CHAPTER XV.

FALL OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.

Social condition of the Country in 1870--Mr. Bright’s “Six

Omnibuses in Temple Bar”--Opening of Parliament--Mr. Gladstone’s

Irish Land Bill--Amendments to the Bill--Dual-Ownership

Established--The Bill and the House of Lords--The Revolt of Lord

Salisbury--The Education Bill--Mutiny of the Liberal

Dissenters--Mr. Lowe’s Second Budget--The Civil Service opened to

Competition--Mr. Cardwell’s Failure at the War Office--The Queen

and the Army--Mr. Childers and Admiralty Reform--Mr. Baxter and

Navy Contracts--The Wreck of the _Captain_--Lord Granville and the

Colonies--Death of Lord Clarendon--The Franco-Prussian

War--Collapse of the French Armies--Sedan--Fall of the Bonapartist

Dynasty--Proclamation of the Third Republic--Investment of

Paris--The Government of National Defence at Tours--M. Gambetta

Rouses Prostrate France--Gallant Stand of the Mobiles--A Passing

Glimpse of Victory--The Queen and the War--Prussia and

England--Russia Repudiates the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of

Paris--Papal Infallibility and the Italian Occupation of Rome--King

William Proclaimed German Emperor--Opening of London

University--Betrothal of the Princess Louise--Death of General

Grey--Death of Dickens--The Novelist and the Queen--Garden Party at

Windsor Castle--The Red River Expedition.

If the social condition of Ireland when the year 1870 opened was gloomy,

that of England could not be considered bright. Trade was still bad, and

desponding critics began to hint that it would not for many years

recover from the disaster of 1866. Raw cotton was still scarce and dear,

and high prices had rendered the demand for manufactured goods stagnant.

The feud between the capitalists and the trades unions was still

disturbing the peace of the industrial world, and the political horizon

of the Continent was heavy with the bodeful war cloud that broke during

the latter half of the year in the sudden storm that wrecked the Second

Empire. Irish land tenure, the establishment of a national system of

elementary public instruction in England, and the admission of

candidates to the Civil Service by competitive examination, were the

topics that were most keenly canvassed in the early weeks of the year.

From this discussion it was clear that public opinion was set against

what was derisively called “the one-horse system of legislation”--that

is to say, the exhaustion of the Session by one great measure like the

Irish Church Bill. At least four measures were expected from Parliament

ere the year closed--the Irish Land Bill, the Primary Education Bill,

the Bill abolishing University Tests, and a Bill introducing Election by

Ballot. In the end of 1869 a few changes had occurred in the composition

of the Ministry. Mr. Layard had been appointed Minister to Madrid. To

him Mr. Ayrton succeeded as First Commissioner of Works, while Mr.

Stansfeld took Mr. Ayrton’s place as Financial Secretary to the

Treasury. Lord Cairns resigned the leadership of his Party in the House

of Lords, and it seemed likely that the Duke of Marlborough or the Duke

of Abercorn would be his successor. But from this calamity the Tories

were saved by the self-denial of Lord Cairns, who withdrew his

resignation and resumed his post. Speculation was busy as to the

Ministerial programme, and Mr. Bright’s speeches at Birmingham, in which

he dwelt on the difficulties of legislation, had a depressing effect on

the country. “You cannot drive six omnibuses abreast through Temple

Bar,” was the phrase with which Mr. Bright endeavoured to moderate the

expectations of the people. On the other hand, Mr. Forster, addressing

his constituents at Bradford, endeavoured to neutralise Mr. Bright’s

pleas for delay. It was true, he said, that it was hopeless to drive six

omnibuses abreast through Temple Bar, but that was no reason why they

should not go through one after the other. The “Irish Land Omnibus” said

Mr. Forster, must go through first, after which the “Education Omnibus,”

driven by himself and Lord de Grey, must follow.

Parliament was opened by Commission on the 8th of February with a

Queen’s Speech, from which, at the last moment, paragraphs

congratulating France on the re-establishment of constitutional

government, and rejoicing over the reception of the Duke of Edinburgh in

India, had been mysteriously excised. The Royal Speech promised reduced

estimates, an Irish Land Bill, an Education Bill, a Licensing Bill, a

Land Transfer Bill, an Intestacy Bill, a Bill to legalise Trades Unions,

and a Merchant Shipping Bill. The Ballot Bill was ignored, and the Bill

for the abolition of University Tests dimly alluded to, rather than

definitely promised. In the House of Lords Opposition criticism was in

the main a complaint that the Government had abdicated its functions of

maintaining order in Ireland. In the House of Commons Mr. Disraeli

admitted that the Irish policy of the Cabinet was not _per se_ the cause

of Irish disturbances. But it had been so susceptible to misapprehension

that it had sent Ireland into “spontaneous combustion” and “riotous

hallucination.” It was a policy which had excited the wildest of false

hopes, both as to the Repeal of the Union, and the transference of the

landlords’ property to the tillers of the soil. But both Lord Cairns and

Mr. Disraeli avoided committing their Party either to a demand for

coercive legislation in Ireland, or to any position on the Land Question

that would prevent them from attacking or supporting the Ministerial

Bill when it was produced. On the Liberal benches, however, it was felt

that the only weak point in Mr. Gladstone’s policy touched by his Tory

critics was what he called “the discriminating amnesty” to the Fenian

prisoners. It was generally admitted that if Ministers had only clearly

said at the outset that they did not intend to extend their amnesty, the

hopes that had unsettled and agitated the Irish people during the recess

would never have been raised.

On the 14th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced his Land Bill, which

legalised all Ulster customs of selling tenant-right, gave the tenant a

right to compensation for his improvements and for capricious eviction,

and provided means for peasants buying their holdings through advances

made out of the Irish Church surplus, in cases where the tenant

deposited one-fourth of the purchase-money. Mr. Disraeli was, on the

whole, generous in his treatment of the Bill. Irish landlords, like Lord

Granard, recognised its moderation, and, though they did not quite

approve of its principles, they deprecated all factious opposition. It

was soon seen that the Tory leaders meant to let the measure pass. But

Mr. Disraeli, ever mindful of the great secret of successful leadership,

resolved, with masterly strategic skill, to show his followers “sport”

by advising them, at a meeting held in Lord Lonsdale’s house, to attack

three points. On each of these they were in full accord with him. On one

of them they had a chance of winning; on another they might safely

yield, and yet get great credit for the highest patriotism; whilst on

the third, though defeat was probable, it could not be attended with

dishonour. The first point was that police-cess--incurred to protect

landlords from assassination--which the Bill divided between landlord

and tenant, should be paid by the latter alone. The second was that

where there was doubt about an improvement, the law should presume it

was made by the landlord, and not, as stipulated, by the tenant. The

third was to cut out of the Bill everything that interfered with freedom

of contract. In other words, Mr. Disraeli desired to leave landlords and

tenants free to contract themselves out of the Bill in a country where

the landlord, and not the tenant, was really the only one of the two

contracting parties who could be plausibly called free. Upwards of three

hundred amendments to the Bill were, however, put down before Easter,

and the first clause, legalising Ulster customs, took twelve hours’

debating before it passed the ordeal of Committee. The Government soon

found it necessary to modify the measure so as to separate compensation

for improvements, from compensation for eviction. Then they struck out a

clause which enabled landlords to get rid of all claims by offering a

tenant a thirty-one years’ lease. These changes, Mr. Disraeli alleged,

[Illustration: BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE, LONDON.]

formed a breach of the terms on which he had promised the Government

conditional support, and for a time factious obstruction prevailed.[321]

For the clause enabling landlords to nullify the Bill by offering

leases, Ministers substituted a clause permitting landlord and tenant to

come to a voluntary arrangement for a thirty-one years’ lease, but

allowed the Courts to take this offer of a lease, if it were refused,

into consideration in assessing compensation for eviction. Mr.

Disraeli’s argument here was far-seeing. He said these changes would

tempt the landlords to use ruthlessly the only power left to them by the

Bill--that of eviction for non-payment of a rent which, however, they

were permitted to raise, till it was impossible for any tenant to pay

it. This, indeed, was what happened. At first the Bill, as has been

explained, compensated eviction by the offer of a thirty-one years’

lease. The moment that clause was withdrawn, and eviction was

compensated by damages, it was recognised that occupancy, _per se_, gave

the occupier certain rights in the soil; in other words, the

dual-ownership of landlord and occupier was then recognised as a

principle. A long and weary struggle in Committee, in which the defence

of the Bill was brilliantly conducted by Mr. Gladstone and Mr.

Chichester Fortescue, followed, and the Opposition, aided by some

crotchety Liberals, attempted to smother its principle by loading it

with incompatible details. As Easter drew near, it was despondently

whispered that the measure would have to be abandoned. Under unseen

pressure from the constituencies, however, the action of the House was

quickened after the Easter Recess, and all attempts at re-opening the

controversy over the principles of the Bill under the pretext of

improving it in detail, were crushed. Considerable concessions were made

to the Tories. Mr. Gladstone’s original scheme provided that no tenant

who paid under £100 a year of rent could contract himself out of the

Bill. The Government lowered the limit to £50 of rental. The clause

creating the presumption that improvements were made by the tenant, was

limited as regards those made before the Act took effect. In Committee

nothing was done for tenants who were evicted after it was known the

Land Bill would be brought in. Nothing was done for reclaiming occupiers

under middlemen, whose own tenancies expired with their leases from

superior landlords. But before Parliament adjourned for Whitsuntide the

Bill had passed through the House of Commons substantially unchanged.

The landlords’ friends preferred to accept it as an alternative to

further agrarian agitation, though Mr. Hardy threatened that the House

of Lords would abrogate the penalty on evictions.

Lord Cairns had by this time been compelled through ill-health to

finally resign the leadership of the Tory Party in the Peers, which he

had reluctantly resumed, and the Duke of Richmond had been chosen as his

successor. The new chief’s first speech on the Irish Land Bill was

moderate and business-like, and his proposed amendments were to exempt

all landlords from the Bill if they offered twenty-one instead of

thirty-one years’ leases, to fix a date beyond which no tenant’s claim

for improvements would be considered, to let landlord and tenant settle

their disputes privately, without going into court, and to cut out a

clause limiting distress for rent to persons who had contracted to

submit to it. Though he disapproved of the Bright clauses creating a

peasant proprietory, they were defended by Lord Salisbury and Lord

Cairns. Lord Athlumney, as an Irish proprietor, said the Bill contained

nothing which a humane landlord would object to accept, and the Duke of

Abercorn gave the measure a general support. Lord Derby’s criticism was

more subtle. The Bill did not apply to large farms. That was offering

landlords an inducement to clear out small tenants, for it gave

landlords what the custom of the country had denied them--a moral right

to evict on paying damages for the privilege. Lord Lurgan on the Second

Reading said the Bill no more hurt him than would a Bill legalising his

debts of honour, but Lord Leitrim objected to it “from the title

downwards,” and thought that disputes between landlords and tenants

should be settled by Quarter Sessions--a tribunal composed of landlords

alone. In Committee amendments were passed cutting down the scale of

compensation, denying compensation to assignees not approved by the

landlord (Duke of Richmond), enacting that no tenant paying more than

£50 a year was in any circumstances to get compensation for eviction

(Lord Salisbury), asserting that the presumption of law was to be that

all improvements were made by landlords (Lord Clanricarde), prohibiting

tenants from letting gardens to their labourers (Duke of Richmond), in

fact, with the exception of the Bright clauses, the Peers mangled the

Bill so as to make it utterly useless to the tenants. The excitement

usually stirred up by a conflict between the two Houses grew every day,

and men began to talk of an autumn session, the rapid passing of the

Bill again through the Commons, and a creation of new Peers to force it

through the House of Lords. For this dead-lock Lord Salisbury was

chiefly responsible, for he practically ousted the Duke of Richmond from

the leadership. After a day’s reflection, however, the Peers, influenced

by Lord Cairns and Mr. Disraeli, retreated from the perilous position

they had taken up. They withdrew their amendments on report, accepting

instead a few plausible but transparently illusory compromises suggested

by Lord Granville by way of saving their dignity. The result was that,

for a time, Lord Salisbury was discredited, and the position of the Duke

of Richmond, whose hand he had admittedly forced, was strengthened in

the leadership. The Commons accepted all the amended amendments of the

Peers except three,[322] and so the Bill passed. It marked an epoch in

the political development of England. It was the first great

constructive measure which recognised the right of the poorest class as

distinguished from the middle class, to participate in beneficial

legislation. It recognised the justice of legislating for the interests

of the masses on the principle that it was not safe to leave them to the

mercy of Supply and Demand, and of the economic Moloch of

_laissez-faire_.

The other great measure of the Session--Mr. Forster’s Education

Bill--illustrated the change in the drift of English legislation during

the Victorian age still more strikingly. On the 17th of February Mr.

Forster introduced his Education Bill. The problem to be solved, as Mr.

Forster said, was “how to cover the country with good schools.” The

conditions under which it must be solved were two: (1), the interests of

the parents and children must be harmonised with those of the

ratepayers; and (2), the new system must not be so built up as to

destroy the old one where it was efficient. England was mapped out by

Mr. Forster into school districts.[323] If in any of these more schools

were needed, the people would have a year of grace in which to provide

them, by voluntary subscription. If not, an elected local School Board

would provide them compulsorily, and maintain them out of fees, rates,

and the usual Government “Grants in Aid.” Religious teaching was not

proscribed--the kind and quantity of it to be given, subject to a

Conscience Clause, being left to the Boards. The Boards might also

assist existing schools, or adopt compulsory education if they chose,

and the Bill dealt with children between the ages of five and twelve.

Where districts or Boards refused to provide efficient schooling for the

people, the Education Department was to have power to force them to do

so. The opposition to the Bill centred round the religious question. As

Mr. Lowe said in his speech on the Second Reading, the House agreeing on

the general principle, fixed their whole attention on one narrow point,

like a “fierce herd of cattle in a large meadow deserting the grass

which is abundant about them, and delighting themselves by fighting over

a bed of nettles in a corner of the field.” The opposition of the

Anglican clergy was anticipated. They naturally objected to any system

that gave the parish schoolmaster something approaching the endowed

status of the parish priest, and which released him from abject

servitude to the Church. They could not conceal their hostility to a

scheme of education which was National without being Anglican, and in

which the principle of religious equality, so fatal to the claims of an

Established Church, was not only recognised, but endowed by the State.

But what had not been foreseen was the opposition of the Dissenting

ministers and churches--an opposition that culminated in personal

animosity to Mr. Forster. Representative Dissenters, like Mr.

Winterbotham, told the House that they would prefer to delay the

settlement of the whole question, till the country was prepared to

accept secular education pure and simple. Their belief was that the Bill

would tempt the different religious bodies to fight for control over the

School Boards, so as to influence their decision on the question of

religious teaching, and that in this struggle the Established Church,

from the _prestige_ of its connection with the State, would again assert

its ascendency. The Party of Free Thought, led by Mr. Mill, joined the

Dissenters in their attacks on Mr. Forster, Mr. Mill’s objection to the

Bill being, that under it the whole body of the ratepayers might be

taxed to pay for teaching a particular religion to the majority. Lord

Russell, who also pleaded for delay, advocated

[Illustration: MR. DISRAELI (AFTERWARDS LORD BEACONSFIELD).

(_From the Bust by J. E. Boehm, R.A., in the Possession of the Queen._)]

a compromise which would have legalised formal Bible-reading and

hymn-singing during school-hours, divorced from any distinctive

religious instruction, whereas Mr. Mill and Mr. Fawcett would have

preferred compulsory secularism, to permissive sectarianism.

Bible-reading, without note or comment, it was felt, might be

unobjectionable in the case of children reared in religious families.

But it was obviously useless to the “wastrels” of the gutter whom it

was the primary object of the Bill to instruct. The great majority of

Englishmen believed that moral teaching was a powerful agent for

civilising this class of children, and that though catechisms and

formularies should be excluded from new rate-built schools, it was not

wise to fetter the discretion of the teacher, in explaining the Bible to

the best of his judgment and ability. But as to the old denominational

schools, it was generally admitted that Parliament could not do more

than ask them to separate their sectarian, from their secular

instruction by a “Time-table Conscience Clause.” It would not have been

just to insist that they should submit to be virtually secularised,[324]

under pain of forfeiting their share in the school-rate or the Imperial

Grant in Aid. Mr. Forster was willing to concede vote by ballot for the

Boards, and the Time-table Conscience Clause. But he refused to give

effect to the national feeling in favour of excluding from rate-built

schools denominational creeds and formularies, and leaving religious

teaching to the discretion and good taste of schoolmasters and school

managers. Moreover, he failed to meet the reasonable demand that a

School Board should by law be established in every parish, so as to

provide a competent authority for keeping the education of the district

up to the proper standard of efficiency. At length the Government bent

before the tempest of agitation which the Secularists and Dissenters

raised. Mr. Gladstone accepted an amendment of Mr. Cowper Temple’s,

excluding from all rate-built schools denominational catechisms and

formularies. But instead of limiting the power of denominational

managers to control religious teaching in cases where they did not

supply a large moiety of the school funds, he entirely severed the

connection between these schools and local authorities elected by the

ratepayers. They were to depend on the Imperial Grant alone, but then

this Grant to _all_ schools was to be raised so as to cover not one

third, but about one half of their expenses. Mr. Disraeli, with an eye

to the Radical Secularist “Cave,” scoffed at the compromise as a scheme

for endowing “a new sacerdotal caste.” Lord John Manners lamented that

it would ruin denominational schools. The Dissenters averred it would

encourage them by doubling their Grants in Aid. They seemed to argue

that parents who preferred denominational education should themselves

pay a special price for it, whereas, parents who desired secular

education should get it at the expense of the State. Mr. Gladstone’s

compromise, however, was accepted, and the Bill was passed by both

Houses. But it created a feud between the Dissenters and the Liberal

Party, which irretrievably weakened the Government.

With the exception of a Bill to enable persons in Holy Orders to get rid

of Clerical Disabilities when they desired to quit the ministry of the

Church, and a Coercion Bill for Ireland, the legislative results of the

Session were not of much importance. Mr. Lowe’s second Budget,

introduced on the 11th of April, showed the amazing surplus of

£7,870,000 on the accounts for 1869-70. He had spent out of this sum

£4,300,000 for the Abyssinian War,[325] £1,000,000 in retiring Exchequer

bills, and the remainder in swelling the Exchequer balances in hand at

the Bank, which stood at £8,606,000--a sum which, he admitted, was

excessive. He had sold £3,000,000 of new Consols privately to the

public, and £4,000,000 of them to the National Debt Commissioners, which

enabled him to pay the cost of buying up the telegraphs. To wipe out

this fresh debt of £7,000,000, he had created terminable annuities which

would cease in 1885. For the coming year he estimated a revenue of

£71,450,000 and an expenditure of £67,113,000, so that, if taxes were

not altered, he would have a surplus of £4,337,000. Of this he disposed

by reducing the Income Tax to fourpence in the £, halving the sugar

duties, and altering the tax of 5 per cent. on the passenger receipts of

railway companies to 1 per cent. on their gross receipts. After these

remissions, Mr. Lowe still kept in reserve a probable surplus of

£311,000. He proposed, however, with the consent of the Committee, to

increase the rigour of tax-collection, to substitute for game licences,

licences to carry guns, and to abolish hawkers’ licences and several

other trade licences. The Budget was well received, but it was not one

that strengthened the Government politically. With such a large surplus,

Mr. Lowe might have conciliated the farmers by dealing with the Malt

Tax, more especially as he admitted he owed much of his surplus to the

fall in wheat. In three years it had dropped from 72s. to 42s. a

quarter, and cheap food had produced an increased consumption of

dutiable articles, _i.e._, an “elastic revenue.” Still he was credited

with having influenced one decision of the Ministry which was extremely

popular in the country--their decision to throw the whole Civil Service,

with the exception of the Foreign Office, open to competition, like the

Civil Service of India. This heavy blow at privilege was struck on the

4th of June, when the Queen signed the Order in Council which gave rich

and poor alike the same passport to the service of the State, and

relieved members of Parliament from the annoyance of being pestered for

“nominations” by aggressive constituents.

The management of the defensive services of the country in 1870 further

illustrated the susceptibility of the Ministry to democratic pressure.

Mr. Cardwell, however, failed to get credit for that portion of his work

which was good, mainly because he gave the House of Commons the

impression that he strove to evade inconvenient questions by cloudy

verbosity, that he was too much at the mercy of his official

subordinates, and had not the knowledge or the vigour to check the

accuracy of the soothing and roseate

[Illustration: COWES, ISLE OF WIGHT.]

statements which they poured through his facile lips into the House of

Commons. His estimates (£13,000,000) showed a reduction of £2,000,000,

and, with Reserves and Auxiliaries, he asserted that he had a force of

322,000 men in the nine military districts of the United Kingdom. He

proposed that recruits should serve for six years in the Line, and six

in the Reserve, and he reduced the number of subaltern officers. These

estimates and figures were, however, vitiated by the suspicion that the

strength of the Army was mainly on paper, that it lacked efficient

transport and artillery, and that even when Mr. Cardwell said, as he did

towards the end of the Session, when the Franco-Prussian War created a

panic as to national defences, that he could detach for active service a

perfectly-equipped force of 30,000 men, he had an inadequate conception

of national wants. The Ministerial policy raised up two different

classes of opponents. To conciliate the Radicals, the Government cut

down the Estimates by reducing the fighting power of the Army. The

militant Radicals, however, declared that they desired to increase,

rather than reduce the strength of the Army, and complained that the

money for this purpose was not obtained by checking waste at the War

Office and Horse Guards. The Party of “the Colonels” in the House of

Commons were incensed against the Government for making reductions,

that interfered with their professional interests. In midsummer,

however, Mr. Cardwell effected one reform, by sanctioning which the

Queen won great popularity at the time. Her Majesty, by signing an Order

which made the Duke of Cambridge, Commanding-in-Chief, subordinate to

the Secretary of State for War, ended a conflict which had been waged

for years between the War Office and the Horse Guards. Every Sovereign

of the House of Hanover had fought with stubbornness for the direct

control of the Army, and Parliamentary influence over it was still

indirect. To make it absolute, it would have been necessary to refuse

supplies, and the Secretary of State, as the agent of Parliament, could

only address requests, and not orders, to the Commander-in-Chief. Mr.

Gladstone’s ears were quick to hear the first murmurings of the

democracy against exempting this Department of the State, from

Parliamentary control and supervision. There was also a suspicion abroad

that no reform could be forced on the Army, whilst the Queen’s cousin

held absolute power over it as the Queen’s agent. Rather than give

enemies of the Monarchy a pretext for a Republican agitation based on a

popular cry, Mr. Gladstone advised the Queen to surrender to the

Secretary of State that part of the Royal prerogative by which the

internal discipline of the Army was entirely regulated by her direct

action.

Mr. Childers, not being hampered by a rival authority like that which

the Duke of Cambridge wielded over the army, was able to adopt a

vigorous policy of Reform at the Admiralty. His estimates amounted to

£9,000,000, and for that sum he promised to strengthen the fleet by

fifty of the most powerful iron-clads in the world, and to build at the

rate of 13,000 tons a year till twenty more first-class iron-clads were

afloat. He reduced the clerical staff of his office, effected sweeping

reductions in the dockyards, and instead of keeping vessels in dock,

sent as many to sea as were fit for service. Mr. Baxter, the Secretary

to the Admiralty, abolished the old system of making purchases by

contract, and instead, bought stores in the open market after the manner

of private firms. The outcry raised against both Ministers from the

vested interests which they assailed was loud and deep. Their policy was

unscrupulously misrepresented, and it created for the Government a host

of active and irrepressible enemies. The fatigues of office and the

harassments of the attacks which were made upon him in the House of

Commons for saving the taxpayers’ money, undermined Mr. Childers’ health

in June, and for a month he had to abandon all work. The loss of the

turret-ship _Captain_, one of the most powerful iron-clads in the Navy,

which was capsized off Cape Finisterre in a gale in September, with all

her crew--including her designer, Captain Coles, and Mr. Childers’ son,

who was serving on board as a midshipman--clouded the naval

administration of the Government. The ship went down because she was

overmasted and overweighted, and had not enough freeboard. It was,

moreover, unfortunate that naval experts who had in vain pointed out

these defects to the Admiralty had warned them that she was unsafe

before she was sent to sea.

Lord Granville’s Colonial policy, it has been stated, was directed to

further the severance of the Colonies from the Mother Country. The

controversy was chiefly fought out over New Zealand, which had been

seriously grieved by the withdrawal of Imperial troops when she was

engaged in Maori warfare. After much irritating discussion, Lord

Granville attempted to conciliate the colonists by a niggardly offer of

a guarantee for a loan of £500,000, which was rejected by the Colonial

Commissioners. But in May he became alarmed when he found out that his

policy was forcing separation on the colony, and that the idea of

separation was hateful to the English people. He then offered to

guarantee a loan of £1,200,000, and this was accepted as a token that

the scheme he was supposed to favour--that of cutting the Colonies

adrift--was, for a time, abandoned.[326] But the death of Lord Clarendon

on the 27th of June enabled Mr. Gladstone to transfer Lord Granville to

the Foreign Office, and Lord Kimberley reigned in his stead over the

discontented Colonies.

Lord Clarendon’s death happened at an evil time, for Europe was

distracted by the war between France and Prussia which had at last

broken out. It is a curious fact that at the beginning of the year none

of the diplomatists--not even Von Bismarck himself--had the faintest

suspicion that ere six months had passed, this war would be declared.

The Emperor of the French was watching in July, 1869, with straining

eyes the election of a new Legislature. This election, as we have seen,

ended in the return of a strong Opposition, headed by M. Thiers, M.

Jules Favre, and M. Emile Ollivier, whose criticism of personal

Government drove Napoleon to make popular concessions. A Parliamentary

Constitution was granted, and at the end of the year the Emperor had

induced M. Ollivier and a few moderate Liberals to form a Cabinet

charged with the mission of reconciling Parliamentary Government with

Universal Suffrage and the claims of the Imperial dynasty. The Emperor

discarded the old friends who had been the servile instruments of his

will, but shrewd Liberals still held aloof from the Imperial Court and

Government, apparently distrusting his sincerity. And they were right.

The Emperor considered that his new Liberal Constitution should be

revised by the Senate, and the ever-subservient Senate accordingly

inserted in it a provision authorising the Emperor to “go behind” his

Parliamentary Ministry, and submit any question to a _plébiscite_. This

of course meant that whenever Parliament thwarted the Emperor, he could

set aside its decision and appeal on a confused issue to a hasty vote

of an ignorant democracy, whose verdict was pre-arranged by subservient

Prefects. The new Constitution itself was submitted to such a vote, and

though M. Ollivier remained in office, most of his abler colleagues

resigned. By a majority of five and a quarter millions against a million

and a half, the people cast their suffrages for the Emperor. The issue

on which they voted was nominally whether they approved of the

Constitution reforms which he and the Senate had effected. In reality,

it was whether Napoleon III. should, in spite of Parliament, be allowed

still to rule France from above. The first result of the vote was the

appointment of a Ministry in which M. Ollivier was the sole

representative of Liberal feeling, or Constitutional instincts. The Duc

de Gramont became Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Marshal Lebœuf, the

Minister of War. But fifty thousand soldiers had voted against the

Emperor in the _plébiscite_, and Napoleon III. was accordingly warned

that to conciliate the army something must be done by France to eclipse

the fame which Prussia had won at Sadowa. His envoys and agents in

Germany assured him that the German States hated Prussia, and in their

hearts looked to France for deliverance. As a matter of fact, it was

German hatred of France and the German terror of a French occupation,

that was binding them closer to Prussia. French intrigues might have

delayed the union of Germany, but French aggression was certain to

precipitate it, and yet Napoleon resolved to adopt an aggressive policy.

As for the means, they were ready to his hand. Did not Marshal Lebœuf

report that the re-organised army of France could go anywhere and do

anything? There was not even a button wanting, and the new _chassepot_

and _mitrailleuse_ must annihilate any troops that faced their fire. The

pretext for the quarrel was soon found. Spain had long been looking for

a King. She offered her crown to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern. On the

6th of July the Duc de Gramont angrily declared in the Legislature that

if Prussia permitted a Prussian Prince to accept the Crown of Spain,

France would consider his acceptance as a cause of war. In vain did the

Opposition warn the Emperor and his Ministers that such a war would be

unjustifiable and disastrous. Paris went into a frenzy of delight at the

prospect of a march to Berlin. Ever anxious to promote the cause of

peace, the Queen personally strove to avert hostilities, and so far as

Prussia was concerned with some success. The English Court and the

English Cabinet induced King William to advise Prince Leopold to refuse

the Spanish Crown. King William’s magnanimity and moderation in making

this concession to the arrogant demands of France were ill-requited. M.

Ollivier, it is true, announced to the Legislature that the dispute was

at an end, and Europe breathed freely. But to the amazement of everybody

it soon appeared that M. Ollivier had been duped, for instead of

crossing the golden bridge of retreat which the King of Prussia

generously built for him, Napoleon put forward a fresh demand. It was

not enough, said he, that Prince Leopold’s candidature should be

withdrawn. King William, as head of the Hohenzollerns, must give a

pledge that he would never in all time coming permit a Hohenzollern to

aspire to the Crown of Spain. The insolent claim was rejected. A

sensational and mendacious statement in the French Ministerial Press, to

the effect that King William had rudely refused even to grant an

audience to the French Ambassador, lashed the Parisians into a warlike

mood. This insult, the Duc de Gramont, amid a tempest of cheering, told

the French Chamber could only be avenged by a war--a war into which M.

Ollivier airily observed he went “with a light heart.” On the 16th of

July the French Declaration of War was delivered at Berlin, and French

armies were moving towards the Rhine, with Parisian screams of “_À

Berlin!_” ringing in their ears.

[Illustration: SEDAN.]

Napoleon commanded in person, with Lebœuf as his lieutenant; Marshal

Macmahon led the right wing, or Army of Strasbourg; Bazaine, with

Frossard, Douay, and De Failly, commanded the corps that held the line

northward as far as Metz and Thionville. The aggressiveness of France

had flung the German States into the arms of Prussia, and Napoleon

delayed his march so long, that he lost his only chance of thrusting

himself between the

[Illustration: THE FRENCH TROOPS LEAVING METZ.]

hosts of Prussia and her South German allies. The administration of the

French army was soon seen to be in confusion, and its strength only on

paper. Its transport and commissariat broke down, and almost from the

outset it acted on the defensive, while the Imperial Staff seemed

ignorant of the geography of their own country. In the meanwhile Von

Bismarck biassed the opinion of England against France by publishing, on

the 25th of July, the draft of a secret Treaty which our ally Napoleon

III. had proposed to the King of Prussia, by which France was to consent

to the union of Prussia, or North Germany, with the States of South

Germany, in consideration of Germany helping France to seize Belgium. As

England stood pledged to defend Belgium, such a proposal revealed a

depth of perfidy which disgusted Europe with Bonapartism.[327] It was a

plot to make war on England, concocted by Napoleon at the very time

(August or September, 1866) when he was pretending to be her ally.[328]

North and South Germany swiftly mobilised their armies under the supreme

command of the King of Prussia, with Von Moltke as Chief of the Staff.

The Crown Prince of Prussia, with Blumenthal as his Chief of Staff, led

the South German troops. His cousin, Prince Frederick Charles, and

General Steinmetz, commanded the corps that marched on the valley of the

Moselle. When the Parisians were vaunting the success of the French

troops in a slight skirmish at Saarbrück, the Crown Prince defeated the

French at Weissenburg on the 4th of August, and on the 6th shattered

Macmahon’s army at Wörth, while Steinmetz--the “blood spendthrift,” as

Bismarck called him--crushed Frossard on Spicheren heights. A German

corps was sent to invest Strasbourg, whither part of Macmahon’s army had

fled. The Crown Prince started after the rest of that ill-fated force,

then retreating on Châlons. The relics of Frossard’s army had fled to

join Bazaine near Metz, whose design was to unite with Macmahon at

Châlons. The Emperor of the French had appointed the Empress as Regent

when he took command in person of the army near Metz. This command he

now resigned to Bazaine. The Legislative Body, infuriated by the defeats

on the frontier, turned the Ministry of Ollivier out of office, and

General Montauban, Duke of Palikao,[329] was called to power. To secure

the Emperor from the political consequences of retreat, Bazaine had

delayed his departure from Metz to Châlons for a fortnight after the

rout at Wörth. This obviously enabled the Germans to come up in time to

prevent him from joining hands with Macmahon. On the 14th Steinmetz held

him for a day at Courcelles. Then Prince Frederick Charles advanced and

harassed Bazaine with impetuous cavalry charges till reinforcements

arrived, which drove the French back on Gravelotte St. Privat. On the

18th the Germans fought and won the battle of Gravelotte, but at the

cost of one-seventh of their effective strength,[330] and finally shut

Bazaine up in Metz. Von Moltke immediately made arrangements to crush

Macmahon’s reorganised army at Châlons. It is due to Macmahon to say

that he himself and the Emperor desired to fall back on Paris, but the

Empress-Regent, fearing that the Emperor’s appearance in Paris, with an

army in retreat, might have bad political results, foolishly insisted on

Macmahon hastening eastwards to Metz to relieve Bazaine. Macmahon obeyed

these orders, and, as might have been expected, was intercepted and

surrounded by the Germans at Sedan, where the Emperor and his army,

after a disastrous fight, surrendered to the King of Prussia as

prisoners of war on the 1st of September. The Second Empire was consumed

in the circle of fire at Sedan. On the 4th of September the Imperial

dynasty was deposed, and a Republic proclaimed. The Empress and the

Ministry fled for their lives, the Empress making good her retreat to

England. A Provisional Government was formed under General Trochu,

Commander of the garrison of Paris, M. Jules Favre, M. Gambetta, and M.

de Rochefort, and M. Thiers undertook to roam over Europe in the futile

attempt to get some of the European Powers to mediate between France and

Prussia.[331] Germany now demanded the cession of Alsace and Lorraine,

and on the 19th of September Paris was invested and practically cut off

from all communication with the rest of France. M. Jules Favre opened up

pacific negotiations with Von Bismarck, but, as he refused to admit that

some transfer of strongholds and territory to Germany was necessary,

they were broken off. “Not an inch of our territory nor a stone of our

fortresses,” was the reply of M. Favre to the Prussian Minister’s

proposals. Bazaine might have escaped from Metz and relieved Paris, but

then the result of his skill and the valour of his army would have been

to strengthen the new-born Republic. He delayed too long, and he also

opened up negotiations with Von Bismarck through a secret envoy, General

Boyer. Bismarck had only one object--to conclude peace with some kind of

French Government which would be strong enough to keep its pledges.

Hence he had been willing to consent to an armistice, so that the

Government of the Republic might, by means of a General Election, obtain

an authoritative mandate from the people. This project having failed, he

was quite willing to conclude a peace with the Imperial Government

covered by Bazaine’s bayonets. He was willing to let Bazaine leave Metz

and proceed with his troops to some place where they might form a

rallying-point for the defeated dynasty.[332] The Empress-Regent in

England was consulted, but she declined to consent to any proposals

which made cession of territory a basis of peace. On the 25th of October

the King of Prussia wrote to the Empress that negotiations were at an

end, and on the 28th the great army of Metz--the last hope of the

Bonapartes--surrendered unconditionally. Bismarck’s policy was now to

foster the Third Republic till it became authoritative enough to

undertake and uphold Treaty obligations.

Though Paris was invested, a delegation of the Government of National

Defence, headed by M. Gambetta, a brilliant and eloquent young advocate,

who leapt into popularity by his attacks on the Emperor during a

political trial, escaped to Tours in a balloon, and on the 9th of

October he set up a civil and military administration for provincial

France. M. Gambetta displayed astounding courage, irrepressible energy,

and the highest practical administrative ability. Armies rose at his

word as if by magic, and a force of from 150,000 to 200,000 men, with

506 guns, under D’Aurelle de Paladines, was concentrated on the Loire.

Had Bazaine only held Metz for another month the siege of Paris must

have been raised. But the fall of Metz liberated the investing army of

Prince Frederick Charles, and Gambetta’s legions were for the most part

raw militiamen. Hence, when D’Aurelle de Paladines drove Von der Tann

out of Orleans he could not follow up his victory. Prince Frederick

Charles came up with the army of Metz, and Manteuffel stood between the

besiegers of Paris and any relief from the south-west. In vain did

D’Aurelle de Paladines and Trochu by concerted movements endeavour to

break the ring of steel which encircled Paris. Their rough, raw peasants

and improvised officers fought with the utmost gallantry, as if in

contrast to the Imperial troops at Sedan and in the battles before Metz,

where the rank and file in too many cases shrank from closing with the

enemy. But they could not stand against the superb troops of the German

States led by the ablest generals in Europe. After the recapture of

Orleans by the Germans on the 4th of December, D’Aurelle de Paladines

was superseded. His army was broken up into two corps, and under

Bourbaki and Chanzy retreated to the south-east and south-west of the

right bank of the Loire. The “Red Prince” (Frederick Charles) pursued

Bourbaki, and the Duke of Mecklenburg, after a series of obstinate

conflicts, pushed Chanzy slowly but surely from his positions near

Marchenoir. The French Government had now to quit Tours and remove to

Bordeaux, whereupon Chanzy retreated westwards. In the north-west,

Faidherbe, the only strategist of signal ability whom the war brought to

the front on the French side, had many toughly contested engagements

with Von Goeben and Manteuffel, in which the Germans usually had the

advantage. But after Christmas the French leader fairly claimed to have

beaten his German antagonists at Noyelles, where he held his main

position in spite of the attacks of the enemy, though he voluntarily

evacuated it next day, and fell back on his old line at Lille.[333]

Werder was not fortunate in the east. He could not hold Nuits, and he

had to let Dijon fall into the hands of Garibaldi, who, in a fit of

Republican enthusiasm, had given his sword to France after the Empire

fell. The net result of the war at the end of the year was this: Paris

was

[Illustration: VERSAILLES, 1871: PROCLAIMING KING WILLIAM GERMAN

EMPEROR.]

completely invested. But, thanks to M. Gambetta’s fiery genius and

practical organising power, France, after the surrender of the regular

troops of the Third Empire, with their trained officers at their head,

had actually more troops in the field than she possessed when Napoleon

III. advanced to Saarbrück. These improvised armies of the infant

Republic consisted of the rawest recruits. But they freed Normandy and

Picardy, and all accounts showed that on the whole they fought with more

pluck than the Imperial legions who surrendered at Metz and Sedan.

The effect of the war on English public opinion was curious. At the

outset Englishmen of the better sort without distinction of class seemed

to sympathise with Prussia. But the Roman Catholics both in Ireland and

England became partisans of France. After Sedan a change took place. The

enthusiasm of the Roman Catholic party rather cooled, whereas the

working-classes and the advanced democrats in England transferred their

moral support from Prussia to France. The Queen, though she felt the

deepest personal sympathy for the fallen Emperor and his consort, was

naturally drawn to the German cause. It was freighted with those high

aspirations after German unity, which had been the central idea of her

husband’s foreign policy. The brilliant victories of the South German

armies had been won under the leadership of her favourite son-in-law, in

whom the romance and chivalry of mediæval Teutonic Knighthood seemed to

live again. The husband of her favourite daughter and constant

correspondent (the Princess Louis) was a Divisional commander in the

great host, whose iron grasp held Bazaine in Metz. Writing in July to

the Queen, the Princess says, “How much I feel for you now, for I know

how truly you must feel for Germany; and _all_ know that every good

thing England does for Germany, and every evil she wards off her, is

owing to your wisdom and experience, and to your true and just feelings.

You would, I am sure, be pleased to hear how universally this is

recognised and appreciated. What would beloved papa have thought of this

war? The unity of Germany, which it has brought about, would please him,

but not the shocking means.”[334] Unfortunately the personal relations

of friendliness which often bind Courts have in these days but slight

influence on the relations that subsist between Governments. The

Prussian Government was not contented with English sympathy. England,

said the Prussians, might by timely diplomatic action have prevented the

outbreak of the war.[335] But she had a selfish motive in eliminating

Imperial France from Europe as a dominating force. Prussia, in crushing

France, was incidentally doing the work of England in defending Belgium,

and hence England made no effort to keep the peace. Then there had been

some trivial exports of arms from England to France, and the Prussian

Minister--forgetting how Prussia had supplied Russia during the Crimean

War--pretended to consider these exports a breach of neutrality. Oddly

enough, though the Americans had engaged much more extensively in this

traffic, Prussia made no complaint against them. The German case, as

argued by Count Bernstoff, was obviously weak. So long as a country

carries on its trade with belligerents, not as a partisan but as a

neutral, it is impossible for diplomacy to stop that trade. Count

Bernstoff, however, argued that as Prussia did not need to buy arms from

England, whereas France did, the English trade in arms with France must

be necessarily one-sided or partisan. His despatches laying down his

eccentric doctrine of “benevolent neutrality” simply amounted to the

assertion of a new principle. The usage had been that the neutral was

free, subject to the usual risks, to trade with either of two

belligerents just as if there were no war at all. The new principle

asserted by Count Bernstoff was that the neutral, before selling a

belligerent anything, must consider carefully whether the transaction

will confer a benefit on him which it is beyond anybody’s power to

confer on the other belligerent on the same terms. Neutral traffic must,

according to the Prussian Foreign Office, cease whenever its results

give one belligerent certain advantages direct and indirect over the

other. Lord Granville had little difficulty in disposing of a chimerical

doctrine which would have cast on a neutral the burden of weighing his

lawful trade with belligerents to see that each got exactly the same

fair share of it. But the absurd paradox was advanced merely to give Von

Bismarck an excuse for conniving at an act of diplomatic hostility to

England, on the part of Russia, his connivance being the price he had to

pay the Czar, who held back Austria, for “benevolent neutrality” in

1870-71.

In the middle of November the Russian Government suddenly issued a

Circular repudiating the clause in the Treaty of Paris which prevented

Russia from keeping a fleet in the Black Sea. Lord Granville protested

with high spirit against the claim of Russia to repudiate any clause in

a Treaty she had signed, save with the consent of the cosignatories.

Austria, Turkey, and Italy supported England, but Bismarck told Mr. Odo

Russell, who was sent on a diplomatic mission to the King of Prussia at

Versailles, that Prussia had always thought the Treaty needlessly harsh

to Russia, and that, as German interests were not involved, he had no

intention of taking any notice of the Russian Circular. “Resolved, as

Bismarck therefore was,” says Mr. Lowe, “to let the Russians have their

own way, and even help them to attain it, his only care was how to do

this in the manner least objectionable to England. The Black Sea Clause

had been knocked on the head, and was already as dead as a door-nail;

but there was no reason why it should be flung into a ditch like a dog,

and not interred with the decent ceremony of undertakers’ woe.... Thus

too, doubtless, thought Bismarck when he proposed that the Powers should

meet and wail a doleful dirge over the lamented body of their lifeless

offspring. Ingenious idea! A coroner’s inquest in the shape of a

diplomatic Conference to sit on the murdered body of the Black Sea

Clause!”[336] Lord Granville’s position was an embarrassing one. It has

already been pointed out that the Black Sea Clause was in many respects

indefensible, and it was not possible to offer the English people any

adequate return for the money and blood that must be spent in waging a

futile war with Russia to maintain the Treaty. Yet the manner in which

Russia had “denounced” it was meant to be humiliating to England, and it

needed some adroit manœuvring to extricate the country from the

situation which had been created for it by the foolish diplomacy of

1856. When the Conference met on the 17th of January, 1871, the

representatives of the Powers kept their gravity when the President

(Lord Granville) said that it met without any foregone conclusions. To

save the honour of England and put on record a formal avowal of

theoretical belief in the sanctity of Treaties, the Conference

unanimously agreed to declare that no State could recede from its

engagements with other States, save with the consent of these States.

Then Russia was released from the obligations of the Black Sea Clause,

which she had already declared she had no intention of respecting.

For a time the revolutionary forces in Spain were stilled by the

election of the Prince Amadeus of Italy (the Duke of Aosta), second son

of Victor Emmanuel, to the throne of the Cortes. The collapse of the

French Empire naturally led to the annexation of Rome by Italy, and it

was a strange coincidence that the year which saw the extinction of the

temporal power of the Pope, saw his spiritual power asserted more firmly

and extensively than ever. The Assembly of Roman Catholic prelates at

Rome known as the Œcumenical Council, met at the beginning of the year

to proclaim the dogma of Papal Infallibility. The opposition to this

proclamation was organised by the most eminent of the English,

American, German, and Hungarian bishops, and at one time it was feared

they would triumph. The Pope had, however, secured a majority of votes

by the somewhat sublunary method of creating new bishops governing

mythical sees. The doctrine of Infallibility was accordingly proclaimed

a few days after the declaration of war by France against Germany, a war

which had been vigorously promoted by the secret agents of the Vatican,

who had acquired a controlling spiritual influence over the French

Empress. After the annexation of Rome by Victor Emmanuel on the 20th of

September, the Pope refused to hold any intercourse with the Italian

Government. Immuring himself in the Leonine City as a voluntary

prisoner, he pathetically appealed for sympathy to the blunted

sensibilities of a wicked world.

As the year wore on, and the German armies strengthened their hold on

France, it became clear that German unity under Prussian leadership was

an accomplished fact. The autumnal negotiations for the absorption of

the South German States in the North German Confederation ended well,

mainly because Bismarck made generous concessions, reserving the

sovereign rights of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, and abandoning on the part

of Prussia an exclusive right to declare war. The King of Bavaria, the

Grand Duke of Baden, and the other Sovereign Princes, then invited King

William of Prussia to assume the Imperial Crown, and on the 18th of

January, 1871, he was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Kings at

Versailles.[337]

During 1870 the Queen emerged from her seclusion on the 11th of May to

open the splendid hall and offices of the University of London in

Burlington Gardens. The ceremonial was conducted with a pomp and dignity

worthy of the occasion. The senate and graduates wore their academic

costume, Mr. Lowe being the only dignitary who appeared in any other

garb. He, however, had donned for the occasion the official robes of the

Chancellor of the Exchequer, a sumptuous garment for which it was

whispered he had been so extravagant as to pay £130. The Queen was

accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Louise,

and a brilliant train of distinguished persons. The Chancellor (Lord

Granville) read an address to the Queen. Her Majesty handed him a reply,

and having declared the building open the silver bugles blew a blast of

joy. When the Queen retired, Lord Granville, in distributing the prizes,

referred felicitously to Queen Elizabeth’s visits to Oxford and

Cambridge--those visits during which she is described as “questioning

and answering and scolding not only in Latin but also in Greek.”

In the autumn of the year the Queen in Council gave her consent to the

marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lorne, the eldest

son of the Duke of Argyll. When it became known that the Queen had

violated the exclusive traditions of the House of Brunswick, and

reverted to old precedents set by the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the

Stuarts, who all contracted marriages with subjects, society was greatly

excited. The marriage was regarded as a triumph of aristocratic and

democratic ideas over the monarchical principle--that is to say, of the

triumph of the two ideas that have ever been most popular in England.

The Queen with great tact had consciously or unconsciously responded to

the instinctive feeling that had silently grown among her people. They

had always disliked, though they had never dared to repeal, the Royal

Marriage Act. It was felt to be a sacrifice to expediency--and it was

passed mainly because Englishmen did not desire to see Mrs. FitzHerbert

crowned as Queen of England. The Act bound all the descendants of George

III. who wished to marry to obtain the written consent of the

Sovereign,[338] and it was felt that as Princes and Princesses were very

apt to form _mésalliances_, it would be difficult to maintain the

_prestige_ of the monarchy, save under some such restrictions as the Act

imposed.[339] But when the Royal Family increased and multiplied, so

that the Princess Louise only stood twentieth in the line of succession

to the Queen, it was time to relax the usage. No State interest could,

in such a case, be practically endangered, by permitting a daughter of

England to indulge her personal preferences in the selection of a

husband.

The death of General Grey in the spring of the year was deeply felt by

the Queen. The Princess Louis in one of her letters to her mother says,

“Lady Car (Barrington) wrote to me how very grateful Mrs. Grey was to

you for your great kindness and consideration. In trouble no one can

have a more true and sympathising friend than my beloved mamma always

is. How many hearts has she not gained by this, and how many a poor

sufferer’s burdens has she not lightened!” General Grey’s services as

Private Secretary to the Sovereign, indeed, were such as to render his

death a matter of serious political interest. At this time the Queen

exercised a personal supervision over every department of State, more

especially over the Foreign Office, War Office, Admiralty, and Poor Law

Board. On all matters of importance connected with the administration of

these offices it was her custom to send to the Government of the day her

own views, and such notes of precedents and of the opinions of former

Ministers, as her carefully-kept series of State commonplace books

supplied. It was the duty of General Grey to take the rough drafts of

memoranda as they came from the Queen’s hand, and give them the form of

State papers. In fact, he did the work which the Prince Consort had been

in the habit of doing, and his position was really that of a

supernumerary Minister in attendance at Court, but without a seat in the

Cabinet, and without any responsibility to Parliament. After General

Grey’s death it was suggested that a new Cabinet office should be

created, to be held by a Minister who should have no other duty than

that of residing in personal attendance on the Queen, and acting as her

Private Secretary. The suggestion was happily not pressed, because it

would obviously have led to Constitutional difficulties. The new

Minister must have become either the Queen’s clerk, in which case he

would have been an encumbrance to the Cabinet, or he must have become a

real Minister of State confidentially representing the Sovereign, in

which case he would have become its master. Colonel Ponsonby was

therefore selected to succeed General Grey, and the revival of

Government by favourites, which was the bane of the early years of

George III.’s reign, was prevented.

The death of Charles Dickens on the 9th of June robbed England of a

great humourist, whose genius was consecrated not only to the delight,

but to the service of the English people. It was his mission to soften

the harsh contrasts of society, and quicken the consciences, and touch

the hearts of the governing classes, to whose apathy and ignorance of

life among the poor he traced most “of the oppression that is done under

the sun.” Whether Dickens will survive as an English classic has been

doubted. But no doubt exists as to the qualities which gave him an

unique position among men of letters in the Victorian period. His sense

of humour was singularly keen and delicate. His faculty of observation

exceeded that ever given to mortal man; in fact, what he saw, he saw so

vividly that by his descriptive method he could print it on his reader’s

mind with photographic fidelity. His power of characterisation, it is

true, was limited, but that was because his characterisation was

invariably idiosyncratic. It was always an isolated phase of a character

that impressed him--a single trait to which he gave corporeal reality.

On the other hand,

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS.]

there was no limit to his power of producing fresh illustrations of this

phase or trait under an infinite variety of circumstances and

conditions. If he rang the changes on one theme, his capacity for

producing variations on the original air with unfailing freshness, and

seductive spontaneity, imparted some semblance of the roundness and

many-sidedness of Nature even to the oddest of his oddities. But his

sense of colour was faulty, and his passion for melodramatic effect, and

his habit of harping too much on one string of feeling, gave to his

pathos, a false note of theatrical sentimentality. None of his

[Illustration: GARDEN PARTY AT WINDSOR CASTLE.]

readers in England, it may fairly be said, was a more consistent and

devoted admirer of the genius of Dickens than the Queen. Next to Scott

and George Eliot, Dickens was her favourite novelist. It had been her

desire in the early days of her married life to make his acquaintance

personally, but the touch of false pride which marred Dickens’s

character, and rendered him morbidly sensitive as to “patronage,”

prevented their meeting. In 1857, the Queen had been compelled to refuse

her name for the dramatic performance of the _Frozen Deep_, given for

the benefit of Douglas Jerrold,[340] but she offered to allow Dickens

and his company of players to select a room in the Palace and perform

the play there before her and the Court. Dickens begged leave to decline

the offer, as he could not feel easy about the social position of his

daughters at a Court under such circumstances. He suggested that the

Queen might come to the Gallery of Illustrations a week before the

subscription night, with her own friends, and witness a private

performance of the play. “This,” writes Dickens, “with the good sense

that seems to accompany her good nature on all occasions, she resolved

within a few hours to do.” So delighted was the Queen with the

performance that she sent round a kind message to Dickens asking him to

come and see her and receive her thanks personally. “I replied,” says

Dickens, in his account of the affair, “that I was in my farce dress,

and must beg to be excused. Whereupon she sent again, saying that the

dress ‘would not be so ridiculous as that,’ and repeating the request. I

sent my duty in reply, but again hoped her Majesty would have the

kindness to excuse myself presenting myself in a costume and appearance

that was not my own. I was mighty glad to think, when I awoke this

morning, that I had carried the point.” This incident occurred in 1857.

In 1858 the Queen made another attempt to bring the great novelist to

Court. “I was put into a state of much perplexity on Sunday” (30th

March, 1858), writes Dickens. “I don’t know who had spoken to my

informant, but it seems that the Queen is bent upon hearing the ‘Carol’

read, and has expressed her desire to bring it about without offence,

and hesitating about the manner of it, in consequence of my having

begged to be excused from going to her when she sent for me after the

_Frozen Deep_. I parried the thing as well as I could, but being asked

to be prepared with a considerate and obliging answer, as it was known

the request would be preferred, I said, ‘Well, I supposed Colonel Phipps

would speak to me about it, and, if it were he who did so, I should

assure him of my desire to meet any wish of her Majesty, and should

express my hope that she would indulge me by making one of some audience

or other, for I thought an audience necessary to the effect.’ Thus it

stands, but it bothers me.” This difficulty could not be got over,

though the Queen, by buying a copy of the “Carol,” embellished with the

author’s autograph, at the sale of Thackeray’s library, testified to her

interest in the two great humourists of the Victorian age.[341] Indeed,

it was not till 1870, shortly before Dickens’s death, that the novelist

met the Queen. He had brought from his American tour a great many large

photographs of the battle-fields of the Civil War. Having taken a deep

interest in that struggle, and having followed its details closely, her

Majesty, who heard of the photographs through Mr. Arthur Helps (Clerk of

the Privy Council), expressed a desire to see them. Dickens, on hearing

of this from Mr. Helps, at once sent the photographs to Buckingham

Palace, and then received a message from the Queen inviting him to see

her, that she might thank him in person. “The Queen’s kindness,” says

Mr. Forster, “left a strong impression on Dickens. Upon her Majesty

expressing regret not to have heard his readings, Dickens intimated that

they had become now a thing of the past, while he acknowledged

gratefully her Majesty’s compliment in regard to them. She spoke to him

of the impression made upon her by his acting in the _Frozen Deep_, and,

on his stating, in reply to her inquiry, that the little play had not

been very successful on the public stage, said this did not surprise

her, since it no longer had the advantage of his performance in it. Then

arose some mention of some alleged discourtesy shown to Prince Arthur

in New York, and he begged her Majesty not to confound the true

Americans of that city with the Fenian portion of its Irish population,

on which she made the quiet comment that she was sure the people about

the Prince had made too much of the story. He related to her the story

of President Lincoln’s dream the night before his murder. She asked him

to give her his writings, and could she have them that afternoon? but he

begged to be allowed to send a bound copy. Her Majesty then took from a

table her own book on the Highlands, with an autograph inscription to

‘Charles Dickens,’ and saying that the ‘humblest of writers’ would be

ashamed to offer it to ‘one of the greatest,’ but that Mr. Helps, being

asked to give it, had remarked that it would be valued most from

herself, closed the interview by placing it in his hands.” Though

Dickens refused a baronetcy, which the Queen would have gladly conferred

on him, he was persuaded to go to Court. In March, 1870, he writes to a

friend:--“As my Sovereign desires that I should attend the next levee,

don’t faint with amazement if you see my name in that unwonted

connection. I have scrupulously kept myself free for the 2nd of April,

in case you should be accessible.” His name is among those who attended

the levee, and his daughter’s name appears among those who were at the

Drawing Room that followed. “I never saw Mr. Dickens more agreeable,”

says Lady Houghton in a letter to Mr. Forster, “than at a dinner at our

house about a fortnight before his death, when he met the King of the

Belgians and the Prince of Wales, at the special desire of the

latter.”[342]

The chief social function of the season of 1870 was the Garden Party at

Windsor, which took place on the 25th of June. Great preparations were

made for the event. A series of tastefully arranged tents had been

erected on the lawn under the East Terrace, and in the grounds of the

Home Park towards Frogmore, and the State Apartments of the Castle were

also thrown open for the reception of guests, who were conveyed from the

station by forty carriages. They began to arrive about four o’clock, and

the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the Royal Family

came on the scene later on. The street and road to the Castle were kept

by a large body of the Metropolitan Police; a guard of honour of the

Scots Fusilier Guards was posted in the quadrangle of the Castle, and

the Yeomen of the Royal Body Guard were on duty inside. The Queen, who

looked well and cheerful, received her visitors in a tent near the wall

of the East Terrace, and was surrounded by members of her family, and

attended by the Lord Chamberlain, the Duchess of Sutherland, and the

Marchioness of Ely. The London Glee and Madrigal Union and her Majesty’s

private band supplied the music that delighted the gay and brilliant

crowd of promenaders, who did not break up and return to town till about

seven o’clock in the evening. It had been expected that the Queen would

be able to attend and open the Thames Embankment early in July, and her

appearance at the Garden Party at Windsor strengthened popular

anticipations. Unfortunately, when the time came round, her Majesty felt

herself unable to endure the strain of the public ceremony, and the

consequence was that, when it was performed on her behalf by the Prince

of Wales (13th July), at least a thousand seats were vacant for which

tickets had been issued.

Ere the year ended the rebellion in the Red River Settlement, or the

“Revolt of the Winnipegers,” as the Americans called them, was quelled.

The history of the rising was as follows:--The Hudson’s Bay Company had

enjoyed powers of proprietorship and exclusive trade in the vast region

extending from the American frontier to the Frozen Ocean. Early in the

century Lord Selkirk had established in the extreme south of this

region, and close to the American line, a colony of mixed blood,

descended from French, Canadian, English, and Scottish parents, servants

of the Company. They squatted on a strip of fertile land on the Red

River, which flows from Minnesota into Lake Winnipeg. These people

increased to the number of 10,000, and they inhabited, perhaps, the most

secluded spot ever reached by European colonists, in the centre of the

North American Continent. They had been ruled by the Company under a

“Governor of Assiniboia,” and a Recorder. In 1869 the Company agreed to

sell all their territorial and sovereign rights in Rupert’s Land to

Canada for £300,000. This cession included the Red River Settlement. The

“Winnipegers” however, objected to be transferred to what they called a

“foreign power,” and they split into two parties--the Canadians, almost

all half-breeds, speaking French and professing the Catholic religion,

and who rose in rebellion, and a minority of English and Scots who

remained loyal. The rebels refused to admit into the district Mr.

Macdougal, who was sent by Canada as Governor. A leading agitator, Louis

Riel, was proclaimed (in February) “President of the Republic of the

North-West,” and the insurgents appealed to the United States for

protection. A contingent under command of Colonel Wolseley was

despatched to suppress the insurrection. The expedition reached Fort

Garry, the headquarters of Riel and his rebel followers, on the 23rd of

August. They were welcomed by the loyal party, and found that Riel

himself had disappeared, with a considerable amount of plunder, into the

neighbouring American territory. The British force was admirably

handled, and did not lose a single man, despite the enormous

difficulties of its march over a rough and broken country. For from its

point of disembarkation in Lake Superior, it had to travel through 600

miles of an unknown wilderness of water, rocks, and forests, where no

supplies were obtainable. The whole expense was under £100,000, of which

one quarter only was to be paid by England. Order was re-established on

the Red River at the end of 1870, and, as the “province of Manitoba,” it

was added to Canada.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In 1847 the rate of discount had risen to 8 per cent., and the

bullion in the Bank had fallen to £8,313,000. On the 9th of November,

1857, the rate of discount rose to 10 per cent., and yet gold still

flowed out till it sank to £7,171,000. The Bank was authorised to

increase its issue by £21,000,000.

[2] Campbell’s army consisted of 25,000 men, 16,000 being European

troops, the largest number ever brought together in India up to that

time.

[3] Sir H. Rose’s losses were 38 killed, and 215 wounded. The starving

women and children were, however, spared, and, indeed, fed by the

English soldiers, out of their own rations. The massacre of the

garrison was an act of vengeance for the treacherous butchery of the

English in Jhansi, who, on the 4th of June, 1857, had surrendered, on

the assurance that their lives would be spared by the implacable Ranee.

She, however, ordered them to be killed, as at Cawnpore.

[4] The Nankin Treaty of 1842 was confirmed. Ambassadors and diplomatic

agents were by the new Treaty to be appointed at St. James’s and

Pekin, and the British Minister was to be received at Pekin without

being called on to perform any humiliating ceremony. Disrespect to the

British Minister was to be a punishable offence, and Consuls in open

ports were to be respected. Chinese Christians were to be protected,

and not persecuted by the Government, and British subjects were to have

a right of travelling in China under passports. Newchwang, Tang-chow,

Taiwan, Chan-chow, and Kiung-chow were to be, with the ports, opened

by the Treaty of Nankin free to British subjects. British subjects

were permitted to employ Chinamen in any lawful capacity, and British

ships were to trade on the Yang-Tsze river. All questions of right

between British subjects were to be decided by British authorities, but

Chinese criminals were to be punished by the Chinese tribunals. Other

clauses stipulated for a war indemnity to England, for full privileges

of protection to British subjects, and for tariff and customs dues on

goods carried by British ships. After the Treaty was concluded, the

Chinese Emperor evaded his obligation to ratify it, till compelled to

do so by force in 1860.

[5] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 125, 126.

[6] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 133, 134.

[7] Palmerston in defeating Mr. Locke King’s motion for leave to bring

in a Reform Bill committed a fatal error. The Cabinet originally meant

to support the scheme, but to insist on raising Mr. King’s £10 county

franchise to £20--which would probably have settled the Reform question

for ten or fifteen years. As it was, by opposing the measure, and

referring Reform to a Cabinet Committee, they disgusted a powerful body

of their own supporters, who felt that the Whigs meant to shelve Reform

altogether.

[8] Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll.

[9] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 155.

[10] Mr. Henley, one of the ablest members of the Tory Party,

strenuously opposed his leaders on this question, and supported the

vote of thanks to Lord Canning.

[11] It is more than probable that had the Tories been in office

Napoleon III. would never have dreamt of pressing them, as he pressed

Palmerston, to alter the law of Conspiracy so as to harass political

refugees in England. In 1853 he sounded Lord Malmesbury on the subject,

who told him, with manly firmness and frankness, that “Every country

had its own subject on which no cession could be made. The Holy Places

in the East was that of Russia, the refugees was ours, and it was

useless to torment us about an impossibility, for no English Minister

could alter the law at present.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I.,

p. 392.

[12] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, entry under date 21st February.

[13] See Letter of Prince Consort to Stockmar, Martin’s Life of the

Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIII.

[14] Her Majesty’s sanction strengthened the hands of the

unconstitutional sections of the Radical and Tory Parties, who have of

late years connived at the progressive usurpation of the functions of

the Executive by the House of Commons, thereby laying the basis for

“Home Rule” agitations in discontented Ireland, and in “neglected”

Wales and Scotland. In the attempt to combine executive with

legislative functions the House of Commons has virtually broken down.

[15] The Cabinet consisted of Lord Derby, Premier; Lord Chelmsford,

Lord Chancellor; Lord Salisbury, President of the Council; Lord

Hardwicke, Lord Privy Seal; Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Mr.

Walpole, Home Secretary; Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary; Sir John

Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty; General Peel, Secretary of

State for War; Mr. Henley, President of the Board of Trade; Lord John

Manners, First Commissioner of Works; Lord Ellenborough, President of

the Board of Control; and Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer,

and Leader of the House of Commons.

[16] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 98. Soon afterwards,

however, arrangements were made which enabled Sir E. B. Lytton to take

the Colonial Office, Lord Derby going to the India Office.

[17] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 99.

[18] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 214. The evidence of

Mr. Greville in this instance is that of an unwilling witness. He still

affected, like most independent political thinkers in 1858, to treat a

Derby-Disraeli Cabinet as a burlesque Ministry. For example, he never

condescended to attend as Clerk of the Privy Council after Lord Derby

took office, but allowed his deputy to do duty. When this was pointed

out to Lord Derby, he only laughed, and said “he had not observed his

(Greville’s) absence, as he never knew whether it was John or Thomas

who answered the bell.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 153.

[19] Moreover, there was just a chance that Ministers might be beaten,

which would necessarily have brought back Lord John Russell, a prospect

to which Whigs like Lord Clarendon looked forward with horror, because

he would come back with a Reform Bill. See a private letter from Lord

Malmesbury to Lord Cowley in The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II.,

p. 100.

[20] See The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 101, 106, 151,

and 152, for evidence bearing on this grave charge against Palmerston

and Persigny.

[21] The Peelite leaders sneered at the appointment. Mr. Greville

calls Pélissier “a military ruffian, as ignorant of diplomacy as of

astronomy.”--Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 181. The

Palmerstonians objected to him because his ignorance of diplomacy

rendered it difficult for them to intrigue with him for the purpose of

embarrassing the Government of their own country.

[22] A few days after the formation of the Derby-Disraeli Ministry,

De Persigny told Clarendon that the Tory Government “had prepared for

themselves an _héritage de rupture_ by the concurrence of their Party

in the vote that had driven Lord Palmerston from power.”--Martin’s

Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV. “The first time I met

him (Persigny) at the Foreign Office,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “he

literally raved, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword (he was

in Court dress), and shouting ‘_C’est la guerre! c’est la guerre!_’

during which scene I sat perfectly silent and unmoved, till he

was blown, which is the best way of meeting such explosions from

foreigners.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 106.

[23] The _Cagliari_ was a Sardinian ship fitted out to carry a

revolutionary expedition to stir up Calabria. She was seized by the

Neapolitan Government, and her two English engineers, Messrs. Watts and

Park, were imprisoned.

[24] Mr. Greville hints that the Radicals were subsequently angry at

Lord John Russell for helping Mr. Disraeli out of his difficulty with

the India Bill. On this point he seems to have been misinformed. See

Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[25] The phrase was one used by Pélissier to the Prince Consort. See

Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV.

[26] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 428; Holmes’ History of

the Indian Mutiny, p. 454; Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 118.

[27] The Talookdars of Oudh were not freeholders, but Crown vassals--in

some cases hereditary--who really farmed the Crown rents as middlemen

between the cultivators and the State. As a matter of abstract right,

Canning’s proclamation, declaring the soil of Oudh to be the sole

property of the British Government, could not be impugned. Nor could

its policy as regards rebel Talookdars be disputed. Still, it is but

fair to say that Outram thought the original draft too sweeping, and

that it might prejudice many claims which it would be prudent to

recognise. Canning allowed Outram to soften the Proclamation, and it

was so discreetly acted on by Outram and his successor, Mr. Robert

Montgomery, that the powerful local aristocracy of Oudh were speedily

pacified. There was, therefore, just a grain of truth in Ellenborough’s

objections to the original draft.

[28] A Resolution of this sort, however, was valid only for the current

Session. Hence it had to be renewed every Session a Jew came to be

sworn. In 1860 a new Act substituted a standing order for a Resolution,

so that Jews could be sworn without any preliminary proceedings. Even

this last relic of bigotry was swept away by the Act 29 & 30 Vict., c.

19, which deleted the words “on the true faith of a Christian” from the

Parliamentary Oath. See Sir Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, Sixth

Edition, pp. 189-192.

[29] In May they were induced to shake hands at Mr. Ellice’s (“Bear”

Ellice) house. But Lord Malmesbury says that when the incident was

discussed at Lady Palmerston’s, Lady William Russell observed, “They

have shaken hands, and embraced, and hate each other more than

ever.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 120.

[30] After much diplomatic squabbling, a Conference settled the point

on the 10th of August, by establishing the same institutions in both

Principalities, both with separate Ministries and Parliaments. The

first thing the Provinces did was to vote their own union under Prince

Couza--a mortification for England, against the probable occurrence of

which her careless diplomatists had not stipulated.

[31] Her Majesty was not the only one of the guests who had been

shaken. “An absurd occurrence,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “took place

when Sir John Pakington, as First Lord of the Admiralty, landed Lord

Hardwicke and Admiral Dundas in his barge. As he steered her, he kept

time with the men as he would if he had been rowing on the Thames,

bending his body backwards and forwards, and as he approached the

pier, not having given the order ‘Way enough,’ the boat with her whole

force struck the mole, and the two admirals and the whole crew fell

sprawling on their backs. The rage of the two former, after recovering

themselves, was vented with uncontrolled expressions on the unfortunate

First Lord, amidst the laughter of the spectators, who were standing on

the pier.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. Vol II., pp. 129, 130.

[32] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVII.

[33] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[34] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[35] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 213.

[36] This important secret pact was not unknown to the British

Government. It came into Mr. Kinglake’s possession, and at Lord

Palmerston’s request he gave a copy of it privately to Mr. Seymour

Fitzgerald, who represented the Foreign Office in the House of Commons.

The text was revealed by Lord Malmesbury. The Princess Clothilde made a

grim joke upon her loveless and ill-fated marriage--“Quand on a vendu

l’enfant, on peut bien vendre le berceau.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister,

Vol. II., pp. 220, 221, 223.

[37] The intrigue between Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III. at

Compiègne, in November, gave great and justifiable offence to the Tory

Ministry, and was regarded with disapproval by the country.

[38] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 236.

[39] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[40] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 155.

[41] See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[42] Votes were given to persons who had £10 a year in Bank Stock or

the Funds, or a deposit of £60 in a Savings Bank, or a pension from

the State of £20 a year, and to University graduates, members of the

learned professions, and certain schoolmasters.

[43] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCII.

[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCIII.

[45] Lord Palmerston’s organs in the Press were, during this

controversy, virtually official organs of the French Emperor,

and were embarrassing ministers with factious opposition. Lord

Malmesbury, writing in his Diary on the 21st of February, observes,

“Lady Tankerville says that Lady Palmerston told her that the attack

upon the Foreign Policy of our Government, for which her husband had

given notice to-morrow, was made in compliance with the Emperor’s

wish!”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 158.

[46] Lord Malmesbury warned Prussia that England could not approve

of her going to war with France, and would give her no assistance

in protecting the German coast against an attack by a French or a

Franco-Russian fleet.--See Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, pp. 204, 205.

[47] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 184.

[48] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 160.

[49] The surrender of Lombardy and the Duchies to Sardinia was one.

[50] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 200, 201.

[51] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II.

[52] The Queen apparently did not know that, owing to the use which

Napoleon had made of Palmerston’s indiscreet approval of Persigny’s

proposals, the Emperor of Austria was under the impression that we had

been willing to act as extortioners. On the 12th of July, a day before

the Queen wrote her letter to Lord John Russell, the Austrian Emperor

wrote to Napoleon III., thanking him for informing him that England

supported Persigny’s terms. Lord John Russell, in a despatch (July 27),

found it necessary to undeceive the Austrian Government on this point.

[53] It was raised from 5d. to 9d.

[54] Palmerston contended in the end of August that these plans came

within the decision of the Cabinet not to meddle with the Italian

question till after the Treaty of Zurich had been signed. The Queen

held that they did not, and on a Cabinet meeting being hastily summoned

to settle the point, the decision went for the view of the Queen.

[55] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 270.

[56] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 174.

[57] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 213.

[58] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVII.

[59] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXVI.

[60] The National Budget, by Alexander Johnstone Wilson. London:

Macmillan: 1882, p. 90.

[61] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 216. Morley’s Life of

Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[62] In a letter to Mr. Bright he says, “To form a fair judgment of

this reckless levity and utter want of dignity and decency on the

part of the Prime Minister, just turn to the volumes of the life

of the first Lord Auckland, who was sent by Pitt to negotiate the

Commercial Treaty with France in 1786. I have not seen the book, but

I can tell you what you will not find in its pages. You will not read

that in the midst of those negotiations Pitt rose in the House, and

declared that he apprehended danger of a sudden and unprovoked attack

on our shores by the French king; that (whilst history told us we had

84,000 men voted for our Navy to the 31,000 in France, and whilst we

had 150,000 riflemen assembled for drill) he, Mr. Pitt, pursued the

eccentric course of proposing that the nation should spend £10,000,000

on fortifications, and that he accompanied this with speeches in the

House in which he imputed treacherous and unprovoked designs upon

us on the part of the monarch with whom his own Plenipotentiary was

then negotiating a Treaty of Commerce in Paris. On the contrary, you

will find Pitt consistently defending, in all its breadth and moral

bearings, his peaceful policy, and it is the most enduring title to

fame that he left in all his public career.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden,

Chap. XXIX.

[63] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVIII.

[64] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 190.

[65] Count Vitzthum illustrates the relations between the Republican

conspirators and the Italian Court by the following anecdote:--One

day an English gentleman visited Cavour, who was surprised to find he

knew a great deal about the intrigues of Victor Emmanuel’s Government.

He exclaimed, “How is it that you, a stranger, are acquainted with

secrets which I thought were only known to _one_ man besides the King

and myself--namely, the Republican exile, Mazzini?”--St. Petersburg

and London in the years 1852-1864. Reminiscences of Count Charles

Frederick Vitzthum von Eckstaedt, late Saxon Minister at the Court of

St. James’s: Longmans and Co. (1887).

[66] Count Vitzthum hints that the mysterious collapse of the Royalist

armies in the Sicilies was due to foul play. He says of Garibaldi, “His

jugglery, thanks to the inaction of Europe and the melancholy condition

of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, met with unexpected success. One

example will suffice. A few weeks after Garibaldi’s entry into Naples,

a former Neapolitan General was arrested at Paris. He had, without

knowing it, paid out some forged banknotes. The examination showed he

had received them from Garibaldi as a bribe. People knew after this

how the latter bought his victories.” Vitzthum seems to have disliked

Garibaldi, and his opinion on the matter is not conclusive. One would

like to have better evidence than the confession of an utterer of

forged notes that he got them from Garibaldi. Even if the story be

true, it only points to what was one justification for the Sicilian

insurrection--the complete demoralisation of the servants of the State.