Smith O’Brien, his lieutenants being John Mitchel and John
Martin. All three were Protestants. Mr. Smith O’Brien was descended from
King Brian Borhoimè--who played the part of Alfred the Great in Irish
history. A brother of Lord Inchiquin, he was an aristocrat and a Tory,
with frigid manners, and a high and chivalrous sense of honour. He had
drifted into the “Young Ireland” Party, firstly, because fourteen years’
experience of the Imperial Parliament convinced him that it could not
legislate wisely for Ireland, and, secondly, because he despaired of any
other Party obtaining for Ireland the only Government that could lift
her to her place among the nations. As a speaker he was cold, logical,
and stilted. But he had a severe and ascetic sense of public duty, and
his fidelity and truthfulness secured for him the unswerving loyalty of
his followers.
It was in 1847 that “Young Ireland” first came into collision with the
authorities. John Mitchel, whose violent teaching was abhorred by
O’Brien, virtually seceded from the Party represented by the _Nation_.
He had started the _United Irishman_, and he made it a venomous advocate
of Revolution. The outbreak in Paris, in 1848, put the game in Mitchel’s
hands. The populace imagined that no government could stand against a
mob. “Confederate” Clubs sprang up like mushrooms, and Mitchel became so
reckless in his appeals to force that the Government were compelled to
“gag” him. He was arrested and sentenced to fourteen years’
transportation for treason-felony, on the 20th of May, 1848. O’Brien and
Meagher, who had been prosecuted in March, escaped because the juries
disagreed.
Dr. Kevin Izod O’Doherty and Mr. D’Alton Williams, a fortnight after
Mitchel’s condemnation, brought out a new organ, the _Irish Tribune_,
and Martin, “honest John Martin,” as he was called, followed up with the
_Felon_, a paper whose teachings were so abominably bloodthirsty that
Albany Fonblanque, in the _Examiner_, suggested it ought to be called
the _Fiend_.[105] The sole defence for a truculence, which can be
paralleled only by the ravings of Marat, is that the “Young Irelanders”
had been goaded to madness by the terrible scenes of the famine, and the
apparent impotence of the English Government either to prevent or cope
with that hideous calamity. Five weeks after the _Felon_ appeared,
Martin, Williams, O’Doherty, and Duffy were arrested. The Habeas Corpus
Act was suspended, and warrants were out against Mr. Smith O’Brien and
Meagher (pronounced Maär), the latter the fiercest and most eloquent of
their orators. They felt they had now gone too far to draw back, though
it would have been easy for them to do so by simply letting themselves
be arrested. They considered it their duty to offer to head a rebellion
before they were captured; but when they appealed to the people to rise,
they found that the peasants hardly knew who they were. They were looked
on askance as the men who had quarrelled with O’Connell, and were
denounced by the priests. Even if the peasants had been willing, famine
had left them physically unfit for battle. Why dwell on the story of the
wretched _fiasco_ that was called the “rebellion” of ’48? The small band
of patriots who joined the standards of the insurgents had few
arms--pikes, old guns, and scythes were their chief weapons. They had
no commissariat, no generals, and no plan of campaign. A barricade,
commanded by Dillon, was “rushed” at Killenaule. At Ballingarry a party
under Mr. Smith O’Brien, hailed by his followers as “King of Munster,”
on the 26th of July besieged six policemen, who had taken refuge in a
farmhouse belonging to a widow called Cormack. The police refused to
surrender, and on the 29th Mr. O’Brien, with reinforcements, again
appeared. Another party of policemen came on the scene. A few shots were
exchanged, and then the insurgents tried to fire the building. “The
widow Cormack, whose five children were in the house,” writes Mr. A. M.
Sullivan,[106] “rushed to the rebel chief, flung herself on her knees,
and asked him if he was going to stain his name and cause by an act so
barbarous as the destruction of her little ones.” Mr. O’Brien ordered
the combustibles to be flung aside, and his followers, galled by the
fire from the improvised fortalice, and disgusted by his
soft-heartedness, beat a hasty retreat. The leader of the insurrection,
like Scott’s Highland Chieftain, “took to the hills, and became a broken
man.” On the 5th of August he walked from his mountain refuge to Thurles
Railway Station. When taking a ticket for Limerick, a guard named Hulme
recognised and arrested him. With Meagher, Leine, and O’Donoghue, who
were captured in the same locality, he was lodged in Kilmainham Gaol.
O’Brien and his comrades were tried at Clonmel on the 21st of September,
and sentenced to death. This was subsequently commuted to transportation
for life, whereupon the condemned men protested that the commutation was
_ultra vires_ on the part of the Queen, and that they had a legal right
to be “hanged, drawn, and quartered,” or set free! The protest was of no
avail, for Parliament quickly passed a special Act, empowering the Crown
to commute sentences of high treason. Dillon, O’Gorman, and O’Doherty
escaped to America. Duffy was thrice brought to trial, but his advocate,
Mr. Butt, thrice baffled his prosecutors. Mr. Smith O’Brien and his
companions were set free in Van Diemen’s Land, on parole. Subsequently
they were allowed to return home, but Mr. O’Brien died in retirement,
never again taking part in public life. Hundreds of able and promising
young men fled from the country, and Ireland suffered not only by the
exile, enforced or voluntary, of the most public-spirited men in her
governing middle class, but from the reaction and the prostration that
always follow an abortive revolution.
Though the progress of the Revolutionary movement in England, Ireland,
and France engrossed the interests of the Queen and Prince Albert, it
was impossible for them to be indifferent to its progress in other
countries, notably in Germany, where it took the form of a movement in
favour of National Unity. Ferdinand I., a monarch weak alike in body and
mind, at this time sat on the throne of Austria. He was, however, little
better than the tool of Prince Metternich, the energetic and
unscrupulous Minister in whom Absolutism was incarnate. After the fall
of Louis Philippe, turbulent Viennese mobs demanded constitutional
reforms in Austria. On the 13th of March, the populace sacked
Metternich’s Palace, in Vienna, and the Minister himself, disheartened
on finding that his Imperial master shrank from defending his
prerogatives, fled from the capital in disguise. “If emperors disappear,
it is never till they have come to despair of themselves,” was the
mocking observation with which Metternich placed his resignation in the
hands of the Archduke Charles. Hungary naturally caught the contagion of
Liberty, and Louis
[Illustration: THE EXCHANGE AND FREDERICK’S BRIDGE, BERLIN.]
Kossuth carried in the Diet at Pesth an address to the Emperor
Ferdinand, demanding a national Government, from which the
foreign--_i.e._, the German--element was to be eliminated. Feeble
efforts at repression in Vienna ended in the concession of a Free Press,
a National Guard, and a Liberal Constitution for the Empire.
It almost seemed as if the Revolution of ’48 had come to enforce the
views which the Queen and Prince Albert had in vain impressed on their
German relatives. Those views were to the effect that the time had
arrived when the Princes of the Empire ought, as a matter of grace, to
grant constitutional liberties to their subjects. But their Teutonic
Majesties and Serenities had lest their chance of conceding by policy
what Revolution now extorted from
[Illustration: THE KING OF PRUSSIA ADDRESSING THE BERLINERS. (_See p.
346._)]
them by force. The movement began in Baden, where, on the 29th of
February, the Grand Duke was compelled to grant a Free Press, a National
Guard, and Trial by Jury to his subjects. It spread fast through the
minor States. In Munich it ended in the abdication of the King on the
21st of March. In the Odenwald the peasants sacked the baronial castles,
and a servile war seemed imminent, even in Coburg. The Queen was
therefore excited by every fresh outbreak, her only consolation being
that Belgium--her uncle’s kingdom--remained tranquil. The Prince
Hohenlohe, the husband of her half-sister, and her half-brother, the
Prince of Leiningen, were simply ruined. “All minds,” writes the
Princess Hohenlohe to the Queen, “are on the stretch.... Never was such
a state of lawless vagabondage as there is now all over Germany, more or
less. At all hours of the day young men are walking about the streets
doing nothing.” Business was at a standstill: there was neither buying
nor selling, marrying nor giving in marriage; and the Queen’s
half-sister, in another letter, speaking of herself and her illustrious
family, remarks, piteously:--“We are undone, and must begin a new
existence of privations.”
Prussia was stricken sharply by the revolutionary tempest. The very day
after Metternich fled from Vienna the mob of Berlin rose against the
Government. Riot after riot followed this outbreak, and the concessions
proclaimed on the 18th of March came too late--though the King,
Frederick William, imagined he would win the sympathies of the German
race by advocating the formation of a United Germany, federated under
one flag, one army, one law, and one executive. The people, full of joy
at their triumph, went to the Palace to congratulate their Sovereign,
who came forth to harangue them. A glimmer of steel, however, within the
castle quadrangle in an instant transformed the loyal crowd into a
raging and rebellious mob. “Bitter experience,” says Mr. Charles
Lowe,[107] “had taught them to distrust the word of their King. But
instead of _retiring_, a squadron of dragoons, with a company of foot,
_advanced_ to clear the square; and either by accident or design, two
muskets were fired into the crowd. ‘Treason!’ ‘Revenge!’ ‘To arms!’ was
resounded on every side.” Two hundred barricades rose in the streets as
if by magic, “and the city was soon one wild scene of carnage,” lit
throughout the dark hours of night and morning by the red glare of
sacked and burning houses. The troops virtually triumphed, but the King,
grief-stricken, because of the slaughter of his “dear Berliners,”
suddenly gave the command next morning to “cease firing.” The unpopular
Ministers were dismissed. An amnesty was proclaimed, and the troops were
ordered to quit the city. A Burger Guard was extemporised, and the King
was compelled by the mob to stand bareheaded on the balcony of his
Palace, and salute a ghastly procession of the dead who had been slain
by his troops. On the 21st of March he rode through the streets,
delivering many effusive and emotional speeches, promising a liberal
constitution, and pledging himself, even in defiance of Austria, to head
the movement for German Unity. The Crown Prince (afterwards Emperor
William I.), who was wrongly supposed to have ordered the troops to fire
on the people, fled to England, and his Palace was saved solely because
some loyal person artfully chalked over it the words “National
Property.” He was most hospitably entertained by the Queen till the end
of May, when he returned to Berlin. “May God protect him,” writes her
Majesty to her uncle, King Leopold. “He is very noble-minded and honest,
and most cruelly wronged.”
Italy, already a hotbed of discontent, naturally participated in the
revolutionary movement. Early in March, Lombardy rose against the
Austrians, and Venice, led by Daniel Manin, proclaimed a Republic.
Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, yielding to popular pressure, put
himself at the head of the agitation for Italian unity, and on the 23rd
of March advanced to Milanese territory. The people of Tuscany and the
Papal States flew to arms, but were pacified by the grant of
constitutions, though the Pope was forced by the populace in May to levy
war on Austria, his most faithful ally. The Dukes of Parma and Modena
fled for their lives from their capitals. In Sicily alone the revolution
was suppressed by force. This seems to have disheartened the liberators
of North Italy--or, perhaps, it would be more correct to say it
encouraged their Austrian masters. Ignoring defeat after defeat, the
Austrians, under Radetsky, held on to their Italian provinces with grim
tenacity. Pacific mediation was rejected on both sides, and, finally,
Charles Albert, who by this time found that Sardinia was expected to
bear the brunt of the war single-handed, was rendered helpless by his
fatal reverses at Custozza (22nd of July) and Somma Campagna (26th of
July). The Pope, alarmed by the liberal movement he had encouraged, lost
the confidence of his subjects, and on the assassination of Rossi, his
secretary, fled from Rome to Gaeta (24th of November). From thence he
issued a protest against the Revolutionary Government of the Holy City,
which protest was promptly supported by the armed intervention of
France.
In Spain, however, the Revolution, in May, took a form which gave Queen
Victoria the greatest anxiety. At first all parties in the Cortes were
opposed to violence. Suddenly, however, the Party of Action waxed
strong. The Government foolishly prorogued the Cortes, and this was
followed by a protest in the shape of a popular rising in Madrid, on the
26th of March. It was suppressed, and a few of the most distinguished
men in Spain were summarily banished beyond the seas. Lord Palmerston
here interfered with characteristic recklessness and audacity. On the
16th of March he wrote to Sir Henry Bulwer, the British Minister at
Madrid, requesting him to advise the Queen of Spain to change her
Ministers. Sir Henry Bulwer not only sent a copy of this despatch to the
Duc de Sotomayor, but also procured its publication in the Opposition
newspapers. The Spanish Government, incensed at Sir H. Bulwer’s
intrigues with the Party of Violence, not only resented this impertinent
interference with their affairs, but haughtily returned the despatch to
the English Foreign Office. Lord Palmerston replied sarcastically to
Sotomayor, and not only approved of the conduct of Sir Henry Bulwer, but
caused him to be made a K.C.B. Accordingly, on the 19th of May, the
Spanish Government requested Sir Henry to leave Spain within forty-eight
hours, which he did, and a cessation of diplomatic intercourse was the
result. Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, had seen Lord
Palmerston’s ill-advised despatch,
[Illustration: THE FOUNTAIN OF CYBELE, MADRID.]
and having told Lord Palmerston that he objected to it, he naturally
concluded it would not be sent. “Shortly after,” writes Mr.
Greville,[108] “he (Lord John Russell) was with the Queen, and, in
conversation on this topic, he told her what had passed between
Palmerston and himself, and what he had said. ‘No! _did_ you say that?’
said the Queen. He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well, then,’ she replied, ‘it produced
no effect, for the despatch _is_ gone. Lord Palmerston sent it to me. I
_know_ it is gone.’”
There was quite a storm of indignation against Lord Palmerston in every
political club and _coterie_ when this affair became known. The Queen
was angry, and so were Palmerston’s colleagues, some of whom declared
that they could not defend his conduct. He was attacked by the
Opposition in both Houses; and Lord Lansdowne, who had to plead for him
in the Lords, told Lord John Russell that “this must never happen
again,” and that in future Lord Palmerston must not be allowed to send
out any despatches unless they
[Illustration: BARON STOCKMAR.
(_Engraved, by permission, after the Portrait in Sir Theodore Martin’s
“Life of the Prince Consort.”_)]
were sanctioned by Lord John himself.[109] It was morally certain that
Sir H. Bulwer had, at Lord Palmerston’s instigation, mixed himself up
with the intrigues of the revolutionary party in Madrid, and on the 5th
of June Mr. Bankes gave expression to the true feeling of every section
of the House of Commons, by moving a Vote of Censure on Lord Palmerston.
Whigs, Tories, and Radicals were agreed that his conduct had been
imprudent and discourteous. The Queen expressed to Lord John Russell her
grief over his rude and untoward management of diplomatic business. His
colleagues condemned him in private, and yet the attack on him
mysteriously collapsed. The debate, says Mr. Greville, cynically, was a
fight “with muffled gloves,” and why? Palmerston, for whom the stars in
their courses fought, was saved by two strokes of luck. Sir Robert Peel,
whose defence of him was a piece of exquisite irony, decided that as the
Ministry refused to desert him he must be supported, Peel’s sole object
at this time being to protect the only Ministerial combination which
could protect Free Trade. The Spanish Government had also put themselves
in the wrong in ordering Sir Henry Bulwer to quit Madrid, merely because
Lord Palmerston sent them, through him, an insolent and foolish
despatch. Members who were prepared to vote for Mr. Bankes’s motion felt
that unless it were proved clearly that Sir Henry Bulwer had
participated in revolutionary conspiracies, they must vote for the
Government, on the score of national honour. The Spanish Ministry failed
to prove this, because they dared not set forth their case. One of Sir
Henry Bulwer’s instruments in driving the Narvaez Government from office
was Serrano, who from corrupt motives revealed the conspiracy to
Narvaez. But Serrano was the lover of the Queen of Spain, and had his
evidence been adduced against Lord Palmerston, her Majesty would have
been unpleasantly compromised. The debate on Mr. Bankes’s motion was
thus a Parliamentary victory for Lord Palmerston. But it served to
augment the distrust with which the Queen and his own colleagues
regarded his harum-scarum method of conducting the business of the
Foreign Office.
Parliament, which had been adjourned over the Christmas holidays, again
met on the 3rd of February, 1848. Meeting as it did on the eve of a
revolution in Europe, and at a time when the masses of the English
people were in a ferment of discontent, one might suppose that it was
greatly agitated by the tempest of sedition that raged outside its
walls. On the contrary, it pursued its course with almost stoical
indifference to “the condition-of-England question,” and neither the
sullen temper of the English working classes, nor the impending revolt
of the “Young Ireland” Party, seems to have given the representatives of
the people the slightest concern. In fact, the West Indies now took the
place of Ireland and the manufacturing districts of England, as a scene
of distress worthy of monopolising the attention of Parliament. What Mr.
Disraeli said of similar events in 1834 might well have been said of
those of 1848, namely, that “the mean position which the Saxon multitude
occupied as distinguished from the Jamaica planters sank deep into their
hearts.” Again the attention of the working classes was drawn to the
contrast between the interest which Parliament displayed in “a petty and
exhausted colony” and “the claims for constitutional rights by the
working millions of England.”[110] Oddly enough, it was Mr. Disraeli’s
own leader, Lord George Bentinck, who, finding that the planters
attributed their sufferings to the loss of the protection which
differential duties on foreign sugar had given them in the English
market, took up their case at this inopportune moment with more warmth
than prudence. He moved for and obtained the appointment of a Committee
to inquire into their grievances. In June the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Sir Charles Wood, brought forward a proposal to advance
£200,000--ultimately the sum was fixed at £170,000--for the purpose of
helping planters to get coolie labour. Lord John Russell subsequently
announced further concessions. He refused to exclude slave-grown sugar
from the English market. He, however, proposed to reduce the duty on
colonial sugar, leaving ordinary foreign sugar at its existing rate. But
he applied to both colonial sugar and certain varieties of foreign sugar
a descending scale of reduction, which would in 1855 end in equalising
them, though up to that period a slight advantage would be given to the
colonial sugar. The philanthropists attacked the scheme because they
demanded the total exclusion of slave-grown sugars. Some Free Traders
like Mr. Hume attacked it, because they thought the true remedy lay in
letting the colonists have more freedom in importing labour, and in
managing their own affairs. A painful scene took place during these
debates between Lord George Bentinck and Lord John Russell. Lord George
declared in violent language that Mr. Hawes, Under-Secretary for the
Colonies, had suppressed a despatch which threw light on colonial
distress. Lord John Russell jeered at his antagonist’s connection with
the turf, where alone, he said, such tricks were common. Mr. Disraeli
retorted by saying that for his services in detecting a turf fraud Lord
George Bentinck had been thanked by a Committee, the chairman of which
was the Duke of Bedford, Lord John Russell’s brother. During this
wrangling the House of Commons was converted into a bear-garden, and
members roared and hooted at each other as if they were maniacs. The
Government carried their proposal only by a majority of fifteen, and
this, together with loss of prestige from bad management and clumsy
Parliamentary tactics, further weakened the Cabinet in the eyes of the
public. Even the Queen began to think she might soon have to send for
Lord Stanley, for it was only Sir Robert Peel’s support that kept the
Administration alive.
The financial statement of the Government, which was made, not by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir C. Wood), but by Lord John Russell
himself, early in the year, had been disappointing. He estimated a
deficit of £2,141,209, and he said it must be met either by increasing
taxation, or reducing the cost of the Army and Navy. But the agitation
which had been raised by the Duke of Wellington about the defenceless
state of the country drove the Ministry to increase the military and
naval estimate by £358,000, in addition to which Lord John Russell
decided to take a Militia vote of £150,000. He proposed, therefore, to
continue the Income Tax, which was to expire in April, 1849, for five
years, raising it from 7d. to 1s. in the pound. The duties on copper
ore, equal to £41,000, were to be remitted, which would leave a surplus
of £113,000 on the Estimates. Never did a Budget raise such a storm of
opposition. Were Ministers mad, asked Mr. Hume, that they proposed to
increase taxation daring a time of commercial distress and seething
political discontent? He and Mr. Cobden demanded, like all the Radicals,
a reduction of armaments to meet the estimated deficit on the Budget.
All the Protectionists, of course, fell upon the Ministry, crying,
“Behold the fatal results of Free Trade!” and demanding the substitution
of indirect taxation, or import duties, instead of an increased Income
Tax--a tax which, said they, they would never have permitted Sir Robert
Peel to impose, had it had not been understood that it was to be only a
temporary one. Sir Charles Wood in a few days offered to refer the
Estimates to Select and Secret Committees, a proposition violently
attacked, as tending to relieve Ministers of their constitutional
responsibility, and permit Committees of the House to encroach on the
true functions of the Executive. Then the country rose as one man
against the Budget, and members were threatened with the loss of their
seats if they voted for an increased Income Tax. On the 28th of February
Sir Charles Wood accordingly brought in an amended Budget. He would
continue the existing Income Tax for five, or, if the House decided, for
three years; but for two years, to meet a deficit which he thought was
temporary, he proposed to add 5 per cent. to it. This still further
irritated the country, whose ideas on taxation the Government utterly
ignored. The working classes scoffed at the House which fretted over the
addition of sevenpence in the pound on the tax on their incomes, when
_they_ paid twice as many shillings in the pound on the great staples of
their consumption. The middle classes complained that Ministers paid no
heed to their demand that a distinction be made between permanent and
precarious incomes, and for the adjustment of the tax to the means and
substance of the taxpayer.
Meantime the Select Committee on the Estimates were reducing them. On
the 25th of August Sir C. Wood stated to the House that the Committee
had so adjusted revenue and expenditure that there would only be a
deficit of £292,305 to meet. To that he had to add the extraordinary
expenditure of the year, incurred on account of the Caffre War, together
with sums for relieving fresh distress in Ireland, which brought the
total deficit to be met to £2,031,226. This sum the Government proposed
to borrow in the open market. After some protests from the Radicals
against increasing the floating debt in time of peace, and against the
refusal of the Government to reduce establishments, the Ministry carried
their point. But the Cobdenites taunted them with Sir Robert Peel’s
remark, that he would not attempt to govern the country unless he could
equalise its expenditure and its revenue.
Parliament in 1848 was tolerably free from discussions on the
interminable Irish question. But Mr. Smith O’Brien, the leader of the
Irish Party of Action, was in earnest, and his followers were full of
enthusiasm for Irish nationality. Lord Clarendon had attempted to
conciliate the priesthood, but he had failed; and the Executive in
Dublin sought for increased power to maintain order in Ireland. Hence a
Bill aimed at seditious clubs was brought forward by the Government. It
empowered the Lord-Lieutenant to arrest and detain any person whom he
suspected of conspiring against the
[Illustration: SIR GEORGE GREY.]
Queen’s Government--in other words, it was proposed to suspend the
Habeas Corpus Act.[111] The Bill passed rapidly through all its stages,
even Radicals like Mr. Hume voting for it, reluctantly, as a hateful
incident in our Irish policy. They, however, warned the Ministry that
they must lose no time in bringing in remedial measures, dealing with
the Franchise, the Church, the Grand Jury laws, and Municipal
Institutions in Ireland. On the 26th of July the Bill was passed through
the Upper House. A few days afterwards Mr. Sharman Crawford, previous to
the House of Commons going into Committee of Supply, moved that the
distracted condition of Ireland demanded the constant attention of
Parliament, and said that if he carried his motion he would follow it up
with one which Lord John Russell had moved in 1844, referring the
subject of Irish grievances to a Select Committee. He complained of the
delays in remedial legislation; but Lord John Russell, though
conciliatory, opposed the motion on the plea that it would be better to
proceed gradually with the work of reform in Ireland, than to burden the
House with the impossible task Mr. Crawford would impose on it. It was
in this debate that Mr. Bernal Osborne complained that Ireland was
governed, like a Crown Colony, with “a mock Sovereign, a Brummagen
Court, and a pinchbeck Executive,” and recommended the abolition of the
Viceroyalty, the government of Ireland by a fourth Secretary of State,
occasional sessions of the British Parliament in Dublin, and an annual
visit of the Queen and Court to her Irish dominions. Sir George Grey,
the Home Secretary, also suggested that the Government would not be
averse from modifying the position of the Established Church in Ireland,
and there seemed to be in the minds of Ministers a disposition to seek,
in a scheme of “concurrent endowment,” a solution of the Irish problem.
Mr. Crawford’s motion was rejected by a vote of 100 to 24.
On the 24th of February the Lord Chancellor introduced the Irish
Encumbered Estates Act. The measure provided for the swift and easy sale
and transfer--voluntary or compulsory under an order of the Court of
Chancery--of estates whose owners could not pay off their mortgages and
had no capital to improve them. The mistake lay in selling along with
the estates, which were the landlords’, the improvements which, as a
rule, were made by the tenants, and which in equity, and by the custom
of land tenure in Ireland, belonged to the latter. The measure was
therefore pregnant with evils which had to be dealt with subsequently by
the Land Acts with which Mr. Gladstone’s name will be permanently
associated.
What was the effect of the Chartist rising on Parliament? It bulks but
slightly in the proceedings of the Legislature. On the 10th of April Mr.
Feargus O’Connor presented to the House of Commons a petition signed by
5,706,000 persons in favour of the “six points of the Charter”--namely,
Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Manhood Suffrage, Equal Electoral
Districts, Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of
Parliament, and Payment of Members. He moved that it be read by the
clerk. The first sheet was taken up and the prayer read, whereupon the
messengers of the House gathered up the five great masses of parchment
of which the petition consisted, and rolled it to the table. On the 13th
Mr. Thornley, on behalf of the Select Committee on Petitions, reported
that the Chartist petition weighed not five tons, as was alleged, but 5¾
cwts., and that it contained only 1,975,496 signatures, and not
5,706,000, as Mr. O’Connor had stated. Among these appeared the names of
the Queen as “Victoria Rex,” the Duke of Wellington, K.G., Sir Robert
Peel, and names that were no names, such as “No Cheese,” “Pugnose,”
“Flatnose,” and the like, so that doubts as to the authenticity of the
document might be fairly raised. Mr. O’Connor and Mr. Cripps exchanged
pungent personalities over this discovery, and when Mr. O’Connor left
the House, the Speaker, fearing a duel might be the result of the
quarrel, induced Mr. Cripps to withdraw his imputations on Mr.
O’Connor’s honesty. Lord John Russell then moved that Mr. O’Connor be
arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms. The offender, on being brought to the
bar, gave explanations which brought the scene to an end.
On the 7th of April Sir George Grey brought in the Crown Government
Security Bill, which was a device of Lord Campbell’s for reducing the
offences created by the Act of 1796 from treason to felony, and for
extending it to Ireland, where, as the law then stood, it was impossible
to punish a revolutionary movement, except by treating it as treason or
misdemeanour. This gave a deathblow to the odious statutory crime termed
“constructive treason,” substituting, as Lord Campbell says in his
Journal, a plain, easy, popular method “by which _incipient_ traitors
may be prosecuted as _felons_, and transported beyond the seas.” In one
of the debates on this Bill, Mr. Smith O’Brien, while professing his
loyalty to the Queen, declared he was not loyal to the Government or to
the Imperial Parliament, and would do what he could to overthrow the one
and dissever the other. He lashed the House into fury by his references
to his intrigues with the leaders of the French Revolution, and by
menacing England with the hostility of the Republics of France and
America. Campbell’s Bill may be described as one to degrade “the
spouters of state sedition,” as Mr. Disraeli once called them, to the
level of vulgar criminals in the eyes of the people. A Bill enabling the
Home Secretary on his responsibility to compel the departure of aliens
visiting the country not from the usual motives of business and pleasure
was denounced by the Radicals, led by Sir W. Molesworth, as “analogous
in principle to the famous law of Suspected Persons of the 17th of
September, 1793, one of the most accursed laws of the Reign of Terror.”
Lord John Russell was taunted with having opposed a similar provision
which disfigured the Aliens Act in his maiden speech in 1814, and Mr.
David Urquhart amused the House by quoting Leviticus xxiv. 22 and
Numbers ix. 14 against the proposal. It was, however, carried in both
Houses.
It was felt at this time that the House of Commons was not equal to the
task of social legislation. A large Party, under the leadership of Mr.
Joseph Hume, contended that the duty of Parliament to the people did
not begin and end with the passing of repressive laws in a revolutionary
crisis. But as the House was then constituted, they felt that little
else could be expected from it, and they accordingly urged that it be
made effective by being reformed. To bring the popular chamber into
closer touch with the people, Mr. Hume and other Radical Reformers
argued that the franchise must be extended. Hence arose his Resolution
of the 20th of June, to the effect that the House of Commons did not
fairly represent the people, and his proposal for (1) household
franchise; (2) vote by ballot; (3) triennial Parliaments; (4) equal
apportionment of Members to population. This motion marks the beginning
of the great Reform movement which culminated in the Reform Bill of the
Derby-Disraeli Government in 1867, and of Mr. Gladstone’s Government in
1885. Lord John Russell opposed the Resolution, though he abandoned the
doctrine with which he was credited, namely, that the Bill of 1832 was
final, and he admitted that it had worked badly, by enforcing too great
uniformity of qualification. Mr. Disraeli opposed every one of Mr.
Hume’s proposals, except that for triennial Parliaments. Mr. Sidney
Herbert, on behalf of the Peelites, also opposed Mr. Hume, who was
supported solely by Mr. Cobden, the Radicals, and the “Manchester
School.” The Resolution was rejected by a vote of 351 to 84.
[Illustration: FROM AN ETCHING BY THE QUEEN.]
[Illustration: THE SOUTH-EAST CORRIDOR, WINDSOR CASTLE.
(_After a Photograph by Messrs. G. W. Wilson and Co._)]