TWO LITTLE WARS AND A “PENAL DISSOLUTION.”
The Queen’s New Year Greeting to Napoleon III.--A
Gladstone-Disraeli Coalition--A “Scene” in the Carlton Club--Mr.
Disraeli’s Attack on Lord Palmerston’s Foreign Policy--The Queen
Consents to Reduce the Income Tax--A Fallacious Budget, with
Imaginary Remissions--The Persian War--General Outram’s
Victories--Unpopularity of the War--Making War without Consulting
Parliament--The Rupture with China--A “Prancing Proconsul”--The
Bombardment of Canton--Defeat of Lord Palmerston, and his Appeal to
the Country--A Penal Dissolution--Abortive Coalition between the
Peelites and Tories--Mr. Gladstone and the Intriguers--Split in the
Peelite Party--Palmerston’s Victory at the Polls--The Rout of the
Manchester School--The Lesson of the Election--Opening of the New
Parliament--The Work of the Session--Mr. Gladstone’s Obstruction of
the Divorce Bill--The Settlement of the Neufchâtel Difficulty--The
Question of the Principalities--Visit of the French Emperor to the
Queen.
Writing on New Year’s Day in 1857, Lord Malmesbury says in his Diary,
“The Conference opened yesterday on the questions of Bolgrad and the
Isle of Serpents, which the Russians falsely claim as being included in
the Treaty of Peace. The Swiss are making energetic preparations for
resisting the threatened invasion of Neufchâtel by Prussia; whilst
England and France are using their utmost exertions to prevent a war.
England has declared war against Persia, and Admiral Seymour has
bombarded Canton to avenge an insult offered to our flag.”[293] The
Queen, in a letter conveying her greetings to the Emperor of the French,
also observes, mournfully, that “the New Year again begins amid the din
of warlike preparation;” and there was undoubtedly a feeling of
disappointment in England that the Peace of Paris had not brought peace
to the world. Yet the general condition of the country was prosperous.
Crime, however--especially fraud and murder--had increased shockingly,
and severe moralists in Pall Mall went about predicting that Parliament
must now devote a Session to social legislation--especially penal
legislation--so as to purge a corrupt people of its wickedness. But the
corrupt people, much to the Queen’s regret, was of quite another
opinion--and so were the political factions. The constituencies were
beginning to murmur against taxation. Now that war was over, they
demanded sweeping reductions in the income and other taxes, which
involved the diminution of the army and navy to such slender dimensions,
that her Majesty felt certain they would be as unfit to cope with a
sudden emergency as they were when the Crimea was invaded. As for the
factions, they were determined to turn out the Government, which they
knew existed solely on the credit Palmerston had obtained by carrying on
war when the nation wanted it, and ending it when the nation was getting
sick of the struggle. The Queen was hostile to any abrupt change of
Government at a time when she could see no means of replacing
Palmerston’s Cabinet by a stronger one, and she viewed with
disapprobation the subterranean intrigues which were going on between
the Tories and the Peelites. That Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli were
attempting, through the medium of Lord Stanley, to form a Coalition, was
known at the Court; nay, it was even said that Mr. Gladstone was to take
the leadership of the Tory Party in the House of Commons. Sir William
Jolliffe, the Tory Whip, when pressed on the point in December, 1856,
told Mr. George Byng that this was “not true at present; that he could
not say what might or might not happen hereafter, but that he (Mr.
Gladstone) could not be accepted as a leader, and must, in any case,
first serve in the ranks.” Only a short time before that some of the
younger members of the Party had visited the drawing-room of the Carlton
Club with the amiable intention of throwing Mr. Gladstone out of the
window. That they had now modified their repugnance to him indicates how
keen their hunger for office had grown. But that the Tory Party was
disorganised through Mr. Disraeli’s unpopularity, and also because Lord
Palmerston’s policy, though Liberal abroad, was really too Conservative
at home to be successfully attacked, is clear from a letter which Lord
Derby wrote to Lord Malmesbury on the prosperity of the Conservatives at
the close of 1856.[294]
Parliament was opened on the 3rd of February, 1857, and the Queen’s
Speech naturally referred to the wars and rumours of war that filled the
air. Law Reform and the Bank Act were the only subjects of domestic
interest dwelt upon. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert now appeared
almost anxious to join Lord Derby; and the Tories, on their part, were
quite prepared to support Mr. Gladstone in demanding that the Income Tax
be reduced to 5d. in the current year, and abolished altogether in 1860,
as had been agreed on in 1853.[295] Mr. Disraeli’s attack, on the other
hand, was directed against the Foreign Policy of the Government. He
complained that at the very time Lord Clarendon was encouraging the
hopes of Count Cavour and of Italy at the Congress of Paris, France had
signed a Secret Treaty guaranteeing to Austria her Italian provinces,
and had signed it by the advice of England. Lord Palmerston denied the
existence of this Secret Treaty. But he admitted that in 1854, when
there was some hope that Austria would take part in the war, an
agreement was made to the effect that should Russia raise an
insurrection in North Italy, France would help Austria to put it down,
if Austrian armies were actually co-operating with the Allies against
Russia. In the Upper House, Lord Aberdeen voted for the amendment to the
Address with many of the Tories--a somewhat unusual thing for an
ex-Premier to do--and this, along with Mr. Gladstone’s cordial support
of Mr. Disraeli, was taken to be a sign that the Peelites desired to
coalesce with the Opposition. Lord John Russell, who was a kind of
political Ishmaelite, also spoke bitterly about the abortive
demonstration of the fleet at Naples, which had drawn upon us insulting
remonstrances, and had not coerced King Ferdinand into good behaviour.
On the 17th of February Mr. Disraeli compelled Lord Palmerston to admit
that “a military convention,” if not a Secret Treaty, between France and
Austria _had_ been signed, but only as a temporary arrangement. When,
however, Mr. Disraeli persisted in saying it was a Secret Treaty, and
that on the face of it there was no limit to the period of its
operation, Palmerston lost his temper, a circumstance so extraordinary
that it convinced the House he had been again caught tripping.
[Illustration: OLD WINDSOR LOCK.
(_From a Photograph by Taunt and Co., Oxford._)]
After many harassing consultations, the Queen felt that it was
impossible for the Cabinet to resist the growing agitation against the
Income Tax. The coalition between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli was too
ominous to be disregarded; and so, on the 10th of February, she wrote to
King Leopold, “We think we shall be able to reduce the Income Tax and
yet maintain an efficient navy, and the _organisation_ of the army,
which is even more important than the number of the men.”[296] When Sir
George Cornewall Lewis brought in his Budget on the 13th of February, it
was found that he reduced the Income Tax from 1s. 4d. to 7d. in the
pound; but of course this was still 2d. above the peace limit fixed in
1853. The complaint of the Opposition was that the Government imposed
that 2d. merely to promote what Mr. Disraeli called the “turbulent and
aggressive policy” abroad by which Lord Palmerston diverted the
attention of the country from its own affairs at home.[297] Mr.
Gladstone attacked the Budget all along the line. Sir George Lewis, he
said, pretended to remit £11,000,000 of taxation. But of that sum
£4,470,000 were war taxes, which necessarily dropped when war was over,
and though Sir George brought the tea duty down from 1s. 9d. to 1s. 7d.
on the lb., and on sugar from 20s. per cwt. to 18s. 4d., that still
raised from tea and sugar £1,400,000 more than the old peace duties drew
from them. The real remission, then, was not £11,000,000, but
£3,184,000. The faults of the Budget were obviously two. It virtually
ignored the pledge of the Government in 1853 to abolish the Income Tax
in 1860. Instead of cutting down expenditure so as to render it possible
to keep that pledge, it increased expenditure above the peace limit, so
as to make it impossible to surrender the Income Tax.[298] The accepted
financial policy of the country had been to grant an Income Tax during
peace solely to enable the Government to remit taxes on articles of
popular consumption. It was granted merely to give an elastic revenue
time to recover from sudden remissions of indirect taxation. Sir George
Lewis, however, still kept the tax above the peace limit, and his small
reductions on the tea and sugar duties left them standing above the
peace limit also. Moreover, he maintained his expenditure on a scale
which created deficits that rendered the continuance of the Income Tax,
without compensating remissions of indirect taxes, inevitable. In fact,
Sir George Lewis may be said to have introduced the vicious principle of
modern finance, by which a temporary Income Tax is insidiously converted
into a permanent one, and by which, under cover of extraordinary
disbursement during a war, the country is left after peace is declared
with a residue of that outlay clinging to the estimates, as ordinary and
permanent annual expenditure. The Budget, however, was carried through
in a slightly modified form, but the sudden dissolution of Parliament in
March compelled Sir George Lewis to levy his new taxes not on a
descending scale for three years, but for the ensuing year only. With a
view to the popular vote to which Lord Palmerston was about to appeal,
Sir George then surrendered 2d. of the tea duty, which brought it down
to 1s. 5d. on the pound. But he made no adequate provision for the
Persian war, or the war with China. His alteration of the tea duty of
course rendered his surplus a myth, and his Budget, with an inflated
expenditure, went forth, as Mr. Gladstone complained, with a deficiency
of ways and means. In fact, on the eve of an appeal to the
constituencies, a prudish Chancellor of the Exchequer “went to the
country” with a profligate electioneering Budget.
Mention has been already made of a “little war” that was being waged
with Persia. It had sprung out of the irrepressible desire of the Shah
to hold Herat, and from the traditional belief of the Foreign Office
that when Herat was in Persian hands, “the key of India” was in the
pockets of the Czar.[299] In 1851 Persia had promised that she would not
meddle with Herat if the Afghans did not attempt to seize it. But the
Governor of Candahar advanced on the coveted city, whose ruler appealed
to Persia for protection. The Indian Government admitted that there was
no danger to India in Persia responding to this appeal. The Foreign
Office, however, suspended diplomatic relations with the Court of
Teheran.[300] Persia then agreed to retire from Herat when the Afghans
withdrew, and negotiations went on in a dilatory fashion till the
Crimean War broke out, when the Czar urged Persia to resist and become
his ally. The Shah’s Prime Minister held his Imperial master back, and
Mr. Thomson, a typical representative of the Foreign Office in Persia,
by way of further conciliating the friendly Premier, appointed as First
Secretary of the British Legation, a disreputable person who had been
dismissed from the Persian service, and whose family were among the most
active enemies of the anti-Russian Minister. The Minister refused to
receive this individual--Meerza Hashim by name. By way of compensating
him Mr. Murray, who succeeded Mr. Thomson, appointed him British agent
at Shiraz, a place where we had no right to have an agent at all, but
where, by the courtesy of the Persian Government, we had been allowed to
have one.[301] The Persian Premier then threatened to arrest Meerza
Hashim. As a matter of fact, he arrested his wife, and maliciously
insinuated in a despatch, when Mr. Murray demanded her release, that he
had compromised himself with the lady. Murray accordingly struck his
flag and demanded an apology, whereupon Persia issued a manifesto
declaring that the Afghans were advancing on Herat, and threatening to
seize that fortress. In July, 1856, a British force was ordered to
proceed from Bombay to occupy the island of Karrack and the city of
Bushire. By this time the Crimean War was over, and Persia could get no
aid from her Russian ally. A Persian ambassador therefore was sent to
Paris to negotiate for peace, but he broke his journey at Constantinople
to arrange the terms with Stratford de Redcliffe. Whilst there, news
came that Persia had captured Herat. Stratford demanded its evacuation,
and the dismissal of the Prime Minister. This latter demand the Persian
Envoy rejected. The English Government therefore went on with the war.
It was, however, declared by the Indian Government that war was waged
for the recovery of Herat, which Persia had offered to evacuate, whereas
the British Government, in their declaration, stated that their object
was the dismissal of the Persian Premier,[302] who had foiled the
attempt of Russia to drag the Shah into the Crimean War. The Expedition,
led by General Outram, occupied Karrack and captured Bushire. But these
victories did not really determine the issue. In England the war had
become unpopular. Palmerston had begun it, and carried it on without
consulting the House of Commons, by the simple expedient of using the
revenues of India to meet its expenses. This was a source of supplies
which the House, of course, could not control. At the beginning of the
Session it was currently rumoured that the Government would soon be
called to account for a proceeding which the Representative Chamber was
bound to view with jealousy and suspicion.
These mutterings of hostility alarmed Palmerston, for he had already
determined to dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country against the
condemnation which the House of Commons had passed on his policy in
China. Whilst, as yet, the full bearing of his Persian policy was
imperfectly understood by the constituencies, he hastened to make peace,
and Persia, after her defeats, was not disposed to be obstinate. But the
Shah refused to dismiss his Prime Minister, and Palmerston was
accordingly fain to withdraw his demand, and be content with an apology
for the imputations which had been cast on Mr. Murray’s character. Such
was the inglorious end of a war which is one of the least creditable
events in Lord Palmerston’s career. As might be expected, when the
General Election was over, and the new Parliament met, Ministers were
fiercely attacked for declaring and prosecuting the war
unconstitutionally without consulting the House of Commons. The country
was now fully alive to the danger that lurked in such a monstrous
extension of the Queen’s prerogative as would permit her to use the
revenues of India, which the House of Commons could not control, for
carrying on war outside the Indian Empire. The only real control which
the people have over the Crown is their power to stop supplies for the
army. The Persian War, however, proved that the Crown could draw
supplies and troops from India, without any Parliamentary sanction
whatever. Palmerston’s policy had thus put into the hands of the Queen
a deadlier weapon of despotism than either the Tudors or the Stuarts had
dared to wield. But the attack, damaging as it was, failed to upset the
Ministry; though the House, in 1858, at Mr. Gladstone’s suggestion,
forced the Government to accept a clause in the India Bill which
disallowed such pretensions on the part of the Crown.[303]
But at the beginning of the Session of 1857 it was not Persia but China
that really engrossed the attention of the country. A dispute between
Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong, and the Chinese authorities at
Canton, raised an issue which made it easy for the Peelites to unite
with the Tories, and the Cobdenites with both.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN BOWRING.]
The Chinese War of 1857 occupies an unique place in the events of the
Victorian epoch, because it was a war which was provoked by a member of
the Peace Society. In October, 1856, the Chinese authorities arrested
twelve Chinamen on board a native lorcha called the _Arrow_, on a charge
of piracy. The British Consul, asserting that the _Arrow_ was a British
ship, contended very properly that the accused should have been demanded
from him. Nine of the Chinamen were released. Sir John Bowring thereupon
insisted on the release of the other three, and an apology within
forty-eight hours, on pain of immediate reprisals. The three men were
released; but the Chinese Governor courteously refused to apologise,
because, he said, as the _Arrow_ was _not_ a British ship, no wrong had
been done to the British flag. This was literally true, for Sir J.
Bowring, as everybody now admits, was utterly mistaken as to the
nationality of the lorcha. The courtesy of the Chinese in surrendering
the prisoners in deference to an illegal demand, which Bowring had
couched in terms of offensive arrogance, was rewarded next day by the
bombardment of the luckless commercial city of Canton--a barbarous act
which could be justified by the laws neither of God nor of man. In fact,
“a prancing pro-Consul,” to use a famous phrase of Sir William
Harcourt’s, had virtually usurped the prerogative of the Crown, and
levied war on a foreign Government on his own responsibility. Instead of
recalling Bowring and the British Consul, Lord Palmerston, without
giving the matter much thought, identified himself with their
proceedings, though many Members of his Cabinet, notably Lord Granville
and Mr. Labouchere, who afterwards were forced to defend Bowring in
Parliament, personally disapproved of his conduct.[304] But Ministers
virtually abandoned the case of the _Arrow_ when the controversy grew
hot. “As usual,” writes Mr. Morley, “they shifted the ground from the
particular to the general; if the Chinese were right about the _Arrow_
they were wrong about something else; if legality did not exactly
justify violence, it was at any rate required by policy; Orientals
mistake justice for fear; and so on through the string of well-worn
sophisms, which are always pursued in connection with such
affairs.”[305] The real truth, as the Tory leaders said in the debates
in both Houses of Parliament, was that Bowring’s vanity had been hurt
because the Chinese had refused to receive him in Canton. When he sent
Admiral Sir M. Seymour to bombard the port he tacked on to his original
ultimatum a demand that foreigners should be freely admitted to the
city, on the ground that this privilege, though ceded by the Treaty of
1846, had never been granted. Admitting that his interpretation of this
disputed point in the Treaty was correct, neither he nor Lord Palmerston
had any right to force that interpretation on China by war. Their duty
was to have acted in concert with the Governments of France and the
United States, who were equally interested in the question, and in this
way to exhaust the resources of diplomacy, before appealing to the
arbitrament of the sword. Every Member of both Houses of Parliament who
was not an infatuated partisan of Lord Palmerston’s took this view of
the case; and when Mr. Cobden, on the 26th of February, brought forward
a motion condemning the policy of the Government, he carried it, after a
debate which lasted many nights, by a majority of sixteen.[306] In the
House of Lords the Government repelled the attack, on the 27th of
February, by a majority of thirty-six; and had the division been taken
on the same night in the Commons, the majority, after Cobden’s and
Russell’s speeches, would have been so enormous that Palmerston would
hardly have dared to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament. But he
adroitly delayed matters, held a meeting of his Party, harangued them,
and threatened them with a dissolution, and so, by the 4th of March,
when the division was taken, the majority against him dwindled to
sixteen. On the 5th of March, Ministers announced that Parliament would
be dissolved and the sense of the country taken on the issue. The
antipathy of the Queen to “penal dissolutions,” indeed, to any
dissolution of Parliament, if it can be avoided, was overcome by Lord
Palmerston representing that the majority against him was exceedingly
small--that it was made up of a coalition of factions, whose leaders,
agreeing only on one point, could not possibly form a stable Government.
On the other hand, from a General Election a Government of some kind
would be evolved with a solid working majority, an advantage of supreme
importance in the eyes of the Sovereign.
Then the game of intrigue began. Lord Malmesbury was sent to Mr. Sidney
Herbert to negotiate an alliance between the Tories and the Peelites,
his proposal being, says Lord Malmesbury, “that we should not take a
hostile part towards each other’s candidates.” By this arrangement it
was supposed that no personal enmities would be made, and the difficulty
of organising an actual coalition, if such should be deemed necessary,
would therefore be minimised.[307] Mr. Herbert rejected these overtures,
because the Peelites had become so much divided in opinion and so weak
in influence, that his desire was to see them dispersed. Lord Malmesbury
then sounded Mr. Gladstone at the Carlton Club. “He had,” writes his
lordship, “seen Sidney Herbert, who told him of our interview, and
Gladstone said he quite disagreed with his views, and had told him
so.... His leanings are apparently towards us, but he was quite of my
opinion that no sort of agreement should be made beyond the one I had
proposed.”[308] In fact, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Herbert had very nearly
quarrelled over the matter. Writing to Sir George Lewis on the 16th of
March, the late Mr. A. Hayward says, “Gladstone and S. Herbert have come
to an explanation which has ended very like the lovers’ separation in
Little’s poems:--
‘You may down _that_ pathway rove,
While I shall take my way through _this_.’
Sidney Herbert takes the Liberal and Gladstone the Derbyite turn. I know
no one who will follow Gladstone’s lead in the matter, except, perhaps,
Lord A. Harvey.”[309]
As a rule in England, the Minister who dissolves Parliament and appeals
to the country is beaten. The General Election of 1857 was a startling
exception to that rule. For Palmerston it was a complete victory. For
his opponents it was not a defeat--but a rout. Cobden, Bright, Gibson,
Fox, and Miall were rejected by the very men whose fortunes they had
made by their Free Trade policy. As Mr. Morley says, “nothing had been
seen like it since the disappearance of the Peace Whigs in 1812, when
Brougham, Tierney, Lamb, and Horner all lost their seats.”[310] The
Peelites suffered almost as cruelly. The Conservative ranks were sadly
thinned, for twenty-four counties were won by the Ministry; in fact, the
_Times_ declared, that the Tories would “never again, as a party, become
candidates for office.”[311] The “Manchester School” lost its
supporters, (1), because it had got the reputation of factiously
opposing all Governments; (2), because the manufacturers, enriched by
Free Trade, had ceased to be Radical; and (3), because they thought that
when Palmerston forced Bowring into Canton at the point of the bayonet,
cotton goods would go in with him. The Peelites were beaten (1), because
they were divided among themselves; and (2), because they were a small
faction, and in a General Election a small faction generally is crushed
in the collision between the great parties. The Tories lost adherents
(1), because the farmers resented their support of an amendment moved by
their natural enemy, Mr. Cobden; and (2), because rumours were spread
abroad by Lord Palmerston’s agents that they were about to coalesce with
Mr. Gladstone, who represented the principles of “the traitor Peel.”
Lord Palmerston triumphed (1), because his only Liberal rival, Lord John
Russell, had alienated the country by his tortuous disloyalty to two
Ministries, and incurred the hatred of the Dissenters by his defence of
Church Rates; (2), because his personal popularity, after bringing the
wars with Russia and Persia to an end, was unbounded; and (3), because
he and his satellites poured forth speeches, inflated with cheap and
vulgar “patriotic” claptrap, to such an extent that even Mr. Greville
says in his “Memoirs” that he was “disgusted at the enormous and
shameful lying with which the country is deluged.”[312] England,
moreover, was involved in a war with China, and after all Palmerston was
the only political leader who had proved that he could carry on a war
with least discredit to the country.[313] The election was, therefore,
a personal one. Constituents did not scrutinise closely the principles
or capacity of candidates, so long as they promised to support Lord
Palmerston,[314] and so numbers of Parliamentary Reformers crept
unnoticed into the House. But in such cases the loyalty of a majority
lasts no longer than the popularity of the leader. Let him make one
false step that forfeits popularity, and then his supporters desert him,
disinterring what they call their “principles” from buried election
addresses to justify their “new departure.”
[Illustration: CHINESE LORCHAS IN THE CANTON RIVER.]
It was unfortunate that neither the Queen nor Prince Albert recognised
this fact, and that they both imagined that Palmerston’s
principles--which, in domestic policy, were reactionary and
illiberal--were as popular as Palmerston himself. The only true and just
criticism of this historic Election, which sent 189 new Members to the
House of Commons, and for a time broke the old parties to pieces, was
passed by the Duke of Newcastle. Writing to Mr. Hayward on the 10th of
April, he says:--“I come to the conclusion that Palmerston will be
disappointed with his new Parliament. The gain to _Liberal opinion_ is
very great, and the Derby party is for the present smashed; but in these
gains are to be found Palmerston’s disadvantages. Nobody _can_ fear the
alternative of a Derby Ministry, and if Palmerston _rises_ to the
occasion he will soon find his popularity gone and his Government in
danger. It is all nonsense to suppose that the China vote has really
influenced the decision of the country; but there is a question which
alone Palmerston cares about (and that in an _adverse_ sense), which has
gained ground everywhere, and is now established as the question of the
day--Reform of Parliament; and I have no belief in a _good_ measure
coming from unwilling men; and _how_ unwilling are the influential men
in the present Cabinet my former association with them pretty well
informs me.”[315]
From this Election the history of the Queen’s reign enters on a fresh
phase. Underlying every party intrigue and combination there is
henceforth to be detected an irrepressible though concealed antagonism
between the Parliamentary Reformers and their opponents. In England, it
is a curious fact that political parties always exhaust their ingenuity
in veiling the real issue between them. When a Government is punished by
dismissal, it is not dismissed for the blunder it has committed, but
because it has done, or refused to do, something else, which is hardly
hinted at in public, but which has offended a powerful body of its
supporters. Palmerston was a Minister whose ardent, impetuous
temperament, and confidence in his own dexterity, rendered him prone to
commit blunders. A Minister of that type can go on blundering with
impunity so long as he is supposed to be trustworthy on the one great
question which lies closest to the hearts of that section of his
supporters, who are prepared to sacrifice him for their cause. But
whenever they discover that he is not to be trusted, they take advantage
of his first mistake to combine with his enemies and overthrow him. In
the new Parliament of 1857, it was therefore clear that Palmerston’s
personal ascendency would last till the party of Parliamentary Reform
discovered that they had absolutely nothing to expect from him, save
open or concealed hostility. It was because the Queen did not grasp this
fact that she was startled to find, a few months after Parliament met,
how rapidly Palmerston’s popularity was waning. Prince Albert also,
strangely enough, mistook the verdict of the country in 1857, as being
one cast solely against “the peace-at-any-price people.”[316]
On the 7th of May the House of Commons began the business of the new
Session. On that day the Lord Chancellor read the Queen’s Speech, which,
contrary to general expectation, did not contain any reference to
Parliamentary Reform. It was, says Lord Malmesbury, “the lamest
production, even for a Queen’s Speech, I ever read.”[317] However, it
gave a soothing account of foreign affairs, and intimated not only that
the main stipulations of the Treaty of Paris had been carried out, and
that the Neufchâtel difficulty was in a fair way of being settled, but
it announced the signature of a Treaty of Peace with Persia. The only
subject for regret in our foreign relations was, of course, the war with
China. The legislative programme was meagre in the extreme, for the only
important Bills promised were, one relating to the jurisdiction of the
Ecclesiastical Courts over wills and divorce, and another to check
fraudulent breaches of trust. The Address was carried with very little
debate, the Radicals being satisfied to let the question of
Parliamentary Reform sleep, because Lord Palmerston promised that during
the recess the Cabinet would give the subject serious consideration. It
was, in truth, a dull and uneventful Session.
But a slight fillip of interest was imparted to it by the revival of the
old controversy as to the admission of Jews to Parliament. The election
of Baron Rothschild as one of the Members for the City of London
compelled the Government to deal with the matter, and Lord Palmerston
brought forward a Bill, on the 15th of May, to alter the law relating to
Parliamentary Oaths, and remove from the statute book one of the last
relics of mediæval bigotry. Although it was bitterly opposed by many
Tories, such as Sir F. Thesiger and Mr. Whiteside, the Bill passed the
House of Commons, but only to be thrown out by the House of Lords. Lord
John Russell then tried to solve the problem by bringing in a Bill to
extend the operation of the Act, 1 and 2 Vict. cap. 106, giving a
discretion as to the forms on which certain oaths are administered. But
while this Bill was in progress it was proposed to free the Jews from
their Parliamentary disabilities by applying to their case the
provisions of the Act 5 and 6 William IV. cap. 62. This Act was passed
to enable a solemn declaration to be substituted for an oath in certain
instances. The only question was whether the Act could be stretched so
as to include the oath imposed on Members of Parliament. On Lord John
Russell’s motion a Select Committee was appointed to inquire if the Act
applied to Parliamentary Oaths, but in due time they reported that it
did not. This virtually ended the controversy for the Session, and Lord
John Russell could only give notice that he would renew the agitation
next year.
Undoubtedly the legal and social reforms proposed by the Government in
1857 were those which created most excitement in the country. The
Ecclesiastical Courts had been long threatened with extinction, and at
last the Government dealt them a fatal blow. Bills were introduced in
May transferring to purely secular tribunals their Testamentary
Jurisdiction and the greater part of their control over the Marriage
Laws, and though the establishment of the new Court of Probate was not
much opposed, the Divorce Bill was fiercely debated. Members who were
under sacerdotal influence attacked this measure with
[Illustration: THE CASCADE: VIRGINIA WATER.]
the utmost ferocity. Indeed, it was not opposed, but factiously
obstructed, clause by clause and line by line, Mr. Gladstone being the
most energetic of its opponents.[318] It was, however, passed, and
undoubtedly the Government won some credit in the country by the
pertinacity with which they piloted this embarrassing measure through
both Houses of Parliament. “I am very glad,” writes Lord Campbell, in
his Journal, “that the Divorce Bill finally passed the Commons framed
almost exactly according to the recommendations of the commission over
which I had the honour to preside, preserving the law as it has
practically subsisted for two hundred years: that a husband who has
conducted himself properly may obtain a dissolution of the marriage for
the adultery of the wife, and that a wife may obtain a dissolution of
the marriage for the adultery of the husband, attended by incest, or any
aggravation which renders it impossible for the connubial union to
continue; the
[Illustration: PLAN OF WINDSOR CASTLE.]
law being now to be administered by a regular judicial tribunal, instead
of the injured parties being obliged to petition the Legislature for
private Acts of Parliament to dissolve the marriage. We are assailed on
the one hand by those who hold that, according to divine law, marriage
cannot be dissolved even for adultery, and on the other by those who
think that for this purpose no distinction should be made between the
sexes,[319] and that in all cases the wife should be entitled to a
divorce on proof of any breach of the marriage vow by the husband. But I
think the true principle is, that the marriage ought only to be
dissolved when it is impossible for the injured party to _condone_, and
that Divine Providence has constituted an essential difference in this
respect between the adultery of the husband and the adultery of the
wife. I would rather run the risk of cases of great hardship occurring,
when it would seem desirable that women should be released from the
tyranny of profligate and brutal husbands, than give too great a
facility to divorce, which has a tendency most demoralising.”[320]
Another measure of sound reform, with which Lord Campbell honourably
associated his name, gave rise to a curious incident, towards the end of
the Session, in the House of Commons. “Since I returned from circuit,”
says Lord Campbell, in his Diary, “my chief business has been to watch
the progress through the House of Commons of my Bill for checking the
trade in obscene publications by allowing them to be seized in the
_depôts_ of the dealers. Brougham had hardly ventured to oppose the Bill
as it passed through the Lords, but afterwards he wrote a violent
article against it in the _Law Magazine_, and he put up Roebuck to
assail it in the House of Commons. The Bill, being in Committee
yesterday (July 12th), I showed myself in the Peers’ Gallery to watch
its fate, and that I might be consulted, if necessary, during the
debate. Roebuck contented himself with reading a letter which he had
received from Brougham, pointing out the danger of country justices
perverting the Bill for the punishment of poachers; and it went through
the Committee with the amendments which I had suggested and assented to.
The Speaker then sent me a message by the Chancellor of the Exchequer
complaining that I had appeared in the House _to overawe their
deliberations_, like Cardinal Wolsey and Charles I., and that it would
become his duty to protest against such an unconstitutional
proceeding.”[321]
Brief mention must also be made of the Fraudulent Trusts Bill, as one
of the Ministerial achievements during the Session of 1857. Several
glaring cases of embezzlement on the part of trustees had recently
occurred, and yet it was found that the existing criminal law could not
reach the guilty parties. Sir Alexander Cockburn, before his elevation
to the Bench, had promised to deal with this scandal, and now his
successor, Sir Richard Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury, fulfilled that
promise. The object of his Bill was simply to make trustees of
settlements, directors of companies, and other persons invested with a
fiduciary character, criminally responsible for frauds, or for the
misappropriation of the funds entrusted to their care. The Bill passed
both Houses. The only serious opposition it met with was from Lord St.
Leonards, who dreaded lest its severity might deter honest and
substantial men from serving as trustees.
These were among the chief results of the brief but useful Session of
1857, which was prorogued on the 28th of August. Up to midsummer the
House of Commons dozed through halcyon days, only too well pleased to do
the bidding of its master. Lord John Russell was meek, Mr. Gladstone was
an absentee, the Tories were discouraged, and the Radicals were docile.
To go to a division at this time on any question was to rush to
ignominious defeat. But about the middle of July the House began to show
signs of a quickened life. The debates on the Persian War roused the
combatant spirit of the Opposition; Mr. Gladstone reappeared, as
Ministers knew to their cost when the Divorce Bill was obstructed; and
it was remarked that even Palmerston’s most subservient followers no
longer hesitated to cheer Mr. Roebuck or Mr. Disraeli, when they made an
exceptionally clever attack on the Ministry. In August the shadow of the
Indian Mutiny darkened the prospects of the Government, and when
Parliament was prorogued there was some ill-concealed grumbling among
the captious critics of the Court, because the Queen went to Scotland at
a time when the British Empire in India was in dire peril. But on the
whole, Palmerston’s _prestige_ was not materially impaired. His domestic
programme, modest as it was, had been successfully carried out.
Moreover, for the first time in his career, his relations with the Court
had been put on a satisfactory footing. On this point Mr. Greville
records an interesting conversation with Lord Clarendon, who told him
that the Queen had treated Palmerston during the Session with unreserved
confidence. Palmerston, on the other hand, found it expedient to treat
the Queen with a deference and attention which had produced a favourable
change in her sentiments towards him. Mr. Greville says, “Clarendon told
me that Palmerston had lately been ailing in a way to cause some
uneasiness.... Clarendon talked one day to the Queen about Palmerston’s
health, concerning which she expressed her anxiety, when Clarendon said
she might indeed be anxious, for it was of the greatest importance to
her, and if anything happened to him he did not know where she could
look for a successor to him, that she had often expressed her great
desire to have a _strong_ Government, and that she had now got one,
Palmerston being a strong Minister. She admitted the truth of it.
Clarendon said he was always very earnest with her to bestow her whole
confidence on Palmerston, and not even to talk to others on any subjects
which properly belonged to him, and he had more than once (when,
according to her custom, she began to talk to him on certain things),
said to her, ‘Madam, that concerns Lord Palmerston, and I think your
Majesty had better reserve it for your communications with him.’ He
referred to the wonderful change in his own relations to Palmerston,
that seven or eight years ago Palmerston was full of hatred and
suspicion of him, and now they were the best of friends, with mutual
confidence and goodwill, and lately, when he was talking to Palmerston
of the satisfactory state of his relations to the Queen, and of the
utility it was to his government that it should be so, Palmerston said,
‘And it is likewise a very good thing that she has such boundless
confidence in her Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when after all there is
nothing she cares about so much.’”[322]
And yet it cannot be said that in foreign affairs Lord Palmerston had
won any conspicuous triumph for British diplomacy. The dispute with
Persia did not end gloriously for England. It is true that the
controversy over Neufchâtel, in which the Queen, owing to her close
relations with the Royal Family of Prussia, was deeply interested,
terminated happily.[323] But on the other hand, the vexed question of
the Danubian Principalities was still open, and it was almost certain
that it would lead to the diplomatic humiliation of England.
The future government of the two Principalities was left by the Congress
of Paris to be settled by the Treaty Powers. Russia desired their union
under a Native prince. France and Sardinia desired their union under a
foreign prince, fearing that a Native ruler would soon become a mere
satrap of the Czar. Turkey and Austria desired to keep the
Principalities separate, and this view was warmly supported by Lord
Palmerston and Lord Clarendon. At the Congress of Paris, France had
insidiously suggested to Austria that she should take the
Principalities, the object being to justify new territorial arrangements
on the Rhine in French interests. After that proposal was rejected, the
French Emperor drew closer and closer to Russia; but when the General
Election gave Palmerston a solid majority, Russia became effusively
civil to England. When, however, England persisted in acting with
Austria and the Porte, thereby resisting territorial changes, which
could only be made
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE.
(_From a Photograph by Bassano._)]
at the expense of Austrian and Turkish interests,[324] the French
Emperor took umbrage at our diplomacy. But Persigny’s influence was
successfully exerted to hold him true to the Anglo-French alliance,
Persigny’s chief argument being that a war with England would so
convulse France that, in the general confusion, the Bonapartist dynasty
might disappear. Napoleon III., therefore, determined to pay the Queen a
private visit, and, though her Majesty was not anxious to receive him,
she consented to do so, in the hope and belief that personal
communications between the two sovereigns might serve some useful
purpose.
When this visit was paid, in August, the controversy over the
Principalities had become very serious. The Moldavian elections had
returned a majority of Separatists, and the French complained that this
result was due to the influence of English agents over the
constituencies. France, Russia, and Sardinia, in fact, threatened to
suspend diplomatic relations with Turkey unless the elections were
annulled. The Eastern Question, in short, had once more been re-opened,
and Europe was thus brought to the brink of war. The French Emperor, the
Queen, and Prince Albert freely interchanged their ideas on the question
at Osborne, whilst at the same time the French and English
Ministers--namely, Persigny, Walewski, Palmerston, and
Clarendon--carried on a series of conferences. The grievance of the
Emperor was that, though Turkey had promised France to annul the
elections, at the last moment she had, at the instigation of Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, broken her promise. The Porte had admitted that
they were thus in the wrong, but had excused their conduct by saying
that they acted under pressure from England and the English Ambassador.
The annulment of the elections was now with France a point of honour;
and as Persigny had failed to bring Palmerston and Clarendon to reason
on the point, his Majesty had resolved to appeal to the Queen. The Queen
and her husband seem to have met the Emperor’s arguments with Lord
Stratford’s counter-statement, but in vain. The end of their conference
was a victory for France on the main point at issue. Lord Stratford was
to be ordered to reverse his course, and to call on the Porte to annul
the elections. “Lord Palmerston,” writes Lord Malmesbury on the 14th of
August, “has given way on the question of the Principalities, so the
Emperor has gained his point by his visit to Osborne. The dispute arose
on the question of the union of the Principalities, which France,
Russia, Prussia, and Sardinia supported. England, Austria, and Turkey
opposed the union; and the elections in Moldavia having been in favour
of England, the French, Russians, &c., accused the English Government of
having influenced them unfairly, and demanded that they should be
annulled. The Porte refused this, upon which the Ambassadors of France,
Prussia, and Sardinia struck their flags. The Emperor Napoleon, instead
of wasting time in useless correspondence, came over himself, and the
question was settled at once. I do not pretend to judge whether
Palmerston was right or wrong, but his defeat must have cost him a
bitter pang. Louis Napoleon’s Ministers have been completely won over by
the Russians, especially Walewski.”[325] The Queen was certainly of a
different opinion. She thought that Palmerston had succeeded in
effecting a compromise, and not a capitulation. Prince Albert was also
distinctly under the impression that whilst England surrendered on the
question of the elections, France had surrendered on the question of
uniting the Principalities. A Memorandum was drawn up on 9th of August,
embodying some arrangement of this sort, but Walewski refused to sign
it, upon the ground, says Sir T. Martin, “that the Emperor’s Government
desired to keep the satisfaction to be obtained from the Porte and the
arrangement subsequently to be made respecting the Principalities
distinct from each other, and, also because, were he to sign the
Memorandum, it would appear that France had made a concession on the
latter point for the purpose of inducing the Sultan to agree on the
former.” He also appears to have stated that it was not necessary to
sign the document, because “amongst men of honour writing was
unnecessary.” In May, 1858, at the second Congress of Paris, it was
discovered that writing in this case was extremely necessary. When the
British Plenipotentiaries contended that the French Emperor had yielded
on the point of the union of the Principalities, His Majesty denied that
he had done anything of the sort. The only concession he ever made,
according to his account, was that he would not insist on their being
ruled over by a foreign prince--a detail of secondary consequence. It
seems also to have been admitted on our side that we had agreed to
recognise the administrative union of the provinces, so that the
misunderstanding may have arisen out of a quibble over the terms
“administrative” and “political” union.
During this visit, Lord Malmesbury tells us that extraordinary
precautions were taken by the Queen for the Emperor’s protection.
“Eighty detectives were sent down from London, besides French police.
The strictest guard was kept round the Palace and over the island.
Besides this, a number of men-of-war’s boats guarded the shore, and did
not allow a single boat to approach.”[326] From a memorandum of their
conversations which Prince Albert drew up, it is obvious that the
settlement of the question of the Principalities was not the sole object
of Napoleon’s journey to Osborne. He broached a great many insidious
proposals for a redistribution of European territory, also for a
revision of the Treaties of 1815, but they were all coldly and
sceptically received. He even suggested a wild scheme for converting the
Mediterranean into an European lake. “Spain might have Morocco, Sardinia
a part of Tripoli, England Egypt, Austria a part of Syria--_et que sais
je_,” writes Prince Albert, in describing this suggestion;[327] the
first step being a friendly understanding with England on the subject.
As his Majesty had told the Prince he was soon to have an interview with
the Russian Czar, it need hardly be said that no encouragement was given
by the Queen to these extraordinary projects. In truth, neither the
Queen nor her Ministers were at this moment in a mood for entering on an
adventurous foreign policy. The Indian Empire had been shaken to its
centre by the revolt of the Bengal Army, a revolt known in history as
the great Indian Mutiny, and the causes of which must now be traced.