DISCONTENTED DEPENDENCIES.
Reaction in England in 1849--Attacks in Parliament on the Queen’s
Speech--Gagging Parliament--The Last Dying Struggle of the
Protectionists--Repeal of the Navigation Laws--The Tory Attack on
the Bishops--Protectionist Plans for Reducing Local
Taxation--Coercion for Ireland--Peel’s Generosity to the Whigs
Explained--Irish Mendicity and English Grants in Aid--A Policy of
Pauperism and Doles--Small Minds in a Great Crisis--Peel’s
Comprehensive Plan for Relieving Ireland--The Break-down of the
Poor Law--The Queen and the Irish Landlords--Prince Albert’s
Project for Reforming the Irish Poor Rate--Scandals at the Colonial
Office--Ceylon--Demerara and Canada--The Loyal Rebels of
Canada--Riots in Montreal--Attacks on Lord Elgin--An Examination
and Defence of his Policy--The Test of Results--“Be Just and Fear
Not.”
When Parliament met on the 2nd of February, 1849, the condition of
England may be described as negatively good. It was not prosperous. It
was not prostrate. The commercial and manufacturing interests were
rallying, but had not yet recovered from the blows of panic in 1847 and
revolution in 1848. The small investors were uneasy about the management
of the great railway enterprises which had absorbed their savings. The
landed gentry were in a state of feverish apprehension as to the effect
of Sir Robert Peel’s fiscal policy, which would come into full
operation in 1849. Ireland was still a distressful country--the Poor Law
having inflicted a severe blow on Property, without at the same time
relieving Pauperism. More legislation, it was felt, was needed to
succour the starving Irish, and the sullen discontent of the people,
which followed the suppressed rebellion, irritated Englishmen and put
the House of Commons in the worst possible temper for initiating
remedial
[Illustration: DEMONSTRATION OF SAILORS IN FAVOUR OF THE NAVIGATION
LAWS.]
legislation for Ireland. But the Party of Violence in England and
Scotland was effectually crushed, and though some sympathy was felt for
its misguided leaders, yet everybody rejoiced that the cause of Social
Order had triumphed in 1848, and that 1849 found England profoundly
tranquil.
The Queen’s Speech referred to the disturbances on the Continent, and to
the steps which the British Government, in conjunction with France, had
taken to produce a permanent settlement of affairs in Sicily. It touched
on the recrudescence of rebellion in the Punjab, suggested a
modification in the Navigation Laws, congratulated the country on
escaping the shock of revolution, and on signs of returning prosperity.
It pointed to an amendment of the Irish Poor Law, and closed with a
proud allusion to the devotion of the English people in maintaining the
great institutions of their country “during a period of commercial
difficulty, deficient production of food, and political revolution.”
Naturally the country Party attacked those portions of the Speech which
implied approval of Sir Robert Peel’s Free Trade policy. In both Houses
the arguments were that the Government exaggerated the prosperity of the
country, that their foreign policy had left them without allies, that
the outlook
[Illustration: THE EARL OF CLARENDON, LORD-LIEUTENANT OF IRELAND.]
abroad in Ireland and in India was troublous, and did not justify the
large reductions in the estimates which were foreshadowed. The Irish
Party in the House of Commons scoffed at the Royal allusions to Ireland,
and contended that the insurrection which had been suppressed was a sham
one, “got up,” said Mr. Grattan, “to put down Repeal.” Radicals like Mr.
Hume attacked the Colonial policy of the Government, and clamoured for
the removal of Lord Grey from the Colonial Office, because of certain
arbitrary proceedings which he had sanctioned in British Guiana and
Ceylon. It was felt that the real object of the Opposition was to
inveigle Parliament into giving a hostile vote against Free Trade and
the Repeal of the Corn Laws, one paragraph in the Amendment to the
Address affirming that the worst Protectionist predictions had been
verified. It was also admitted that the policy of the Government had
been right in its aim, which was to keep the country out of war, and
that this had been attained, in spite of Lord Palmerston’s turbulent
methods of diplomacy. The Amendment to the Address was rejected only by
a majority of two in the House of Lords, but in the House of Commons Mr.
Disraeli was fain to withdraw it. On the 3rd of February, when the
Address to the Crown was adopted, Lord John Russell proposed and carried
certain Resolutions for facilitating the despatch of public business--to
wit, that Bills be read a first time without debate, that when a Bill in
Committee was ordered by the House to be taken up again on a particular
day, then when that day came the Speaker should leave the Chair without
putting any question, and let the House go into Committee without delay;
that the amendments on a Bill, reported from Committee of the whole
House, should be received without debate. Mr. Milner Gibson vainly
endeavoured to induce the House to add another resolution limiting
speakers to one hour each, with an exception in favour of Members
introducing Bills and Ministers of the Crown replying to attacks. Lord
John Russell gave some faint signs of sympathising with this restriction
on Parliamentary garrulity, and Mr. Cobden supported the proposal
vehemently. But Sir Robert Peel carried the House against it, and Mr.
Gibson’s motion was accordingly lost by a vote of 96 to 64.
In the Session of 1848 Ministers were unable to apply their Free Trade
policy to the Shipping Trade, owing to Protectionist obstruction. On the
14th of February, 1849, they, however, proposed to repeal the Navigation
Laws, which restricted “the free carriage of goods by sea to and from
the United Kingdom and the British Possessions abroad.” Power, however,
was reserved to the Queen to re-enact the restrictive laws against
countries that adopted a commercial policy hostile to British interests.
The monopoly of the coasting trade, however, was not completely
abandoned. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Labouchere, did not
venture to propose that foreign ships might trade from port to port as
freely as our own. All he said was, that a foreign ship sailing from a
British port might in the course of her voyage to foreign parts touch at
and trade freely in British ports _en route_. The Resolution was
carried, and a Bill founded on it was brought in on the 9th of March,
when it was vigorously opposed by Mr. Herries. The case of the
monopolists was sadly damaged by Mr. Gladstone, who showed that with
every relaxation of restrictions the English Shipping Trade had
increased. The fact was, however, that the question was felt to be no
longer arguable. The Navigation Laws were meant to protect the monopoly
of English shipowners. Having stripped every other class of Protection,
it was absurd to obstruct the perfect working of Free Trade by
maintaining Protection for the benefit of the shipowners alone.
Moreover, it was necessary to establish a free shipping trade in Canada,
to compensate her for the loss of the protective duty on corn. Mr.
Labouchere ultimately struck out the clauses relating to the coasting
trade for purely fiscal reasons, and a masterly speech from Sir James
Graham, on the 23rd of October, carried the third reading of the
measure, which crowned the edifice of Free Trade. In the House of Lords
the narrow majorities in favour of the Government rendered the last
dying struggle of the Protectionists rather exciting. They declared that
the Bishops carried the Bill, and the Earl of Winchelsea warned the
Prelates that if they voted on secular questions in such a fashion they
would be allowed to send only “a chosen few to the Upper House, who
would be permitted to speak and vote solely on religious questions.
Though the Protectionists were defeated, they were not daunted.
Organised under the active and restless leadership of Mr. Disraeli, they
harassed the Government at every point. But their grand attack was made
on the 8th of March, when Mr. Disraeli brought forward a resolution
proposing to throw a portion of local burdens on the Imperial taxation
of the country. This proposal he defended as a fair compensation to the
agricultural interest for the loss of Protective duties on Corn. Finance
was never Mr. Disraeli’s strong point, and, as Mr. Hume observed, it was
not easy to see how the farmers would profit by an arrangement, which,
by Mr. Disraeli’s own showing, would impose on them an additional
income-tax of £6,000,000. Moreover, it was only too obvious that if any
relief were granted to the farmers, it would be speedily appropriated by
the landlords in the shape of increased rent.
Ireland was quiet, but sullen and disaffected. Though there was no open
rebellion in the country, the secret organisation of revolt still
existed, and the Home Secretary felt that it would be necessary to renew
the Bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. Sir George Grey brought
forward a motion to this effect on the 6th of February, defending the
proposal on the ground that it was purely a precautionary one, and that
Lord Clarendon, who thought it necessary, could be trusted to use his
powers with discretion. The weakness of the Government lay in their
opposition to the Coercion Bill of 1846. Then they turned out Sir Robert
Peel by refusing to vote for Coercion unaccompanied by remedial
measures. “Where,” asked the Peelites, sneeringly, “are the remedial
measures which should accompany this Whig Bill?” Nevertheless, Peel
generously supported the Ministry, ostensibly or the ground that Ireland
must not be made the battle-ground of Party, really because he was
determined, at all costs, to maintain in power a Ministry that would
give his fiscal policy a fair trial, as against a Protectionist
Ministry, whose primary aim would be to wreck it.
Yet a remedial measure had been introduced by the Chancellor of the
Exchequer on the 7th of February, in a proposal to grant from the
Imperial Exchequer £50,000 to thirty distressed Irish Poor Law Unions,
of which twenty-one were utterly bankrupt. Most pitiful was the picture
which Sir Charles Wood drew of Ireland in moving the grant. The potato
crop had again failed. Pauperism had again increased. Ireland was being
depopulated, not so much by an emigration, as by an exodus. The
landlords were sinking under the poor rates, and their estates, deserted
by tenants who ran away without paying rent whenever they disposed of
their crops,[120] were in many
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.]
places lying waste and desolate. Mr. Hume protested against the
never-ending system of grants in aid, but the Government carried their
vote in its original form.
On the 1st of March Lord John Russell brought forward another Irish
scheme. The Report of the Committee on the Irish Poor Law recommended
that each Union should, by a sixpenny rate, raise a general fund for the
relief of the poor in Ireland, which should be banked in the name of the
Irish Paymaster of the Civil Service, and held at the disposal of
Parliament. Lord John moved that the House go into Committee on this
proposal on the 1st of March. A project to impose a new national tax on
Ireland for
[Illustration: LORD ELGIN, GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF CANADA.]
local purposes, without imposing the same in England, was an eccentric
one to come from statesmen who regarded the Union as a reality, and not
a sham. Logically it was unjust to tax the industry of Ulster in order
to provide local grants in aid for Ireland, while the industry of the
United Kingdom generally escaped taxation. The proposal was obstructed
in various ways, the Ministerial defence being that Imperial taxation
fell more lightly on Ireland than on England and Scotland. Money must be
found for the relief of Irish pauperism somehow, and if not by this
plan, then by an extension of the Income Tax to Ireland, which would be
still less popular. The Peelites even were not at one, Lord Lincoln
advocating the extension of the Income Tax to Ireland, and Peel himself
supporting the rate-in-aid scheme, not because he liked it, but because
he believed that after what had been done for her, Ireland ought to make
some special exertion to help herself, which would also have the effect
of inducing England to co-operate with her in pushing on regenerative
measures. Mr. Bright defended the grant-in-aid scheme, declaring,
however, that the incurable evils of Ireland were traceable to her
misgovernment by her landlords. But it is quite clear that Peel was the
only politician on either side of the House who at this crisis had the
penetration to see that the ills of Ireland were too desperate to be
remedied by a pettifogging system of English doles and grants in aid. He
stood alone in seeing that nothing less than a reform going to the root
of Irish rural economy, would be of the slightest use, and in his speech
he suggested that the best remedy would be to increase facilities for
the transfer of land. From his ambiguous language one gathers that he
had in contemplation some scheme by which the State should buy up the
poverty-stricken tracts and plant them with solvent colonists, the
plantations being managed by a Government Commission. As for the people,
those who were not needed as labourers might be induced by the
Commission to emigrate. Had he combined this project for one to give
Ireland tenant-right, and had he persuaded Parliament to accept his
ideas, there would probably have been no “Irish problem” to perplex us
in the jubilee year of the Queen’s reign. After wearisome debates the
proposal of the Ministry was carried in both Houses, Government having
made an advance of £100,000 to the impecunious Unions in anticipation of
the Bill passing the Lords.
The next Irish measure was Sir John Romilly’s Encumbered Estates Bill,
introduced on the 26th of April. The Bill of the preceding Session had
failed to work because its machinery--that is, the Court of
Chancery--was too cumbrous. Romilly’s idea was to substitute for the
Court a Commission, which should conduct the business of land transfer
unfettered by the clumsy procedure or the heavy fees of Chancery. His
speech was a masterpiece of exposition, and Mr. Bright expressed the
prevailing opinion when he said he accepted the Bill as the harbinger of
better legislation for Ireland. It passed both Houses without serious
opposition.
It has been said that the sudden pressure of the Poor Law on the
mortgaged estates of Ireland nearly ruined the Irish gentry. The Queen
and Prince Albert were deeply distressed by painful accounts of the
sufferings of this class which reached them. The Prince, indeed, drew up
a memorandum for Sir George Grey, pointing out very sensibly the
injustice of the existing law. A good landlord spent his substance in
improving his estate, and in finding or making work for his labourers. A
bad landlord kept his money in his pocket, and when his labourers,
unable to earn wages, began to starve, he threw them on the rates. But
both landlords paid the same poor rate, so that the good landlord not
only taxed himself through his improvements to keep his own workmen
from idleness, but was taxed through the Union, to support the
unemployed workmen of the bad and non-improving landlord. The idea of
the Queen and her husband was that the pressure of the rate should be
eased on good landlords who made sacrifices to keep their labourers in
work and wages. Sir George Grey submitted the project to the Cabinet,
and then told Prince Albert that it would have to be abandoned, for
nobody could embody it in a practical Bill. This did not show that the
idea was bad, but merely that Whig constructive statesmanship at that
time was feeble, not to say incompetent. But the glaring fact remained
that the application of the Elizabethan Poor Law to Ireland was bringing
ruin to the rich, and doing but little to fend off starvation from the
poor. Property was simply unable to support the mass of pauperism that
was suddenly cast on it for maintenance. Some modifications in the law
must be proposed, if the whole system--upheld as it was solely by grants
in aid from England--was not to break down completely. Lord John Russell
accordingly proposed, on the 26th of April, a Bill to limit the
liability of Irish land for poor rates, by fixing a maximum beyond which
the rate could not be increased. The proposal was carried in the
Commons, but in the House of Lords the maximum rate clause was struck
out. This was an infringement of the privileges of the Lower House, for
the Peers have no right to alter a Bill sent up by the Commons fixing
rates or taxes. Yet it was almost impossible for the Peers to handle any
Poor Law Bill without trenching on this privilege, and hence it was
proposed that the House of Commons should formally waive its privileges
in regard to this Bill in order to let it be set down for
reconsideration.[121] Precedents existed in favour of this course, but
Sir James Graham very cogently observed that it was bad public policy to
be perpetually adding to precedents, waiving the absolute and exclusive
right of the Commons to control fiscal legislation, and he ingeniously
suggested another way out of the difficulty. This was to throw the Bill
out in the meantime, and re-introduce it afresh with the Lords’
Amendments embodied in it. The suggestion was negatived, and the Bill
reconsidered, the Lords’ Amendments being for the most part adopted. The
failure of the Government to provide a guarantee for meeting any deficit
that might exist after a maximum rate had been levied, had proved fatal
to the maximum rate clause.
On the 4th of May Ireland again came before the country as the
incorrigible mendicant of Parliament. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
having prefaced his proposals with the usual commonplace that “the
present desideratum in Ireland was employment,” moved that further
advances should be made under the Land Improvement Act to enable
employers to provide work for the people. In addition to what still
remained to be disbursed by former advances, Sir C. Wood proposed that
£300,000 be granted, thus bringing the total available subsidy to
£1,252,000. Besides this sum, he proposed to advance £200,000 for the
further development of arterial drainage. A feeble protest was made
against this fresh development of an eleemosynary policy. The system of
permitting Government loans to be jobbed away by the Department of
Public Works in Ireland had, it was said, caused a large proportion of
the money voted to be absorbed in extravagant official estimates.
[Illustration: RIOTS IN MONTREAL: LORD ELGIN STONED BY THE MOB.]
But all objections were over-ruled, and Sir C. Wood’s proposal was
accepted in the long-run.
Next to Ireland, the burning question of the Session was that of
Colonial policy. Most Englishmen were profoundly ignorant about their
Colonies. A strong school of politicians, headed by Mr. Bright and Mr.
Cobden, and after them by Professor Goldwin Smith, taught that the best
thing that could be done with a Colony was to get rid of it, as a costly
encumbrance, so that Englishmen who were not ignorant were somewhat
indifferent about Colonial policy. The result was naturally that the
Colonial Office was free to blunder in its Administration without
running any great risk of detection or punishment--and it had made
affluent use of this privilege. Suddenly, in 1849, England became keenly
interested in her distant possessions. Debates on emigration, and the
demand for financial retrenchment, had alike stimulated
[Illustration: RIOTS IN MONTREAL: BURNING OF THE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY.]
this interest, and it began to dawn upon the House of Commons that a bad
Colonial policy might mean bad Budgets. The first sign of this feeling
was given by Mr. Bailie, who in February brought forward a motion for an
inquiry into the conduct of the Governments of Ceylon and Guiana. His
attack was general as well as particular. In brief, he declared that the
Colonial Office oppressed the Colonies and wasted their revenues in
extravagant expenditure, and he urged that the time had come for
Colonial autonomy. Lord Torrington’s fiscal eccentricities had driven
Ceylon to rebellion, which had been suppressed with shocking barbarity.
The Colonial Office--in other words, Lord Grey--by opposing financial
reforms in Demerara, had rendered it discontented. A feeble Amendment,
moved by Mr. Ricardo, extending the scope of the proposed investigation
into the means by which the Colonies might best meet the difficulties of
the transition from Protection to Free Trade, was all the opposition Mr.
Bailie encountered. The attempt to defend the financial
maladministration of the Colonies by declaring that it was a corollary
of Free Trade failed, and Mr. Bailie’s Committee was appointed. Just
before Parliament was prorogued, Mr. Hume drew the attention of the
House to the evidence it had then accumulated as to Guiana, and moved
that the expenditure of the Colony be reduced, and some measure of
autonomy granted to it. The fault with the administration of Demerara
was this:--for ten years it had been carried on extravagantly in direct
opposition to the views of the elected representatives of the Colonists,
who were for a policy of financial retrenchment. The motion was
negatived, but the debate on it did good. It is perhaps right to say
that the agitation for retrenchment in these Colonies was considerably
stimulated by the abolition of Protection. Free Trade cut down the
profits of the planters. They in turn angrily demanded that the salaries
of Colonial officials should also be docked.
Early in May the Queen was grievously annoyed to learn that the
turbulent Canadians were again threatening to rebel. Parliament,
therefore, soon found itself discussing a Canadian question.
After the rebellion in Canada, which ended in 1838, a Bill was passed
giving compensation to loyal sufferers in Upper Canada. A similar
measure was demanded for Lower Canada--the French province--which had
been the seat of the insurrection. As it was argued that much, if not
most, of the compensation would find its way into rebel hands, the claim
was resisted by “the British Party” in the province. But in 1848 the
Ministry--a Tory, or “British” Ministry--was ejected. The
Governor-General (Lord Elgin) then formed another Cabinet out of the
“French Party,” who, of course, brought in and passed an Indemnity Bill
for the Lower Province. When Lord Elgin went to the House of Assembly,
in Montreal, on the 25th of April, 1849, to give this Bill his sanction,
the “British” mob rose in its wrath, and stoned him as he was leaving
the building. They then set fire to the House of Assembly itself, and
burned it to the ground in a frenzy of loyalty to British interests.
Troops were promptly called out, and the disaffected accordingly adopted
the less violent course of petitioning the Queen to recall Lord Elgin
and veto the obnoxious Bill. The “British Party” gradually cooled down,
but throughout the year they remained very sulky, vainly endeavouring to
persuade themselves to secede to the United States. The condition of the
Colony was, in truth, not such as to stimulate its loyalty. It had lost
the benefit which it had enjoyed from privileged access to a protected
English market. Its finances were disordered. Its stagnation and decay
were in startling contrast to the prosperity and progress of the New
England States of the American Republic. The form of its provincial
Government was cumbrous, inciting to political feuds; and then--worst of
all--in the mother country, Manchester Radicals persistently incited the
Canadians to secede, by promulgating the doctrine that British Colonies
not only benefited by independence, but were, whilst in the dependent
state, a source of trouble and expense to the English taxpayer.
The whole question came before the House of Commons more than once. On
the 14th of June the Rebellion Losses Bill was fiercely attacked by Mr.
Gladstone in the House of Commons as a measure for rewarding rebels.
Some years afterwards Mr. Gladstone made a kind of apology for his
onslaught; but even then he quite misunderstood the true meaning and
bearing of Lord Elgin’s policy.[122] Mr. Herries moved an Address
calling on the Queen to veto the Bill. For two nights it was attacked;
but Sir Robert Peel’s intervention routed the opposition, for he pointed
out that the measure could not possibly give compensation, as Mr.
Gladstone alleged, to any one who was shown to be a rebel, and that it
was only, as Lord Elgin said, the logical sequence of other measures of
the sort, which had been passed without opposition. His strongest point,
however, was that to reject the Bill would be taken as an insult to the
Colony, and an encroachment on its right of self-government. Mr. Herries
lost his motion by a majority of 141. In the House of Lords, however,
the attack was renewed by Lord Brougham, and but for the timely aid of
three proxies the Government would have been beaten by him. The curious
thing to note is the calmative influence of this firm, and resolute
attitude of the Government and Parliament on the Colony. The Tory Party
in Canada up till then had strained every effort, Lord Elgin writes in
one of his letters, to drive him to a _coup d’état_. They had breathed
nothing but rebellion and slaughter for months. The moment Parliament
gently snubbed them, however, they were quieted as if by magic, and
their organs began to write articles declaiming against the practice of
abusing the French, with whom, in the long-run, the Tory or English
Party were bound to live in amity.
During this crisis nothing could be worthier of the occasion than the
courage, the coolness, the dignity, and resolute forbearance of Lord
Elgin. As he says in one of his letters, he stood literally alone. He
was accused of cowardice because he did not quench the revolt in blood;
and even Lord John Russell and Lord Grey, though they defended him,
thought the logic of the case was against him. He was, they argued,
either right or wrong. If the latter, he ought to be recalled; if the
former, he ought to avenge by force of arms the insult offered to the
Queen in his person. But Elgin’s policy was justified by the result.
This was that 700,000 rebellious French subjects of the Queen were
reconciled to her Government, not because they were bribed by
compensation grants, for no actual rebel got any, but because they had a
striking proof given to them that to “be just and fear not” was the
keynote of the British Governor-General’s policy and administration.
[Illustration: OLD FRENCH HOUSE, QUEBEC.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Diaries of a Lady of Quality, by Miss Frances Williams Wynn. 1864.
[2] Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of William IV. and Victoria, by
the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. 1861.
[3] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Right Hon. the Earl of
Malmesbury. 1884.
[4] McGilchrist’s Life of Queen Victoria. 1868.
[5] History of England, Vol. I., chap. 2.
[6] The Greville Memoirs: Second Part (1885), relating to the Reign of
Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852.
[7] Recollections of Society in France and England, by Lady Clementina
Davies. 1872.
[8] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[9] Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I.
[10] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I.
[11] The Early Days of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort; compiled,
under the direction of her Majesty, by Lieut.-General the Hon. C. Grey.
1867.
[12] Letter to Baron Stockmar, May, 1841.
[13] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[14] Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands.
[15] Early Years of the Prince Consort.
[16] Harriet Martineau’s History of England during the Thirty Years’
Peace.
[17] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I.
[18] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Vol. I., p. 134: Vol. II., pp. 396 and
482.
[19] Thoughts on the Present Discontents.
[20] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I., p. 315.
[21] _Examiner_, 27th December, 1845.
[22] The Croker Papers. The Correspondence and Diaries of the late
Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the
Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. Edited by Louis J. Jennings, Vol. III., p.
67.
[23] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Earl of Malmesbury, G.C.B., Vol.
I., pp. 166 and 167.
[24] A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel, by Sir
Lawrence Peel, p. 283.
[25] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, by M. Guizot, p. 251.
[26] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, edited by Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope,
and the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, Vol. II.
[27] Sir Robert Peel: An Historical Sketch, by Henry, Lord Dalling,
1874.
[28] Irish History for English Readers, p. 133.
[29] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XIV.
[30] _Gardener’s Chronicle_, September, 1845.
[31] Endymion, Vol. II., p. 190 (Tauchnitz Edition).
[32] Prentice’s History of the League, Vol. II., p. 415.
[33] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XIV.
[34] _Examiner_, 17th January, 1846.
[35] See _Times_ Report, 7th of January, 1846.
[36] Hansard.
[37] Life and Letters of Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., by R. G.
Wilberforce, Vol. I.
[38] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Note by the Queen, Vol. I.,
p. 322.
[39] Leading article, _Daily Chronicle_, 9th April, 1886.
[40] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Right Hon. the Earl of
Malmesbury, Vol. I. p. 171.
[41] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. II., p. 312.
[42] Campbell’s Lives of the Chancellors.
[43] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, edited by Philip, Earl Stanhope, and
the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell.
[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I., p. 328.
[45] Martin’s Life of Lord Lyndhurst, Vol. II., p. 409.
[46] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, edited by Lord Stanhope and the Right
Hon. Edward Cardwell. Murray: 1875. Vol. II., p. 298.
[47] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, _ut supra_.
[48] Sir Robert Peel’s Memorandum to the Duke of Wellington on the
Position of the Cabinet, June 21. Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, Vol. II.,
p. 288.
[49] Memoirs of Sir R. Peel, Vol. II., p. 246.
[50] Life of Lord Lyndhurst, by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., p. 418.
[51] The Physiology of the Peel Party. Edinburgh: 1846. _Privately
printed._
[52] Lord Grey’s objections were not overcome, as a matter of fact,
till Lord John Russell pledged himself to exercise vigilant personal
control over Lord Palmerston’s Foreign Policy.
[53] Life of Lord Campbell, by the Hon. Mrs. Hardcastle, Vol. II., p.
201.
[54] See Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, Book V., Chap. XI., §
14.
[55] Memoirs, Vol. VIII.
[56] In the _Edinburgh Review_, Vol. LXXXV., there is an article on
the seizure of Cracow, which, though not written by Prince Albert, one
might almost say was dictated by him.
[57] C. C. Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. II.,
p. 421.
[58] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XVII.
[59] Stockmar’s Memorabilia.
[60] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[61] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[62] Stockmar’s Memorabilia.
[63] Life and Letters of Baroness Bunsen, by A. J. C. Hare, Vol. II.,
p. 92.
[64] Experimental Researches in Electricity, by Michael Faraday, Esq.,
D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. From the Philosophical Transactions, Part I. for
1846.
[65] _Times_, 13th January, 1886.
[66] Progress and Poverty, Chap. II.
[67] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 215.
[68] Hansard’s Debates, 19th January, 1847.
[69] _Times_, City Article, 10th January, 1846.
[70] Return in Appendix D to the Report of the Committee of the House
of Commons on Commercial Distress. 1848. P. Paper, No. 395.
[71] Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on Commercial
Distress. Minutes of Evidence. 1848: Q. 4861-4876.
[72] _Edinburgh Review_, 1848.
[73] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 218.
[74] C. C. Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. II.,
p. 85.
[75] Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 41.
[76] Life of Lord Palmerston, by the Hon. E. Ashley, Vol. II., p. 46.
[77] It was so obscure that Dr. Wilberforce says, playfully, in one
of his letters to his brother:--“N.B.--Could we not pass a vote that
Hampden should always preach in Hebrew?”--Life of Bishop Wilberforce,
Vol. I., p. 93.
[78] Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. II., p. 115.
[79] Bulwer’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. III., p 388.
[80] A strong Memorandum by Lord Palmerston on the National Defences,
December, 1846, is given _in extenso_ in Lord Dalling’s Life of Lord
Palmerston, Vol. III., p. 390.
[81] Vol. II., p. 220.
[82] Life and Letters of Baroness Bunsen, Vol. II., p. 8.
[83] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. I., p. 398.
[84] It is supposed to be the special prerogative of Trinity to receive
Royal visitors to Cambridge.
[85] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. X.
[86] Whewell’s Memoirs.
[87] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 226.
[88] Memoirs of an Ex Minister, Vol. I., p. 208.
[89] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXIV.
[90] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 548.
[91] _Le Moniteur_, 28th January, 1847.
[92] Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with
Nassau William Senior, edited by M. P. Simpson, Vol. I., p. 37.
[93] For much interesting information on Chartism, the reader who
desires to study the subject further may profitably refer to Forty
Years’ Recollections, by Thomas Frost; Frost’s Secret Societies of
the European Revolution; Urquhart’s _Diplomatic Review_; Molesworth’s
History of England; Memoirs and Correspondence of Thomas Slingsby
Duncombe; Gammage’s Narrative of the Chartist Movement; and Sybil, or
the Two Nations, by Lord Beaconsfield.
[94] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by Lord Malmesbury, Vol. I., p. 224.
[95] Life and Letters of John, Lord Campbell, by the Hon. Mrs.
Hardcastle.
[96] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister.
[97] Letter to Mrs. Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in
London, by J. A. Froude, Vol. I., p. 434.
[98] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[99] Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, p. 217.
[100] Morley’s Life of Cobden.
[101] This was a favourite idea with the Duke. He attributed our Afghan
disasters to our failure to keep open our communications.
[102] Forty Years’ Recollections, by Thomas Frost, p. 161.
[103] Young Ireland: a Fragment of Irish History, by Sir C. Gavan Duffy
(Cassell & Company).
[104] Young Ireland. _Fortnightly Review_, December, 1880.
[105] “It is a peculiarity of Irish rebellion that it counts so much
on the co-operation of women, who are to be nothing less than unsexed
for its purposes. “Women are to squirt vitriol, and women are to put on
hoops--not hoops on their own persons, but hoops on the persons of her
Majesty’s soldiers, hoops wrapped round with turpentine, steeped in tow
and fired.... The _Felon_ newspaper has run its short course. An apter
name should be chosen for the next organ of the Mitchel doctrines. The
_Fiend_ should be the title.”--_Examiner._
[106] New Ireland, Sixth Edition, p. 91.
[107] Prince Bismarck: An Historical Biography, by Charles Lowe, M.A.,
Vol. I., p. 63.
[108] Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p. 169.
[109] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria.
[110] Sybil, or the Two Nations, by the Earl of Beaconsfield, Book V.,
Chap. I.
[111] It is interesting to record that Lord Brougham, in the House of
Lords on the 21st of July, 1848, read a letter in which the writer said
that Mr. O’Connell had, in conversation, suggested, three weeks before
Sir R. Peel’s Coercion Act was passed, that a suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act would be preferable, as it “would cure and not irritate.”
Mr. O’Connell further stated that he would support Peel in pursuing
that policy, provided the Minister would pledge himself to introduce
the measures of relief and justice to Ireland which he had so often
promised.
[112] Thomas Carlyle, by J. A. Froude, Vol. I., p. 248.
[113] Letter to the Registrar-General on Health Insurance, by William
Farr, Esq. Appendix to the Registrar-General’s Report for 1849.
[114] Prince Consort’s Speeches.
[115] Leaves from her Majesty’s Journal, 8th of September, 1848.
[116] Lyell was knighted during this visit to Balmoral.
[117] H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.
[118] Professor Anderson’s entertainment is evidently referred to here.
[119] The “ladle” in which the offertory is collected in Scottish
parish churches is passed round each pew by an “elder” of the Kirk.
[120] In the Life of the Prince Consort, by Sir T. Martin, there is a
record of a curious conversation the Prince and Lord Clarendon, giving
a graphic description of rural Ireland at this time.
[121] This was done, as a matter of fact, on three previous
occasions--the Irish Municipal Bill (1834), and the Irish Poor Law
Bills of 1838 and 1847.
[122] Memoir of James, eighth Earl of Elgin, edited by Theodore
Walrond, with a Preface by A. P. Stanley, Chap. IV., pp. 70 _et seq._