A HOPEFUL YEAR.
Hopefulness all round--Ministers at the Fishmongers’--The Queen’s
Speech--The Legislative Bill of Fare--The Queen and Mr. Gladstone’s
Irish Church Policy--Release of Fenians--Mr. Gladstone’s Scheme for
Disestablishing the Irish Church--The Debate in the Commons--The
Second Reading Carried--The Bill in Committee--Read a Third
Time--The Lords and the Bill--Amendments of the Peers--The Lords
Bought Off--The Bill becomes Law--Mr. Lowe’s First Budget--The
Endowed Schools Bill--The Habitual Criminals Act--The Lords and the
Commons’ Legislation--Official Hostility to Reforming
Ministers--Weak Members of the Cabinet--Mr. Reverdy Johnson and the
_Alabama_ Claims--The Policy of “Masterly Inactivity”--Liberalism
in France--Prince Leopold’s Illness--The Queen’s Interview with Mr.
Carlyle--Visit of Ismail Pasha to the Queen--The Peabody
Statue--Prince Alfred in Australia--The Prince of Wales and Court
Dress--Death of Lord Derby--Death of Lady Palmerston--Opening of
Blackfriars Bridge and Holborn Viaduct--O’Donovan Rossa,
M.P.--Orangemen and Fenians.
Hopefulness was the prevailing feeling with which the year 1869 was
hailed by everybody. Politically the country was in a state of
tranquillity. The democracy had won a great victory at the polls, and a
new and brilliant ministry had been called to power to give effect to
the will of the people. Trade, it is true, was still suffering from the
shock of 1866. The supply of raw cotton was scarce, and high prices
lessened the demand for the manufactured article. The policy of the
Trades Unions aggravated the uneasiness of the mercantile community.
Superficial observers began to declare that the Unionists, by hampering
their employers at home, were driving trade abroad, and a demand for
Protection, under the guise of Reciprocity, was heard, though as yet but
faintly, amid the din of controversy. Some of the leading men in great
commercial centres like Manchester were so impressed with the manifest
ignorance of economic principles exhibited in these controversies that
they started a series of evening lectures for working men on political
economy, Professor Stanley Jevons undertaking to deliver the
course.[292] On the other hand, the country was free from all
difficulties as to foreign affairs--even the dispute with the United
States as to the _Alabama_ claims was supposed to be in a fair way of
settlement under the flattering unction of the American Minister’s
post-prandial rhetoric. The first weeks of the year were enlivened by
the trials of election petitions, and the new tribunal of judges
appointed to try on the spot cases of corrupt practices, on the whole,
gave general satisfaction, It was felt that if the new court was a judge
without a jury, the old one--a committee of the House of Commons--was a
jury without a judge, and that in respect of consistency in interpreting
the law and logical application of principles, the new court was a vast
improvement on the old one.
Though everybody knew that the Irish Church Question must overshadow all
others, the utterances of Ministers were eagerly scanned for indications
of policy. The spirit of economy, it soon appeared, would reign supreme
in the administration, for not only did Mr. Goschen at the Poor Law
Board issue orders prohibiting the guardians of the poor in London from
giving relief to the able-bodied poor except under conditions of
task-work, but the Admiralty issued a circular instructing naval
officers to forbid unremunerative and profitless work, and save coals
and stores as much as possible. In his speeches to his constituents in
Renfrewshire, the Home Secretary, Mr. Austin Bruce, proclaimed his
conversion to the ballot; but Mr. Lowe, at Gloucester, seemed to limit
himself to rather stale denunciations of the Tory Party. On the 11th of
February Ministers dined with the Fishmongers’ Company in the City, but
even there their reticence was remarkable. Mr. Gladstone significantly
intimated that the Ministry were encouraged in pursuing their Irish
policy of conciliation, not only by the verdict of the country, but by
“the constitutional character of that Sovereign whose delight it is to
associate herself both with the interests and convictions of her
people.”[293] Mr. Lowe spoke in a caustic saturnine vein about the
difficulty of forcing economy on the servants of the Crown in public
departments: they resented an order to save stores as savouring of
meanness. And then the House of Commons was always too ready to force up
expenditure in detail, whilst clamouring for its reduction in mass. Mr.
Bright observed that the Board of Trade was merely a department that
sent recommendations to people who rarely paid attention to them, and
then launched into an attack on bishops and archbishops, who were, he
said, overpaid, owing to the credulity, if not the liberality, of the
people. His Grace of York had a few days before claimed that the
Episcopal Bench supplied a Liberal element to the House of Lords, and
this seems to have tempted Mr. Bright into his display of spleen.
Altogether, the first impression produced by the Ministerial speeches
was that the Government, though full of good intentions, meant to carry
them out in an arrogant and irritating manner. In the meantime a change
had taken place in the leadership of the Tory Party in the House of
Lords, Lord Malmesbury retiring in favour of Lord Cairns.
On the 16th of February Parliament was opened by Commission, the Royal
Speech being read by the Lord Chancellor. As the Queen did not attend,
it was decided by the Cabinet to propose that Parliament should wait
upon her, and present their Address in reply to the Royal Speech, to her
personally--a somewhat unusual, though not unprecedented, proceeding
when the Queen is herself absent from the opening of Parliament. The
Speech was in style a little flabby, especially where it touched on the
Irish Church Question. No measure of Disestablishment was definitely
promised, but it was announced that Parliament must take in hand the
task of “the adjustment of the ecclesiastical arrangements of Ireland.”
The Speech promised reduced estimates,[294] hinted at the restoration of
Habeas Corpus to Ireland, and it embodied Mr. Austin Bruce’s pledges in
Renfrewshire to bring in a Scottish Education Bill. Perhaps it was
because Ministers strove after brevity that they omitted from the Speech
many measures to which it was generally known they were committed,
_e.g._, Mr. Bruce’s Bill for dealing with Habitual Criminals, Mr.
Goschen’s Poor Law Bill, Mr. Forster’s Middle Class Education Bill, the
Bill abolishing University Tests, a Bill to establish Municipal
Government in Counties, and a Bill abolishing Imprisonment for Debt. The
Address was moved in the House of Commons by Mr. Cowper, selected as a
compliment to the Whigs, and Mr. Mundella, who was chosen to please the
Radical artisans. The debate on the Address was a tame business. The
leaders of the Opposition, desirous of posing as magnanimous adversaries
in defeat, offered no serious criticism. The Government leaders had,
therefore, virtually nothing to reply to. Previous to the moving of the
Address Mr. Gladstone gave notice in the House of Commons that on the
1st of March he should move that the Acts relating to the Irish Church
establishment, and to the Maynooth Grant, and also the Resolutions of
the House of Commons of 1868 be read; that the House should resolve
itself into Committee to consider these Acts and Resolutions. Mr.
Forster, too, gave notice of his Middle Class Education Bill. The
Attorney-General gave notice of a Bankruptcy Bill; Mr. Goschen announced
Bills amending the law assessing Occupiers Holding for short terms, and
equalising the Assessment of Metropolitan Property; and the Home
Secretary announced his Bill for the more effectual Prevention of Crime.
Whatever might be said of the Ministry, it was obviously bent on making
its mark on the Statute book. The House of Lords, indeed, began to take
alarm at the extreme activity of the Commons. They complained that they
were not entrusted with work till after Easter, when the Commons sent
them their Bills to revise in the dog days, and Lord Salisbury angrily
threatened to obstruct Bills if they were not sent up to the Peers in
time for full discussion; but the fault was really that of their
Lordships. As Lord Russell put it, to initiate Liberal Bills in the
Upper House is to secure their rejection; to bring them there after they
have been accepted by large majorities of the House of Commons, gives
them a chance of being passed into law.
When the Committee on the Address brought up their report Mr. Gladstone
moved that the Address be presented by the whole House to the Queen in
person. The Queen’s absence from the opening of a new reformed
Parliament had been taken by various Opposition organs as a proof that
she was inclined to obstruct the policy of the Ministry. That her
Majesty was, as a matter of fact, opposed to Mr. Gladstone’s policy of
Disestablishment is apparent from the Diary of Bishop Wilberforce,
where, under date 20th March, one finds the following entry:--“Back to
Windsor Castle and prepared sermon. Dined with the Queen. A great deal
of talk with the Princess Louise; clever and very agreeable. The Queen
very affable. So sorry Mr. Gladstone started this about Irish Church,
and he is a great friend of yours,” &c. But a still more authoritative
disclosure of the Queen’s personal objections to Mr. Gladstone’s plans
is given in a letter from the Princess Louis of Hesse. Writing on the
25th of April, in reply to a communication on the subject from the
Queen, the Princess says:--“The Irish Church Question, I quite feel with
you, will neither be solved nor settled in this way; and instead of
doing something which would bring the Catholics more under the authority
of the State, they will, I fear, be more powerful.”[295] The Queen’s
consent to come to London and receive the Address in reply to the Royal
Speech in person was accordingly obtained by Mr. Gladstone for the
purpose of taking the sting out of statements which had gone round the
Tory Press as to her Majesty’s opposition to his Irish policy. It hardly
tended to reconcile the Queen to the views of the Cabinet that her
consent to receive the Address was asked in a manner that precluded the
possibility of refusal, save at the risk of insulting the Legislature.
But in this affair Mr. Gladstone was doomed to disappointment. Before
the Address could be presented her Majesty said she must abandon the
idea of coming to town to receive it. Prince Leopold suddenly fell ill,
and as the Queen was reluctant to leave him, the Address was delivered
to her in the usual manner, and answered by her in the stereotyped
terms. Thus it came to pass that the first meeting of the reformed
Parliament was not honoured with any special mark of personal
recognition by the Chief of the State.
[Illustration: MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE (AFTERWARDS LORD CARLINGFORD).]
From the 1st of March to the end of July, however, the affairs of
Ireland completely absorbed public attention. As an earnest of their
conciliatory policy, Ministers had allowed the Act suspending Habeas
Corpus in Ireland to expire. In February they pardoned forty-nine of the
Fenian prisoners, selecting the objects of the Queen’s clemency from
those who were dupes as distinguished from ringleaders. This still left
eighty-one prisoners under sentence, and whilst it did not satisfy Irish
hopes, it encouraged a belief that it was comparatively safe to play at
treason in Ireland. As Lady Clanricarde said in a letter to Mr.
Hayward, “the released Fenians are now [April 13] socially, financially,
and in character, in a better position than they were at any other time
of their lives.”[296] The popular notion in Ireland was that they had
cowed the Government. Nor was the Church Question the only one which was
agitating the Irish mind. Shrewd observers had, indeed, warned Ministers
in the autumn of 1868 that the Irish people were even more eager for
Land Reform than the Disestablishment of the Church. Writing to Mr.
Chichester Fortescue on 15th of October, 1868, Mr. Hayward says,
“Froude, who has been two months in Ireland, mostly near Kenmare, says,
that so far as he saw, the Irish Church Question is little thought of in
comparison with the Land Question, and he knows of nothing that could be
proposed in the way of compromise, as the proprietors want to get rid of
their small tenants, and the small tenants want to get rid of the
landlords. Lord Lansdowne’s manager told him that he could make £25,000
a year out of the property by clearing out the cottiers.”[297] It was,
therefore, creditable to Ministers that, when questioned on the subject
in both Houses, they declared that whenever the Church Question was
disposed of, they would try and solve the Irish agrarian problem.
On the 1st of March Mr. Gladstone rose in an eager and crowded House and
moved that the Irish Church Resolutions be read. After that ceremony, he
moved that the House go into Committee to consider them. This being
done, he then proceeded to unfold his plan, in a speech which was a
masterpiece of artistic exposition. Technically speaking, he proposed to
disendow the Irish Church absolutely from the passing of the Act,
because he vested all its property in a Commission, appointed for ten
years. But the Church was to be disestablished at a date fixed by him as
the 1st of January, 1871. Whenever the Act passed the Church would be
quite free to take collective action for its future management, and
whenever it could present the Crown with a scheme of organisation the
Queen would be advised to incorporate it as a Free Church. The
Commission, of course, was to pay the life incomes of the clergy. But
these life incomes under the Bill might be commuted for a fixed sum, to
be handed over to the new Church Corporation. Private gifts made to the
Church since 1660, and all ecclesiastical fabrics, would remain in the
hands of the disestablished clergy. Similar methods for dealing with the
State subsidies to Presbyterian clergymen and professors were proposed,
and the trustees for the Presbyterians and for Maynooth College were to
have fourteen times their annual subvention given to them in full
satisfaction of all claims. The tithe charge was to be sold to the
landlords for twenty-two and a half years’ purchase, the money to be
vested in the Commission. As for the surplus property, or “spoil,” as it
was called, it was to be devoted to keeping up pauper lunatic asylums,
infirmaries, and hospitals for the poor, and asylums for idiots,
institutions which were then chargeable on the country.[298] The
leading idea disposing of the surplus for the benefit of the poor, was
generally admitted to be an ingenious way of meeting the cry of
sacrilegious spoliation.[299] Lord Westbury was, however, said to have
remarked that in taking endowments from the Irish clergy whose
intellects were warped, and giving it to lunatics and idiots who had no
intellects at all, Mr. Gladstone had followed a natural law of
association, and had exhibited a nicely discriminating sense of the
relative value of competing claims on his compassion.
But the country was impervious to all sarcasms of this sort, and it was
lavish in praise of a measure so obviously characterised by breadth of
view as to its ends, and minute completeness and efficiency of detail,
as to its means. The strategic value of Mr. Gladstone’s policy in
passing the Suspensory Bill in 1868 was now apparent to everybody. The
discussions it provoked had armed him at every point, and from the
almost embarrassing returns of dates and materials with which it
furnished him he was able to draw up a measure which was felt to be
complete and symmetrical. He reduced its weak points to a minimum--in
fact, if the principle of the Bill were accepted, it would be very
difficult for the most unscrupulous opposition to wreck it on details.
Mr. Disraeli’s criticism was very mild. He said Mr. Gladstone “had not
wasted a word,” but despite his statement, the Opposition must still
“look on Disestablishment as a great political error,” and on
Disendowment as “sheer confiscation.” Whether intentionally or not, his
tone conveyed an impression that, so far as he was concerned, he would
have been glad, after the verdict of the General Election, to throw over
the Church. But Sir Stafford Northcote a few days afterwards told a
meeting of Middlesex
[Illustration: CHOIR OF ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN.]
Conservatives that the Bill was a combination of robbery and bribery,
and Sir J. Pakington significantly thanked Providence for the House of
Lords. Mr. Disraeli felt that his resignation before Parliament met,
implied an acceptance of the verdict of the country. To him and to many
others, including the Bishop of Oxford, the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr.
Magee), the two Archbishops, Lord Salisbury, Lord Nelson, “our best
Churchman,” according to Wilberforce, Lord Carnarvon, and the Duke of
Richmond, it seemed unwise to divide the Houses of Parliament against
the principle of a national decision, to which the leaders of the
Opposition bowed when they resigned. They would have preferred to accept
the Bill in principle, and in Committee to have extorted from the
Government the best possible terms for the Church. But the advice of
extreme men prevailed, and so the Tory leaders decided to oppose the
Second Reading of the measure. On the 18th of March Mr. Disraeli moved
its rejection, in a speech remarkable for its brilliancy and the skill
with which he laid bare the weak points of Mr. Gladstone’s plans.
[Illustration: CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, DUBLIN.]
Yet his followers heard his epigrammatic assault with unconcealed
dismay, and after it was delivered condoled with each other because it
was a fiasco. The fault of the orator was that he gave his Party no
position or counter-scheme behind which they could entrench themselves.
He ignored the cardinal fact of the controversy, that the Irish people
were smarting under a sense of injustice, because their own national
church had been robbed to enrich the ministers of an alien creed. He
conjured up terrible but imaginary revolutionary catastrophes as the
results of the Bill. He dwelt on the value of the Irish Established
Church as a body bound by law to receive the religious pariahs of the
country, an argument that made the blood of most of his lieutenants, who
were pious Churchmen, run cold. Three discontented priesthoods instead
of one, said he, would make themselves organs of Irish discontent;
ignoring the fact that the one priesthood which would _not_ be smarting
was five times as numerous and potent as the other two put together. But
the debate as a whole was unreal and academic. It was more like a bout
with foils than a duel _à outrance_. The speakers who were chiefly
affected by the religious side of the question thought it expedient to
represent the Bill as an alarming attack on property. The champions of
property, on the contrary, represented the Bill as an impious attack on
religion. Three speeches alone maintained the reputation of the
House--those of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Bright, and Sir R. Palmer. They each
spoke as if they had a heart and a conscience, and were personally
responsible for the moral and political results of their votes. Mr.
Gladstone rested his case on the absolute necessity of redressing a
wrong done by a strong nation to a weak one in an age when might was
right. The Empire as a whole had a moral right in national interests to
prevail over any of its parts. But Ireland, he said, had a right to be
governed so that it might be known to all men that her life was not
hostile but supplementary to that of the Empire. Mr. Bright’s speech was
full of intense Christian feeling. He expressed, in words vibrating with
genuine emotion, his horror at a system which associated any Christian
church with a policy of conquest. As for the charges of robbery, he
disposed of them in the splendid peroration in which he declared that
the plan for disposing of the Church surplus realised his highest ideal
of Christian statesmanship. It applied funds which were misused in
stimulating barren sectarian controversies and enmities, to beneficent
purposes untainted by doctrinal partisanship or dogmatic preferences.
Sir Roundell Palmer surprised every one by his candid admission that a
large measure of disendowment in Ireland was a moral necessity. All
establishment revenues, such as those attached to episcopal sees, the
capitular revenues of cathedrals, and funds for preaching Protestantism
in places where there were no Protestants, he admitted could not justly
be appropriated by a small alien sect in the name of the Irish nation.
But then, he argued with subtlety and power, it was equally unjust to
alienate parochial endowments, which were locally of parochial use in
promoting the objects which they were instituted to further. Sir
Roundell Palmer’s speech, in fact, revealed what would have been a
possible compromise had it not come too late. He suggested that which
Mr. Disraeli had failed to discover--an alternative policy--when he
issued his electoral manifesto staking the fortunes of the Irish Church
on the cry of “No Surrender.” The Second Reading of the Bill was
carried, after a week’s debate, by a majority of 118.[300] _Paucis
carior est fides quam pecunia._ Hence, after this division, the
Churchmen thought there was nothing left to fight for save the money
which the Irish clergy should be allowed to carry with them into the
desert of Disendowment. On Wednesday, the 14th of April, Mr. Disraeli
called the Tory Party together at Lord Lonsdale’s house, and the meeting
agreed not to press private amendments, but to support Mr. Disraeli’s
own proposals which he submitted to the House of Commons next night. He
proposed that the Church, though disendowed, should remain under the
discipline and patronage of the Crown.[301] He demanded a year’s
reprieve from disestablishment. He proposed to compensate permanent
curates, to pay over to the Church a capital sum of four times its net
annual revenue, also a sum equal to fourteen times the annual charges
for repairs; and he demanded that the Church should be allowed to hold
all private property ever given to it, whether in Catholic or Protestant
times. He insisted on compensation for life interests on a more
extravagant scale than the Bill sanctioned, and his proposal as to
tithes was amusingly unscrupulous. One of the great points in his speech
on the Second Reading was, that the Bill, whilst it confiscated the
property of the Church, offered a conciliatory bribe to the landlords.
The tithe rent-charge was sold at twenty-two-and-a-half years’ purchase
to the landlords, on condition that they made it yield the State four
and a half per cent. on its capital value. But to accommodate them Mr.
Gladstone said that if they wished to buy up the tithe but could not pay
the money down for a twenty-two-and-a-half years’ purchase, they could
borrow it from the State, and refund it by paying three per cent. on it
for forty-five years. In other words, Mr. Gladstone charged them three
per cent. for interest, and kept the other one and a half per cent. of
the tithe yield for forty-five years as a sinking fund to wipe out the
original advance. Mr. Disraeli, however, proposed to sell the tithe
rent-charge to the landlords at an average price struck from the records
of the Landed Estates Courts during the past ten years. As rent-charges
sold in the Landed Estates Courts were not sold under the security of
the Government, the price at which landlords would have bought up these
charges under Mr. Disraeli’s amendment would have been about twenty-five
per cent. under that demanded by Mr. Gladstone. The case of the
“permanent curates” seemed to excite much sympathy in the House. Mr.
Gladstone was also at first inclined to yield to, though he ultimately
rejected, an appeal from one of his supporters, Mr. Wykeham Martin, who
desired to let the clergy of the Irish Church keep their glebe houses
when free from building debt, without paying ten years’ purchase for the
site as the Bill provided.
In truth, it was soon seen that it was hopeless to attack the Bill in
Committee. Mr. Gladstone was master of every detail--legal, historical,
and archæological. He showed himself an expert among the experts, and it
appeared that he had foreseen every objection and forestalled every
counter-plan. Mr. Disraeli--who had left much of the work of Opposition
to Mr. Hardy and Dr. Ball--soon grew sick of the discussion, and used
his influence to quicken the progress of the measure, the Third Reading
of which was fixed for May 31st, when it passed by a majority of 114. On
the Queen’s birthday the leading Conservative Peers held a meeting, at
which strong efforts were made to reject the Second Reading of the Bill
in the House of Lords. The ablest peers were, however, in favour of
timely surrender, in the hope that they might extort better terms of
compensation for the Church. That was also the view of the Episcopal
Bench. On the other hand, the Irish Bishops said frankly that feeling
ran so high among their flocks that they did not dare to let the Second
Reading pass unchallenged. To do so, would sacrifice all their moral and
personal influence in the Irish Church. The English Bishops admitted
that they must do whatever their Irish colleagues did, and thus it came
to pass that whilst Dr. Magee, the Bishop of Peterborough, privately
argued in favour of accepting the principle of the Bill, and then making
the best possible terms for disendowment, he delivered in the House of
Lords by far the most eloquent and powerful speech denouncing its
principle from a moral point of view. At another meeting of Tory Peers
held at the Duke of Marlborough’s house, Lord Cairns and Lord Derby
unfortunately induced the majority to sanction the policy of moving the
rejection of the Bill. The debate in the House of Lords lasted all
through the week, beginning on the 14th of June, and it was remarkable
for sustained eloquence and intellectual power. The Bishops, especially
Dr. Magee, carried off the honours of the fray. The Archbishop of
Canterbury produced a strong impression against rejecting the Second
Reading, for the burden of his argument was that the State should
establish a church in order to keep it from becoming fanatical, and then
maintain it only as long as it could do so without defying the will of
the people. The Liberal Peers were timid and feeble, and the case for
passing the Second Reading was really made out by Lord Carnarvon, Lord
Salisbury, the Bishop of St. David’s, the Duke of Richmond, and Lord
Stanhope. Perhaps the most striking point in the discussion was the
clear indication it gave that the Peers, with the exception of Lords
Salisbury and Carnarvon, were at heart partisans of concurrent
endowment, and it was in this direction that most of the Amendments they
proposed pointed, after the Second Reading had been carried by a
majority of 33.[302] Lord Grey, for example, desired to cut out of the
preamble of the Bill the clause forbidding the application of the Church
surplus to religious uses, and Lord Russell wanted to authorise the
purchase, out of the surplus, of churches, parsonages, and graveyards
for all the sects in Ireland.
On going into Committee the Peers forced several amendments on the Bill.
The date at which the Bill was to take effect was changed from 1871 to
1872. Existing Irish Bishops were to hold their seats in the House of
Lords till they died out one by one. Curates’ salaries were not to be
deducted from life interests--an alteration that increased the
compensation to the Church by about £300,000. Life interests were to be
taken at fourteen years’ purchase--the capital value to be paid to the
Church, which would pay the annuities, a clear gain of about £2,000,000
to the Church. Glebes and glebe-houses were
[Illustration: DR. WILBERFORCE, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.
(_From the Photograph by S. A. Walker._)]
to be handed over to the Irish Church, but when the Duke of Cleveland
proposed that the same provision should be made for the clergy of other
churches in Ireland, he was defeated by a combination of Ministerialists
and Orangemen, who thereby destroyed the principle of religious equality
on which the Bill was founded.[303] On no single amendment, save one,
did the Bishops vote for the Government, and on that one--the amendment
delaying the division of the surplus _sine die_--the only Bishop who
voted for the Ministry was Wilberforce. “Some one,” writes Lord
Malmesbury, “observing him going out with them [Ministers] in the
division, said, ‘The Bishop of Oxford is going the wrong way.’ ‘No,’
observed Lord Chelmsford, ‘it is the road to Winchester.’”[304] After
the Third Reading of the Bill the Lords, however, accepted a
re-amendment by Lord Devon that Irish Bishops should cease to sit in the
Upper House, and Lord Stanhope carried another restoring the principle
of religious equality by granting residences and glebes to Catholics and
Presbyterians. The House of Commons rejected all the important
amendments of the Lords, Mr. Gladstone contemptuously observing that the
Peers seemed to judge affairs from a balloon. A bitter and protracted
struggle between the two Houses was averted by Lord Cairns, who
privately negotiated a compromise with Lord Granville. Its main point
was that in return for the concession of an additional 5 per cent. on
the commutation of life interests (making it 12½ per cent.), the Tory
Peers would let the Bill pass. In plain English, Lord Granville bought
off the opposition of the Peers by a re-endowment of £500,000 for the
Free Protestant Church of Ireland, and the Act received the Royal Assent
by Commission on the 26th of July. It was understood that the Queen was
prepared to use her influence to bring about a compromise less
humiliating to the House of Lords. But the matter was taken out of her
hands. Lord Malmesbury says, “Lord Cairns settled it with Lord
Granville, taking the whole responsibility upon himself, for he never
consulted any of his party, and a great many are much displeased. Lord
Derby was so angry that he left the House.”
Great interest attached this Session to Mr. Lowe’s first Budget. Mr.
Ward Hunt had been mistaken in his estimate of income, for while he
anticipated a revenue of £73,180,000, only £72,591,991 had been
received. But a saving in expenditure of £511,000 almost balanced this
loss of revenue. Mr. Lowe estimated his expenditure for the coming year
at £68,223,000, and, as taxes then stood, his income at £72,855,000, so
that he had a surplus to handle of £4,632,000. Unfortunately, the cost
of the Abyssinian War had been sadly under-estimated by Mr. Disraeli’s
Government, and £4,600,000 of Lord Napier’s bill was still outstanding.
Mr. Lowe’s plan for replenishing reduced balances and meeting unexpected
liabilities whilst still remitting taxes was at once original and
ingenious. Long credit is given for taxes in England. By abolishing this
credit and exacting the full tax within the financial year--that is to
say, by collecting in 1869-70 the half of the tax that in ordinary
circumstances stood over to 1870-71--Mr. Lowe estimated he would have
what he called “windfalls” of £600,000 on assessed taxes, £950,000 on
the land and house tax, and £1,800,000 on income tax, which gave him
£3,350,000. Applying this to the reduction of the Abyssinian War debt he
left of it only £500,000 standing. But the estimated surplus was
£4,632,000, so that even after deducting the Abyssinian debt, he still
had in hand £4,100,000 for remission of taxes, and the replenishment of
the Exchequer balances which Mr. Ward Hunt’s policy had exhausted. Mr.
Lowe therefore remitted the shilling duty on corn, the duty on fire
insurances, the hair powder tax, the duty on tea licences, and a penny
of income tax. The carriage duty he simplified and reduced. The duty on
horses he reduced--an announcement that gave infinite satisfaction to
the House of Commons--and he abolished the special duty on post-horses.
He said that as he could not take off the duty on armorial bearings, “it
appeared to him the best thing he could do was to increase it.” The
perplexing and complex discussion which the scheme provoked, and the
indignation of the small traders at being called upon to pay all their
taxes in full instead of in two half-yearly instalments obscured the
real issue. The real point to consider, however, was whether it was
worth while to pay the April quarter’s taxes in January, in order to get
the remissions which Mr. Lowe promised. The House thought that the gain
was commensurate with the sacrifice, and so the Budget passed without
serious opposition.[305]
That the new House of Commons was leavened by a spirit of reform was
manifest from the record of its legislative achievements. In March Mr.
Forster introduced his Endowed Schools Bill, the gist of which was the
appointment of a Commission, empowered, if need be, to reorganise
compulsorily old endowed schools, and to adapt them to modern
requirements. One curious feature in it marked the growth of opinion on
the education of women. Girls, as well as boys, were to have a fair
share of these endowments. Mr. Austin Bruce, the Home Secretary, passed
an Habitual Criminals Act, in deference to the growing feeling of the
people that the large class who lived by crime were far too gently
treated by the authorities. It put habitual criminals, or persons twice
convicted of crime, under police supervision for seven years, and in
cases of fresh charges threw on them and on receivers of stolen goods
the burden of proving their innocence, a burden that heretofore was laid
on Society. Lord Hartington’s Bill for purchasing the telegraphs carried
out a bad bargain, to which Mr. Ward Hunt had committed the nation.[306]
But all other legislation of importance was wrecked by the House of
Lords. For example, the Commons in 1869 passed a Bill giving married
women control over their own property; the Lords threw it out. The
Commons affirmed the principle of abolishing University Tests; the Lords
again stopped the way. The Commons passed a Bill abolishing the law of
primogeniture; the Lords rejected it. The Commons accepted a Bill rating
all Scottish landowners for the support of a universal unsectarian
compulsory system of education in Scotland; the Lords quashed the
project, which was denounced even by so Liberal a newspaper as the
_Daily Telegraph_ because it was “too revolutionary, too full of
compulsion, and _too Scotch_.” The Commons passed a Bill legalising
marriage with a deceased wife’s sister; here again the Lords undid the
work of the Commons. The questions relating to purity of election,
forced on the country by the revelations made at trials of election
petitions during the recess, were by the Commons referred to a Select
Committee, on the understanding that it would report, as it did report,
in favour of the ballot; but the Lords did not disguise their hostility
to that project either. The first Parliament that met under household
suffrage therefore demonstrated alike the intense devotion of the
Commons and the intense hostility of the Lords to all progressive
legislation.
And yet any shrewd observer could see that the Ministry, despite its
reforming zeal, was not gaining strength in a reforming House of
Commons. The belief in Mr. Gladstone’s ability and earnestness had not
decayed; but his colleagues were busy accumulating a baneful crop of
private hatreds. Mr. Cardwell and Mr. Childers cut down expenditure in
the army and navy, and Mr. Baxter, as Secretary to the Admiralty,
insisted on buying stores for the public on the economical business-like
principles that guide private firms. Mr. Childers found the Admiralty in
a state of chaos. When anything went wrong everybody was generally
responsible, but nobody in particular could be punished. Mr. Childers
fixed responsibility for patronage and discipline, for building and
equipping ships, and for finance on three subordinates. To reduce the
redundant officers he offered to give them a lump sum down, instead of
half-pay, if they would retire. He, or rather Mr. Baxter, laid down the
rule that it was better to buy stores in the open market instead of
contracting for them. As to the fleet, he introduced the principle of
reducing it as much as possible at foreign stations, where it was
difficult to control, and concentrating it as much as possible at home,
where it was easily within reach of his arm. In ship-building he
insisted on concentrating expenditure, not on repair, but on
construction, and on building, not a great many ships of a semi-obsolete
type, but a few heavily-armed and armoured swift vessels, which would be
guaranteed to beat any craft afloat. The Tory Opposition somewhat
unpatriotically joined in the “hue and cry” which every incompetent
official and every useless clerk who was shelved by these reforms raised
against Mr. Childers. The dockyard men actually assaulted Sir C.
Wingfield, Member for Gravesend, because he defended reductions. The
words and deeds of Mr. Childers and Mr. Baxter were misrepresented by
Tory partisans,
[Illustration: THE VICTORIA EMBANKMENT, LONDON.]
who tried to make political capital out of the storm of prejudice which
dispossessed jobbers raised against them. Yet, as a matter of fact,
whereas the Tory Ministry discharged 3,948 dockyard hands, and pensioned
411, Mr. Childers merely pensioned 617 men, aided 666 to emigrate, and
gave gratuities to 117. Forthwith a powerful body of officials, most of
whom had the means of influencing the newspaper press, foreseeing that
the corrupt spending departments were in danger of being reorganised,
began to wage a “paper war” against the Ministry. Mr. Lowe’s vitriolic
insolence to deputations who came to do business with him, his quarrel
with the legal profession over the site of the New Law Courts, his
contemptuous criticism of the Money Market, his proposal to coin a new
sovereign with enough alloy to cover the cost of mintage, and his
determination to collect the income-tax in a lump sum in the January
quarter of the year, also raised up hosts of enemies. Mr. Bruce annoyed
people by his obstinate officialism, and Mr. Ayrton by his overweening
niggardliness, his too obvious desire to effect mean savings meanly, and
his foolish fancy for rubbing pepper into the wounds of those whom he
cut by his sharp tongue. Mr. Bright’s speeches on the Irish Church Bill
should have vastly augmented his reputation; but his indolence as an
administrator was notorious. His resolve to prevent the Board of Trade
from doing any work for the people which it could avoid doing disgusted
Tories and Radicals alike. His opposition to Lord Edward Cecil’s
Resolution in favour of a Bill to check adulteration, based as it was
upon the ideas of the old Whigs, and informed as it was by the
prejudices of the vulgarest type of small tradesman, did much to destroy
his popularity. Adulteration, he said, was only another form of
competition. The use of false weights, as a rule, was a pure
inadvertency, and if traders were to be spied on every hour by
inspectors he (Mr. Bright) would advise them to emigrate. All his
arguments, curiously enough, were those by which the coining of
counterfeit money might be defended, and the effect of them on the
public mind was not favourable to the Cabinet of which he was a member.
Lord Granville, too, had sadly mismanaged the Colonial Office. His
policy of gradually withdrawing Imperial troops from the self-governing
colonies, and teaching them to rely on themselves and their territorial
militias for defence was wise and prudent. But it was carried out with a
lack of tact that irritated the susceptibilities of the Colonists. Lord
Granville hardly concealed his approval of the wild doctrines of
Professor Goldwin Smith to the effect that colonies were a burdensome
nuisance, and that the best thing to do with them was to cut them
adrift. The tone of Colonial Office despatches at this time was
studiously impertinent. As for Lord Granville’s subordinates at
Whitehall, they prided themselves on treating eminent Colonists as if
they were returned convicts. Lord Granville’s refusal to permit a
British regiment to remain in New Zealand, then engaged in a Maori war,
and his recommendation to the Colonists to recognise the independence of
the Maori king, naturally rendered his Colonial policy hateful to all
colonists.
Foreign affairs alone seem to have been prudently managed. The only
serious question with which the Foreign Office had to deal was that of
the _Alabama_ Claims. The Tory Ministry, reversing the somewhat defiant
policy of Lord Russell, had conceded to the American Minister--Mr.
Reverdy Johnson--every claim he was instructed to prefer.[307] This
policy was continued by Lord Clarendon. Mr. Johnson’s method of working
was to stupefy the English nation with gross flattery and with ecstatic
post-prandial outbursts of brotherly love, and then cajole it into
immeasurable concessions. He was a professional diner-out, and he took
in his hosts as well as their dinners. But the American democracy
ignored the concessions their Minister had obtained. Their attention was
fixed on his exaggerated assurances of their goodwill, at a time when
they desired him to convey the impression that they still regarded with
dignified displeasure the unfriendly attitude of England during the
Civil War. The Convention negotiated between Mr. Johnson and the Foreign
Secretary was accordingly denounced by Mr. Sumner in the Senate in a
speech in which he not only demanded an apology from England for
recognising the Confederate States as belligerents, but consequential
damages for all injuries to America, that were indirectly as well as
directly due to the escape of the Confederate cruisers from British
ports. When the Senate refused to ratify the Convention, the reply of
Lord Clarendon was a courteous and decisive refusal to conduct
negotiations on the absurd basis put forward by Mr. Sumner. Mr. Johnson
was recalled. Mr. Motley, the eminent historian, was sent in his stead
to the Court of St. James’s, and towards the end of the year American
public opinion began to favour a reopening of the negotiations on a more
reasonable basis, but at Washington, and not in London.[308]
The India Office, too, under the Duke of Argyle, was managed so as to
add considerably to the _prestige_ of the Government. The affairs of
India had indeed been conducted, since the accession of Sir John
Lawrence to the Viceroyalty, with consummate ability. The struggle for
power in Afghanistan between the descendants of Dost Mahomed had been
watched by Lawrence with masterly inactivity. At last, as if by a
Providential inspiration, Lawrence came to the conclusion, in 1867, that
of all the rival aspirants the fugitive Shere Ali was the one who was to
be favoured by Fortune. He avoided an alliance with the usurper Azim
Khan, and when Shere Ali at last ascended the throne his friendly
overtures were amicably met. When Lord Mayo succeeded Lawrence in 1868,
his appointment was denounced as a Tory job. Mr. Gladstone, with great
generosity, refused to yield to those who pressed him to recall Mr.
Disraeli’s viceroy in 1869, and Lord Mayo developed an unexpected
capacity for government. He carried out Lawrence’s frontier policy only
with greater warmth of feeling. On the 27th of March Shere Ali met Lord
Mayo in durbar at Umballa, and was splendidly entertained. There Lord
Mayo formally recognised his guest’s position, and on behalf of the
Indian Government arranged to supply him with arms and a subsidy of
£120,000 a year to defend his throne.
[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S DRAWING-ROOM, OSBORNE.
(_From a Photograph by Hughes and Mullins, Ryde, Isle of Wight._)]
Foreign affairs had little interest for the Queen in 1869. In Germany
the policy of Von Bismarck was directed to prevent the premature
development of the national sentiment in favour of forming a new German
Empire. France was engaged in hastily reorganising her military system,
and the French Emperor, broken in health and depressed in spirits, had
to meet, with anxious heart, the rising tide of Liberalism, which the
elections that followed the dissolution of the Legislature, showed was
beginning to flow in France. In July, when the Legislative Body met, the
Opposition, which used to number about six, numbered 120, and when they
threatened to attack the Government M. Rouher offered to come to terms
with them.[309] The Emperor’s illness postponed matters for two months,
but meantime the old Ministry resigned in favour of a more Liberal one.
Finally, a still more Liberal one
[Illustration: ISMAIL PASHA.]
was formed by M. Emile Ollivier, at the end of the year, charged with
the mission of transforming Bonapartism into Constitutional Monarchy, on
the basis of Parliamentary Government. In Spain the revolution of the
previous year still dragged on. The financial embarrassments of Italy
had rendered the House of Savoy a little unpopular, but the recovery of
Victor Emmanuel from a perilous illness, and the birth of an heir
presumptive to the Italian Crown, soon restored the popularity of their
Monarchy among the Italians. The Pope attained the summit of his
ambition by assembling at Rome, on the 8th of December, a grand council
of the Latin Church, for the purpose of sanctioning formally the
doctrine of the personal infallibility of the Holy Father, speaking _ex
cathedrâ_ and _quoad sacra_.
We may presume that the Queen’s domestic circle was, early in the year,
alarmed by the strangely sudden illness of Prince Leopold, which
prevented her from receiving in person the Address from the House of
Commons in reply to the Speech from the Throne. No notice of this
illness is, however, taken in the letters of the Princess Louis of
Hesse; in fact, it seems to be the only illness of the Prince to which
that illustrious lady does not allude in her correspondence with the
Queen. The sole reference to Prince Leopold at this period is in a
letter from the Princess to her mother, dated 30th January, in which she
says, “Our thoughts and prayers are so much with you and dear Leopold on
this day [his Confirmation]. May the Almighty bless and protect that
precious boy, and give him health and strength to continue a life so
well begun and so full of promise.” A month later the Queen had sad
tidings of further domestic anxieties from her tender-hearted daughter.
One of her servants had fallen ill, and the Darmstadt household was so
seriously underhanded, that the Princess herself had to drudge in her
nursery. “You will be amused,” she cheerily writes, with an obvious
effort to spare her mother unnecessary anxiety, “when I tell you, that
old Amelung is coming to sleep with baby, and take charge of him; but
she is too old and out of practice to be able to wash and dress him
morning and evening besides, so I do that, and it is, of course, a great
assistance to all my being able to do it, and I don’t mind the trouble.
Of a morning, as Louis is usually out riding or at his office, I take
Victoria and Ella out, who are very good little girls, and very
amusing.”[310] It was fortunate for the amiable Princess that her
illustrious mother had brought her up to be a helpful housemother,
competent at any moment to cope with the _res augustæ domi_.
In the beginning of the year the Queen had an interview with Mr.
Carlyle, in whose sorrowful life Dean Stanley had interested her. Her
Majesty expressed a desire to become personally acquainted with a man
whose genius had shed so much lustre on her reign, and, according to Mr.
Froude, Carlyle felt for the Queen “in her bereavement as she had
remembered him in his own.” The meeting took place in the Westminster
Deanery, and Carlyle’s account of it is as follows:--“The Queen was
really very gracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose
greatly in my esteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any
point. The interview was quietly very mournful to me.”[311]
On the 17th of April the Queen visited Aldershot, and reviewed the
troops stationed there. The weather was so bad in the morning that it
was supposed that the review would be abandoned, but eventually, about
midday, the clouds cleared off and the “Assembly” sounded. The Queen,
accompanied by the Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice, left Windsor a
little before noon, and was escorted by a troop of Life Guards as far as
Bagshot, where a troop of the 5th Dragoon Guards relieved them, and
conducted the Royal party to the camp. Her Majesty drove to the Royal
Pavilion, where she partook of luncheon, and as the weather at this time
was exceedingly threatening--rain falling heavily--the signal was
hoisted at headquarters for the troops to “wait further orders.” At
three o’clock, the weather having somewhat cleared, the review took
place, about 8,000 of all ranks being on parade.
But in spite of diversions of this sort the Queen felt at times the
increasing loneliness of her life. In reply to some expression of this
the Princess Louis writes to her on the 16th of April, “We shall,
indeed, be so pleased, if later you wish to have any of the
grand-daughters with you, to comply with any such wish, for I often
think, so sadly for your dear sake, how lonely it must be when one child
after another grows up and leaves home; and even if they remain, to have
no children in the house is most dreary. Surely you can never lack to
have some from among the many grandchildren; and there are none of us
who would not gladly have our children live under the same roof where we
passed such a happy childhood, with such a loving grandmamma to take
care of them.” In May, however, the secluded life of the Queen was to
some extent brightened and cheered. “How glad I am,” writes the Princess
Louis, “that the dear Countess [Blücher] is with you again; she is the
pleasantest companion possible, and so dear and loving, and she is
devoted to you and dear papa’s memory as never any one was.”
On the 22nd of June Ismail Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, paid a second visit
to England (his first having taken place in 1867), and during his short
stay of eight days his time was well occupied with _fêtes_, reviews, and
banquets. He was met at Charing Cross by the Prince of Wales with a
royal greeting in the name of the Queen, and drove to Buckingham Palace
amid cheers from the crowd outside the station. On the 24th he left
Buckingham Palace for Windsor Castle on a visit to her Majesty. The
Prince and Princess of Wales and Prince Hassan, the Viceroy’s son,
accompanied him, and with a select party dined with the Queen. On the
26th the Queen entertained the Viceroy with a review of 5,000 troops in
Windsor Great Park. Next day he returned to town and dined with the
Prince and Princess of Wales at Marlborough House. On July 1st, having
taken leave of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Ismail Pasha started on
his return journey. He was at this time endeavouring to strengthen his
independent position in Egypt, and though he met with little
encouragement, he considered it advisable to try and secure English
support against the Sultan.
Her Majesty had taken a deep interest in the statue to Mr. Peabody,
executed by Mr. Story, the American sculptor-poet, which was to be
erected within the precincts of the Royal Exchange, in the City of
London. Accordingly, the Prince of Wales unveiled the memorial on the
23rd of July, and his neat, natural, and polished oratory, especially
his graceful allusions to his own reception in America, attracted some
notice at the time.[312]
[Illustration: THE TAPESTRY ROOM, ST. JAMES’S PALACE (_From a Photograph
by H. N. King._)]
[Illustration: THE QUEEN OPENING HOLBORN VIADUCT.]
In the autumn the Queen enjoyed a series of excursions from
Invertrosachs, to which the Princess Louis of Hesse refers in one of her
letters from Kranichstein. “What charming expeditions you must have
made,” writes the Princess to her Majesty, “in that lovely country. What
I saw of it some years ago I admired so intensely. You can well be proud
of all the beauties of the Highlands, which, have so entirely their own
stamp that no Alpine scenery, however grand, can lessen one’s
appreciation for that of Scotland.... Many thanks for the grouse, which
have just arrived--the first since two years ago!”[313]
During the year the Queen was subjected to considerable annoyance, owing
to the mismanagement which seemed to mar the success of the Duke of
Edinburgh’s tour in Australia. At the time he was shot at by O’Farrell
the Legislature of New South Wales passed at one sitting a
Treason-felony Bill, the provisions of which were of the drastic
character enforced in modern times only by the autocrats of
_opera-bouffe_. But after a while from across the sea whispers of
heart-burnings and discontent were wafted, which first took definite
form in spring, when an ugly item was discovered in the Civil Service
Estimates. It was a sum of £3,500 for gifts and presents made by the
Duke of Edinburgh while voyaging in Australian waters with the
_Galatea_. The Colonists were, not unnaturally, irritated at what they
considered the lack of taste shown in throwing on the Estimates the
expense of those trifling gifts which the Prince had made to several of
the most eminent Australians. Though no defence was formally made for
the Prince, obviously his youth and inexperience accounted, to some
extent, for the unfortunate error.
A visit paid by Prince Arthur to Ireland in summer also led to some
unpleasantness. In Derry the Prince’s appearance seemed to suggest to
the Orangemen the idea that the occasion was one for assailing Mr.
Gladstone and the Ministry, and for making riotous attacks on the
Catholics who retaliated after their kind. The Mayor of Cork, too,
presiding at a dinner given to two released Fenians on the 28th of
April, lauded O’Farrell’s motive in shooting the Duke of Edinburgh. The
observations were so pointedly directed at Prince Arthur’s visit, that
they constituted practically an invitation to assassinate him. The
Government accordingly brought in a Bill on the 5th of May to dismiss
Mr. O’Sullivan from office “as if he were naturally dead,” the first
reading of which Mr. Disraeli, to the consternation of his followers,
showed a desire to resist.[314] Mr. O’Sullivan, however, saved everybody
further trouble by resigning his office.
On the other hand, if two of the Queen’s sons were a little unfortunate
in their experience of popular demonstrations, the Heir Apparent was
fast becoming the idol of Society. It was understood that he had used
his influence in order to bring about a change in Court dress, which was
taken as a concession to the democratic spirit of the age. What was the
origin of the rule compelling unofficial persons to wear a distinctive
dress when presented to the Queen? In the early Georgian period no such
rule existed. Nobody but a gentleman could go to Court, and so people
who were presented, as a matter of course, wore the ordinary dress of a
gentleman, just as officers have always approached the Queen in uniform,
which, in theory, is their ordinary dress. But in time persons who were
not, technically speaking, gentlemen, were presented to the Sovereign.
The introduction of what is now known as “evening dress” for persons of
all grades abolished costume as a mark of rank. Yet the Court still
adhered to the theory that any one presented to the Sovereign must bear
about him an outward and visible sign that he was a gentleman, and as
the ordinary “swallow-tail” coat was common to all classes, the rule was
laid down at Court that what had been the peculiar costume of a
gentleman down to the time of George III. should always be worn. The new
Court costume, as sanctioned by the Lord Chamberlain in February, 1869,
was, however, a compromise between the old fashion of the Georgian
period and the conventional “swallow-tail.” In form and colour the levee
dress resembled an ordinary evening dress. But the material was to be
velvet and not broadcloth, and the collar of the coat was to be straight
and embroidered with gold. The dress sword and cocked hat were still to
be worn. As for the full-dress to be worn at Drawing Rooms, it was also
a compromise. Trousers were not to be worn unless they were decked out
with broad gold stripes down the sides.
On Saturday, the 23rd of October, Lord Derby died in the seventy-first
year of his age, forty-nine years of which had been spent in political
life. For a quarter of a century his name and influence had worked like
a wizard’s spell on the minds and hearts of the Tory Party, and yet, as
a statesman and a legislator, he had done comparatively little.
Passionate unwisdom was too often the leading trait of his policy, but
his impetuous and imperious self-confidence, his stately presence, his
eager spirit, fiery partisanship, and irrepressible pugnacity rendered
him an invaluable Party leader. He passed away amid the wreckage of most
of his political idols, conscious that he had failed in what he had
haughtily asserted was his mission--to stem the tide of democracy. That
a superb air of aristocratic distinction surrounded even his blunders
was perhaps the secret of his success as leader of the House of Lords.
As a fluent, stimulating, passionate speaker, with a style at once
incisive, stately, and sonorous, he ranked as one of the last of the
rhetoricians among the Peers of England.
On the 11th of September the Queen lost a good friend, in whose widowed
life she had frequently displayed her sympathetic interest. That friend
was Lady Palmerston, who had long reigned as the leader of Whig society
in London, and who died at Brocket Hall in her eighty-third year. She
was the last of four great ladies of quality whose social influence did
much to shape the fortunes of their country and the course of
politics--Lady Jersey, Lady Willoughby, Lady Tankerville, and
herself--and who, by a curious coincidence, not only began life
together, and married at the same time, but were firm allies and friends
to the end, and died at the same age.[315] She was, when Countess
Cowper, one of the first six patronesses of Almack’s. She kept at
Panshanger the most brilliant political _salon_ of the time when the
Princess de Lieven, the Duchess de Dino, Talleyrand, Pozzo, Alvanley,
Luttrell, and Lord and Lady Holland were among her closest and most
confidential friends. She was Lord Byron’s patron in 1814, and as the
sister of Melbourne, and the wife of Palmerston, she was the social
centre of Whiggery till within four years of her death. Mr. Hayward has
done ample justice to the pure refinement and sweetness of her
disposition, to the constancy of her friendships, and the easy
placability of her resentments. “For myself,” writes her son-in-law,
Lord Shaftesbury, “I may say that until I lost her, I hardly knew how
much I loved her.”[316] And again in his Diary, Lord Shaftesbury writes,
“forty years have I been her son-in-law, and during all that long time
she has been to me a well-spring of tender friendship and affectionate
service.... Few great men, and no women, except those who have sat on
thrones, have received after death such abundant and sincere testimonies
of admiration, respect, and affection. The Press has teemed with
articles descriptive of her life and character, all radiant with feeling
and expression of real sorrow.”[317] Lady Palmerston, in fact, reaped
the reward of a long career, which she spent for the sole purpose of
making everybody with whom she came in contact, happy. Her second
husband, Lord Palmerston, who to his last hour treated her with the
tender gallantry of a lover, was the hero of her career, and one of the
prettiest stories told of her is to the effect that she once said his
death had prolonged her own existence. Her explanation of the paradox
was, that latterly she had been pursued by the fear that his strength
would give way without his being conscious of it, and that she looked
with horror to the possibility of the man she worshipped sinking into
senility.[318]
On the 6th of November the Queen visited the City of London for the
purpose of opening the new bridge over the Thames at Blackfriars and the
new Viaduct over the Fleet Valley, from Holborn Hill to Newgate Street.
When it was announced in October that this visit would take place, a
rumour was spread abroad to the effect that the unemployed poor of
London were to be organised by agitators so as to line the route which
was to be traversed by the Queen. Curiously enough, the representatives
of the unemployed, greatly to their honour, discouraged this proposal on
the ground that the spectacle would pain the Sovereign deeply at a
moment when she was striving, in spite of her shattered nerves and
sorrowing heart, to do her public duty to the best of her power. Then
it was rumoured that Fenians would interfere with the Royal procession,
but, as a matter of fact, no mishap marred the double ceremony. The
great concourse of people who received the Queen was unusually
enthusiastic, and she herself was obviously charmed with the warmth of
her reception.
[Illustration: THE QUEEN OPENING BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE.]
The year closed with gloomy news from Ireland. The electors of
Tipperary, acting under Fenian intimidation,[319] had returned the
Fenian “convict” Jeremiah O’Donovan, or “O’Donovan Rossa,” as he called
himself, to Parliament, an election which was of course void, and which
was alleged, by opponents of the Ministry, to demonstrate the futility
of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy of conciliation. Dark rumours also flew
round to the effect that the Government had in contemplation the
summoning of Parliament and the suspension of Habeas Corpus in Ireland.
The Orangemen, who had resented the disestablishment of the Irish Church
by menaces of rebellion, now threatened to stand aloof in any conflict
between the Crown and the Fenians.[320] At a time when Englishmen were
being persuaded to adopt a conciliatory Irish policy, when, after having
disestablished the Church, they were meditating the disestablishment of
the rack-renting landlords, the Irish people deemed it wise to increase
their demands. They raised the old agitation against the Union. By the
Tipperary election, however, they showed that Repeal was meant to be a
stepping-stone to an Irish Republic, and it was in vain that English
Liberals, who feared lest this extravagance might create a violent
anti-Irish feeling in England, remonstrated with the Nationalist
leaders. They remained--
“Deafer than the blue-eyed cat,
And thrice as blind as any noonday owl.”