THE LAST YEAR OF “THE GREAT PEACE.”
Abortive Attacks on the Ministry--Mr. Disraeli’s First Budget--Fall
of the Tory Cabinet--The Queen and Lord Aberdeen--Organising the
Coalition--A Ministry of “All the Talents”--The Queen and South
Kensington--A Miser’s Legacy to the Queen--Sport at
Balmoral--Proclamation of the Second Empire--The “Battle of the
Numeral”--The Queen Initiates a Policy--Personal Government in the
Victorian Age--A Servile Minister--Lord Malmesbury’s
Spies--Napoleon III. and “Mrs. Howard”--Creole Card-Parties at
Kensington--Napoleon III. Proposes to Marry the Queen’s Niece--Lord
John Russell’s Education Scheme--Mr. Gladstone’s First Budget--The
India Bill--Transportation of Convicts to Australia Stopped--The
Gold Fever in Australia--The Rush to the Diggings--The First Gold
Ships in the Thames--Gold Discoveries and Free Trade--Chagrin of
the Protectionists--The Rise in Prices--Practical Success of Peel’s
Fiscal Policy--Strikes and Dear Bread--End of the Great Peace.
No sooner had the Duke of Wellington been buried than rival parties
resumed the war of faction. The Free Traders, who had been resuscitating
the old anti-Corn Law organisation in the North of England, resolved to
force from the Ministry an unambiguous declaration against Protection.
Mr. Charles Villiers accordingly moved a series of resolutions on the
23rd of November, affirming, that the Free Trade policy of the country
had been wise, just, and beneficial[64]--“three odious epithets,” said
Mr. Disraeli, which could not be accepted by the Tory Party. He
ridiculed this attempt to revive the cries of “exhausted factions and
obsolete politics.” He was himself fain, however, to propose a
resolution, which admitted that Free Trade had cheapened the necessaries
of life, which bound the Government to adhere to that policy, but which
did not contain any formal recantation of Protectionist principles.[65]
Mr. Bright hit the weak spot in these tactics when he asked, was it
safest to let the national verdict on Free Trade be drawn up by Mr.
Villiers, who advocated it, or by Mr. Disraeli, who did not advocate it,
and the majority of whose followers were pledged to exact from the
people some kind of compensation to the landed interest for the repeal
of the bread tax? Had it suited Lord Palmerston to let the Ministry be
beaten, nothing could have prevented their defeat. But, as we have seen,
he had resolved never to serve under Lord John Russell; and there was
too much reason to fear that at the moment Lord John was the only
possible Premier in the event of Lord Derby resigning office.
“A moderate resolution,” writes Sir George Cornewall Lewis to Sir Edmund
Head, “had been prepared by Graham, and assented to by Lord John and
Gladstone. Charles Villiers was willing to move it, but Cobden insisted
on something stronger, in the secret hope that the House would reject
it, and thus damage itself in public opinion, thereby promoting the
cause of Parliamentary Reform. Palmerston got possession of the
resolution prepared by Graham, and moved it as an intermediate
proposition.”[66] The resolution affirmed the principle of Free Trade,
but not in terms obtrusively offensive to the Tories. It was eagerly
accepted by Mr. Disraeli, who saw in it the means of deliverance from
his enemies, and it was carried by a majority of 468 to 53--the minority
representing all the Tories who were prepared to cling to Protection,
even after it had been formally abandoned by Mr. Disraeli in his
audacious address to his constituents.[67]
Mr. Disraeli’s tactics in thus evading defeat have sometimes been cited
as a proof of his skill. In reality, they were the outcome of
inexperience and exaggerated self-confidence. He did not correctly
understand why Sir James Graham and Mr. Gladstone desired to move a
moderate resolution. They were, of course, anxious not to turn out the
Ministry before Mr. Disraeli’s Budget saw the light. They were morally
certain that it would contain some fantastic proposals, which must not
only wreck the popularity of the Government, but destroy public
confidence for ever in Mr. Disraeli’s financial skill. Events proved
that they were right in their calculation.
[Illustration: NORTH TERRACE AND WYKEHAM TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
On the 3rd of December, in a speech of dazzling brilliancy, Mr. Disraeli
introduced his famous and fatal Budget. It reduced the Malt Tax by
one-half. The House Duty was raised from 9d. to 1s. 6d. in the £, and
extended from houses of £20 to houses of £10 rental. Light dues paid by
ships other than for the support of lighthouses pure and simple were
taken off. Tea duties were to be reduced gradually by small annual
amounts from 2s. 2¼d. to 1s. a
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF ARGYLE.]
pound. The Income Tax was to be extended to funded property and salaries
in Ireland. A distinction was drawn in taxing permanent and precarious
incomes, the exemption for industrial incomes being limited to £100 a
year, and for incomes from property to £50; and the rates of assessment
per £ were 7d. on incomes from rent of land and from funds, but only
5¼d. on incomes from farming, trade, and salaries. Farmers’ incomes
were to be taken as a third instead of a half of their rents. The
remissions were so balanced by the additions to taxation that no surplus
on the estimated revenue could be shown. A surplus of £400,000 was,
however, manufactured by appropriating as revenue the repayments on
local loans made to the Exchequer Loan Commission--repayments hitherto
used for clearing off debt. The scheme could not stand criticism. After
four nights’ debate, it was utterly demolished, Mr. Gladstone’s speech
attacking it being one of the few which are said to have ever really
turned doubtful votes in the House of Commons. The addition to the House
Tax, pressing, as it did, on those who would come within the extended
range of the Income Tax, infuriated the urban voters. The remission of
half the Malt Tax failed to satisfy a landed interest, hungering for
compensation for the abolition of the Corn Laws, because a reduced Malt
Tax, it was agreed, benefited nobody but the publicans and the brewers.
An extension of the Income Tax to funded property, Mr. Gladstone
contended, was a breach of Mr. Pitt’s pledge to the public creditor, in
1798, that no distinct and special tax should ever be laid on the
stockholder as such. Mr. Gladstone, like all the eminent financial
authorities, protested against recognising the illusory principle of a
graduated Income Tax, which lurked in the distinction made between
permanent and precarious incomes. He further protested against the
danger of estimating too narrowly for the services of the year, and
urged with incontestable force that it was a vicious principle to reckon
as surplus revenue £400,000 of repayments on the score of local
loans--that is to say, to regard the repayment of borrowed money as true
income. The Government were beaten on their Budget, by a vote of 305 to
286, on the morning of the 17th of December.[68] In the evening Lord
Derby handed his resignation to the Queen at Osborne.
Her Majesty, fully aware of the reasons that rendered Lord John Russell
an impossible Premier, now saw her way to organising the strong
Government of capable and experienced statesmen which, ever since 1846,
she had held could only be formed by a coalition of the Whigs and the
Peelites. She accordingly summoned Lord Aberdeen and Lord Lansdowne to
assist her out of the Ministerial crisis. Gout prevented Lord Lansdowne
from attending at Osborne. His ill-health, together with his loyalty to
Lord John Russell, and the disinclination of the Peelites to serve under
him, rendered it impossible for him to accept the Premiership. It was
equally impossible for the Queen to ask Lord Palmerston to become Prime
Minister, after the recent events which had led to his dismissal from
the Foreign Office. Hence Lord Aberdeen, though the head of the smallest
faction, was the candidate for the Premiership who least divided the
Opposition. He was therefore charged with the task of forming a
Cabinet.[69] On the 28th of December the famous Coalition Ministry was
organised--Lord Cranworth was Lord Chancellor; Lord Aberdeen, Prime
Minister; Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Palmerston,
Home Secretary; Lord John Russell,[70] Foreign Secretary; the Duke of
Newcastle, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Sidney Herbert, War Secretary; Sir J.
Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Granville, President of the
Council; Sir C. Wood, President of the Board of Control; the Duke of
Argyle, Lord Privy Seal; Sir W. Molesworth, Chief Commissioner of Works;
the Marquis of Lansdowne, a Minister without office. “The success of our
excellent Aberdeen’s arduous task,” writes the Queen to the King of the
Belgians, “and the formation of so brilliant and strong a Cabinet would,
I was sure, please you. It is the realisation of the country’s and our
own most ardent wishes, and it deserves success, and will, I think,
command support.”[71] The Queen here simply reflected public opinion.
Never had a Cabinet of abler men, individually speaking, ruled England
since the Ministry of “All the Talents” fell from power. But the
Sovereign and her people both forgot that in our strange and anomalous
constitution no Cabinet is, as a rule, so weak as a Cabinet of strong
men. This Ministry, which started on its career on the flood-tide of
Court and popular favour, was destined, by its vacillation in foreign
policy, to lead the country into the terrible calamity of a European
war. It was doomed to fall amidst the execrations even of those who,
like Mr. Cobden, declared that to his dying day he could never
sufficiently regret giving one of the votes that brought it into power.
After the formation of the Government, the usual explanations of the
position of affairs were given in both Houses of Parliament, Lord Derby
attempting to show that the destruction of his Ministry had been plotted
by an unprincipled combination of hostile factions. On the contrary, as
Sir George Cornewall Lewis says in one of his letters, “there was no
real anxiety on the part of the Opposition to turn out the Government;
the sections of it were divided, and there was none of that ‘coalition’
which Lord Derby spoke of. The Budget, however, was more than human
flesh and blood could bear. The promises of a substitute for Protection
which Disraeli had made at the Elections rendered it necessary that the
Government should propose something which appeared for the benefit of
the agriculturists. They sounded some of their supporters among the
county members as to a transfer from the local rates to the Consolidated
Fund; but I believe the answer they got was, that a measure which
destroyed the power of the magistrates and the local authorities would
not be acceptable to their party. They had nothing then to propose but a
reduction of the Malt Tax, which created a large deficit, and rendered
an increase of taxation necessary. This latter object was effected by
doubling and enlarging the House Tax. Disraeli was evidently very
confident of the success of his Budget, and impatient to produce it. But
when it had been out a week it was clear the country would not agree to
it. The farmers did not care about the reduction of the Malt Tax; but
the towns did care very decidedly for the increase of the House Tax, and
showed a strong objection to it.... Having made their Budget a means of
redeeming their promise to give their party an equivalent for
Protection, they could not modify it, and therefore defeat on it was
vital.”[72] On the 31st of December all the appointments under the new
Government were filled up, and Parliament was adjourned till the 10th of
February, 1853.
[Illustration: VIEW IN BRAEMAR.]
In the early part of the year the Queen was much distressed by reason of
her husband’s anxieties in connection with the affairs of the Great
Exhibition. His idea was to apply the surplus in the hands of the
Exhibition Commissioners
[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA.
(_After the Equestrian Portrait by Count D’Orsay_)]
to the purchase of a site at South Kensington, for the Science and Art
Institution which he hoped to see created. Ninety acres of land were
bought for £342,500, of which sum Government advanced £177,500, with the
intention of transferring the National Gallery to the site. The agent of
the Commissioners, however, had in purchasing the land stupidly agreed
to take it on a building lease, under conditions which would have
destroyed their plans, and involved them in the dilemma of repudiating
their agent, or incurring liabilities to erect dwelling-houses, which
they dared not undertake. The vendor, Baron Villars, generously
permitted them to make other arrangements for buying the fee-simple of
the land; but the anxieties of the Prince during the period when the
issue was in suspense preyed terribly on his mind and health, and the
Queen has herself recorded how she exhausted all means in her power to
cheer and sustain him in his distress.
[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO THE BRITANNIA TUBULAR BRIDGE.]
Her Majesty’s birthday was spent in the sunshine of domestic happiness
at Osborne. In the festivities of the season the Queen, early in June,
assures her uncle, King Leopold, that she and her family joined only to
a limited extent. They gave two State balls and two State concerts. They
go, she says, three or four times a week to the play or opera, are
hardly ever later than midnight in going to bed and, but for the
fagging business of public affairs, the Season “would be nothing to us.”
During the summer, life at Osborne was diversified by several short
yachting excursions round the South Coast. In August the Queen planned
and carried out a brief visit to her uncle, King Leopold of Belgium,
reaching Antwerp on the 10th in the Royal yacht in a tempest of wind and
rain. At the King’s country seat at Laeken the Royal party spent four
bright and happy days, saddened only by the too visible gap in the
family circle, left by the death of Queen Louise. The disagreeable and
tempestuous voyage homeward was only broken by a charming visit to
Terneusen, where the simple hospitality and quaint old-world ways of the
villagers greatly delighted her Majesty, who seems to have passed a
pleasant day among them.
On the 30th of August her Majesty was amazed to receive information at
Balmoral to the effect that an eccentric old barrister called Nield had
bequeathed a legacy of £250,000 to her. John Camden Nield was a miser,
who had pinched and starved himself for thirty years to add to his
patrimony. The Queen very properly resolved to refuse the legacy if Mr.
Nield had any relations living who had a claim to the money;[73] but as
it appeared he had none, she accepted the gift. The holiday at Balmoral
was as bright and happy as could be wished. “Nothing,” writes Lord
Malmesbury, who was in attendance on the Queen at this time, “can exceed
the good nature with which I am treated, both by her Majesty and the
Prince. Balmoral is an old country house in bad repair, and totally
unfit for Royal personages.... The Royal party consists of the Duchess
of Kent, the ladies in waiting, Colonel Phipps, and Sir Arthur Gordon.
The rooms are so small that I am obliged to write my despatches on my
bed, and to keep the window constantly open to admit the necessary
quantity of air; and my private secretary, George Harris, lodged
somewhere three miles off. We played at billiards every evening, the
Queen and the Duchess being constantly obliged to get up from their
chairs to be out of the way of the cues. Nothing could be more cheerful
and evidently perfectly happy than the Queen and Prince, or more kind to
every one round them. I never met any man so remarkable for the variety
of information on all subjects as the latter, with a great fund of
humour _quand il se déboutonne_.” The Prince himself records in his
Diary,[74] however, that “Balmoral is in full splendour, and the people
there are very glad that it is now entirely our own.” On the 4th of
September Lord Malmesbury writes:--“The Prince had a wood driven not far
from the house. After we had been posted in line, two fine stags passed
me, which I missed. Colonel Phipps fired next, and lastly, the Prince,
without any effect. The Queen had come out to see the sport, lying down
in the heather by the Prince, and witnessed all these fiascos, to our
humiliation.”[75] This happy holiday was sadly broken by the death of
the Duke of Wellington, which brought the Court unexpectedly back to
Windsor in October, their route being through Edinburgh, Preston,
Chester, and North Wales, where they inspected, on the 14th of October,
the Britannia tubular bridge over the Menai Straits. The Queen drove
through the bridge in a State carriage drawn by men, while Prince
Albert, accompanied by Mr. R. Stephenson, walked across on the roof of
the tube. On reaching the south end, the party descended to the water’s
edge, from which they obtained a complete view of the magnificent
proportions of the gigantic structure.
During 1852 one striking event in Foreign Affairs that occupied the
attention of the Queen was the transformation of the French Republic
into the Second Empire. In Paris, on the 1st of January, Charles Louis
Napoleon was installed at Notre Dame as President of France, and he
promulgated a new Constitution, preserving little of the form and none
of the spirit of Liberty. The whole Executive was to be vested in the
President, who was to be advised by a Council of State, a Senate of
nobles nominated for life, and a powerless legislative body elected by
universal suffrage for six years, whose transactions at the demand of
five members could be kept secret. The next step taken by the
Prince-President was to issue Decrees on the 23rd of January, compelling
the Orleans Princes to sell their real and personal property in France
within a year, and confiscating the property settled on the family by
Louis Philippe previous to his accession in 1830. This raised a storm of
indignation among all Frenchmen who were not accomplices of the
Prince-President in the _coup d’état_, and it caused Montalembert to
resign his seat on the Consultative Commission of the 2nd of December.
De Morny and Fould also resigned, M. de Persigny replacing the
former.[76] To the Queen, whose partiality for the Orleans family was
well known, these Decrees were painfully offensive. The
Prince-President’s strongest partisan in England, Lord Malmesbury, wrote
a letter remonstrating with him, and the reply serves to illustrate the
character of the men who consented to serve in the Senate. “He (the
Prince-President),” says Lord Malmesbury in a letter to Lord Cowley,
British Ambassador at Paris, “declared the confiscation necessary, as
even some of his own Senators had been tampered with by Orleanist agents
and money.”[77] On September 13th this patriotic Senate prayed for “the
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME, PARIS (WEST FRONT).]
re-establishment of the hereditary sovereign power in the Bonaparte
family;” and on the 4th of November the Prince-President announced that
he had in view the restoration of the Empire, and ordered the French
people to be consulted on the matter. The French people, when consulted,
were for the restoration--7,839,552 voting “Yes,” and 254,501 “No.” The
vote was cast on the 21st of November, three days after Wellington was
laid in the grave. As Cobden said, one might almost picture the third
Napoleon rising from the yet open tomb of the vanquisher of the
first.[78] On the 2nd of December Charles Louis Napoleon was declared
Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon III. The Constitution
of January was confirmed with some slight modifications. A Royal title
was given to Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s uncle. St. Arnaud, Magnan, and
Castillane were created Marshals of France; and then there arose the
first of the Imperial difficulties--that of obtaining recognition from
the European Courts.
[Illustration: COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT.]
The Queen took a thoroughly sensible view of the situation. The
atrocities of December and the confiscation of the Orleans property had
not prepossessed her Majesty in favour of the French Emperor. But in her
opinion there was no essential difference between such a Republic as had
been established by the _coup d’état_ strengthened by the Constitution
of January, and a military Empire without glory or genius. If the vast
majority of Frenchmen were desirous of transforming their
Prince-President into an Emperor, that was their affair, and Foreign
Courts had no concern in the matter. The Queen was, therefore, strongly
in favour of recognising the title of the Emperor of the French, and of
according to him the customary courtesy of addressing him in ceremonial
communications as _mon frère_.[79] The Northern Courts, however, could
not bring themselves to treat as an equal, an adventurer who, to use
his own expression in announcing his marriage in the Chamber on the 22nd
of January, 1853, “had frankly taken up before Europe the _position de
parvenu_.” Ultimately they all yielded to facts, and with the exception
of Russia, agreed to address Charles Louis Bonaparte as their “brother.”
The haughty autocrat of Muscovy, who had smiled on him approvingly when
he strangled Liberty in France, frowned on the attempt to raise on its
ruins a fabric of Empire, claiming parity with the ancient dominion of
the Romanoffs. The Czar, therefore, persisted in addressing the French
Emperor, not as “my brother,” but “my cousin.” This trivial slight is
mentioned here, because it had subsequently a potent influence on the
fortunes of England.
“England,” writes Sir Theodore Martin, “conceded the phrase _mon frère_
without a grudge.”[80] That is a somewhat misleading statement. It was
certainly decided in England that the Emperor should be recognised some
little time before the Empire was proclaimed, because everybody knew
that its proclamation was inevitable. Having determined that the
Prince-President was to be recognised in some fashion as Emperor, a
question as to style was raised by the pedants of diplomacy, which
showed where the “grudge” lay. It gave rise to that most grotesque of
diplomatic struggles--the once famous but now forgotten Battle of the
Numeral. Charles Louis Bonaparte, through his envoys, let it be known at
the Court of the Queen that he meant to call himself Napoleon III. “Why
Napoleon the Third?” asked alarmed Diplomacy. “Clearly he means to filch
from us a recognition of the ephemeral title of the Duc de Reichstadt,
the son and heir of Napoleon I., who was proclaimed when the First
Empire crashed into ruins.” It was a crafty device to avenge Waterloo
with the blast of a herald’s trumpet, and to wipe out fifty years of
French history, just as the Parliament of the Restoration tried to
efface the Commonwealth by dating the statutes of 1660, as of the
twelfth year of the Merry Monarch’s reign. The usurper might be
recognised by England as Napoleon II., perhaps, but never, argued Lord
Malmesbury, as Napoleon III., for that would have countenanced more than
our recognition of the Second Empire was actually meant to convey. It
would have implied a recognition of the Emperor’s _hereditary_, as
distinguished from his _elective_, title to the Throne. Most wearisome
were the disputes and most tiresome the conferences between Lord
Malmesbury, then Foreign Secretary, and the French Ambassador on this
subject. At last it was agreed that we should accept the disagreeable
numeral, after the French Government admitted in writing that it was not
to imply our recognition of the Emperor’s hereditary right to the
Imperial Crown of France. From first to last, however, Lord Malmesbury
and the other diplomatists were mistaken. Very little reflection might
have taught them that if the numeral were meant to efface Waterloo, and
the Monarchies of the Bourbons and the Barricades, the usurper would
have styled himself Napoleon V., and not Napoleon III., for his elder
uncle Joseph and his father Louis both survived the young and ill-fated
Duc de Reichstadt. A hereditary title, moreover, would not need to have
been consecrated by a _plebiscite_, and the reign of its wearer would
not have been dated from 1852, but from the date of Louis Bonaparte’s
death. It is, therefore, natural to ask how Charles Louis Bonaparte came
to style himself the Third and not the Second Emperor. The explanation
illustrates the facility with which the tragicomedy of fussy English
diplomacy is transformed into farce at the touch of fact. Lord
Malmesbury, who is rendered supremely ridiculous by the story, tells it
himself as follows in his Diary:--
“December 29 (1852). We went to Heron Court. Whole country under water.
Lord Cowley[81] relates a curious anecdote as to the origin of the
numeral III. in the Emperor’s title. The Prefect of Bourges, where he
slept the first night of his progress, had given instructions that the
people were to shout ‘Vive Napoléon!’ But he wrote ‘Vive Napoléon!!!’
The people took the three notes of interjection for a numeral. The
President, on hearing it, sent the Duc de Mortemart to the Prefect to
know what the cry meant. When the whole thing was explained, the
President, tapping the Duke on the shoulder, said, ‘_Je ne savais pas
que j’avais un Préfet Machiavéliste._’”[82]
After the proclamation of the French Emperor, his matrimonial schemes
touched the family connections of the Queen somewhat closely. The
Emperor’s marriage, in truth, was the favourite topic for gossip and
scandal in every high social circle in Europe. As a matter of fact,
Charles Louis Napoleon was averse from marriage. Two women were already
devoted to him; perhaps more zealously than any bride of exalted rank
could ever be. One was Madame Favart de l’Anglade, a creole, who lived
some time at Kensington Gate, and whose whist and dinner parties have,
perhaps, not yet been quite forgotten in the old Court suburb. (Lord
Malmesbury, it may be said in passing, was told by Kisseleff, the
Russian Ambassador at Paris, that had the _coup d’état_ failed, Charles
Louis Bonaparte and De Morny were to have fled for concealment to this
lady’s house.) The other woman who exercised so much influence on the
Prince-President’s life was a Mrs. Howard. She was his mistress, and he
created her Comtesse de Beauregard after he broke off his intimacy with
her.[83] This event was virtually an intimation of his intention to
marry. He was anxious to have an heir--for obviously none of the
Bonapartes were fit to succeed him. To perpetuate a dynasty a Royal
bride would be useful, and to enable him to obtain a Royal bride,
Charles Louis Bonaparte persuaded France to proclaim him Emperor.
His first project was to seek in marriage the Princess Caroline
Stephanie de Vasa, a grand-daughter of the Grand Duchess of Baden, and
daughter of Prince Gustave de Vasa, son of the last King of Sweden of
the old legitimate dynasty. The proposal was not accepted, and the lady
afterwards married a German Prince. In December, however, Walewski was
sent to the English Court to ask the hand of the Princess Adelaide of
Hohenlohe for his Imperial master, greatly to the disquietude of the
Queen, who was her aunt. On the 28th of December, when the Tory
Ministers went to Windsor to deliver up their seals of office, the Queen
began at once to discuss this delicate affair with them. Lord Malmesbury
says:--“The Prince (Albert) read a letter from Prince Hohenlohe on the
subject, which amounted to this, that he was not sure of the settlement
being satisfactory, and that there were objections of religion and
morals. The Queen and Prince talked of the marriage reasonably, and
weighed the _pros_ and _cons_. Afraid the Princess should be dazzled if
she heard of the offer. I said I knew an offer would be made to the
father. Walewski would go himself. The Queen alluded to the fate of all
the wives of the rulers of France since 1789, but did not object
positively to the marriage.”[84] This project, however, fell to the
ground, and the Emperor, tired of being rejected by Princesses, acted on
the wise apophthegm of Ovid--_Si qua vis apte nubere, nube pari_. On the
22nd of January, 1853, he announced his intention of marrying Eugenia de
Montijo, Countess of Théba, daughter of the Donna Maria Manuela
Kirkpatrick, Dowager Countess de Montijo, by the Count de Montijo, an
officer of rank in the Spanish army. The father of the Donna Maria
Manuela Kirkpatrick was British Consul at Malaga, and supposed to be
descended from the assassin of the Red Comyn, whose family motto, “I mak
sickar” (“I make sure”), perpetuates grim
[Illustration: MDLLE. EUGENIA DE MONTIJO, AFTERWARDS EMPRESS OF THE
FRENCH.]
memories of his loyalty to the Bruce. His Majesty told the deputations
from the Senate, the Legislative Body and the Council of State, that
whilst it was his aim to place France once more within the pale of the
old Monarchies, that result would be better attained by policy than by
“Royal alliances, which create feelings of false security, and
frequently substitute family interests for those of the nation.” Now,
any dispute which engages Europe in diplomatic controversy that finally
leads to war, is apt to produce fresh groupings of the Powers. An
Imperial parvenu seeking for a respectable ally finds in these new
groupings excellent opportunities for insinuating himself into “the pale
of the old monarchies.” Hence the Emperor’s marriage was a sinister omen
for England, because it was his fixed idea that England was the most
profitable ally France could have. The Queen, however, on hearing that
the Emperor’s marriage was a love match, imagined that his abandonment
of an attempt to contract a Royal alliance gave additional force to his
assurance at Bordeaux, on the 9th of October, 1852, that the “Empire was
Peace,” and that under its guidance France was about to enter on a busy
epoch of Industrialism. English Society approved of the marriage,[85]
and the Press was loud in its praises of the Imperial pair.[86] Nobody,
indeed, had the faintest suspicion at the time that war was in store for
us--a war which gave the French Emperor that very alliance with England
for which he was then scheming. But before describing the events that
led up to the most disastrous calamity that darkens the Queen’s reign,
it may be well to sketch briefly the chief points in the Home Policy of
her Majesty’s Ministers during 1853.
It has been said that there were only two great projects in which the
Queen interested herself during this year, filled, as it was, with
distracting anxieties as to foreign affairs--the Budget and the India
Government Bill. There was, however, a third: Lord John Russell’s
scheme--unhappily abortive--for establishing a national system of public
instruction.
Parliament met on the 10th of February, and Mr. Disraeli called Sir
James Graham and Sir Charles Wood to account for speaking rudely of the
French Emperor in their hustings addresses. Nothing came of his pungent
attack, and public interest in politics was languid till April arrived,
when Mr. Gladstone introduced his celebrated Budget--the first of a
series that enabled him to divide with Sir Robert Peel the glory of
being the greatest Finance Minister of the Victorian age.
Mr. Gladstone found that Mr. Disraeli, by under-estimating his revenue
and over-estimating his expenditure, had left him with a surplus, not of
£461,000, but of £2,307,000.[87] Unexpected military expenditure, due to
dread of a French invasion, had reduced this surplus to £807,000. The
primary feature in Mr. Gladstone’s Budget was the extension of the tax
on personal property devised by will to real property, and also to
personal property that passed by settlement. This, Mr. Gladstone
reckoned, would ultimately bring in £2,000,000, and put him in a
position to deal with the Income Tax, which came to an end in 1853. He
proposed to continue the Income Tax at sevenpence in the pound for two
years, then to reduce it to sixpence, and in three years after that to
reduce it to fivepence. He extended the tax to Ireland, but, by way of
compensation, remitted the debts which Ireland had recently incurred to
the Imperial Treasury. He increased the duties on Scotch spirits from
3s. 5d. to 4s. 8d., and on Irish spirits from 2s. 8d. to 3s. 4d. a
gallon, and thus, he reckoned, he had a surplus of £2,151,000 to spend.
How did he spend it? He abolished the duty on soap, thereby terminating
the last of the taxes on the four “necessaries”--salt, leather, and
candles were the other three--which Adam Smith condemned a century
before.[88] He reduced the taxes on 256 minor articles of food, besides
tea, advertisements, carriages, dogs, male servants, apples, cheese,
cocoa, butter, and raisins. He reduced the rate of postage to the
Colonies--a reduction which, it is surprising to find, had not been even
suggested by Mr. Disraeli or any of his predecessors in the highest of
Imperial interests. An ingenious feature in his Budget was his
manipulation of the Funds. Old Three per Cent. Consols, which could be
paid off at a year’s notice, sold for a little over par, that is to say,
£100 of stock sold for a little more than £100. New Three per Cents,
however, which were not redeemable for twenty years, sold for
£103--_i.e._, £100 of stock was worth in the market £103, the difference
of £3 representing the value of the State guarantee to pay interest on
the stock for twenty years. Hence, he said, if he gave a like guarantee
for some of the unguaranteed stock, he might lay hands on the increment
of value thereby added to it for the benefit of the State. He
accordingly permitted fundholders to exchange £100 of Consols, or
“Reduced Three per Cents.” for Exchequer bonds,[89] or for £82 10s. in
New Three and a Half per Cent. Stock, guaranteed for forty years to pay
£2 17s. 9d. of interest, or for £110 irredeemable Two and a Half per
Cent. Stock. Mr. Spencer Walpole has said
[Illustration: PRINCE JÉRÔME BONAPARTE.]
that “in breadth, in comprehension, in boldness, in knowledge, and in
originality,” Mr. Gladstone’s first Budget will compare with Peel’s
greatest efforts in 1842 and 1845.[90] But even Mr. Walpole admits that,
whereas Peel’s Budgets can be tested by results, Mr. Gladstone’s can be
judged of only from its intention. The Crimean war--which he did not
foresee, and which, as will be shown presently, was then brewing--upset
all his calculations. It was not favourable to conversion of debt;
moreover, the new succession duty did not bring in one-fourth of the
estimated sum.[91] Only one important change was effected in the scheme.
The duty on advertisements, which Mr. Gladstone proposed should be
reduced to 6d., was abolished by the odd and novel method of moving and
carrying an amendment substituting the cipher (0) for the figure 6(d.),
in the resolution of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Hume
challenged the competence of the House of Commons in Committee to adopt
a resolution with a “nought” in it instead of a definite figure, but the
Speaker ruled against him.
[Illustration: SKETCH IN THE OUTER CLOISTERS, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
The India Bill was introduced by Sir C. Wood on the 3rd of June, 1853.
The complaints against the system under which India was ruled were that
it led to wars, deficits, maladministration of justice, neglect of
public works and of education. The Dual Government of the Imperial Board
of Control and the Court of Directors of the East India Company was
maintained, but the Court of Directors was reduced from thirty members
to eighteen, twelve of whom were to be chosen by the Company, and six
nominated by the Crown, who were to be Indian officials of ten years’
service. The new system, which was to prevail till Parliament chose to
change it, put an end to the old plan of leasing the Indian Empire for a
term of years to a Company of merchant adventurers. As to patronage,
competition was substituted for nomination as the mode of entering the
public service. Direct appointments to the Indian Army were, however,
left in the hands of the Directors of the Company. The scheme was warmly
discussed, the friends of the Company insisting on immediate
legislation; its enemies, thinking that in time they might be able to
educate the country up to the point of abolishing the authority of the
Directors, and transferring the government of India absolutely to the
Crown,[92] pressed for delay. Mr. Disraeli and the bulk of the Tories
were for postponing legislation, but in the end the Government carried
the Bill.
Lord John Russell, on the 4th of April, explained his scheme for
establishing a system of national education. The main point in it was
that it empowered Municipal Authorities to raise a rate in aid of
voluntary schools, the rate to be applied to pay twopence in the week
for each scholar, provided fourpence or fivepence were contributed from
other sources. The scheme was, however, abandoned. Lord John had in his
speech foreshadowed the introduction of a Bill imposing drastic reforms
on the Universities, and this roused the Tory Party to obstruct his
proposals. It is but fair to draw attention to this Bill, because Lord
John Russell is entitled to the credit of having been the first
statesman to present a comprehensive scheme for organising primary
education, based on the principle that it is the duty of the community
to provide for the instruction of the people by levying an education
rate. This, said Mr. W. J. Fox, was “a most important step in the
progress of public instruction.”
A Bill empowering the Local Governments in Canada to deal with Clergy
Reserves was introduced by Mr. F. Peel on the 15th of February. It is
notable because the debates on it illustrate the difference between the
ideas of the two parties in the State as to Colonial Government--the
Tories in those days being on the whole opposed to granting the Colonies
privileges of self-government, whilst the Liberals favoured such grants.
In 1791 it was enacted that whenever the Crown disposed of waste lands
in Canada, one-seventh of their value should be reserved for the support
of the Protestant clergy. The funds, it seems, had not been fairly
distributed, the Established Churches of England and Scotland having
received the largest share of them. In 1840 the Imperial Legislature had
confirmed this appropriation by restraining the Canadian Legislatures
from meddling with these funds. The Bill of the Government simply gave
the Canadian Legislature the right of dealing with them as it thought
fit, on the ground that the disposal of lands which derived their value
from Canadian capital and Canadian enterprise was a matter of Colonial
rather than of Imperial concern. The Bill was passed.
On the 11th of July a Bill for altering the punishment of transportation
was introduced into the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. Only one
Colony--Western Australia--was willing to receive convicts, and not more
than 800 to 1,000 a year could be sent there. The Government proposed,
therefore, to limit transportation to such cases of crime as would carry
a sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment, and substitute shorter
periods of imprisonment for offences, which up till now had been
punished by varying periods of transportation.
This proposal, which was carried, was forced on the State by the great
changes which had been effected in the Australian Colonies after the
discovery of gold in New South Wales. Here it may be well to notice the
manner in which these gold discoveries were made, and their effect on
the prosperity of the Empire.
It was on the 10th of September, 1852, that the West India mail steamer
brought news to England which revived the old yearning for the discovery
of the fabled El Dorado--dormant in the English breast since the days of
Raleigh. Gold, it was reported, had been found near Bathurst, in New
South Wales, where a frantic rush to the diggings had taken place. The
merchant left his warehouse, the shopman his counter, even the lawyers
deserted their clients--all eager to join in the headlong race to the
mines. But all the gold they were likely to win could not possibly
balance the loss caused to the Colony at the time by the mad stampede of
the shepherds, who abandoned their countless flocks for the mines. The
gold fever was further exacerbated by the subsequent discovery of
another rich deposit in Victoria. America had found her El Dorado in
California; Englishmen accordingly heard with pride that they, too, had
come into a richer heritage in the hitherto despised convict settlements
of Australasia. On the 23rd of November, 1852, three vessels from
Australia sailed into the Thames with a cargo of seven tons of solid
gold. The _Eagle_ brought 160,000 ounces, worth £600,000, and she had
made the passage from Melbourne to the Downs in seventy-six days; the
_Sapphire_ and _Pelham_, from Sydney, brought 14,668 ounces and 27,762
ounces respectively; the _Maitland_, from Sydney, followed with 14,326
ounces; the _Australia_, the first steamer that arrived from these
Colonies, next came in with a still larger quantity; and in December the
_Dido_ appeared with a cargo of gold-dust valued at £400,000.
Politically the Protectionists tried to turn these discoveries to some
account. They had predicted that Free Trade would ruin the country. On
the contrary, £6,000,000 of taxation had been remitted since 1846, and
yet there was no shrinkage of revenue. Exports had risen from
£58,000,000 to £78,000,000, the shipping trade was brisker than ever,
and on the 1st of January, 1853, there were not quite 800,000 paupers in
the country.[93] Even the landed interest could not pretend to have been
ruined, seeing that the Income Tax assessment under Schedule B, which
is levied on rents of agricultural land, had risen from £46,328,811 in
1845 to £46,681,488 in 1852. This tide of prosperity under Free Trade
seemed certain to flow rather than to ebb, so that the Tories were
taunted with the utter failure of their dismal Protectionist prophecies.
It need hardly be said that the Queen, who, as a strong Free Trader, had
watched with deep anxiety the result of the great revolution in fiscal
policy which she had helped Peel to initiate, was intensely gratified,
not to say relieved in mind, when the figures illustrating the
commercial condition of her realm were brought under her notice. The
Protectionists, however, had an answer to these facts. It was, they
averred, the unexpected discovery of gold in Australia that had saved
the country from the ruin which they predicted must come from Free
Trade. It may be pointed out that the figures we have given for the
purpose of showing how the trade of the country stood after 1846, cover
the period _before_, and not the period _after_, gold was imported from
Australia--a circumstance which the Queen and Prince Albert were quick
to note and appreciate. The Tory Protectionists, in fact, completely
misunderstood the effect which would be produced by any sudden increase
in the supply of gold. That effect was two-fold: (1) on the mother
country, and (2) on the Australian Colonies.
There is very little mystery about the effect of an increase in the
production of gold. The more we put into the market the less valuable
will it become. If we double the quantity of gold in circulation, it
follows that an article which could be bought for a sovereign will not
be sold for less than two sovereigns. The price of the article is thus
said to rise, whereas the value, or, properly speaking, the purchasing
power of the gold, for which it is exchanged, is said to fall. An
increase in the stock of gold ought, therefore, to lead to a rise in
prices, and to a fall or depreciation in the value of the metal. In 1853
some foolish persons therefore predicted that gold would soon be as
cheap as silver; and yet, though the supply was trebled, gold was not
trebly depreciated in value. “Undoubtedly some effect,” says Mr.
Walpole, “was consequently made on prices; but the effect was probably
only slowly and gradually felt. Gold was absorbed in vast and
unprecedented quantities in the arts, and the supply which was actually
available for barter was not immediately augmented to the same
degree.”[94] It is difficult to understand how so able a writer has been
led into an error which must vitiate every deduction drawn from the
effect of the Australian gold discoveries on the prosperity of the
English people, in the Victorian period. Nobody has ever been able to
estimate even approximately the amount of gold that is absorbed in the
arts. All that we know is that the amount is so small, that it could not
affect such an enormous increase in the supply as that which came from
Australia.[95] Besides, as gold did not fall much in value, it was not
likely that it would be much absorbed in the arts. But, then, what
became of all the gold that was so suddenly poured into England from
Australia? Some of it was absorbed in coinage,[96] but not enough to
account for the absorption of the vast quantity that remained. The key
to the puzzle is, in truth, to be found in the statistics of commerce
which we have already cited.
[Illustration: THE CONVEYING OF AUSTRALIAN GOLD FROM THE EAST INDIA
DOCKS TO THE BANK OF ENGLAND.
(_After the Engraving in the “Illustrated London News.”_)]
The value of gold was kept up in spite of the sudden increase in the
supply, because, under Free Trade, the commerce of the country began to
expand by leaps and bounds. The Australian supplies, in fact, were
absorbed in trade, for it is obvious that the sudden expansion of
business which followed from Free Trade must have caused a corresponding
demand for money, not only to conduct the operations of barter, but to
pay the wages of the additional workers who produced the articles sold
for money. When this fact is grasped, it is easy to understand what the
Australian gold discoveries did for England. Had no new supplies of gold
been found in 1853, Free Trade would have brought serious disasters in
its wake, but not precisely in the form predicted by the Tories. The
sudden expansion of trade would have caused a sudden demand for gold;
the value of gold must have risen. Supposing gold had thus doubled in
value, then the prices of commodities would have been halved, that is to
say, one hundred oxen would have sold only for as many sovereigns as
fifty sold for before the value of gold was thus increased. Everybody
who had to make a fixed money payment, such as rent or interest, would
have had their payment doubled, for they would have had to produce twice
as much to meet their obligations as originally sufficed for that
purpose. The burden of the National Debt, for example, would have been
doubled, for, to pay every pound’s worth of interest to the fundholder,
the public would have had to realise what represented two pounds’ worth
of wealth when the interest was first fixed. In fact, the only people
who would have gained, would have been the few who had to receive fixed
payments, at the expense of the many who had to make them. The discovery
of gold at a time when a liberated and expanding trade was causing an
increased demand for the metal was thus a providential coincidence. By
preventing the demand from outrunning the supply, it prevented a sudden
increase in the value of the metal, which must have reduced prices and
upset all the monetary arrangements of the country.
What was the effect of the discovery of gold on the Australian Colonies?
Very much the same as the discovery of rich deposits of any other
saleable ore, excepting in this respect, that gold is the one metal that
commands an immediate sale, at a high and very slightly varying price.
Land, Labour, and Capital are the three great requisites of production.
Of these Australia, prior to 1853, had only the first in abundance. The
gold mines attracted a rush of emigrants to Australia. But gold mining
is a lottery in which the prizes fall to the few. The average earnings
of the digger were soon found to be lower than the wages paid in other
employments. Hence crowds of men who had been attracted to the mines
soon left them, and were ready to follow other pursuits, so that the
gold rush gave Australia the second element in production--labour. But
the gold which was won, and the demands of the mining population, soon
stimulated industry and increased wealth in the Colonies--in other
words, the gold rush brought to Australia the third requisite of
production--capital.
The Australian gold discoveries, therefore, transformed an insignificant
penal settlement into a rich and queenly Commonwealth, and saved England
from the gold famine, with its disastrous fall in prices, which a sudden
expansion of trade must inevitably have produced after Protective duties
were abolished. There were, however, two shadows on the picture. The
gold rush to Australia depleted the labour market at home. The demands
of the Australian Colonies for British goods, after gold had been
discovered, were enormous. A sudden diminution in the supply of labour,
combined with a corresponding increase in the demand for the goods which
Labour produces, naturally led to a demand in England for increased
wages. Strikes broke out all over the country. Labour was scarce and
business brisk, and though the conflict was, except in rare cases,
unaccompanied by violence, it may be said that generally speaking
victory lay rather with the workers than with their masters. Wages were
forced up, which was perhaps fortunate, because, as the year wore on, it
soon became apparent that a bad harvest in England, France, and Germany
would seriously increase the price of food.[97] The enormous impetus
given to industry, and the rise in wages which followed, enabled skilled
labour to bear this increase in the price of bread. The unskilled
labourers, however, who from lack of organisation cannot “strike” with
much effect, suffered acutely, especially towards the end of the year.
But by that time a calamity was within measurable distance, which
diverted the minds of the English people from dear bread and bad
harvests. That calamity was the Crimean war, which rendered 1853 the
last year of “The Great Peace” which followed the battle of Waterloo.
[Illustration: STUDY OF A CHILD.
(_After an Etching by the Queen._)]
[Illustration: OFF THE COAST OF ASIA MINOR (TURKEY IN ASIA).]