THE DEATH OF PALMERSTON.
Opening of Parliament--Lord Russell and the American
Government--Catholicism and Conservatism--Mr. Disraeli angles for
the Irish Vote--Palmerston on Tenant Right--Another Panic in
Piccadilly--Death of Cobden--Failure of the “Manchester School”--A
Prosperity Budget and a Round Surplus--End of the American
War--Moderation of the Victors--Assassination of President
Lincoln--Reorganising the South--Conflict between President Johnson
and the Republican Party--The Mexican Empire and the United
States--The Danish Question--The Convention of Gastein--Bismarck’s
Interview with the Duke of Augustenburg--The Mystery of
Biarritz--Lord Chancellor Westbury’s Fall--Death and Character of
Palmerston--The New Ministry--Mr. Gladstone Leader of the
Commons--The Rinderpest--The Fenian Conspiracy--The Queen’s Letter
on Railway Accidents--Laxity of Administration in the Queen’s
Household--Birth of Prince George of Wales--Majority of Prince
Alfred--The Queen at Gotha--The Betrothal of the Princess
Helena--The Last Illness and Death of King Leopold of Belgium--His
Character and Career--Suppressing a Rebellion with a Carpet-Bag.
Brighter prospects dawned on the year 1865 than could have been
anticipated. England was at peace with all the world, and in spite of
Lord Palmerston’s irritation against the German Powers, it was certain
that the country would not permit him to engage actively in Continental
broils. The Civil War in America, so disastrous to Lancashire, was
drawing to a close; and though a dubious and desultory conflict with the
Maoris in New Zealand was going on, the scene of strife was far away,
and the struggle but slightly affected the course of business. Trade was
sound and healthy, and the cotton famine had almost disappeared. Lord
Palmerston’s Cabinet still held its ground, and though its aged chief
had begun to show signs of physical decay, his high spirits and
indefatigable energy gave no indication that the end of his career was
at hand. Two of the four or five great ladies of fashion who had for
forty years exercised a far-reaching, though unseen, influence on
political life--Lady Tankerville and Lady Willoughby d’Eresby--had died
in January, within a few days of each other. Lady Palmerston was thus
left as almost the sole representative of those _grandes dames_ of
politics who were the flower and crown of the old order of society, soon
destined to perish under the touch of democratic reform. Parliament was
opened by Commission on the 7th of February. The Speech from the Throne,
which was read by the Lord Chancellor, referred to the Treaty of Peace
between the Emperor of Austria, the King of Prussia, and the King of
Denmark, and declared that no renewed disturbance of the peace of Europe
was to be apprehended. It regretted the conflict with some of the native
tribes in New Zealand, and rejoiced at the tranquillity of our Indian
dominions. It spoke with confidence of the condition of Ireland. The
Message from the Throne further promised the introduction of Bills for
the amendment of the laws relating to patents for inventions, and for
conferring on the county courts an equitable jurisdiction in actions
involving small amounts. A Bill for inquiring into English public
schools was promised, and her Majesty directed that a commission should
be issued to inquire into endowed and other schools in England. Lord
Derby, though he bore traces of suffering from repeated attacks of gout,
was able to speak with fluency and power, but the debates on the
Address, it must be admitted, were not interesting, nor did they evoke
any material opposition. Discussions took place upon the condition of
the Irish peasantry, emigration, the tenure of land, tenant right, and
the Established Church. The approaching triumph of the Northern States
in the American Civil War was plainly foreshadowed by the increasing
civility of Lord Russell’s references to the Federal Government. In a
discussion on our foreign relations, he vindicated the neutral policy
which his Administration had pursued towards both belligerents, but
towards the conqueror his neutrality was now obviously benevolent. He
pointed out how Confederate agents were continually employed either in
building vessels in this country, or in buying merchant ships which
might afterwards be sent to France and other places that they might be
fitted out as armed cruisers against the commerce of the United States,
and this he now discovered gave rise to the “natural irritation” of the
United States against England. The Americans, he said, saw a number of
ships, which had come in some way or another from English ports or
English rivers, afterwards equipped as men-of-war for the purpose of
destroying their sea-borne commerce. It was to be expected that they
should wax angry with us in consequence. Still, Lord Russell urged that
the Government had done everything in their power to prevent this
country from being made the basis of warlike operations against the
Federal Government.
In those days Mr. Pope Hennessy was one of the most active and
aggressive members of the Irish Party. He had been advanced in public
life by the social influence of Cardinal Wiseman, and had attached
himself to the Tories as one of Mr. Disraeli’s partisans. His object was
to revive, if possible, those Nationalist ideas which Mr. Disraeli had
promulgated when bidding for the Irish vote in 1844. Mr. Disraeli’s
object in cultivating his enthusiasm was to use him as an agent in
cementing “the natural alliance between Catholicism and Conservatism,”
which at the time he was most anxious to promote. Early in the Session,
then, a lively discussion was initiated by Mr. Hennessy on Irish
affairs, obviously with the intention of eliciting from the Ministry
declarations that would tend to render Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet
unpopular in Ireland. Mr. Hennessy’s motion was “that this House
observes with regret the decline of the population of Ireland, and will
readily support her Majesty’s Government in any well-devised measure to
stimulate the profitable employment of the people; and that an address
to the Crown be prepared, founded on the foregoing resolution.” The
resolution was supported by a number of speakers, both Irish
[Illustration: MIDHURST, SUSSEX: BIRTHPLACE OF COBDEN.]
and English, among whom were prominent Conservatives, like Sir Stafford
Northcote and Lord Robert Cecil, and prominent Whigs like Sir Patrick
O’Brien and Mr. Monsell. It was opposed on the part of the Government by
Mr. Gladstone, Sir Robert Peel, and Sir George Grey. Sir Stafford
Northcote, in speaking on the motion, indicated very plainly that his
leaders had already begun to angle for the Irish vote. Ireland, said he,
had been crippled by English legislation, and Parliament “ought to
approach this question with a feeling of tenderness,” and a desire to
see how far it was possible to remedy that grievance. Lord Palmerston
concluded the debate with a speech which has been rendered historic by
one of its phrases. He said, “Until by some means there can be provided
in Ireland the same remuneration for labour and the same inducements to
remain which are afforded by other countries, you cannot, by any laws
which you can devise, prevent the people from seeking elsewhere a better
condition of things than exists in their own country. We are told that
tenant right and a great many other things will do it. None of these
things will have the slightest effect. _As to tenant right, I may be
allowed to say that I think it is equivalent to landlord’s wrong._” In
1865 the idea that there was, and ever had been since the conquest of
Ireland, a dual ownership in Irish soil--an ownership which naturally
and equitably follows from the relations of an unimproving landlord to
an improving tenant, had not yet dawned on the English mind.
One of the results of what Lord Russell called the “natural irritation”
of the American people against England was a feeling of much uneasiness
as to the safety of Canada. Confederate agents had attempted to make
raids on Northern territory from Canadian soil. Threats of reprisals had
proceeded from the organs of public opinion in the United States, and
something approaching a panic was created in England, when the Federal
Government gave formal notice that it was their intention to terminate
the Convention under which England and the United States had mutually
agreed not to fit out ships of war on the great lakes. It was also
suggested that the American Government would soon “denounce” in similar
fashion the Treaty of Commerce between the United States and Canada. In
the House of Commons the Government was closely questioned on all these
complications by Sir J. Walsh, who declared that the steps taken by the
Federal Government were tantamount to a declaration of war. Palmerston
tried to soothe these fears, and Earl Russell in the Upper House
lavished conciliatory flattery on the United States, complimenting them
on the patience with which they had endured the unsympathetic demeanour
of England--the most unendurable element in which had been the tone of
superfine insolence that marked his own despatches.[229] Yet all this
time there was perfect tranquillity on the Canadian frontier. The
Canadians did not seem to dread an American attack. The American
Government, under Mr. Lincoln, in spite of the Irish War Party, was
almost fanatically pacific. The truth was, as Mr. Bright said, that
English anxiety as to the safety of Canada was due to a feeling “in our
heart of hearts that we had not behaved generously to our neighbours; a
twitching of the conscience that tended to make cowards of us at this
particular juncture.” As usual the people had to pay for this panic in
Piccadilly. The Government demanded a vote of £200,000 for the defences
of the Canadian frontier, of which Lord Hartington, on behalf of the War
Office, proposed to spend £20,000 in fortifying Quebec. As against the
United States the frontier of Canada was of course practically
indefensible. There was, therefore, reason in the contention of
independent critics that such an expenditure might be regarded by the
Americans as a provoking menace, rather than as a rational precaution.
By a sad coincidence, whilst these discussions were going on, the hand
of death was being laid on the statesman who was of all men most
competent to represent those who doubted the possibility of defending
Canada. Richard Cobden, who declared that it would be just as possible
for the United States to sustain Yorkshire in a war with England, as for
England to enable Canada to contend against the United States, was
sickening with his last illness. On the 2nd of April he died, and with
him passed away the purest, most generous, and most chivalrous paladin
of English Liberalism in the House of Commons. Men of all parties joined
in doing homage to his memory. Mr. Disraeli vied with Mr. Bright in
passing an eulogium on his public services. The Emperor of the French
sent a letter of condolence to his widow. In the United States he was
mourned by the American people as if he had been one of their own
citizens. Mr. Bright said in the House, “I little knew how I loved him
till I lost him,” and it indeed seemed as if this feeling were universal
throughout England. Cobden’s disinterested honesty, the charm of his
sweet and sympathetic nature, the fascination of his earnest, persuasive
and transparently lucid eloquence, his buoyant courage, and his genuine
devotion to the English people, all contributed to build up the fabric
of his reputation and his popularity. His mission in life had been to
beat down the power of the territorial aristocracy, which, in his youth,
ruled England in the interest of a few rival groups of great families.
In their place he imagined he could put a new order of merchant princes
and Captains of Industry--an order of liberal-minded and highly-cultured
men whose fortunes were bound up with the interest of Labour, and whose
public spirit and civil capacity might recall the era of the Medici in
Italy, and of the De Witts in the Low Countries. The leading ideas of
the “Manchester School,” which he was credited with founding, have long
since ceased to influence the English mind, though some of them have had
enough vitality to survive the caprice of circumstances and the course
of time. Cobden’s errors sprang from the fact that he believed that
political power was to be finally centred in and wielded by the
middle-classes. For example, it was for their interests to narrow as
much as possible the Imperial responsibilities of England. Therefore,
whilst he advocated Colonial autonomy it was not with a view to
facilitate Imperial Federation, but to prepare the colonies for an
independent existence, which should at once free us from the expense of
defending them, and enrich us by the profits of their trade. On the
other hand, the working classes regard the colonies as a heritage to be
jealously preserved for their order, and the success of Federalism in
the United States has induced them to dream of making a similar
experiment within the British Empire. Obviously nothing could be more
completely at variance with Cobden’s doctrines than these ideas. His
scheme of policy was in fact faulty, because it was based on enriching a
plutocracy, which, however, has not used its wealth for the purposes he
had in view. It has, on the contrary, spent its resources in imitating
and reproducing the worst qualities of the old feudal nobility, whose
power Cobden desired to destroy. As the result of his policy, and the
triumph of that part of it which accumulated wealth in the hands of the
manufacturing classes, the country had a House of Commons in 1865, which
was as much opposed to Reform as the House of Lords in 1832. For Cobden
the irony of fate could hardly have been more cruel.
The financial statement of the year was preceded by motions in the House
of Commons, for the purpose of obtaining a Parliamentary pledge for the
remission of certain duties, which were considered a blot on the fiscal
system. One was the Malt Tax, for the repeal or modification of which a
desultory agitation had been promoted by the Tories for some years in
the agricultural districts. The other motion was in favour of a further
reduction of the duties on Fire Insurance. Though the Anti-Malt Tax
agitators were beaten, the opponents of the Fire Insurance duties
prevailed against the Government. The public had been informed by the
Royal Speech that the receipts of the revenue had come up to the
estimates; but this information rather understated the fact. The
prosperity of the finances, in truth, had exceeded the most sanguine
calculations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Remissions of taxation
were consequently looked for, and speculation was busy with conjectures
as to the quarter in which reductions would be proposed. The 27th of
April was appointed for the financial statement, and on that day Mr.
Gladstone presented his accounts and his plans. He had raised a larger
revenue than had ever been raised in England by taxation at any period,
whether of peace or war. In 1864-65 the actual expenditure had been
£66,462,000, being £611,000 less than the estimate. Comparing the
expenditure of the year with the revenue, he found that there was an
apparent surplus of £3,231,000. The estimated revenue had been
£66,128,000, whereas the actual revenue was £70,313,000. It had been
expected that there would be a total loss on the year of £3,080,000,
whereas there had been altogether a gain of £147,000. This showed how
the prosperity of the country was advancing by leaps and bounds. Coming
to the estimate of the income and expenditure of the ensuing year, Mr.
Gladstone said he had to provide for an expenditure of £66,139,000,
while he estimated the revenue at £70,170,000. This showed, on the basis
of existing taxation, a surplus of £4,031,000. That surplus, he stated,
he would dispose of as follows:--He proposed to equalise the stamp duty
on scrip certificates and receipts in the case of English and Foreign
transactions. The stamp on agreements for letting houses would be
reduced to a penny. The tax on appraisements would be graduated, so that
property amounting to £5 would not pay 2s. 6d. but
[Illustration: GENERAL ROBERT LEE.]
3d., and so on upwards. The stamp duty on charter parties would be
reduced to 6d. There were also to be alterations in regard to Marine
Insurance stamps, and stamps on insurances against accidental death,
personal injury, and damages to plate-glass. He refused to reduce the
Malt Tax, but he proposed to lower the Tea Duty by a remission of 6d.
per lb. As to the Income Tax, he admitted that Ministers should do all
they could for its reduction. It was, at present, at the lowest point,
practically, at which it ever stood. It had never been lower than 6d. in
the pound, but still he proposed to remove one-third of it, thus
reducing it to 4d. The final loss to the Exchequer by this reduction of
2d. would be £2,600,000, of which about £1,650,000 would fall upon the
current year. Dealing with the Fire Insurance duty, he pointed out that
it was desirable it should be reduced to a uniform rate of 1s. 6d., and
to this would be added the substitution of a penny stamp in lieu of the
1s. duty on insurance policies. The relief given by the proposed
reductions would be:--On tea, £2,300,000, on Income Tax, £2,600,000, and
on Fire Insurance Duty, £520,000, making a total of £5,420,000, of which
£3,778,000 would fall on this year. Deducting this latter sum from the
estimated surplus, £4,031,000, there would be still a surplus of
£253,000 on the accounts of the coming year.
It was on the 2nd of June that Lord Russell in the House of Lords
declared the Civil War in America at an end, and refused Confederate
vessels any further rights of harbour in English ports. It has been
shown how General Sherman’s devastating march through Georgia exposed
the real weakness of the South. At the end of 1864 Hood’s army was
pining away in Alabama or Tennessee, and Beauregard, with 20,000 men,
alone stood between Sherman’s legions, flushed with victory, and the
harassed and outnumbered army of Lee. On Christmas Day the Confederates
repelled an attack by Butler on Wilmington, but on the 14th of January,
1865, when operations were renewed by General Terry and Admiral Porter,
the key of the position was easily taken, and the Confederates were
deprived of their only free and practicable outlet to the sea. On the
17th of February Charleston was evacuated. Sherman had already set forth
on his march to the north--Beauregard retreating rapidly before him. And
yet, though they thus had victory within their grasp, the leaders of the
North made one last effort to conciliate the South. “Although no
authorised version of the negotiations has ever been given to the
public,” says Mr. Sterne, “it was conceded that, with the single
exception of slavery and submission to the authority of the Union on the
part of the South, every condition that the Southern States could ask
would be submitted to by the North, including the adoption of the
Southern debt and the reimbursement to the Southern slave-holders for
slaves lost.”[230] In a moment of insanity the Southern Government
rejected these generous terms, and so the war went on. Sherman’s
movement to the north enabled Grant to press Lee with effect. He forced
him back to Petersburg and Richmond. On the 1st of April both towns were
captured, and Lee was not only pursued but overtaken and beaten in his
last fight. “General,” wrote Grant to his fallen foe on the 7th of
April, “the result of the last week must convince you of the
hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the army of Northern
Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so, and regard it as my
duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of
blood, by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate
States Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia.” The capitulation
was arranged on terms which were extremely generous to the vanquished.
No prisoners were taken. The officers were paroled, and the troops were
all permitted to return home on condition of submitting to the Federal
Government. Within a few days Johnston surrendered to Sherman on the
same terms, and on the 18th of April the war was at an end.
The victors astonished the world by their moderation. Not a single
rebel, save the governor of a military prison, who was convicted of
behaving with revolting brutality to Federal prisoners in the South,
perished on the scaffold. Even the few prominent civilians who were
arrested and imprisoned were soon released. The best men, both in the
Northern and Southern States, vied with each other in promoting a policy
based on conciliation for the future and oblivion for the past. Mr.
Lincoln, who had been re-elected President in the autumn of 1864, began
his second term of office on the 4th of March, 1865. On the evening of
the 14th of April he visited Ford’s Theatre at Washington with Mrs.
Lincoln and another lady and gentleman, and about half-past ten, during
a pause in the performance, he was shot by one Wilkes Booth, who
suddenly entered the President’s box and discharged a pistol at his
head. Booth then leaped on the stage flourishing a dagger, and
exclaiming “_Sic semper tyrannis!_” escaped from the theatre. Mr.
Lincoln never recovered consciousness, and he died on the morning of the
15th.
From every part of the world expressions of sympathy were conveyed to
Mrs. Lincoln and the American people, who had been thus cruelly deprived
of the sagacious and upright statesman whose civic courage and
unquenchable patriotism had saved the Union. The Queen, who had always
admired Mr. Lincoln’s character and career, sent an autograph letter to
Mrs. Lincoln, expressing, with simple and womanly tenderness, her
sympathy for the President’s family.[231] Addresses on the assassination
of the President were presented by both Houses of Parliament to the
Crown, and the Queen in reply to these wrote: “I entirely participate in
the sentiments you have expressed in your address to me on the subject
of the assassination of the President of the United States. I have given
directions to my Minister at Washington to make known to the Government
of that country the feelings which you entertain in common with myself
and my whole people with regard to this deplorable event.” The
miscreants who had conspired against Lincoln’s life had also intended to
assassinate his chief Ministers, and one of them inflicted severe wounds
on Mr. Seward and his son, from which, however, they both recovered.
Mr. Lincoln was succeeded by the Vice-President, Mr. Andrew Johnson,
who, in the first moments of excitement which followed Lincoln’s murder,
charged Mr. Jefferson Davis and the leaders of the South, with being
Booth’s accomplices. These charges, however, were not generally
credited, because it was clear that the life of Lincoln, whose policy
was notoriously one of clemency and moderation, was quite as precious to
the conquered States, as to their conquerors. But undoubtedly the angry
passions which Booth’s crime had stimulated, increased the difficulty of
reorganising the territory now held by the Federal troops. To admit the
Southern States to the Union with their old rights of sovereignty and
autonomy as if nothing had happened was impossible. The negroes, though
free, were unenfranchised, and therefore at the mercy of their old
masters. But the negroes had bled and suffered for the Union during the
war, and they could not be abandoned now. Moreover, Lincoln’s
proclamation abolishing slavery gave them an implied promise of
protection from subsequent oppression. But then the American
Constitution contained no provision for dealing with the difficulty
which the war had created. To enfranchise with a stroke of the pen a
vast ignorant servile population, which had been demoralised by slavery,
was fraught with the utmost peril, not only to American democracy, but
to American civilisation. Again, the States themselves had always
determined the conditions of enfranchisement. As sovereign communities
they had the clearest right to organise their own internal
administration free from all interference from the Federal authorities,
who had no power over them, save that of seeing that they adopted a
republican form of government. The first step taken was to organise the
Freedman’s Bureau with agents all over the South with the object of
protecting the negroes from injustice and oppression. But President
Johnson had spent his life in the Slave State of Tennessee, and he had
many sympathies with the slave-owners. Taking his stand on the letter of
the Constitution, he refused to sanction those methods of reconstruction
which Congress adopted, and sent military governors to rule the
conquered States, until their permanent government was organised. The
fourteenth amendment to the Constitution prohibiting slavery in the
United States was carried in June. But the President vetoed the
Freedman’s Bureau Bill and the Civil Rights Bill, his veto being
overridden by the majority in Congress, in which, however, the Southern
States were not yet represented. In a word, the President was soon in
open conflict with the Republican majority that had carried the country
through the long and bloody war.
[Illustration: BIARRITZ.]
This conflict[232] was eagerly canvassed in all its stages by Englishmen
of all classes, who seemed at this time to take a keener interest in the
fascinating problems of American politics than in their own domestic
affairs. But perhaps nothing appealed more strongly to the imagination
of the people than the ease with which the American people disbanded
their armies, and absorbed a million unpensioned officers and soldiers
at the very moment of victory into the mass of the peaceful civil
population. The calmness, courage, and good sense with which the
Americans set aside the menaces of the war party against England, and
applied themselves to pay off the six hundred millions sterling of their
war debt, further commanded the admiration of the world. Not even in
Mexico could the United States be persuaded to interfere. Their
Government simply refused to recognise that of the Emperor Maximilian,
and accredited a minister to the President of the Mexican Republic, who
still waged a desultory struggle with the Imperial Government and its
French allies. As France, however, had now thought it prudent to
announce the withdrawal of her troops from Mexico, the United States
could afford to wait for the inevitable issue.
The Danish Question, in which the Queen had so deeply interested herself
during the previous year, was easily settled--for a time. Austria and
Prussia agreed to share the spoils of war, and the Duchies were divided
between them. This arrangement, formulated by the Convention of Gastein,
in August, averted war between the allies. As for the views of the minor
States and the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg, they were brusquely
put aside. The Duke had made the fatal mistake of pretending to regard
the services of Prussia in liberating the Duchies as uncalled for. He
even hinted that his cause would otherwise have been much better managed
by the Diet. When he came to Berlin to press his claims at the Prussian
Court, he had an interview with Von Bismarck in the King’s
billiard-room, which ought to have warned him of what was coming.
“At first,” said Bismarck once, “I wanted from him no more than
what the minor Princes conceded in 1866. But he would not yield an
inch (thank Heaven! thought I to myself, and thanks to the wisdom
of his legal advisers).... At first I called him ‘Highness,’ and
was altogether polite. But when he began to make objections about
Kiel Harbour, which we wanted, and would listen to none of our
military demands, I put on a different face. I now titled him
‘Translucency,’ and told him at last, quite coolly, that we could
easily wring the neck of the chicken we ourselves had
hatched.”[233]
The French Government described the Treaty of Gastein as an act of
political “highway robbery and attorneyism.” Lord Russell condemned it
as a mere expression of brute force, and the Fleets of France and
England met and made a foolish demonstration at Cherbourg, by way of
giving point to their diplomatic denunciations of the Convention. It was
merely a temporary arrangement, which gave Prussia time to secure
herself against France before she attempted to expel Austria from North
Germany. At a mysterious interview between Napoleon and Bismarck at
Biarritz, in October, it was supposed that, in return for vague promises
to assist French schemes in Italy and Belgium, the Prussian
Minister--now Count Von Bismarck--had obtained an equally vague pledge
of benevolent neutrality from France.[234]
The last days of the moribund Parliament were enlivened by a grave
personal scandal. Lord Chancellor Westbury was accused of having
improperly and corruptly administered the patronage of his high office,
and two cases were cited against him. One was that of Mr. Leonard
Edmunds, who, though he had heavy defalcations in his accounts, was
allowed to retire on a pension from the Clerkships of Patents and of the
House of Lords, in favour of Westbury’s son. The other case rested on
certain appointments which Westbury had made to offices, and on grants
of retiring pensions in the Leeds Court of Bankruptcy. It was alleged
that the Lord Chancellor, in making these appointments, had been
influenced by family considerations detrimental to the public service.
After receiving the Report of a Select Committee, the House of Commons
censured Lord Westbury, who immediately resigned his office.[235] His
Lordship, when he went to hand over the Great Seal to the Queen, had a
somewhat painful interview with her Majesty. In his Diary, under date
the 7th of July, Bishop Wilberforce writes:--“Going in to the Queen met
Westbury coming out; his fallen look moved my compassion. Later I met
him on the broad staircase looking quite down, as he wandered alone down
to town. But Delane [the editor of the _Times_] told me that going up to
London in the train he was quite uproarious in his jollity, professing
such delight at being free from office, going to enjoy himself, foreign
travel,” &c.
Parliament died of old age. It had exhausted its allotted septennial
span, and was prorogued and dissolved on the 6th of July. The General
Election created little stir or excitement in the country, because no
appeal was made by either party to the constituencies on any vital
question. The election of Mr. John Stuart Mill for Westminster roused
some popular interest. The defeat of Mr. Gladstone at Oxford University
was due to the votes of the non-resident graduates among the country
clergy; and there was a stroke of unconscious irony in the success of
the Opposition at Tiverton, where they managed to give Lord Palmerston a
Tory as a colleague. The Liberals claimed to have carried 367 seats, and
the Tories 290. But all speculation as to what course the new Parliament
might adopt was cut short by the death of Lord Palmerston on the 18th of
October. He was within two days of completing his eighty-first year,
and, as his biographer says, “the half-opened cabinet-box on his table,
and the unfinished letter on his desk, testified that he was at his post
to the last.”[236] He had sat in sixteen Parliaments, and had been
chosen to sit in a seventeenth. He had been a member of every
Administration that had ruled England since 1807, save those of Sir
Robert Peel and Lord Derby, and the voice of the nation rightly decreed
for him the funeral honours of Westminster Abbey. It will always be a
mystery why Palmerston succeeded in establishing, towards the end of his
life, a personal dictatorship over the England which was governed by the
£10 householder. In home politics he took hardly any interest. One day,
for example, at Balmoral, when the Queen asked him for some information
about a serious strike in the North of England, he replied that he had
none; but “Madam,” said he, “I hear that the Russians have crossed the
Pruth.” He was an aristocrat to the core, and his ideas of England’s
mission in the world, and of her interests in the political forces and
conflicts that shaped the destinies of nations, were those, not of a man
of business or of affairs, but of a happy-hearted, reckless, pugnacious
public-school-boy. To coolness, courage, and tenacity of purpose, he,
however, added a dexterity in action that rendered him a successful as
well as
“A daring pilot in extremity.”
In one of his letters to Sir Stratford Canning he reveals the secret of
much of his power when he says, “I believe weakness and irresolution are
on the whole the worst faults that statesmen can have. A man of energy
may make a wrong decision but, like a strong horse that carries you
rashly into a quagmire, he brings you by his sturdiness out on the other
side.” Looking back on his career, it is hard to find one single stroke
of his policy that can be justified by history, with the exception of
the support he generously gave to the cause of Italian unity. The
cornerstone of his policy in his last administrations was the
Anglo-French alliance, and its worthlessness was attested not only by
the enormous military expenditure which Palmerston himself extorted from
the people to ward off a French invasion, but by the fact that the
alliance itself always broke down to the disadvantage of England,
whenever a strain was put upon it. His sympathy with democracy abroad
brought him no credit, for it was insincere. It was displayed mainly in
order to keep the Radical party quiet when the people began to demand
reforms at home. His most wonderful practical achievement was that of
reconciling both Tories and Radicals to the political supremacy of the
extremely moderate Liberals--the Liberals who had been rendered
Conservatives by the prosperity which Free Trade had conferred upon
them. His cleverness in selecting serviceable subordinates, his personal
loyalty to them, his geniality and cheerfulness, his singular gift of
managing the House of Commons, all contributed to consolidate his
influence in the country. His power over the House of Commons was
probably greater than Peel’s. He knew, as if by instinct, in any
emergency the kind of argument that was sure to tell on that Assembly.
He ruled it through its foibles, its prejudices, and its impulses. He
could adapt his style to every passing mood of its fickle temper, and
alike in jest and earnest he was always on the level of its standard of
good taste and fine feeling.
Lord Palmerston’s funeral took place in Westminster Abbey, accompanied
by every mark of respect and honour. The arrangements made for filling
up the vacancies in the Cabinet which were caused by his death were
simple. Earl Russell was called upon by the Queen to assume the post of
Premier. The Earl of Clarendon, then Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster, became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Chichester
Fortescue was made Secretary for Ireland in place of Sir Robert Peel,
who had always warned his colleagues he would join the Tories after
Palmerston’s death. The office of Under-Secretary for the Colonies was
conferred upon Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P. for Bradford. Mr. Heath resigned
the Vice-Presidency of the Board of Trade, in which he was succeeded by
Mr. Goschen. The important position of Leader of the Government in the
House of Commons devolved upon Mr. Gladstone, who had found a seat in
Lancashire. His financial genius had vastly added to the _prestige_ of
Lord Palmerston’s Ministry, and his commanding intellect and fascinating
oratorical power had long before marked him out for the leadership.
[Illustration: THE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION, DUBLIN (1865).]
Two evil incidents marred the latter portion of the year. These were the
outbreak of the cattle disease which became known as “rinderpest,” in
England and Scotland, and the development of the Fenian conspiracy in
Ireland. Down to the middle of December 5,000 cases of “rinderpest” had
occurred, and most of them had ended fatally. The plague, it is true,
was disappearing in some districts, but in others its ravages were
increasing, and a Royal Commission recommended that all movement of
cattle in the country should be stopped for a time. Local authorities
in many cases suspended fairs and markets.
The history of Ireland after the resignation of Lord Aberdeen was summed
up in the administration of Coercion Acts that were rendered necessary
by outrages which a peasantry infuriated by land clearances and
rack-rents perpetrated. For a time the policy of eviction and emigration
went on unresisted. In 1854 the rebels of ’48 were amnestied, but when
they came back they found that Irishmen regarded them rather as
reactionaries than rebels. As had always been the case in Ireland, the
pendulum of public opinion had now swung over from Anti-Unionism to
Separatism. The failure of ’48, the triumph of the evicting landlords,
the progressive poverty of the people, the treachery of leaders like
Sadlier and Keogh, who were bought up by the Whigs, disgusted Irishmen
with Parliamentary agitation. The Fenian conspiracy was the outcome of
this feeling. It originated among victims of the famine clearances, and
among some of the men of ’48. It was introduced into Ireland during the
Indian Mutiny by Mr. James Stephen, when it was known as the Phœnix
Society. One of his first converts was a Jeremiah Donovan, of
Skibbereen, who afterwards dubbed himself O’Donovan Rossa. He in turn,
induced ninety out of the hundred members of the Skibbereen Club to join
his band. That Society could hardly have conducted its proceedings with
much secrecy at this time, for it was soon denounced from every altar in
the country. The Lord-Lieutenant, however, proclaimed it, and there and
then elevated the Phœnix plotters to the dignity of national heroes. The
leaders were arrested, and on pleading guilty were released with
admonition. But over the Atlantic the Society had taken firmer root
among the victims of evicting landlords, as the Irish Revolutionary
Brotherhood. Yet even there it would have probably perished from the
opposition of the priests and the advocates of open agitation, but for
the cleverness with which its leaders made capital out of the famous
McManus funeral. McManus, one of the most amiable and highly respected
members of the Young Ireland Party, had, after his escape from Van
Diemen’s Land, settled in California, where he died. It was resolved by
his compatriots to exhume his body and convey it to Ireland for burial.
The route of the funeral, from San Francisco to Dublin, was naturally at
every stage the scene of a patriotic Irish demonstration, and by adroit
management the Fenian leaders had contrived to get control of all the
arrangements, so that the reflected _prestige_ of this impressive and
imposing demonstration of Irish nationalism went to their credit. In
Ireland the Society was soon considered to be the only one that had any
real power to help the people, and after the McManus funeral it grew
apace. In 1862 it announced at Chicago its intention of establishing
Irish independence by armed force, and its organ--the _Irish
People_--was founded in Dublin by Messrs. John O’Leary, Thomas Clark
Luby, and Charles James Kickham. For two years the Society was permitted
to carry on its propaganda. Then in September, 1865, Luby, O’Leary,
Kickham, and Stephens were arrested. Ten days after their capture
Stephens escaped from jail by aid of his gaolers, who were also Fenians.
In November the others were tried for treason-felony, and sentenced to
penal servitude for terms varying from ten to twenty years. The
organisation then became a small club in New York, whose leaders
quarrelled amongst themselves. They enjoyed a fictitious importance for
a time, because the Democratic Party and partisans of the Southern
States, invariably professed Fenian sympathies when contesting State
elections.
Two Colonial disputes gave the Government of the day some trouble before
the end of the year. The Assembly of Victoria tried to pass a Protective
Tariff over the veto of the Council, by tacking it on to the Bill
granting the supplies for the year. The Council held to its veto. The
Government was thus left without money for the public service, and
affairs came to a deadlock. In the circumstances the Governor, Sir
Charles Darling, cut the knot of the difficulty by allowing his
Ministers to raise money under the sanction of resolutions passed by the
Assembly, or representative branch of the Legislature. He also entered
into an ingenious arrangement with a bank in Melbourne. The law forbade
voluntary payments from the Treasury which were not authorised by an
Appropriation Bill. But the bank made advances to the Treasury, and then
sued it for recovery. The Treasury of course confessed judgment when
sued, and thus the law was evaded.
An outbreak of negroes in Jamaica had been suppressed with great vigour
by Governor Eyre. But it was soon suspected that he had mistaken a riot
for a revolution, and that the local authorities had acted in violation
of law, and with callous disregard of the dictates of humanity. Eyre was
suspended, and a Royal Commission was sent out at the end of the year to
report on the occurrence.
Though the Queen remained in close seclusion during 1865, she gave more
than one token of the vigilance with which she watched popular
interests. The year 1864 was famous for the number and the serious
character of its railway accidents, and yet it was hopeless to expect a
Palmerstonian Parliament to compel the railway companies to improve
their management. In the circumstances, it occurred to the Queen that
she might effect some good by using her moral influence on behalf of the
travelling public, and she accordingly directed the following letter to
be sent to the chief companies just as the year opened:--
“Sir Charles Phipps has received the commands of her Majesty the
Queen to call the attention of the directors of the ---- to the
increasing number of accidents which have lately occurred upon
different lines of railroad, and to express her Majesty’s warmest
hope that the directors of the ---- will carefully consider every
means of guarding against these misfortunes, which are not at all
the necessary accompaniments of railway travelling. It is not for
her own safety that the Queen has wished to provide in thus calling
the attention of the Company to the late disasters. Her Majesty is
aware that when she travels extraordinary precautions are taken,
but it is on account of her family, of those travelling upon her
service, and of her
[Illustration: THE QUEEN UNVEILING THE STATUE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT AT
COBURG.]
people generally, that she expresses the hope that the same
security may be insured for all as is so carefully provided for
herself. The Queen hopes it is unnecessary for her to recall to the
recollection of the railway directors the heavy responsibility
which they have assumed since they have succeeded in securing the
monopoly of the means of travelling of almost the entire population
of the country.”
On the other hand, evidence was not wanting that her Majesty’s
retirement had led to laxity of administration in her household. On the
4th of March, for example, Lord Malmesbury writes in his Diary:--“All
London is talking of the way in which the Corps Diplomatique has been
invited to the Queen’s reception. It was, as far as I could understand,
in these terms:--‘That the Queen would graciously receive them, _male_
and _female_, at a Court to be held at Buckingham Palace.’ All those
concerned are trying to shift the responsibility upon one another. The
diplomatists have sent their cards of invitation to their respective
Courts, and therefore it has produced a great sensation all over the
world, as the term _mâle et femelle_ is never used in French, except in
speaking of animals.”[237] But her Majesty’s kind and gracious bearing
at this reception, which was held on the 13th of March, did much to
neutralise the impression produced by the rudeness of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Department. On the 14th of March the Queen visited the
Consumptive Hospital at Brompton, bestowing on the patients in the
various wards kindly words of sympathy. Circumstances prevented her from
undertaking a journey to Ireland, where the people would have been
pleased to have welcomed her at the inauguration of an International
Exhibition. She, however, testified her interest in that enterprise by
requesting the Prince of Wales to open the exhibition in Dublin on the
9th of May. Another son was born to the Prince and Princess on the 3rd
of June, and on the 7th of July the infant was baptized in the chapel at
Windsor in presence of the Queen, who named him George Frederick Ernest
Albert. On the 6th of August the Queen’s second son, Prince Alfred,
attained his majority, and was recognised, with her sanction, as heir to
the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
On the 8th of August the Queen, with Prince Leopold, the Princesses
Helena, Louise, Beatrice, and suite, left England for Germany. She
arrived at Coburg on the 11th, and immediately proceeded to Rosenau. On
the 26th she unveiled the statue which had been set up in memory of the
Prince Consort in the quaint market-place of Coburg. The town was _en
fête_, every house being gay with garlands and banners, and decorated
with trophies of arms and festoons of flowers and evergreens. The troops
paraded the square, while crowds of light-hearted students and
schoolboys, and a great concourse of loyal burghers and honest
country-folk who had assembled to see the ceremony, gave life and colour
to a picturesque scene. The Court carriages bore a brilliant company of
Royal personages. Soon after four o’clock in the afternoon the bells in
all the steeples in the town pealed forth joyous notes; the cannon of
the fortress thundered out a royal salute, and the bands in the square
played the English National Anthem. Then the Queen’s carriage drove up
amidst deafening cheers. She was accompanied by Prince Arthur and the
Princess Beatrice, and was received by the Grand Duke, who led her to
the front of the pavilion that had been prepared for the ceremony. She
was clad in the deepest mourning, and under her bonnet was seen the cap
_à la Marie Stuart_, which about this time she had begun to wear on all
public occasions. The Burgomaster of Coburg presented her with a long
and loyal address. The bells rang, the bands played, the cannon saluted
again, and at a given signal the veil was withdrawn from the polished
bronze statue, which stood out glittering and sparkling in the sultry
sunshine of an autumnal afternoon. Walking up to the monument, the Queen
handed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha the bunch of flowers which had
lain before her on the balcony of the pavilion. These he placed,
together with another bouquet from the Princess Beatrice, on the
pedestal of the statue, and the ceremony was over. On the 8th of
September the Queen left Rosenau with the Princesses Helena and Louise
and Prince Leopold, and stopped _en route_ at Darmstadt, where she was
met by the Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse. Proceeding to Ostend, the
Queen paid a brief visit to King Leopold, after which she embarked at
Antwerp in her yacht for Woolwich.
During the Queen’s autumnal holiday at Balmoral the Prince and Princess
Louis of Hesse again visited her. Later in the year it was announced
that the Princess Helena was to be married to the Prince Christian of
Sleswig-Holstein, second son of the Duke of Augustenburg. “Many thanks,”
writes the Princess Louis to the Queen on the 8th of December, “for your
letter received yesterday with the account of Lenchen’s _verlobung_
[betrothal]. I am so glad she is happy, and I hope every blessing will
rest on them both that one can possibly desire.” It was arranged that
the Queen should lend Frogmore to her daughter, so that she and her
husband might be able to live in England. But the shadow of death was
again brooding over the Royal Household. In the same letter in which the
Princess Louis refers to her sister’s betrothal she writes, “I had a
letter from Marie Brabant two days ago, where she says dear uncle’s
[King Leopold] state is hopeless; but yesterday she telegraphed that he
was rather better. What a loss it would be if he were to be taken from
us, for his very name and existence, though he takes no active part in
politics, are of weight and value.”[238] In England the news of King
Leopold’s illness was received with some concern. The Queen had promised
to open the next Session of Parliament in person, and it was feared that
the death of his Majesty might interfere with a project in which her
subjects of all classes were deeply interested. On the 11th of December
King Leopold died, and on that day the Princess Louis of Hesse, ever
ready to sympathise with her mother’s sorrows, wrote to the Queen,
“Alas! alas! beloved Uncle Leopold is no more! How much for you, for us,
for all, goes with him to the grave! One tie more of those dear old
times is rent! I do feel for you so much, for dear uncle was indeed a
father to you. Now you are head of all the family--it seems incredible,
and that dear papa should not be by your side. The regret for dear Uncle
Leopold is universal--he stood so high in the eyes of all parties; his
life was a history in itself--and now that book is closed.” In another
letter the Princess says, “The more I realise that we shall never see
beloved Uncle Leopold again the sadder I grow. He had, apart from all
his excellent qualities, such a charm as I believe we shall seldom find
again.”
King Leopold’s life was indeed “a history in itself.” He was almost
ostentatiously indifferent to his position--ever impressing on his
subjects that he reigned in their interest rather than in his own. It
has been said that he could always bring them to reason by threatening
to abdicate. The sagacity and tact with which he prevented the Catholics
and the Liberals in Belgium from coming to blows, gave him great
influence in Europe. But that influence was enhanced by his capacity for
diplomatic intrigue, and the opportunities for exercising it which his
curious family connections gave him. Though he began life as one of the
obscurest of the petty Princes of Germany, he had married in succession
the heiress of England and the daughter of the King of the French. By a
double marriage, his children were allied to the Imperial House of
Hapsburg. He was the uncle and mentor of the Queen and the Prince
Consort--indeed, he and Baron Stockmar had brought about their marriage.
His position was supposed to be unassailable from the day when, on being
threatened with a revolution, he calmly began to pack a carpet-bag in
presence of the popular leaders, who thereupon, in a paroxysm of fear,
implored him not to leave the country. Yet, according to Lord
Malmesbury, “the last years of his life were spent in perpetual terror
of Louis Napoleon, and he was constantly alarming our Ministers and
everybody on the subject.”[239]
[Illustration: OPENING OF PARLIAMENT IN 1866: THE QUEEN AT THE PEERS’
ENTRANCE, WESTMINSTER PALACE.]