The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; vol. 4 of 4

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Title: The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; vol. 4 of 4
Author: Wilson, Robert Pierpont
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; vol. 4 of 4" ***

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[Illustration: THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES AND THEIR FAMILY.

(_From a Photograph by Messrs. Russell & Sons, London._)]

THE

LIFE AND TIMES

QUEEN VICTORIA.

ROBERT WILSON.

Illustrated.

VOL. IV.

[Illustration]

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON, PARIS & MELBOURNE_.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ILLNESS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES. PAGE

Effect of Prussian Victories on English Opinion--Sudden Changes of
Popular Impulse--Demand for Army Reform--Opposition to the Princess
Louise’s Dowry--Opening of Parliament--The Army Bill--Abolition of
Purchase--Opposition of the Tory Party--Mr. Disraeli Throws Over his
Followers--Obstructing the Purchase Bill--Mr. Cardwell’s
Threat--Obstruction in the House of Lords--A Bold Use of the Queen’s
Prerogative--The Wrath of the Peers--They Pass a Vote of Censure on the
Government--The Ballot Bill--The Peers Reject the Ballot Bill--The
University Tests Bill--The Trades Union Bill--Its Defects--The Case of
Purchon _v._ Hartley--The Licensing Bill and its Effect on
Parties--Local Government Reform--Mr. Lowe’s Disastrous Budget--The
Match Tax--_Ex luce lucellum_--Withdrawal of the Budget--The Washington
Treaty and the Queen--Lord Granville’s Feeble Foreign Policy--His
Failure to Mediate between France and Germany--Bismarck’s Contemptuous
Treatment of English Despatches--_Væ Victis!_--The German Terms of
Peace--Asking too Much and Taking too Little--Mr. Gladstone’s
Embarrassments--Decaying Popularity of the Government--The Collier
Affair--Effect of the Commune on English Opinion--Court Life in
1871--Marriage of the Princess Louise--The Queen Opens the Albert
Hall--The Queen at St. Thomas’s Hospital--Prince Arthur’s Income--Public
Protests and Irritating Discussions--The Queen’s Illness--Sudden Illness
of the Prince of Wales--Growing Anxiety of the People--Alarming
Prospects of a Regency--Between Life and Death--Panic in the Money
Market--Hopeful Bulletins--Convalescence of the Prince--Public Sympathy
with the Queen--Her Majesty’s Letter to the People 385

CHAPTER XVII.

THE “ALABAMA” CLAIMS.

Thanksgiving Day--The Procession--Behaviour of the Crowd--Scene in St.
Paul’s--Decorations and Illuminations--Letter from Her Majesty--Attack
on the Queen--John Brown--The Queen’s Speech--The _Alabama_ Claims--The
“Consequential Damages”--Living in a Blaze of Apology--Story of the
“Indirect Claims”--The Arbitrators’ Award--Sir Alexander Cockburn’s
Judgment--Passing of the Ballot Act--The Scottish Education Act--The
Licensing Bill--Public Health Bill--Coal Mines Regulation Bill--The Army
Bill--Admiralty Reforms--Ministerial Defeat on Local Taxation--Starting
of the Home Government Association in Dublin--Assassination of Lord
Mayo--Stanley’s Discovery of Livingstone--Dr. Livingstone’s Interview
with the Queen--Her Majesty’s Gift to Mr. Stanley--Death of Dr. Norman
Macleod--The Japanese Embassy--The Burmese Mission--Her Majesty at
Holyrood Palace--Death of Her Half-Sister 414

CHAPTER XVIII.

GOVERNMENT UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

A Lull Before the Storm--Dissent in the Dumps--Disastrous
Bye-Elections--The Queen’s Speech--The Irish University Bill--Defeat of
the Government--Resignation of the Ministry--Mr. Disraeli’s Failure to
Form a Cabinet--The Queen and the Crisis--Lord Derby as a Possible
Premier--Mr. Gladstone Returns to Office--Power Passes to the House of
Lords--Grave Administration Scandals--The Zanzibar Mail
Contract--Misappropriation of the Post Office Savings Banks’
Balances--Mr. Gladstone Reconstructs his Ministry--The Financial
Achievements of his Administration--The Queen and the Prince of
Wales--Debts of the Heir Apparent--The Queen’s Scheme for Meeting the
Prince’s Expenditure on her Behalf--The Queen and Foreign
Decorations--Death of Napoleon III.--The Queen at the East End--The
Blue-Coat Boys at Buckingham Palace--The Coming of the Shah--Astounding
Rumours of his Progress through Europe--The Queen’s Reception of the
Persian Monarch--How the Shah was Entertained--His Departure from
England--Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh--Public Entry of the Duchess
into London 431

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CONSERVATIVE REACTION.

Questions of the Recess--The Dissenters and the Education Act--Mr.
Forster’s Compromise--The Nonconformist Revolt--Mr. Bright Essays
Conciliation--Sudden Popularity of Mr. Lowe--His “Anti-puritanic
Nature”--Mr. Chamberlain and the Dissidence of Dissent--Decline of the
Liberal Party--Signs of Bye-elections--A Colonial Scandal--The Canadian
Pacific Railway--Jobbing the Contract--Action of the Dominion
Parliament--Expulsion of the Macdonald Ministry--The Ashanti War--How it
Originated--A Short Campaign--The British in Coomassie--Treaty with King
Koffee--The Opposition and the War--Skilful Tactics--Discontent among
the Radical Ranks--Illness of Mr. Gladstone--A Sick-bed
Resolution--Appeal to the Country--Mr. Gladstone’s Address--Mr.
Disraeli’s Manifesto--Liberal Defeat--Incidents of the
Election--“Villadom” to the Front--Mr. Gladstone’s Resignation--Mr.
Disraeli’s Working Majority--The Conservative Cabinet--The Surplus of
£6,000,000--What will Sir Stafford do with it?--Dissensions among the
Liberal Chiefs--Mr. Gladstone and the Leadership--The Queen’s
Speech--Mr. Disraeli and the Fallen Minister--The Dangers of Hustings
Oratory--Mr. Ward Hunt’s “Paper Fleet”--The Last of the Historic
Surpluses--How Sir S. Northcote Disposed of it--The Hour but not the
Man--Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill--The Public Worship Regulation Bill--A
Curiously Composed Opposition--Mr. Disraeli on Lord Salisbury--The
Scottish Patronage Bill--Academic Debates on Home Rule--The Endowed
Schools Bill--Mr. Stansfeld’s Rating Bill--Bill for Consolidating the
Factory Acts--End of the Session--The Successes and Failures of the
Ministry--Prince Bismarck’s Contest with the Roman Catholic
Church--Arrest of Count Harry Arnim--Mr. Disraeli’s
Apology to Prince Bismarck--Mr. Gladstone’s Desultory
Leadership--“Vaticanism”--Deterioration in Society--An Unopposed
Royal Grant--Visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to
Birmingham--Withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court--A Dispute
over Precedence--Visit of the Czar to England--Review of the Ashanti War
Soldiers and Sailors--The Queen on Cruelty to Animals--Sir Theodore
Martin’s Biography of the Prince Consort--The Queen tells the Story of
its Authorship 457

CHAPTER XX.

EMPRESS OF INDIA.

Mr. Disraeli recognises Intellect--Lord Hartington Liberal Leader--The
Queen’s Speech--Lord Hartington’s “Grotesque Reminiscences”--Mr. Cross’s
Labour Bills--The Artisans’ Dwellings Act--Mr. Plimsoll and the
“Ship-knackers”--Lord Hartington’s First “Hit”--The Plimsoll
Agitation--Surrender of the Cabinet--“Strangers” in the House--The
Budget--Rise of Mr. Biggar--First Appearance of Mr. Parnell--The
Fugitive Slave Circular--The Sinking of the Yacht _Mistletoe_--The Loss
of the _Vanguard_--Purchase of the Suez Canal Shares--The Prince of
Wales’s Visit to India--Resignation of Lord Northbrook--Appointment of
Lord Lytton as Viceroy of India--Outbreak of the Eastern Question--The
Andrassy Note--The Berlin Memorandum--Murder of French and German
Consuls at Salonica--Lord Derby Rejects the Berlin Memorandum--Servia
Declares War on Turkey--The Bulgarian Revolt Quenched in Blood--The
Sultan Dethroned--Opening of Parliament--“Sea-sick of the Silver
Streak”--Debates on the Eastern Question--Development of Obstruction by
Mr. Biggar and Mr. Parnell--The Royal Titles Bill--Lord Shaftesbury and
the Queen--The Queen at Whitechapel--A Doleful Budget--Mr. Disraeli
becomes Earl of Beaconsfield--The Prince Consort’s Memorial at
Edinburgh--Mr. Gladstone and the Eastern Question--The Servian War--The
Constantinople Conference--The Tories Manufacture Failure for Lord
Salisbury--Death of Lady Augusta Stanley--Proclamation of the Queen as
Empress at Delhi 482

CHAPTER XXI.

THE REIGN OF JINGOISM.

Opening of Parliament--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Leadership--The Prisons
Bill--Mr. Parnell’s Policy of Scientific Obstruction--The South Africa
Confederation Bill--Mr. Parnell’s Bout with Sir Stafford Northcote--A
Twenty-six Hours’ Sitting--The Budget--The Russo-Turkish
Question--Prince Albert’s Eastern Policy--Opinion at Court--The
Sentiments of Society--The Feeling of the British People--Outbreak of
War--Collapse of Turkey--The Jingoes--The Third Volume of the “Life of
the Prince Consort”--The “Greatest War Song on Record”--The Queen’s
Visit to Hughenden--Early Meeting of Parliament--Mr. Layard’s Alarmist
Telegrams--The Fleet Ordered to Constantinople--Resignation of Lord
Carnarvon--The Russian Terms of Peace--Violence of the War Party--The
Debate on the War Vote--The Treaty of San Stefano--Resignation of Lord
Derby--Calling Out the Reserves--Lord Salisbury’s Circular--The Indian
Troops Summoned to Malta--The Salisbury-Schouvaloff Agreement--Lord
Salisbury’s Denials--The Berlin Congress--The _Globe_ Disclosures--The
Anglo-Turkish Convention--Occupation of Cyprus--“Peace with Honour”--The
Irish Intermediate Education Bill--Consolidation of the Factory
Acts--The Monarch and the Multitude--Outbreak of the Third Afghan
War--The “Scientific Frontier”--Naval Review at Spithead--Death of the
Ex-King of Hanover--Death of the Princess Alice 513

CHAPTER XXII.

PEACE WHERE THERE IS NO PEACE.

Ominous Bye-Elections--The Spangles of Imperialism--Disturbed state of
Eastern Europe--Origin of the Quarrel with the Zulus--Cetewayo’s Feud
with the Boers--A “Prancing Pro-Consul”--Sir Bartle Frere’s Ultimatum to
the Zulu King--War Declared--The Crime and its Retribution--The Disaster
of Isandhlwana--The Defence of Rorke’s Drift--Demands for the Recall of
Sir Bartle Frere--Censured but not Dismissed--Sir Garnet Wolseley
Supersedes Sir Bartle Frere in Natal--The Victory of Ulundi--Capture of
Cetewayo--End of the War--The Invasion of Afghanistan--Death of Shere
Ali--Yakoob Khan Proclaimed Ameer--The Treaty of Gundamuk--The
“Scientific Frontier”--The Army Discipline Bill--Mr. Parnell attacks the
“Cat”--Mr. Chamberlain Plays to the Gallery--Surrender of the
Government--Lord Hartington’s Motion against Flogging--The Irish
University Bill--An Unpopular Budget--The Murder of Cavagnari and
Massacre of his Suite--The Army of Vengeance--The Recapture of
Cabul--The Settlement of Zululand--Death of Prince Louis Napoleon--The
Court-Martial on Lieutenant Carey--Its Judgment Quashed--Marriage of the
Duke of Connaught--The Queen at Baveno 562

CHAPTER XXIII.

FALL OF LORD BEACONSFIELD.

General Gloom--Fall of the Tay Bridge--Liberal Onslaught on the
Government--The Mussulman Schoolmaster and the Anglican Missionary--The
Queen’s Speech--The Irish Relief Bill--A Dying Parliament--Mr. Cross’s
Water Bill--“Coming in on Beer and Going out on Water”--Sir Stafford
Northcote’s Budget--Lord Beaconsfield’s Manifesto--The General
Election--Defeat of the Tories--Incidents of the Struggle--Mr. Gladstone
Prime Minister--The Fourth Party--Mr. Bradlaugh and the Oath--Mr.
Gladstone and the Emperor of Austria--The Naval Demonstration--Grave
Error in the Indian Budget--Affairs in Afghanistan--Disaster at
Maiwand--Roberts’s March--The New Ameer--Revolt of the Boers--The
Ministerial Programme--The Burials Bill--The Hares and Rabbits Bill--The
Employers’ Liability Bill--Supplementary Budget--The Compensation for
Disturbance Bill--Boycotting--Trial of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon--The
Queen’s Visit to Germany--The Queen Presents the Albert Medal to George
Oatley of the Coastguard--Reviews at Windsor--The Queen’s Speech to the
Ensigns--The Battle of the Standards--Royalty and Riflemen--Outrages in
Ireland--“Endymion”--Death of George Eliot 581

CHAPTER XXIV.

COERCION.

Lord Beaconsfield Attacks the Government--The Irish Crisis--The Coercion
Bills--An All-night Sitting--The Arrest of Mr. Davitt--The Revolt of the
Irish Members--The Speaker’s _Coup d’État_--Urgency--New Rules of
Procedure--The Speaker’s _Clôture_--End of the Struggle against
Coercion--Mr. Dillon’s Irish Campaign--Mr. Forster’s First Batch of
“Suspects”--The Peers Censure the Ministry--Mr. Gladstone’s “Retort
Courteous”--Abolition of the “Cat”--The Budget--Paying off the National
Debt--The Irish Land Bill--The Three “F’s”--Resignation of the Duke of
Argyll--The Strategic Blunder of the Tories--The Fallacy of Dual
Ownership--Conflict between the Lords and Commons--Surrender of the
Peers--Passing the Land Bill--Revolt of the Transvaal--The
Rout of Majuba Hill--Death of Sir George Colley--The Boers
Triumphant--Concession of Autonomy to the Boers--Lord Beaconsfield’s
Death--His Career and Character--A “Walking Funeral” at Hughenden--The
Queen and Lord Beaconsfield’s Tomb--A Sorrowing Nation--Assassination of
the Czar--The Queen and the Duchess of Edinburgh--Character of the Czar
Emancipator--Precautions for the Safety of the Queen--Visit of the King
and Queen of Sweden to Windsor--Prince Leopold becomes Duke of
Albany--Deaths of Dean Stanley and Mr. Carlyle--Review of Scottish
Volunteers--Assassination of President Garfield--The Royal Family--The
Highlands--Holiday Pastimes--The Parnellites and the Irish Land
Act--Arrest of Mr. Parnell--No-Rent Manifesto 610

CHAPTER XXV.

ENGLAND IN EGYPT.

The Duke of Albany’s Marriage Announced--Mr. Bradlaugh Again--Procedure
Reform--The Closure at Last--The Peers Co-operate with the
Parnellites--Their Attacks on the Land Act--Mr. Forster’s Policy of
“Thorough”--A Nation under Arrest--Increase in Outrages--Sir J. D. Hay
and Mr. W. H. Smith bid for the Parnellite Vote--A Political Dutch
Auction--The Radicals Outbid the Tories--Release of Mr. Parnell and the
Suspects--The Kilmainham Treaty--Victory of Mr. Chamberlain--Resignation
of Mr. Forster and Lord Cowper--The Tragedy in the Phœnix Park--Ireland
Under Lord Spencer--Firm and Resolute Government--Coercion Revived--The
Arrears Bill--The Budget--England in Egypt--How Ismail Pasha “Kissed the
Carpet”--Spoiling the Egyptians--Mr. Goschen’s Scheme for Collecting the
Debt--The Dual Control--The Ascendency of France--“Egypt for the
Egyptians”--The Rule of Arabi--Riots in Alexandria--The Egyptian
War--Murder of Professor Palmer--British Occupation of Egypt--The
Queen’s Monument to Lord Beaconsfield--Attempt to Assassinate Her
Majesty--The Queen’s Visit to Mentone--Marriage of the Duke of
Albany 630

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE INVINCIBLES.

The Married Women’s Property Act--The Opening of Parliament--Changes in
the Cabinet--Arrest of Suspects in Dublin--Invincibles on their
Trial--Evidence of the Informer Carey--Carey’s Fate--The Forster-Parnell
Incident--National Gift to Mr. Parnell--The Affirmation Bill--The
Bankruptcy and other Bills--Mr. Childers’ Budget--The Corrupt Practices
Bill--The “Farmers’ Friends”--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Leadership--The
Bright Celebration--Dynamite Outrages in London--The Explosives Act--M.
de Lesseps and Mr. Gladstone--Blunders in South Africa--The Ilbert
Bill--The Attack on Lady Florence Dixie’s House--Death of John
Brown--His Career and Character--The Queen and the Consumption of
Lamb--A Dull Holiday at Balmoral--Capsizing of the _Daphne_--Prince
Albert Victor made K.G.--France and Madagascar--Arrest of Rev. Mr.
Shaw--Settlement of the Dispute--Progress of the National League--Orange
and Green Rivalry--The Leeds Conference--“Franchise First”--Lord
Salisbury and the Housing of the Poor--Mr. Besant and East
London--“Slumming”--Hicks Pasha’s Disastrous Expedition in the
Soudan--Mr. Gladstone on Jam 652

CHAPTER XXVII.

GENERAL GORDON’S MISSION.

Success of the Mahdi--Difficult Position of the Ministers--Their
Egyptian Policy--General Gordon sent out to the Soudan--Baker Pasha’s
Forces Defeated--Sir S. Northcote’s Vote of Censure--The Errors on Both
Sides--Why not a Protectorate?--Gordon in Khartoum--Zebehr, “King of the
Slave-traders”--Attacks on Gordon--Osman Digna Twice Defeated--Treason
in Khartoum--Gordon’s Vain Appeals--Financial Position of
Egypt--Abortive Conference of the Powers--Vote of Credit--The New
Speaker--Mr. Bradlaugh _Redivivus_--Mr. Childers’ Budget--The Coinage
Bill--The Reform Bill--Household Franchise for the Counties--Carried in
the Commons--Thrown Out in the Lords--Agitation in the Country--The
Autumn Session--“No Surrender”--Compromise--The Franchise Bill
Passed--The Nile Expedition--Murder of Colonel Stewart and Mr. Frank
Power--Lord Northbrook’s Mission--Ismail Pasha’s Claims--The “Scramble
for Africa”--Coolness with Germany--The Angra Pequena
Dispute--Bismarck’s Irritation--Queensland and New Guinea--Death of Lord
Hertford--The Queen’s New Book--Death of the Duke of Albany--Character
and Career of the Prince--The Claremont Estate--The Queen at
Darmstadt--Marriage of the Princess Victoria of Hesse--A Gloomy
Season--The Health Exhibition--The Queen and the Parliamentary
Deadlock--The Abyssinian Envoys at Osborne--Prince George of Wales made
K.G.--The Court at Balmoral--Mr. Gladstone’s Visit to the Queen 671

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE.

An _Annus Mirabilis_--Breaking up of the Old Parties--The
Tory-Parnellite Alliance--Mr. Chamberlain’s Socialism--The Doctrine of
“Ransom”--Effect of the Reform Bill and Seats Bill--Enthroning the
“Sovereign People”--Three Reform Struggles: 1832, 1867, 1885--“One Man
One Vote”--Another Vote of Censure--A Barren Victory--Retreat from the
Soudan--The Dispute with Russia--Komaroff at Penjdeh--The Vote of
Credit--On the Verge of War--Mr. Gladstone’s Compromise with
Russia--Threatened Renewal of the Crimes Act--The Tory Intrigue with the
Parnellites--The Tory Chiefs Decide to Oppose Coercion--Wrangling in the
Cabinet--Mr. Childers’ Budget--A Yawning Deficit--Increasing the Spirit
Duties--Readjusting the Succession Duties--Combined Attack by Tories and
Parnellites on the Budget--Defeat of the Government and Fall of Mr.
Gladstone’s Ministry--The Scene in the Commons--The Tories in
Power--Lord Salisbury’s Government--Places for the Fourth Party--Mr.
Parnell Demands his Price--Abandoning Lord Spencer--Re-opening the
Question of the Maamtrasna Murders--Concessions to the Parnellites--The
New Budget--Sir H. D. Wolff sent to Cairo--The Criminal Law Amendment
Act--Court Life in 1885--Affairs at Home and Abroad--The Fall of
Khartoum--Death of General Gordon--Marriage of the Princess
Beatrice--The Battenbergs 697

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE BATTLE OF THE UNION.

Mr. Chamberlain’s Doctrine of “Ransom”--The Midlothian Programme--Lord
Randolph Churchill’s Appeal to the Whigs--Bidding for the Parnellite
Vote--Resignation of Lord Carnarvon--The General Election--“Three Acres
and a Cow”--Defeat of Lord Salisbury--The Liberal Cabinet--Mr.
Gladstone’s Home Rule Scheme--Ulster Threatens Civil War--Secession of
the Liberal “Unionists”--Defeat of Mr. Gladstone--Lord Salisbury again
in Office--Mr. Parnell’s Relief Bill Rejected--The “Plan of
Campaign”--Resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill--Mr. Goschen becomes
Chancellor of the Exchequer--Riots in the West End of London--The Indian
and Colonial Exhibition--The Imperial Institute--The Queen’s Visit to
Liverpool--The Holloway College for Women--A Busy Season for her
Majesty--The International Exhibition at Edinburgh--The Prince and
Princess Komatsu of Japan 724

CHAPTER XXX.

THE JUBILEE.

The Fiftieth Year of the Queen’s Reign--Mr. W. H. Smith Leader of the
Commons--Sudden Death of Lord Iddesleigh--Opening of Parliament--The
Queen’s Speech--The Debate on the Address--New Rules for
Procedure--Closure Proposed by the Tories--Irish Landlords and
Evictions--“Pressure Within the Law”--Prosecution of Mr. Dillon--The
Round Table Conference--“Parnellism and Crime”--Resignation of Sir M.
Hicks-Beach--Appointment of Mr. Balfour--The Coercion Bill--Resolute
Government for Twenty Years--Scenes in the House--Irish Land Bill--The
Bankruptcy Clauses--The National League Proclaimed--The Allotments
Act--The Margarine Act--Hamburg Spirit--Mr. Goschen’s Budget--The
Jubilee in India--The Modes of Celebration in England--Congratulatory
Addresses--The Queen’s Visit to Birmingham--The Laureate’s Jubilee
Ode--The Queen at Cannes and Aix--Her Visit to the Grande
Chartreuse--Colonial Addresses--Opening of the People’s Palace--Jubilee
Day--The Scene in the Streets--Preceding Jubilees--The Royal
Procession--The German Crown Prince--The Decorations and the
Onlookers--The Spectacle in Westminster Abbey--The Procession--The
Ceremony--The Illuminations--Royal Banquet in Buckingham Palace--The
Shower of Honours--Jubilee Observances in the British Empire and the
United States--The Children’s Celebration in Hyde Park--The Queen’s
Garden Party--Her Majesty’s Letter to her People--The Imperial
Institute--The Victorian Age 733

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
The Prince and Princess of Wales and their Family _Frontispiece._

Osborne, from the Solent 385

The Princess Louise (_From a Photograph by
Elliott and Fry_) 388

The Marquis of Lorne (_From a Photograph by
Elliott and Fry_) 389

Inverary Castle (_From a Photograph by G. W.
Wilson and Co._) 393

Mr. W. E. Forster (_From a Photograph by Russell
and Sons_) 396

Balmoral Castle, from the North-west (_From a
Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen_) 400

After Sedan: Discussing the Capitulation (_From
the Picture by Georg Bleibtreu_) 401

Metz 405

Marriage of the Princess Louise _To face_ 408

Opening of the Royal Albert Hall 409

The Prince of Wales’s Illness: Crowd at the
Mansion House Reading the Bulletins 412

Thanksgiving Day: the Procession at Ludgate
Hill (_From the Picture by N. Chevalier_) 413

Thanksgiving Day: St. Paul’s Illuminated 416

The Thanksgiving Service in St. Paul’s Cathedral 417

Geneva 421

Dr. Norman Macleod (_From a Photograph by
Elliott and Fry_) 425

The Queen receiving the Burmese Embassy 428

Queen’s College, Cork (_From a Photograph by
W. Lawrence, Dublin_) 432

Professor Fawcett (_From a Photograph by the
London Stereoscopic Company_) 433

Queen’s College, Galway 436

Views in Windsor: Old Market Street, and the
Town Hall, from High Street 440

Sandringham House 441

The Queen’s Visit to Victoria Park 445

Blue-coat Boys at Buckingham Palace 448

The Shah of Persia Presenting his Suite to the
Queen at Windsor _To face_ 449

The Duke of Edinburgh 452

The Duchess of Edinburgh (_From a Photograph
by W. and D. Downey_) 453

Marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh (_From the
Picture by N. Chevalier_) 456

Coomassie 460

King Koffee’s Palace, Coomassie 461

Lord Salisbury (_From a Photograph by Bassano,
Old Bond Street, W._) 465

Review in Windsor Great Park of the Troops from
the Ashanti War: the March Past before the
Queen 469

The Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Magee) addressing
the House of Lords 473

Alexander II., Czar of Russia 477

The Albert Memorial Chapel, Windsor (_From a
Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._) 480

Mr. Plimsoll Addressing the House of Commons 484

The Marquis of Hartington (_From a Photograph
by Russell and Sons_) 485

Abergeldie Castle (_From a Photograph by G. W.
Wilson and Co._) 488

View on the Suez Canal 492

Count Ferdinand De Lesseps 493

The Mosque at San Sophia, Constantinople 496

Heralds at the Mansion House, Proclaiming the
Queen as “Empress of India” 497

The Queen Visiting the Wards of the London
Hospital 500

The Albert Memorial, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh 501

Holyrood Palace, from the South-east 504

Sir James Falshaw (_From a Photograph by
J. Moffat, Edinburgh_) 505

Lord Beaconsfield at the Banquet in the Guildhall 508

General View of Constantinople 509

Trooping the Colours in St. James’s Park on the
Queen’s Birthday _To face_ 513

Lord Cairns (_From a Photograph by Russell and
Sons_) 513

Horseshoe Cloisters, Windsor Castle 517

Lord Derby (_From a Photograph by Elliott and
Fry_) 521

The Tower of Galata, Constantinople 525

Russian Wounded Leaving Plevna 528

Hughenden Manor (_From a Photograph by Taunt
and Co._) 529

The Queen’s Visit to Hughenden: at High Wycombe
Railway Station 533

Prince Gortschakoff 537

Russo-Turkish War: Map showing Position of
Russian and Turkish Lines outside of Constantinople,
and of the British Fleet 540

The Marina, Larnaca, Cyprus 544

Salonica 545

Prince Bismarck (_From the Photograph by
Loescher and Petsch, Berlin_) 548

Shere Ali, Ameer of Cabul 553

The Queen Reviewing the Fleet at Spithead 557

The Albert Memorial, Kensington 561

Isandhlwana: the Dash with the Colours 565

Baveno, on Lago Maggiore 568

The Villa Clara, Baveno 569

The Duchess of Connaught 572

The Duke of Connaught 573

Marriage of the Duke of Connaught (_From the
Picture by S. P. Hall_) 576

Queen Victoria (1887) _To face_ 577

The Mausoleum, Frogmore 577

Osborne House, from the Gardens (_From a Photograph
by J. Valentine and Sons_) 581

The First Tay Bridge, from the South 584

Windsor Castle: a Peep from the Dean’s Garden 585

After the Midlothian Victory: Mr. Gladstone Addressing
the Crowd from the Balcony of Lord
Rosebery’s House, George Street, Edinburgh
(_From the Picture in “The Graphic”_) 589

Mr. Chamberlain (_From a Photograph by Russell
and Sons_) 593

Old Palace of the Prince of Montenegro, Cettigne 597

Windsor Castle: Queen Elizabeth’s Library, from
the Quadrangle 600

The Queen Presenting the Albert Medal to George
Oatley, of the Coastguard 604

Review in Windsor Park: Charge of the 5th and
7th Dragoon Guards 605

Ballater 609

Mr. Parnell (_From a Photograph by William
Lawrence, Dublin_) 613

Grafton Street, Dublin 616

Lord Beaconsfield’s Last Appearance in the Peers’
Gallery of the House of Commons (_From a
Drawing by Harry Furniss_) 617

Lord Beaconsfield’s House, 19, Curzon Street, Mayfair 621

The Prince of Wales in his Robes as a Bencher of
the Middle Temple (_From a Photograph by
W. and D. Downey_) 624

The Princess of Wales (_From a Photograph by
W. and D. Downey_) 625

The Royal Family in the Highlands: Tug of War--Balmoral
_v._ Abergeldie 629

Lord Frederick Cavendish (_From a Photograph
by the London Stereoscopic Company_) 633

The Karmous Suburb, Alexandria, and Pompey’s
Pillar 637

Ahmed Arabi Pasha (_From the Portrait by
Frederick Villiers in A. M. Broadley’s “How
we Defended Arabi and his Friends”_) 640

Lord Wolseley (_From a Photograph by Fradelle
and Young_) 641

The Duchess of Albany 644

The Duke of Albany 645

Marriage of the Duke of Albany _To face_ 648

Mentone (_From a Photograph by Frith and Co.,
Reigate_) 649

Lambeth Palace 652

Charles Darwin (_From a Photograph by Elliott
and Fry_) 653

The Round Tower, Windsor Castle 657

The Royal Albert Hall, Kensington 661

John Brown (_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson
and Co., Aberdeen_) 665

The Parish Church, Crathie 669

Braemar Castle 669

General Gordon (_From a Photograph by Adams
and Scanlan, Southampton_) 673

Khartoum 677

Sir Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh
(_From a Photograph by Barraud, Oxford
Street_) 680

The Citadel, Cairo 681

Balmoral Castle, from Craig Nordie (_From a
Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._) 685

Funeral of the Duke of Albany: the Procession
Entering Windsor Castle 688

View in Claremont Park 689

The Linn of Dee (_From a Photograph by G. W.
Wilson and Co._) 693

The Queen Receiving the Abyssinian Envoys at
Osborne 696

Prince Henry of Battenberg (_From a Photograph
by Theodor Prümm, Berlin_) 700

Princess Beatrice (_From a Photograph by Hughes
and Mullins, Ryde_) 701

The Queen in her State Robes _To face_ 705

Mr. Gladstone (_From a Photograph by Elliott
and Fry_) 705

Drawing-Room in Buckingham Palace 709

Map of the War in the Soudan 716

Marriage of the Princess Beatrice 721

Opening of Parliament in 1886: the Royal Procession
in Westminster Palace on the way to
the House of Peers 725

Lord Tennyson (_From a Photograph by H. H. H.
Cameron, Mortimer Street, W._) 729

Opening of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition:
The Queen’s Tour 733

The Queen’s Visit to Edinburgh (1886): Her
Majesty Leaving Holyrood Palace 737

The Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor
Frederick III. of Germany (_From a Photograph
by Reichard and Lindner, Berlin_) 745

The Crown Princess, afterwards the Empress
Victoria of Germany (_From a Photograph by
Reichard and Lindner, Berlin_) 745

The Jubilee Garden Party at Buckingham Palace:
The Royal Tent 749

[Illustration: OSBORNE, FROM THE SOLENT.]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ILLNESS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Effect of Prussian Victories on English Opinion--Sudden Changes
of Popular Impulse--Demand for Army Reform--Opposition to
the Princess Louise’s Dowry--Opening of Parliament--The Army
Bill--Abolition of Purchase--Opposition of the Tory Party--Mr.
Disraeli Throws Over his Followers--Obstructing the Purchase
Bill--Mr. Cardwell’s Threat--Obstruction in the House of Lords--A
Bold Use of the Queen’s Prerogative--The Wrath of the Peers--They
Pass a Vote of Censure on the Government--The Ballot Bill--The
Peers Reject the Ballot Bill--The University Tests Bill--The Trades
Union Bill--Its Defects--The Case of Purchon v. Hartley--The
Licensing Bill and its Effect on Parties--Local Government
Reform--Mr. Lowe’s Disastrous Budget--The Match Tax--_Ex luce
lucellum_--Withdrawal of the Budget--The Washington Treaty and
the Queen--Lord Granville’s Feeble Foreign Policy--His Failure
to Mediate Between France and Germany--Bismarck’s Contemptuous
Treatment of English Despatches--_Væ Victis!_--The German Terms
of Peace--Asking too Much and Taking too Little--Mr. Gladstone’s
Embarrassments--Decaying Popularity of the Government--The Collier
Affair--Effect of the Commune on English Opinion--Court Life
in 1871--Marriage of the Princess Louise--The Queen Opens the
Albert Hall--The Queen at St. Thomas’s Hospital--Prince Arthur’s
Income--Public Protests and Irritating Discussions--The Queen’s
Illness--Sudden Illness of the Prince of Wales--Growing Anxiety
of the People--Alarming Prospects of a Regency--Between Life and
Death--Panic in the Money Market--Hopeful Bulletins--Convalescence
of the Prince--Public Sympathy with the Queen--Her Majesty’s Letter
to the People.

The closing weeks of 1870 and the early days of 1871 were full of
anxiety to the Queen. Despite its services to the country, the Cabinet
was obviously losing ground. The Franco-Prussian War had brought about
a great change in the minds of the people as to the kind of work they
wanted their Government to do, and it was certain that Mr. Gladstone
and his colleagues did not respond quickly to the new impulse which the
fall of Imperialism in France, and the rise of the new German Empire
had given to public opinion in England. When the Cabinet took office,
retrenchment and reform at home, and isolation abroad, were objects
which the nation desired the Government to pursue. The victories of
Prussia certainly strengthened the hands of the Ministry in carrying
out their education policy. But in every other department of public
life the people began to expect from the Cabinet what the Cabinet
was not, by its temperament, likely to give. Ministers, in their
handling of the Army and Navy, for example, made economy the leading
idea of their policy. The country, on the other hand, alarmed at the
collapse of France, put efficiency before economy. Non-intervention in
Foreign Affairs, which was the policy of the Ministry, and which had
been the policy of the Tory Opposition, was discredited when Russia
repudiated the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of Paris, and when it
was discovered that somehow Lord Granville’s management of Foreign
Affairs had left England with enemies, and not with allies, in the
councils of the world. Forgetful of the stormy sea of foreign troubles
through which Palmerston was perpetually steering the labouring vessel
of State, the nation began to long for a Minister who could make
England play a great part in the drama of Continental politics. Lord
Granville’s “surrender” in the Black Sea Conference was admittedly
dignified and adroit, but it did not on that account satisfy the
country. Why had he not pressed for an equivalent right on the part
of England and the Powers to pass the Dardanelles? That would, at all
events, have made the Black Sea an European instead of a Russian lake,
or rather a lake whose waters Russia shared with a weak and decaying
Power like Turkey. Why did he not recast the Foreign Policy of England,
and proceed to check Russia diplomatically by strengthening Austria
in the Danube? If the irritation of the United States was paralysing
England in Europe, why was no decided action taken to bring about an
equitable settlement of the _Alabama_ Claims? Why was the recognition
of the new French Republic delayed, when it was known that even Von
Bismarck deigned to treat with it for peace, and when its recognition
would raise up for England a friendly feeling in France? All these and
other questions were asked by men who were not partisans, and who were,
on the whole, well disposed to Mr. Gladstone’s administration.

The only reform movement, indeed, that excited any popular enthusiasm
at the beginning of 1871, was that which Mr. Trevelyan had started
after he resigned his Civil Lordship of the Admiralty, because Mr.
Forster’s Education Bill increased the grant to denominational schools.
It was significant, too, that this movement was one for making the
army more efficient by abolishing the system that permitted officers
to buy their commissions and their promotion. It had been said that
nothing could be done to render the army formidable, so long as the
Commander-in-Chief was its absolute ruler. The result was that the Duke
of Cambridge was made subordinate to the Secretary of State. Next it
was said that nothing could be done to improve the army so long as it
was pawned to its officers, who had acquired by purchase something like
a vested right in maintaining the existing military system. Abolition
of Purchase, therefore, in 1871, seemed to be the only point of contact
between the nation and the Cabinet, who were supposed to favour Mr.
Trevelyan’s agitation. The demand for increasing the army, when
sanctioned by a Parliamentary vote, Mr. Cardwell evaded. When merely
sanctioned by public opinion he either ignored it, or, as in the case
of issuing breech-loading rifles to the Volunteers, yielded to it after
resisting it for about eight months. The changes in the Cabinet due to
Mr. Bright’s resignation further lessened confidence in the Government.
Mr. Chichester Fortescue, in spite of his half-hearted Fenian amnesty,
was on the whole a popular and active Irish Secretary. He, however, was
appointed to succeed Mr. Bright at the Board of Trade, where he had
to guide a department charged with interests of which he was utterly
ignorant. Lord Hartington, on the other hand, whose transference to
the War Office would have been gratifying to the country, was sent
to the Irish Office, to the consternation of those Liberals who had
been dissatisfied with the reactionary tone of his speeches on Irish
affairs. The general desire for new War and Foreign Ministers was
ignored.[1]

But perhaps the most extraordinary change in public sentiment in 1871
was that which marked public opinion in relation to the marriage of the
Princess Louise. When it was announced, popular feeling was clearly in
favour of the alliance. But towards the end of January, 1871, there was
hardly a large borough in England, the member for which on addressing
his constituents, was not asked menacingly if he meant to vote for a
national dowry to the Princess. Too often, when the member said he
intended to give such a vote, he was hissed by the meeting. Mr. Forster
escaped a hostile demonstration by humorously parrying the question.
He said he could not consent to fine the Princess for marrying a
Scotsman. At Halifax Mr. Stansfeld was seriously embarrassed by the
question. At Chelsea both members nearly forfeited the usual vote of
confidence passed in them by their constituents. Mr. White at Brighton
had to promise to vote against the dowry; at Birmingham Messrs. Dixon
and Muntz could hardly get a hearing from their constituents when they
defended it. The annoyance which the Queen suffered when she saw her
daughter’s name rudely handled at angry mass

[Illustration: THE PRINCESS LOUISE.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

meetings was unspeakable. This unexpected ebullition of public feeling
was due to a belief among the electors that when Royalty formed
matrimonial alliances with subjects it ought to accept the rule which
prevails among persons of private station, and frankly recognise that
it is the duty of the husband to support the wife. To demand a dowry
of £40,000 and an income of £6,000 a year for the Princess Louise,
it was argued, was preposterous. The lady, it was said, could not
possibly need it, seeing that she was to marry a nobleman who was
able to maintain his wife, and who, had he not married a princess,
would have been expected to maintain her in the comfort befitting his
inherited rank and social position. But common sense soon reasserted
its sway over the nation. It was then speedily admitted that a great
country lowered its dignity when it chaffered with the Sovereign over
allowances which were necessary to sustain a becoming stateliness of
life in the Royal Family.[2]

[Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF LORNE.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

In the course of the discussions that were carried on as to the dowry
of the Princess Louise many ill-natured allusions had been made to the
Queen’s life of seclusion, and it had been broadly hinted that she
was neglecting her public duties. It was unfortunate that steps were
not taken by some person in authority to refute this calumny, for, if
her Majesty shunned the nervous excitement of public ceremonials, it
was for the purpose of husbanding her strength for the transaction of
official business. Still, the people were kept in ignorance of that
fact, and the result was that when the Queen proceeded in person to
open Parliament on the 9th of February, 1871, she was for the first
time in her life rather coldly received on the route from the Palace
to Westminster. The Speech from the Throne dealt chiefly with Foreign
Affairs, and it represented fairly the national feeling in favour of
a policy of neutrality, tempered, however, with a strong desire to
preserve the existence of France as “a principal and indispensable
member of the great Commonwealth of Europe.” Two points in it were
recognised as being in a special sense the expression of the Queen’s
own views. These were (1), the cordial congratulation of Germany
on having attained a position of “solidity and independence,” and
(2), the carefully-guarded suggestion that Germany should be content
with the cession of a mountain barrier beyond the Rhine on her new
frontier, and not endanger the permanence of the peace, which must
soon come by pressing for the cession of French fortresses, which, in
German hands, must be a standing menace to France. Perhaps the most
popular paragraph in the Speech was the one which indicated that the
Governments of England and the United States, after much futile and
bitter controversy, were at last agreed that the _Alabama_ dispute
should be settled by friendly arbitration before a mixed Commission.
The instinct of the masses taught them that the “latent war,” as Mr.
Hamilton Fish called it, between the two kindred peoples, explained
why England had suddenly lost her influence in the councils of Europe.
By its reference to Home Affairs, the Royal Speech, for the time,
strengthened the popularity of the Ministry. It promised a Ballot Bill,
a Bill for abolishing University Tests, for readjusting Local Taxation,
for restricting the grants of Licences to Publicans, for reorganising
Scottish Education, and for reforming the Army. When the Debate on
the Address was taken, the House of Commons was obviously in a state
of high nervous tension. It was half angry with Mr. Gladstone because
he had not pursued a more spirited Foreign Policy, and because, by
submitting to the abolition of the Black Sea Clauses of the Treaty of
Paris, and assuming an isolated attitude towards France and Germany,
he had made England the mere spectator of great events, the course of
which she yearned to influence, if not to control. On the other hand,
the House showed plainly that it was thankful that the country had been
kept out of the embarrassments and entanglements of war. Indeed it was
clear that, if Mr. Gladstone had pursued a more spirited policy at the
risk of enforcing it by arms, he would have been hurled from power by
the votes of the very men who now sneered at his policy because it was
spiritless.

Mr. Disraeli’s tone was less patriotic than usual. He was careful to
say nothing that would commit him and his party to any other policy
than that of neutrality; but he was equally careful to encourage a
belief that this policy had been adopted, not from prudence, but from
cowardice. To use one of his own phrases, he “threatened Russia with a
clouded cane;” though, as he knew well, the Black Sea dispute had by
that time ended. He endangered the prospects of peaceful arbitration
on the _Alabama_ Claims, by his bitter allusions to the United States.
He poured ridicule on the military feebleness of the country at a
crisis when a patriotic statesman would have naturally preferred
to remain silent on such a theme. But the effect of his attack was
somewhat diminished by his attempt to show that military impotence was
naturally associated with Liberal Governments. Everybody knew that all
governments, Liberal or Tory, were equally responsible for the bad
state of the army, and that they had all equally resisted the popular
demand for reform, till it grew so loud that Mr. Cardwell was forced to
yield to it.

The great measure of the Session was of course the Army Bill, which
was introduced by Mr. Cardwell, on the 16th of February. It abolished
the system by which rich men obtained by purchase commissions and
promotion in the army, and provided £8,000,000 to buy all commissions,
as they fell in, at their regulation and over-regulation value.[3] In
future, commissions were to be awarded either to those who won them
by open competition, or who had served as subalterns in the Militia,
or to deserving non-commissioned officers. Mr. Cardwell also proposed
to deprive Lords-Lieutenant of Counties of the power of granting
commissions in the militia. He laid down the lines of a great scheme
of army reorganisation which bound the auxiliary forces closer to the
regular army, gave the country 300,000 trained men, divided locally
into nine _corps d’armée_, for home defence, kept in hand a force
of 100,000 men always available for service abroad, and raised the
strength of the artillery from 180 to 336 guns. This, however, he did
at the cost of £15,000,000 a year--a somewhat extravagant sum, seeing
that 170,000 of the army of defence consisted of unpaid volunteers.
The debate that followed was a rambling one. The Tory Party defended
the Purchase system because good officers had come to the front by
its means. Even a Radical like Mr. Charles Buxton was not ashamed to
argue that promotion by selection on account of fitness, would sour
the officers who were passed over with discontent. Lord Elcho, though
he made a “palpable hit” in detecting the inadequacy of Mr. Cardwell’s
scheme of National Defence, sedulously avoided justifying the sale of
commissions in the army. He based his objection to the abolition of
Purchase on the ground that it would involve “the most wicked, the most
wanton, the most uncalled for waste of the public money.” Here we have
depicted a vivid contrast between the House of Commons of the Second,
and the House of the Third Reform Bill. In these latter days Lord
Wemyss--who in 1871 was Lord Elcho--would hardly venture to obstruct
any measure of reform because there was tacked on to it a scheme for
compensating “vested interests” too generously. The Representatives
of the People would now meet such an objection by simply cutting down
the compensation. And Mr. Cardwell had an excellent opportunity for
doing this ready to his hands. The money paid for commissions was
far above the regulation price, and yet it was a statutory offence
punishable by two years’ imprisonment to pay over-regulation prices.
In fact, Parliament may be said to have betrayed the country in
this transaction. Not only had it connived at the offence of paying
over-regulation money, but it made its connivance a pretext for
compensating the offenders for the loss of advantages they had gained
by breaking the law.

Only two arguments worthy of the least attention were brought forward
by the Opposition. The first was that abolition of Purchase would
weaken the regimental system. For it was contended that promotion
by selection for officers above the rank of captain--which was the
substitute proposed for promotion by Purchase--involving, as it did,
transfers from one regiment to another, must destroy the regimental
home-life.[4] The second was, that it would tend to create a
professional military caste, who might, as Mr. Bernal Osborne argued,
prove dangerous to the liberties of the people. It was, however, felt
that it was absurd to sacrifice the efficiency of the Army to its
regimental home life, and that one of the strongest objections to
the Purchase system was that it rendered the Army amateurish rather
than professional. But in the long controversy that raged through
the Session no argument told more effectively than Mr. Trevelyan’s
citation of Havelock’s bitter complaint that “he was sick for years
in waiting for promotion, that three sots and two fools had purchased
over him, and that if he had not had a family to support he would not
have served another hour.” Mr. Cardwell, too, left nothing to be said
when he told the House of Commons that Army reformers were paralysed
by Purchase. Every proposal for change was met by the argument that
it affected the position of officers who had paid for that position.
In fact, the British Army was literally held in pawn by its officers,
and the nation had virtually no control over it whilst it was in that
ignominious position. The debate, which seemed interminable, ended in
an anti-climax that astonished the Tory Opposition. Mr. Disraeli threw
over the advocates of Purchase, evidently dreading an appeal to the
country, which might have resulted in a refusal to compensate officers
for the over-regulation prices they had paid for their commissions
in defiance of the statute. The Army Regulation Bill thus passed the
Second Reading without a division. In Committee the Opposition resorted
to obstructive tactics, and attempted to talk out the Bill by moving
a series of dilatory and frivolous amendments. The clique of “the
Colonels,” as they were called, in fact anticipated the Parnellites of
a later date in inventing and developing

[Illustration: INVERARY CASTLE.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._)]

this form of factious and illegitimate opposition. Mr. Cardwell
so far succumbed that after weary weeks of strife he withdrew his
reorganisation scheme, merely insisting on the Purchase clauses,
and on the transference of control over the auxiliary forces from
Lords-Lieutenant of Counties to the Queen. But the Opposition still
threatened to obstruct the Bill, and it was not till Mr. Cardwell
warned them that he could stop the payment of over-regulation money
for commissions by enforcing the law, that the measure was allowed to
pass. In the House of Lords the Bill was again obstructed, in spite
of Lord Northbrook’s able argument that until Purchase was abolished
the Government could not develop their scheme of Army reorganisation,
which was to introduce into England the Prussian system without
compulsory service. The Tory Peers did not actually venture to vote in
favour of Purchase. But they passed a resolution declining to accept
the responsibility of assenting to its abolition without further
information. Mr. Gladstone met them with a bold stroke. By statute
it was enacted that only such terms of Purchase could exist as her
Majesty chose to permit by Royal Warrant. The Queen therefore, acting
on Mr. Gladstone’s advice, cancelled her warrant permitting Purchase,
and thus the opposition of the Peers was crushed by what Mr. Disraeli
indignantly termed “the high-handed though not illegal” exercise of
the Royal Prerogative.[5] The rage of the Tory Peers knew no bounds.
And yet what could Mr. Gladstone have done? The Ministry might have
resigned, but in that case the Tory Party, as mere advocates of
Purchase, could not have commanded a majority of the House of Commons.
New Peers might have been created, but to this obsolete and perilous
method of coercing the Lords the Queen had a natural and justifiable
antipathy. Parliament might have been dissolved, but then the appeal
to the country would probably have raised the question whether it was
desirable to continue the existence of an unreformed House of Lords
side by side with a reformed House of Commons.[6] The only other course
was to bow to the decision of the Peers, admitting that they must be
permitted to quash a reform, which was passionately desired by the
nation, and that they must be allowed to coerce the House of Commons,
as in the days when they nominated a majority of its members. To have
adopted either of these courses would have been fatal to the authority,
perhaps even to the existence, of the Upper House. Thus the excuse
of the Royal Prerogative, which removed the subject of contention
between the two Houses, was really the means of saving the Lords from a
disastrous conflict with the People. The Peers, however, carried a vote
of censure on the Government, who ignored it, and then their Lordships
passed the Army Regulation Bill without any alteration, nay even
without dividing against the clauses transferring the patronage of the
Militia from Lords-Lieutenant of Counties to the Crown.

The Session of 1871 was also made memorable by the struggle over
the Ballot Bill, in the course of which nearly all the devices of
factious obstruction were exhausted. The Ballot had become since 1832
the shibboleth of Radicalism.[7] Resistance to it had been accepted
as the first duty of a Conservative. The arguments for the Ballot
were (1), that by allowing men to vote in secret they were free from
intimidation, and (2), that when votes were given in secret men were
not likely to buy them, for they had no longer any means of knowing
whether value was ever given for their money. On the other hand, the
Tories argued (1), that to vote in secret was cowardly and unmanly;
(2), that it was unconstitutional; and (3), that it weakened the sense
of responsibility in the voter who had no longer the pressure of public
opinion on him.[8] But though these arguments were elaborated at
enormous length, they were felt by the average elector to be wiredrawn
and academic. To him the practical object of any system of election
was to get the voter to give effect to his own real opinion, and not
the opinion of somebody else, in choosing a member. There could be
nothing constitutional, or moral, or distinctively “English,” in a
man who desired to be represented by A voting for B, either because
his landlord or his employer or some of his neighbours intimidated or
bribed him into doing so. Nor could his sense of duty be strengthened
under a system which enabled him to cast the responsibility for a false
vote on those who had coerced or bribed him into giving it. No doubt
the prospect of getting rid of violent scenes and of the demonstrations
of turbulent mobs round the polling-booths where men voted in public,
induced many independent politicians, who were not insensible to the
weight of some of the Conservative arguments, to accept the Ballot.
Strictly speaking, when the question was lifted out of the mire of
mere party controversy it came to this--whether Englishmen, in giving
their votes, preferred the protection of secrecy, to the protection
of a strong law punishing those who attempted to interfere with their
independence. To set the law in motion against a rich man in England
is a costly, and sometimes a dangerous, process. Hence the majority of
Englishmen preferred the protection of secrecy.

Mr. Forster’s Ballot Bill was introduced on the 28th of February,
and when the Second Reading had been passed after three nights’ dull
debate in June, the Conservatives attempted to talk it out by reviving,
on various frivolous pretexts, a discussion on the principle of the
Bill in Committee.[9] After these tactics had been exhausted, the
Opposition endeavoured to smother the Bill with dilatory amendments.
The supporters of the Government, on the other hand, attempted to
defeat the factious obstruction of their opponents by remaining silent
during the debates. The obstructive party, after a long and tedious
fight, were beaten, and the Bill passed through Committee, but shorn
of the clauses which cast election expenses on the rates, and made
all election expenses not included in the public returns, corrupt
expenses.[10] When the Bill reached the House of Lords, the real
motive which dictated the apparently futile and stupid obstruction
of the Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons, was quickly
revealed. The Lords rejected the Bill on the 18th of August, not merely
because they disliked and dreaded it, but because it had come to them
too late for proper consideration.[11]

[Illustration: MR. W. E. FORSTER.

(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]

Ministers were more successful with some other measures. In spite of
much Conservative opposition they passed a Bill abolishing religious
tests in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and throwing open
all academic distinctions and privileges except Divinity Degrees and
Clerical Fellowships to students of all creeds and faiths. Mr. Bruce
passed a Trades Union Bill, which gave all registered Unions the legal
_status_ and legal protection of ordinary corporations.[12] The vague
language of the old Act touching intimidation was swept away, and
only such forms of coercion as were not only in themselves obviously
brutal, but could also be clearly defined, were made punishable. A
decision of the law courts, however, deprived the Unions of many of the
benefits they had expected to gain under the Act.[13] Mr. Bruce’s Bill,
regulating the licensing of public-houses, another large measure, was
abandoned, but not till it had converted all the Radical and Liberal
publicans and their _clientèle_ into stern and uncompromising Tories.
Mr. Goschen’s scheme for reforming Local Government and Taxation was
far-reaching and comprehensive, but it alarmed the landlords, for it
divided rates between owners and occupiers, and levied rates on game
rents.[14]

But by far the most damaging failure of the Session was Mr. Lowe’s
Budget. It was known that the large outlay on the Army, due to the
abolition of Purchase and other causes, would leave a deficit of
about £2,000,000 to be met by Mr. Lowe in the coming year’s accounts.
How was he going to meet it? An elastic revenue and rigid economy in
expenditure had left Mr. Lowe with a surplus of £396,681. But he had
on the next year’s account an estimated deficit of £2,713,000,[15]
which he proposed to meet by a tax on matches--“not on matrimonial
engagements,” as he remarked,--by a readjustment of the Probate and
Succession Duties, and by an increase of about one penny farthing in
the £ of income-tax.[16] The Radicals attacked the Budget furiously,
and Mr. Disraeli formed with them what Mr. Gladstone termed an
“unprincipled coalition.” But the Tories and the Radicals objected
to the Budget on entirely different grounds. Mr. White, member for
Brighton, quoting Mr. Bright’s declaration that a Government which
could not rule the country with £70,000,000 of revenue did not deserve
public confidence, complained of the increase in the Army Estimates,
and warned the House that if such enormous sums were spent on the
protection of property, the people would elect a Parliament pledged
to tax property to pay them. Mr. Disraeli, correctly gauging popular
feeling, objected to the match tax, the proposal of which enraged the
poor match-makers of the East End of London. He gave just expression
to the feeling not only of his own Party, but of almost all the rich
men on the Liberal benches, when he denounced any increase in the
Succession Duties. The Government only escaped defeat by hinting
that they would abandon the Match Tax. After some fencing, the whole
Budget was reconstructed, the Succession Duties being also given up,
and the additional supplies needed by the Government being met by a
twopenny income-tax.[17] There could be no better illustration of the
strength and weakness of the Gladstone Government than this Budget.
Theoretically and logically, it was quite defensible. Purchase in the
Army had existed for the convenience and advantage of the wealthy
classes. It was, therefore, fair to increase the Succession Duties
in order to pay the expense of abolishing it. The Match Tax again
satisfied the ideal of public financiers, who all yearned for the
discovery of an impost that should fall on an article which, though
used by the masses, was yet not food, or one of those “luxuries” like
tea, which can with difficulty be distinguished from necessaries.
Moreover, as Professor Stanley Jevons proved, the Match Tax would have
laid even on the very poor less than one-third of the burden which had
been imposed by the shilling duty on corn, that Mr. Lowe had repealed
in 1869.[18] Unfortunately, however, Mr. Lowe, in preparing his Budget,
ignored the prejudices and foibles of the people. He imagined that if
he could defend his proposals logically, they would be accepted with
gratitude and unanimity.

In Foreign Affairs, the Government did not improve their position in
1871, and yet they achieved one success, for which they failed to
obtain sufficient credit. In May, the Queen was gratified to learn that
a basis for settling the outstanding dispute between the United States
and Great Britain had been at last discovered. It had been her firm
conviction that this quarrel had caused England to lose her traditional
influence over the affairs of Europe. The first essential step towards
regaining that influence, in her opinion, was taken when it was agreed
to submit to a Joint Commission of eminent Englishmen and Americans
in Washington the points at issue between the two nations.[19] The
American Commissioners, when they met their English colleagues,
refused to consider claims for damages due to the Fenian raids in
Canada. Not ignoring the Confederate raids from Canada on Vermont,
the English Commissioners, on their side, did not press this point.
With great courage and frankness, the British Government, through
their Commissioners, expressed their sincere regret that Confederate
cruisers had escaped from British ports to prey on American commerce.
But they did not admit that they were to blame for such an untoward
occurrence, nor did they offer what Mr. Sumner had demanded, any
apology for recognising the Southern States as belligerents. American
claims against England, and English claims against America, “growing
out of” the Civil War, it was agreed should be alike referred to a
Commission of Arbitration,[20] and the English Commissioners admitting
that some just rule for determining international liability in such
cases should be laid down, accepted the principle that neutrals are to
be held responsible for negligence in allowing warships to be equipped
or built in their ports for use against a belligerent. The English
Commissioners next agreed to let this principle be applied to the
_Alabama_ Claims, and though they were blamed for allowing these claims
to be determined by an _ex post facto_ rule, it was difficult for them
to adopt any other course. The rule was one that was essential to the
protection of British commerce from American privateers in the event of
England being engaged in any Continental war. To adopt it as just and
right for claims that might accrue in the future, rendered it hardly
possible to reject it as unjust and wrong for outstanding claims that
had accrued in the past. As to the Fishery dispute, citizens of the
United States, it was agreed, were to have for ten years the right to
fish on the Canadian coast, and Canadians were to have a similar right
of fishing on the coasts of the United States down to the 39th parallel
of latitude. As the British Commissioners insisted that the balance of
advantage was here conceded to the United States, and that it therefore
ought to be paid for by them, that point was by mutual agreement
referred to another Commission for adjustment. The chronic controversy
as to the San Juan boundary was to be referred to the Emperor of
Germany. These arrangements as embodied in the Washington Treaty were
subjected to some carping criticism in England. Lord Russell moved,
in the House of Lords, that the Queen should be asked to refuse to
ratify the instrument, and Lord Salisbury taunted the Government with
sacrificing the position of England as a neutral power. But the tone of
the debate showed that in their hearts the Conservatives and the old
Whigs were thankful that the country had been so honourably extricated
from an embarrassing diplomatic conflict, and their attack on the
Treaty was like that made by Mr. Sumner and General Butler on the other
side of the Atlantic, merely a Party sortie.[21] In a few weeks it was
universally admitted that the object which the Government had in view
had been attained. As if by magic, the feeling of the United States
towards England changed from one of menacing exasperation, to one of
growing sympathy and friendliness. For the first time in the course of
eighty years the average American stump orator found he could not evoke
a round of applause, by hotly-spiced denunciations of England and
Englishmen.

[Illustration: BALMORAL CASTLE, FROM THE NORTH-WEST.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen._)]

But, speaking generally, the Foreign Policy of the Government
discredited it. In the struggle between France and Germany the Cabinet
preserved a cold

[Illustration:

General Faure. General Wimpffen. Von Moltke. Von Bismarck.

AFTER SEDAN: DISCUSSING THE CAPITULATION (_From the Picture by Georg
Bleibtreu._)]

neutrality, at a time when popular feeling would have supported it
in protesting against the cession of Alsace and Lorraine to the
conquering power. For this attitude, however, Lord Granville had a
plausible excuse. Though the nation was sulky because an effective
protest had not been made, it would not have tolerated any policy that
might have led the country into war. Moreover, the Army had yet to be
reorganised, and till that was done the voice of England was naturally
of little account in the affairs of Europe. At the same time the meek
and spiritless expression which Ministers habitually gave to their
neutrality, irritated a proud and sensitive democracy who were every
day taunted by Tory orators and writers with permitting themselves to
be governed by a cowardly Cabinet. It seems just to say, even when
one makes every allowance for the difficulties of their position,
that in their handling of the diplomacy of the Franco-German War, Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Granville missed a great opportunity. After the
collapse of France at Sedan had been followed by that long series of
German victories which ended in the capitulation of Paris, and the
Armistice Convention between M. Jules Favre and Count von Bismarck
(28th January, 1871), Englishmen were all agreed on one point. To
cede Alsace and Lorraine to Germany was, in their opinion, to create
a French Poland, or Venetia on the Rhine, whose chronic discontent
must permanently imperil the peace of the world. But when the English
Government in February attempted to dissuade Germany from exacting
terms that inevitably rendered revenge the first duty of every French
patriot, England found herself isolated. None of the Powers were
prepared to join her in reviewing the conditions of peace which Germany
might impose, and the German Chancellor never even deigned to answer
the English remonstrance. England, in fact, had moved in the matter too
late.

As far back as the 17th of October, 1870, Sir Andrew Buchanan told
Lord Granville that the Czar, in his private letters to King William
of Prussia, had expressed a hope that no French territory would be
annexed. On the 4th of November the Italian Minister informed Lord
Granville that whilst Italy admitted that French fortresses must
be surrendered to the Germans, yet she held that there should be
no cession of territory. Sir A. Paget, writing from Florence, also
conveyed to Lord Granville about the same time the views of Signor
Visconti to the effect that “the Italian Government had several times
expressed the opinion that a peace in which Germany would seek her
guarantees by the dismantling of fortresses, &c., would afford better
securities for its duration than one which would be likely to create
a new question of nationalities.” Here there was a basis for a joint
representation on the part of the European Powers--for Austria all
through had only been held back through fear of Russia--both to France
and Germany. France might have been warned that, in spite of M. Jules
Favre’s formula,[22] she, as the defeated aggressor, had no right to
object to her menacing strongholds being razed. Germany might have
been reminded that, in the interests not of France but of Europe, it
was her duty as a great and civilising Power not to demand a cession
of territory, the recovery of which must be to France an object of
ceaseless striving.

The Queen would gladly have used her personal influence with the German
Emperor in urging on the Court of Berlin the policy and justice of
this representation. Lord Granville’s subordinates had assured him
that France, despite M. Favre’s heroics, would agree to anything if
spared the surrender of territory. It is now known that even Bismarck
himself was not desirous of the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine
against the will of their inhabitants.[23] The German generals had,
however, claimed what they deemed a safe, military frontier, and though
Von Bismarck induced them not to insist on the cession of Belfort, he
could not repel their demand for Alsace, a third part of Lorraine, and
Metz and Strasburg. The German Crown Prince was, moreover, understood
to be opposed to any irritating and unnecessary annexation. Hence all
the chances were in favour of success, if Lord Granville, acting with
Russia and Italy, had approached Germany with a cordial and courteous
appeal, to reject the advice of her military party, and moderate their
demands in the interests of Europe.[24] But the golden opportunity of
strengthening Von Bismarck’s hands was lost. Lord Granville not only
refused to abandon his attitude of rigid neutrality, but he couched
his policy in phrases so ostentatiously deferential to Germany, that
they almost justified the half-contemptuous replies which Von Bismarck
at this time sent to all despatches from the English Foreign Office,
which he did not entirely ignore. In February, 1871, when Lord
Granville at last plucked up heart to remonstrate with Germany, her
victorious armies had made sacrifices that rendered his tardy protests
impertinent. Italy and Russia had sense enough to recognise this
fact. They therefore refused to join England when Lord Granville sent
his remonstrance to Von Bismarck, who tossed it into his diplomatic
waste-paper basket.[25]

It may be readily conceived, then, that, despite its public services,
its invincible majority, and the failure of the Tory leaders to put
before the country any policy of their own, signs of decay were already
visible in the Government. Mr. Bruce had converted every publican into
an enemy. The Dissenters had vowed vengeance against the Ministry,
because Mr. Forster had increased the grant to denominational schools.
The officers of the Army and the upper and upper-middle classes of
society had resolved to punish Mr. Gladstone because he had allowed
Mr. Cardwell to abolish Purchase. A few Radicals and many Whigs were
also alarmed, because it had been abolished by Royal Prerogative,
the use of which to coerce the Peers was resented by the aristocracy
as an insult. The abolition of Purchase was to have been followed
by an effective reorganisation of the Army. Hence the nation was
profoundly disappointed to find the question of Army organisation
made light of by Ministers during the recess. Mr. Cardwell’s project
for autumn manœuvres on a large scale on the Berkshire Downs had to
be abandoned, because his Control Department could not feed or supply
his troops. When he substituted for this scheme a sham campaign in the
neighbourhood of Aldershot, the Transport Service was found to be so
bad that the Artillery had to be drawn upon to supply it with horses,
carts, and drivers. The disaster to the _Agincourt_ and the wreck of
the _Megæra_, also gave colour to slanders against the Government which
had issued from the Admiralty from the day that Mr. Childers began to
reform its wasteful administration, and Mr. Goschen had continued his
work.[26]

The Duke of Somerset, after the failure of the Berkshire campaign, had
scoffed at the Government because they gave the nation “armies that
could not march and ships that could not swim,” and the epigram was
soon everywhere repeated. Mr. Gladstone’s appointment of Sir Robert
Collier, the Attorney-General, to a seat on the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council was denounced far and wide as a job perpetrated by a
tricky evasion of the law.[27] The Prime Minister’s management of the
House of Commons had also cost him many friends. As Mr. Disraeli once
said, it was like that of a

[Illustration: METZ.]

schoolmaster who was a little too fond of exhibiting the rod. Mr.
Ayrton and Mr. Lowe during the Session even enhanced their reputation
for irritating those who transacted business with them. But at every
turn Mr. Gladstone was embarrassed by his Parliamentary majority. It
had been elected to carry reforms which most of them individually
dreaded. Their desire was therefore to discover, not pretexts for
pushing the Ministry onward, but excuses which they could plausibly
justify to their constituents for holding Ministers back. As for the
working classes, they had imagined when Mr. Gladstone came to office
“something would be done for them.” But nothing except the Trades Union
Bill had been conceded to their demands, and even that measure was
defaced by irritating provisions, inserted to please their masters.
Mr. Disraeli’s strategy in these circumstances was artful, if not
altogether admirable. He gently fomented every rising discontent.
Without committing his Party to redress the wrongs of the discontented,
he left on the country the impression that under his administration
there would be less social friction than then existed, whilst there
could not be much less social reform.

Other circumstances tended to strengthen Conservative feeling in
England. Just as the triumph of democracy in the United States at
the end of the Civil War gave a great impetus to English Liberalism,
so did the march of events in France after the conclusion of peace
produce a reaction in England against democracy. The French elections
resulted in the return of the Assembly which met at Bordeaux on the
12th of February. Its majority consisted of Legitimists and Orleanists,
and, since the Convocation of the Estates General in 1789, no French
Parliament had ever met which contained so many men of high rank and
good estate. It had no special mandate, but it very sensibly took in
hand the task of making peace with Germany, and, having superseded
the Government of National Defence, it elected M. Thiers as Chief of
the Executive. He formed a Ministry which represented the best men of
all parties. The new Government were confronted at the outset with an
unexpected difficulty. The National Guard of Paris had been allowed
to retain their arms, and they not only broke into revolt, but seized
the capital and established in Paris the revolutionary Government of
the Commune, General Cluseret, a revolutionary “soldier of fortune,”
being appointed Minister of War. The idea of the revolt seems to have
been to convert the ten great cities of France into autonomous States
in federal alliance with the rest of the country, and the insurgents
began by giving Paris a separate Government, Executive, Army, and
Legislature. The Red Republicans imagined that by this device they
could emancipate the artisans from the control of the peasants,
who, under universal suffrage, were masters of France. The Commune
was founded by honest fanatics, but it let loose the suppressed
blackguardism of Paris, and before it was stamped out by the Army and
the Government of Versailles, terrible atrocities not unworthy of the
worst days of the “Terror” had been committed by the rabble whom it had
armed, and was powerless to restrain. In England the excesses of the
Commune were pointed to by Conservative writers and speakers as an apt
illustration of the natural and logical tendencies of Radicalism.

The Queen’s domestic life during 1871 was not much disturbed by the
petty demonstrations of Republican feeling which were in vogue at the
beginning of the year. They did not influence either the Ministry or
Parliament; and when, on the 13th of February, Mr. Gladstone proposed
the vote for the Princess Louise’s dowry in the House of Commons,
only three Members voted against it.[28] Mr. Disraeli, though he
supported the proposal, gently tickled the sympathies of its opponents
by suggesting that the system of voting Royal grants should be
changed. His idea was to maintain the Crown by an estate of its own,
ample enough to cover all its personal and family expenses, and that
Parliament should not be called on to grant money to the Queen save for
expenditure on public pageantry.

When it was announced that the Queen had fixed the 21st of March for
the Princess Louise’s marriage, the High Church Party were indignant
that the ceremony was to be performed in Lent. They argued that when
Royalty set an example contrary to the teachings of the Church,
the influence of the clergy was weakened over, what the _Guardian_
newspaper called, “the large area of society which lies between
the inner circle of the devout and the multitude of the unattached
outside the consecrated ground.” No heed, however, was paid to these
remonstrances, and the Royal wedding, when it took place at Windsor,
completely diverted popular attention from the Communist Reign of
Terror in Paris. The enthusiasm of the capital, it is true, was rather
qualified. The West End tradesmen were sulky because of the withdrawal
of the Queen from the gaieties of the London season; and the populace
was annoyed because the marriage did not take place in Westminster
Abbey or St. Paul’s. But the provinces were unusually lavish in their
demonstrations of sympathy with the Sovereign, and with the wedded
pair who had broken down the barrier of caste which had been so long
maintained between the Royal Family and the nation.[29]

The town of Windsor was _en fête_ for the occasion, the people crowding
the Castle Green, and the Eton boys occupying the Castle Hill. The
police and soldiery kept a passage open for the guests who came from
London by special train, and who were conveyed in Royal carriages
to St. George’s Chapel amid general cheering and joyous ringing of
bells. The Ministers of State, Foreign Princes and Ambassadors, and
other prominent persons, were gay in rich and glittering uniforms. Of
the bridal party, the first to arrive was the Duke of Argyll, with
his family. He wore the dress of a Highland chieftain, with philabeg,
sporran, claymore, and jewelled dirk. A plaid of Campbell tartan was
thrown across his shoulders, over which was also hung the Order of
the Thistle. He was accompanied by the Duchess of Argyll, who shone
in silver and white satin. The Lord Chancellor, in wig and gown, and
Lord Halifax, in Ministerial uniform of blue and gold, walked up the
central aisle and took their seats, along with members of the Cabinet
and the Privy Council, in the stalls to the left of the altar. Then
came the Princess Christian, in pink satin, trimmed with white lace,
and some Indian potentates, radiant in auriferous scarlet. Lord Lorne,
the bridegroom, next entered, arrayed in the uniform of the Argyllshire
Regiment of Volunteer Artillery, of which he was Colonel, looking
pale and nervous. He was supported by his groomsmen, Lord Percy and
Lord Ronald Leveson-Gower. The Princess Beatrice arrived evidently in
high spirits, and wearing a pink satin dress, her sunny hair flowing
freely down her back. The Princess of Wales, who received an almost
affectionate greeting, was the last of the Royal party to come. All the
members of the Royal Family were then present, with the exception of
Prince Alfred. As the procession advanced up the nave, the bride was
supported on the right by the Queen, and on the left by the Prince of
Wales and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The Princess, in her dress
of white satin and veil of Honiton lace, was voted one of the most
charming brides on whom the sun had shone. Eight bridesmaids followed,
all daughters of dukes and earls, clad in white satin, decorated with
red camellias. The Queen appeared in black satin, relieved by the
broad blue ribbon of the Garter, and by a fall of white lace, which
nearly reached to the ground. The service was read by the Bishop of
London, the Queen giving away her daughter.[30] After the ceremony, the
Queen took the bride in her arms, and kissed her heartily, while the
Marquis of Lorne knelt and kissed the Queen’s hand. The Royal wedding
breakfast was served in the magnificent oak-room of Windsor Castle,
the company including the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince Arthur,
the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince and Princess Teck, the
Duke of Saxe-Coburg, Prince and Princess Christian. Another breakfast
for the general company was served in the Waterloo Gallery. When the
newly-married pair left the Castle for Claremont, it was noticed that
the bride wore a charming travelling costume of Campbell tartan. As
they departed, their numerous relatives showered over them a quantity
of white satin slippers, and, following an ancient Highland usage, a
new broom was also thrown after them as they got into the carriage. The
Oriental custom of flinging rice after a wedded couple, introduced into
England by the family of Musurus Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador, had not
then become the _mode_ in the highest circles of Society.[31]

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS LOUISE. (_See p. 408._)

(_After the Picture by Sydney P. Hall._)]

[Illustration: OPENING OF THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL.]

On the 29th of March, in the presence of a brilliant and fashionable
crowd of upwards of 10,000 persons, the Queen opened the Royal Albert
Hall at Kensington. The Members of the Provisional Committee met the
Prince of Wales, their President, and, on the arrival of the Queen at
half-past twelve o’clock, the Heir Apparent read the address to her
Majesty, which could hardly be heard, because a provoking echo mimicked
the tones of his voice whilst he described the completion of the Hall.
The Queen having handed to the Prince a written answer, said, “I wish
to express my great admiration of this beautiful Hall, and my earnest
wishes for its complete success.” After a prayer from the Bishop of
London, the Prince exclaimed, “The Queen declares this Hall to be now
opened!” an announcement which was followed by a burst of cheering, the
National Anthem, and the discharge of the Park guns. Then a concert was
given, which included the performance of a cantata written expressly
for the occasion by Sir Michael Costa.

On the 21st of June the Queen again appeared in London to open the new
buildings of St. Thomas’s Hospital on the Albert Embankment, and her
neatly-worded reply to the address which was presented to her on that
occasion attracted considerable attention, because it was rumoured that
it had been carefully written out by herself. It ran as follows:--

“I thank you for your loyal Address. I congratulate you on the
completion of a work of so much importance to the suffering poor of
the Metropolis. The necessity for abandoning the ancient site of
your Hospital has been wisely turned to account by the erection of
more spacious and commodious buildings in this central situation,
and I rejoice that a position of appropriate beauty and dignity
has been found for them on the noble roadway which now follows the
course of this part of the Thames, of which they will henceforth
be among the most conspicuous ornaments. It gives me pleasure to
recognise in the plan of your buildings, so carefully adapted
to check the growth of disease, ample and satisfactory evidence
of your resolution to take advantage of the best suggestions of
Science for the alleviation of suffering, and the complete and
speedy cure of the sick and disabled. These great purposes are not
least effectually promoted by an adequate supply of careful and
well-trained nurses, and I do not forget that in this respect your
Hospital is especially fortunate through the connection with it of
the staff trained under the direction of the lady whose name will
always remain associated with the care of the wounded and the sick.
I thank you for the kind expressions you have used in regard to the
marriage of my dear daughter.”

Early in summer it was bruited about that an application would be made
to the House of Commons for a settlement on Prince Arthur. At first
it was whispered that he was to be created Duke of Ulster, and that
he was to live in Ireland, an eccentric tribute to the loyalty of the
Orangemen, who when the Irish Church was disestablished threatened
to “kick the Queen’s Crown into the Boyne.” The idea, however, was
abandoned, and the agitation against the Princess Louise’s dowry now
broke out anew, especially in Birmingham, in the form of a protest
against the usual portion being voted to the Prince on the attainment
of his majority. But Mr. Gladstone was not to be intimidated by the
Republicans. On the 27th of July he brought down to the House of
Commons a Royal Message requesting the customary allowance for a Prince
of the Blood to be voted.[32] A few days afterwards the Royal Message
was debated, Mr. Peter Taylor moving the rejection of the resolution
voting £15,000 a year to the Prince, and Mr. Dixon moving its reduction
from £15,000 to £10,000. Eleven members voted for Mr. Taylor, and Mr.
Dixon found fifty-one supporters. The grant was easily carried, Mr.
Gladstone basing his case on the implied contract made by Parliament to
support the Royal Family when the Crown Lands were taken over by the
State, and Mr. Disraeli arguing that the English workmen could easily
afford to pay for their Monarchy because they were the richest class
in the world. But Mr. Gladstone seemed a little nervous when Mr. Dixon
indicated that he was forced to demand a reduction of the vote by his
constituents, among whom Republicanism, he said, was spreading, because
they considered it cheap. The Prime Minister accordingly took occasion
to hint that it might be well to establish an arrangement which
would render similar applications to Parliament unnecessary, and Mr.
Disraeli, not to be outdone, made his bid for popularity by suggesting
that the Crown should be allowed to charge Crown Lands for the Queen’s
children, just as English nobles charged their estates with portions
for their younger sons. Perhaps some of the acerbity of the Radical or
Republican members was due to the meddlesomeness of the Home Secretary,
Mr. Bruce, who prohibited a public meeting in Trafalgar Square which
was fixed for the same evening on which the Royal Message was debated,
in order to protest against the grant.[33] The Prince took the title of
Duke of Connaught, and settled down to follow a useful career in the
Army.

In September the country was greatly grieved to learn that the Queen
had fallen seriously ill. Those who had been reproaching her for
retiring from active life now began to suspect what was the truth,
namely, that the Queen’s labours were not materially lessened by her
withdrawal from the exciting functions of each London season. Her
illness took the form of a sore throat, accompanied by glandular
swellings under the arm, and the sympathetic sentiment of London was
expressed by the _Times_, which mournfully regretted that the Sovereign
had ever been pressed to overwork herself.

Gradually the prostration which this illness had caused passed away;
but, unhappily, no sooner had her own health ceased to give the Queen
cause for anxiety, than that of her eldest son broke down. Nothing
could exceed the alarm of the country when it was announced on the
20th of November that the Heir to the Throne was smitten at Sandringham
with typhoid fever--the very malady which had cut off his father in
his prime. The disease, it was said, had probably been contracted
when the Prince was visiting Lord Londesborough at Scarborough, and
it was a significant coincidence, not only that Lord Chesterfield,
who was staying there at the same time, had been attacked by and had
quickly succumbed to the fever, but that six other guests of Lord
Londesborough’s had complained of being unwell. On the other hand,
it was pointed out that a groom at Sandringham, who had not quitted
the place, was smitten at the same time as the Prince, and that it
was therefore to bad sanitation at Sandringham that the mishap must
be traced. Day by day the nation read the reassuring bulletins with
growing anxiety,

[Illustration: THE PRINCE OF WALES’S ILLNESS: CROWD AT THE MANSION
HOUSE READING THE BULLETINS.]

relieved only by the knowledge, not only that the Queen herself
had taken her place at the sufferer’s sick bed, and that the ever
self-sacrificing Princess Louis of Hesse--a nurse of high technical
skill--had installed herself in charge of the sick room. The Princess
of Wales was herself suffering, doubtless from the same poison which
had attacked her husband. Day by day the bulletins were eagerly
scanned, not only in the newspapers, but by excited crowds at public
places like the Mansion House and Marlborough House, where they were
exhibited. After twenty-five days of suffering the Prince, who had
shown signs of recovery, had a relapse, and then the worst was feared.
The Prince it was thought must die, and the shock of the bereavement
might be fatal to the Queen, whose health was already sadly impaired.
Englishmen remembered for the first time that only two precarious
lives--one of which was flickering between life and death--stood
between the country and a Regency. But what might a Regency portend? It
had been fatal to the Monarchy in France; within the memory of living
men it had nearly proved fatal to the Monarchy in England. When it
was announced on the 9th of December that all the members of the Royal
Family had suddenly been summoned to Sandringham, securities in the
Money Market, with the exception of Consols, fell from one to

[Illustration: THANKSGIVING DAY: THE PROCESSION AT LUDGATE HILL. (_From
the Picture by N. Chevalier._)]

two per cent. Twice the physicians warned the Queen that the end was
at hand, but at last, on the 14th of December--strangely enough the
tenth anniversary of his father’s death--the Prince made a rally, and
the bulletins again became more hopeful. Prayers had been offered
up for his recovery in every church in the empire, and even the
Republican societies had sent addresses of sympathy to the Sovereign.
The heart of the people had gone forth to her and to the Princess of
Wales in sincere and unrestrained sympathy, and as the year closed
an official announcement was made which dispelled the gloom that had
settled on all classes. It stated that, though Sir James Paget had
not left Sandringham, the Prince was then (29th December) progressing
favourably. This was followed by a letter from the Queen to the Home
Secretary, in which she said:--“The Queen is very anxious to express
her deep sense of the touching sympathy of the whole nation on the
occasion of the alarming illness of her dear son the Prince of Wales.
The universal feeling shown by her people during these painful,
terrible days, and the sympathy evinced by them with herself and her
beloved daughter the Princess of Wales, as well as the general joy
at the improvement in the Prince of Wales’s state, have made a deep
and lasting impression on her heart which can never be effaced. It
was, indeed, nothing new to her, for the Queen had met with the same
sympathy when, just ten years ago, a similar illness removed from
her side the mainstay of her life--the best, wisest, and kindest of
husbands. The Queen wishes to express at the same time, on the part of
the Princess of Wales, her feelings of heartfelt gratitude, for she
has been as deeply touched as the Queen by the great and universal
manifestation of loyalty and sympathy. The Queen cannot conclude
without expressing her hope that her faithful subjects will continue
their prayers to God for the complete recovery of her dear son to
health and strength.”

CHAPTER XVII.

THE “ALABAMA” CLAIMS.

Thanksgiving Day--The Procession--Behaviour of the Crowd--Scene
in St. Paul’s--Decorations and Illuminations--Letter from Her
Majesty--Attack on the Queen--John Brown--The Queen’s Speech--The
_Alabama_ Claims--The “Consequential Damages”--Living in a Blaze
of Apology--Story of the “Indirect Claims”--The Arbitrators’
Award--Sir Alexander Cockburn’s Judgment--Passing of the Ballot
Act--The Scottish Education Act--The Licensing Bill--Public Health
Bill--Coal Mines Regulation Bill--The Army Bill--Admiralty
Reforms--Ministerial Defeat on Local Taxation--Starting of the
Home Government Association in Dublin--Assassination of Lord
Mayo--Stanley’s Discovery of Livingstone--Dr. Livingstone’s
Interview with the Queen--Her Majesty’s Gift to Mr. Stanley--Death
of Dr. Norman Macleod--The Japanese Embassy--The Burmese
Mission--Her Majesty at Holyrood Palace--Death of Her Half-Sister.

During the first weeks of 1872 the convalescence of the Heir Apparent
seemed to obscure all other topics of political interest. The
anti-monarchical agitation, which Sir Charles Dilke had fomented, not
only by his votes in Parliament, but by his speeches in the country,
suddenly subsided, showing that the sentiment of affectionate regard
which had linked the Crown and the nation together in the past, was not
to be destroyed by political factions who were trading on the temporary
and local estrangement of the Queen from her subjects in the capital.
Faction, indeed, was for the time silenced throughout the land, and the
Queen soon saw that it was the universal desire of the nation that the
recovery of the Prince, which had saved the country from much anxiety
as to its future under a Regency, should be celebrated by a solemn
public function. It was therefore announced in the middle of January
that the Queen would proceed in State to St. Paul’s Cathedral on as
early a day as could be fixed after the 20th of February, to return
thanks for the recovery of her son. Ultimately Tuesday, the 27th of
February, was fixed for the ceremony.

The day was clear and bright, though cold, and a wintry sun shone on
the splendid pageant, for which elaborate preparations had been made
many days before. The demand for tickets to view the spectacle was
unprecedented. Carriages were hired at fabulous prices, and writing on
the morning of the ceremony to his daughter-in-law, Lord Shaftesbury
tells her that when he had ordered a brougham on the previous day at
his job-master’s he was told “that every vehicle had been pre-engaged
for weeks. Thoroughfares like St. James’s Street were impassable,
because for two days before the event they were blocked by crowds who
had come to see the preparations.”[34] In fact, as Bishop Wilberforce
says in a passage in his Diary, London was “quite wild on Thanksgiving
Day.”[35] By general desire the day was celebrated as a national
holiday. As for the crowds in the streets along the line of _route_,
they were said to number from a million to a million and a quarter of
spectators, and the decorations far surpassed any similar display ever
seen in London. The procession started from Buckingham Palace at five
minutes past twelve o’clock, led by the carriages of the Speaker, the
Lord Chancellor, and the Duke of Cambridge, and was composed of nine
royal carriages, in the last of which the Queen was seen accompanied
by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Her Majesty seemed to be in good
health, and she looked supremely happy. The Prince was pale and rather
haggard, but his bright and happy nature shone through a countenance
radiant with gratitude, and he kept bowing all along the way to the
multitudes who cheered him. The hearty reciprocal feeling between the
Queen, the Prince, and the populace, which the shouts of such a vast
crowd expressed, rendered the scene a magnificent demonstration of
national loyalty to a popular Sovereign. At Temple Bar the Queen was
met by the Lord Mayor and municipal dignitaries of the City of London,
arrayed in their robes, and mounted on white horses. Having alighted,
the Lord Mayor delivered to and received back from the Queen the City
sword, according to the usual custom. But, contrary to precedent and to
general expectation, the gates of Temple Bar were not closed against
the Queen, so that it was unnecessary to present her with the

[Illustration: THANKSGIVING DAY: ST. PAUL’S ILLUMINATED.]

keys. The Lord Mayor and his colleagues having re-mounted their
steeds, preceded the Royal procession to St. Paul’s. Precisely at one
o’clock the Queen entered the Cathedral through the pavilion erected
upon the steps. Its approach was covered with crimson cloth, and it was
ornamented with the royal arms and with the escutcheon of the Prince of
Wales. On it there was the inscription “I was glad when they said unto
me, We will go into the house of the Lord.” Within the Cathedral the
scene was imposing and impressive, for all that was exalted in station,
high in official position, or eminent by reason of genius, talent, and
public services was represented in the congregation of 13,000 persons.
Representatives of the Court, the Princes of India, the Colonies, the
Houses of Parliament, the Episcopate, the Judges, the Lords-Lieutenant,
and the municipal authorities of the provincial towns, were especially
prominent. The Queen was received at the Cathedral by the Bishop of

[Illustration: THE THANKSGIVING SERVICE IN ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL.]

London and the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and by the officers of
her household, who were already waiting for her. With the Prince of
Wales on her right hand and the Princess of Wales on her left, the
Queen, leaning on the Prince’s arm, walked up the nave in a procession
which was marshalled by the Lancaster and Somerset Heralds. The special
service began at one o’clock with the _Te Deum_, which was arranged by
Mr. Goss for the occasion, and sung by a choir of two hundred and fifty
voices. The voice of the Archbishop of Canterbury was inaudible, but
the choral part of the ritual was listened to reverently. The words
of special thanksgiving were:--“O Father of Mercies and God of all
Comfort, we thank Thee that Thou hast heard the prayers of this nation
in the day of our trial. We praise and magnify Thy glorious name for
that Thou hast raised Thy servant, Albert Edward Prince of Wales, from
the bed of sickness. Thou castest down and Thou liftest up, and health
and strength are Thy gifts; we pray Thee to perfect the recovery of Thy
servant, and to crown him day by day with more abundant blessings, both
for body and soul, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” Here there
was a long pause, during which the dead silence of that vast hushed
congregation was described by those present as being almost painful to
the ear. Archbishop Tait having pronounced the benediction delivered
a sermon which was striking for its brevity and its simple unadorned
eloquence. He took for his text the words “Every one members one of
another,” and illustrated in a few apt sentences the Divine origin of
family life and of the State and of the Church, which, he said, was but
the family and the State in relation to God. The illness of the Prince
had given a fresh meaning to this conception. Hence “such a day,”
observed the Archbishop in his concluding sentence, “makes us feel
truly that we are all members one of another.” The religious ceremony
ended at two o’clock, and the Royal procession returned to Buckingham
Palace amid thunders of artillery from the guns of the Tower and the
Park.

With one exception the decorations were successful. That
exception--which was noted as curious at the time by the Queen--was
at Ludgate Circus, where the triumphal arch, which ought to have been
one of the grandest in the metropolis was, by reason of backward
preparation, almost a failure. It was not till the procession was
nearly within sight that the scaffoldings were taken down, and the
scene of confusion as the distracted workmen removed the poles,
delighted the mob amazingly.[36] Unfortunately in the hurry, so much
damage was done to the gorgeous gold mouldings of the arch, that it
presented the appearance of an ancient but freshly gilded ruin. As for
the illuminations at night, they were not general--probably because
many people did not regard a religious thanksgiving day as a fit
occasion for illuminating. The centres of attraction were the dome and
west front of St. Paul’s, the dome being picked out by a treble row
of coloured ship’s lanterns. The cathedral itself stood out in lurid
splendour when transient shafts of lime-light, and the fitful glow
of the red light on the gilded ball fell on the building. Two days
after the ceremony the following letter was published in the _London
Gazette_:--

“Buckingham Palace, February 29, 1872.

“The Queen is anxious, as on a previous occasion, to express publicly
her _own_ personal _very deep_ sense of the reception she and her dear
children met with on Tuesday, February 27th, from millions of her
subjects, on her way to and from St. Paul’s.

“Words are too weak for the Queen to say how very deeply touched
and gratified she has been by the immense enthusiasm and affection
exhibited towards her dear son and herself, from the highest down to
the lowest, on the long progress through the Capital, and she would
earnestly wish to convey her warmest and most heartfelt thanks to the
whole nation for this great demonstration of loyalty.

“The Queen, as well as her son and her dear daughter-in-law, felt that
the whole nation joined with them in thanking God for sparing the
beloved Prince of Wales’s life.

“The remembrance of this day and of the remarkable order maintained
throughout, will for ever be affectionately remembered by the Queen and
her family.”

On the very day on which this letter was dated a strange attack was
made on the Queen. When she returned from her afternoon drive in the
Park, she passed along by Buckingham Palace wall, and drove to the gate
at which she usually alighted. The carriage had hardly halted when a
lad rushed to its left side, and bending forward presented a pistol
at the Queen, while he flourished a petition in his hand. He then
rushed round the carriage and threw himself into a similar attitude
on the other side. The Queen remained calm and unmoved, and the boy’s
pistol was taken from him, when it was discovered that it was unloaded.
The petition was a poor scrawl, demanding the release of the Fenian
prisoners, and the lad gave the name of Arthur O’Connor, and stated his
age to be seventeen.[37]

When Parliament assembled in 1872 Mr. Gladstone found himself
confronted by an Opposition which had been rendered almost insolently
aggressive by their triumphs at the bye-elections. He found himself
supported by a majority, each section of which had its special
grievance against him. And if he looked beyond Parliament for support
he might have seen that a subtle popular suspicion was growing up round
his name which was fast neutralising the magic of his personality.
It was said, alike by friends and foes, that an overweening love for
personal power, and a passion for exercising personal authority over
others, had become the guiding motives of his life, and the inspiring
ideas of his policy. Had this been true, it is hardly likely that the
Prime Minister would have identified himself with legislation which
had set the vested interests, and the fanatical sectaries up in arms
against him. But the important point was that, whether true or false,
the calumny was believed, and the Queen, like many other careful
observers, saw the Ministry growing weaker and weaker every day, whilst
Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues were themselves under the delusion
that every day increased their popularity. And yet, as if to justify
the maxim that in politics it is the unexpected that happens, the year
was not fruitful in crises or in sensational scenes. Mr. Disraeli
held his followers in check, and the Session was a business-like one,
which, when it ended, left the Government stronger than could have been
anticipated.

The Parliamentary year was opened on the 6th of February, the Queen’s
Speech being read by Commission. It promised a Ballot Bill, and Bills
for organising Education in Scotland, for regulating Mines, and for
improving the Licensing System. The passage in the Speech to which,
however, all eyes turned was the one dealing with the _Alabama_ Claims.
On this subject the country had suddenly become profoundly agitated,
and from an observation in Bishop Wilberforce’s Diary we gather that
the Queen, shared the popular feeling of the hour.[38] After the nation
had congratulated itself on discovering a diplomatic solution of its
difficulties with the American Republic, it was amazed to find that the
Americans were endeavouring to seize by chicane what they had failed
to gain by diplomacy. When they forwarded the case which they meant
to submit to Arbitration, it was discovered that they had included in
it not only a claim for the actual damage done to American commerce
by the Confederate cruisers, but also the claims for the indirect or
“consequential damages” which Mr. Sumner had put forward, and which
the British Commissioners understood were abandoned. The sum asked
under this head would have covered half the cost of the whole Civil
War. It was therefore the clear opinion of the Queen that England could
not consent to go into Arbitration till this preposterous demand was
withdrawn. Lord Granville, on the other hand, though he inclined to
this opinion, was slow to reply to a demand which he was in honour
bound to promptly repel. He was chiefly concerned about saving the
Washington Treaty, and he therefore sent to the American Government a
mild letter requesting the withdrawal of the “indirect claims” in terms
so deferentially conciliatory, that had he been dealing with a less
pacific Power his despatch would probably have been answered with the
cynical

[Illustration: GENEVA.]

_brusquerie_ that marked Von Bismarck’s dealings with him. But the
country was not as meek as the Minister. There was an outburst of
popular anger against the Americans for the “sharp practice” which
sullied their statement of claim, and Mr. Gladstone soon saw that to
go into Arbitration before the demand for “consequential damages” was
withdrawn would lead to his expulsion from office. His declarations in
Parliament on the subject thenceforth showed that he meant to repudiate
the American interpretation of the Treaty under which the “indirect
claims” had been dragged into the American case, and he spoke with the
high spirit of a statesman rejecting a humiliating demand for tribute
greater than conquest itself could extort. The Opposition in both
Houses, on the whole, gave the Government generous support in this
emergency, though Mr. Disraeli--referring to the torrent of Ministerial
oratory which had deluged the recess--could not refrain in his comment
on the Queen’s Speech from deriding the Cabinet for having lately lived
“in a blaze of apology.”

The story of the controversy on the “indirect claims” may here be told.
The United States, in extremely conciliatory despatches, insisted on
including these claims in their case. They argued that it was for the
arbitrators at Geneva to say whether they were or were not admissible
under the Treaty. They rested their contention on an ambiguous phrase
which Lord Ripon and Sir Stafford Northcote had unfortunately permitted
to pass unconnected into the Treaty. The first Article of that
instrument described its object to be that of removing and adjusting
“all complaints and claims,” &c., “_growing out_ of acts committed by
the said vessels, and _generically known as the ‘Alabama’ Claims_.”
This certainly gave the Americans a plausible excuse for demanding
“consequential” as well as direct damages. On the other side, the
English Government argued that all the concessions made by the British
Commissioners at Washington were made on the understanding that the
“indirect claims” were not included in the Treaty; that in all their
correspondence with the Washington Department of State no claims save
direct claims were ever “generically” known as the _Alabama Claims_;
and, lastly, that their interpretation was publicly expressed and well
known to the United States Government, people, and Minister at the
Court of St. James’s, and was never objected to by either of them. It
would, however, have been easy to put the point beyond dispute when
the Treaty was drawn up by specifically barring all indirect claims.
When Lord Ripon and Sir Stafford. Northcote failed to do that they were
guilty of negligence which, if brought home to the diplomatists of
either Russia or Germany, would have procured for them, not rewards and
honours, but punishment and degradation. Fortunately the dispute ended
happily. Lord Granville for once acted with the firmness becoming the
representative of a great nation. When the arbitrators met at Geneva,
the representatives of England persistently refused to take part in the
proceedings till the “indirect claims” were withdrawn. The arbitrators
then adroitly extricated the agents of the Washington Government from
a false position. They met and declared that, without reference to
the scope of the Treaty or to the merits of the dispute as to its
interpretation, which England refused to discuss before them, they
were agreed that “indirect claims” could never, on general principles
of international law, be a tenable ground for an award of damages in
international disputes.

The Americans then withdrew the obnoxious part of their “case,” and
the arbitrators awarded to the United States £3,229,000 damages
against England for the depredations committed by three out of the ten
Confederate cruisers which, it was alleged, the British Government had
negligently permitted to escape from British ports. The American claim
for naval expenses incurred in chasing these cruisers was, however,
rejected, because the arbitrators held that it could not be practically
distinguished from the general cost of the war. The Lord Chief Justice
of England--one of the members of the Tribunal--concurred in the
judgment as regards the _Alabama_. He differed from all his colleagues
in regard to the _Florida_, and he and the Brazilian arbitrator
differed from the majority as to the case of the _Shenandoah_.[39] The
failure of the English Government to seize the _Florida_ and _Alabama_,
when they put into British ports after they had made their escape, was
evidently the fact which bore most strongly against England in the
opinion of the Geneva Tribunal. The American claims for damages in
respect of the _Georgia_, _Chickamauga_, _Nashville_, _Retribution_,
_Sumter_, and _Tallahassee_, were rejected. On the whole, public
opinion on both sides of the Atlantic, though not quite satisfied with
the verdict, allowed that there had been a fair fight and a fair trial.
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn’s dissenting judgment, however, expressed
the feeling of the English people, which was this. “Let us admit,” they
said, “the _ex post facto_ rule making neutrals liable for damages
if they do not exercise ‘due diligence’--the ‘dueness of diligence’
to be always proportionate to the mischief the vessels might do--in
preventing the escape of cruisers, and in re-capturing them when they
get the chance. English officials were, however, not aware that, when
these cruisers escaped and when on re-entering British ports they were
not detained, international law demanded from them more ‘dueness’ of
diligence than they had exercised or been taught to exercise. Hence it
surely was wrong to give damages for their unconscious negligence, just
as if their negligence had been conscious.” This argument, indeed, Sir
Alexander Cockburn pressed to the point of cutting down to zero the
claim for damages in respect of the _Shenandoah_ and _Florida_.

One of the most important Government measures of the year was the
Ballot Act. But the opposition to it was marked by no novelty of
argument, and it need only be said about it here that it was passed,
the Lords not venturing to reject it a second time.[40] The Scottish
Education Bill, which also passed, established a School Board system
of public instruction all over Scotland far in advance of that
which England had been able to obtain. A Licensing Bill of a mildly
regulative character was carried, the publicans grudgingly accepting it
as a compromise, while the Temperance Party attacked it as miserably
ineffective.[41] Mr. Stansfeld’s Public Health Bill, defining the
authority which must in future be responsible for local sanitation, and
embodying the principle that rates should be divided between the State
and the locality was so adroitly managed by Mr. Stansfeld, that at last
Mr. Disraeli supported the Government in carrying it. Another useful
measure regulating the working of Coal Mines was carried in spite
of many protests against interfering with private contracts between
masters and servants, and many attempts on the part of the vested
interests who were supported by the bulk of the Tory Party, to render
the Bill inoperative. Among other things it prohibited the employment
of women underground, and it made mine-owners responsible for the
results of preventible mining accidents.

Mr. Cardwell’s Army Bill was received with unlocked for favour. It
attempted to adapt the territorial system of Prussia to the exigencies
of military service in England. The nine existing military divisions
were subdivided into sixty-six military districts. In each of these
a small army or brigade was formed, consisting of two battalions of
Regulars, to which were linked the local Militia and Volunteers. One
of the regular battalions was to be told off for foreign service, and
its “waste” supplied by drafts from the territorial _depôt_. The main
objection to the scheme urged by Conservative officers was that it
destroyed the family life of the old regiments--that it even destroyed
their identity by substituting local titles for the numbers which their
prowess in war had in many cases made historic. According to this
scheme the country would have an Army of 446,000 men, of whom 146,000
were available for service abroad. The evidence given before the
Commission which reported on the wreck of the _Megæra_, concentrated
attention on Admiralty Reform. On the whole, the country gave Mr.
Childers credit for having brought order into that chaotic department.
Before he came to power the various branches of the Admiralty had
little or no connection with each other, and when a blunder was made
by conflicting authority or contradictory orders, nobody could be
made responsible. Mr. Childers set responsible officers at the head
of each department, and made excellent arrangements for their mutual
co-operation. But the weak point of his scheme was that he as First
Lord was the real _nexus_ which bound the whole organisation together.
The system accordingly broke down when his health gave way, for Mr.
Lushington, who was in a sense the Grand Vizier of the First Lord,
was a civilian comparatively new to the department, and unable to act
as an efficient substitute for Mr. Childers.[42] Mr. Goschen met the
difficulty, not by appointing a naval expert as his second in command,
but by casting responsibility for all orders on three officials--a
Naval Secretary who was to be responsible for orders concerning the
_personnel_, a Controller who was to be responsible for those relating
to the _matériel_, and a Permanent Secretary who was to be responsible
for those affecting finance and civil business. To secure unity of work
the Board of Admiralty was to meet daily for consultation, and in the
First Lord’s absence the supreme authority was to pass to the First
Naval Lord of the Admiralty.

[Illustration: DR. NORMAN MACLEOD.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

In spite of a serious defeat on Sir Massey Lopes’ motion on the
question of Local Taxation,[43] a narrow escape from defeat on
the Collier scandal, and a clever mocking attack by Mr. Disraeli
at Manchester in the spring on their sensational policy and their
ambiguous utterances on the proposals of their extreme supporters,
the Ministers were stronger in Parliament when the Session ended
than when it began. Mr. Lowe’s Budget further helped the credit of
the Government, for such was the elasticity of the revenue that
it foreshadowed a surplus of £3,000,000, and enabled him to remit
the twopenny Income Tax which he had imposed in 1871.[44] Ireland,
however, was as usual a source of anxiety to the Cabinet. The Tories
and Orangemen, indignant at the Disestablishment of the Church, had
coalesced with the more moderate Repealers, and set on foot the Home
Government Association,[45] from which the Home Rule Party under the
leadership of Mr. Isaac Butt sprang. Whenever the Ballot Act was
passed, Home Rule candidates began to carry the Irish bye-elections
against the Ministerialists--in fact, it was apparent to shrewd
observers that the destruction of the Liberal Party in Ireland was
now only a matter of time. Earl Russell was probably of this opinion
when, in August, he startled the town by publishing a letter in the
_Times_ virtually conceding the principle of Home Rule in order to
lighten the burden of Imperial legislation with which Parliament was
overweighted.[46]

As for the Opposition, their councils were divided. Lord Salisbury
was averse from promising any programme. Mr. Disraeli seemed afraid
to suggest one that went beyond sanitary reform. Yet the Tories had
completely broken the absolute power of Mr. Gladstone in the country,
and were still, as the Municipal Elections in November showed, a
growing party. The causes which contributed to a reaction in their
favour in 1871 were still at work. Mr. Gladstone’s opposition to Sir
Massey Lopes’ motion on rating, and the sudden appearance of Trades
Unionism among the agricultural labourers gave Conservatism hosts of
fresh recruits, for the squires and the farmers naturally rallied to
the Party whose leaders stood forth as champions of the threatened
interests.

The attempt of O’Connor on the Queen’s life was not the only crime of
the kind that darkened the year. On the 8th of February Lord Mayo,
the Viceroy of India, was stabbed to death by a Mahommedan convict at
Port Blair, the port of the penal settlement on the Andaman Islands,
to which Lord Mayo was paying a visit of inspection. The assassin was
a sullen, brooding fanatic who had been transported for killing a
relative with whom he had a “blood feud.” The Queen was as much shocked
as the country by the event, for by this time it was universally
recognised that Lord Mayo was one of the most competent Viceroys who
had ever ruled India. His intuitive insight into difficulties, his
shrewd perception of character, his frank resoluteness of action,
his clearness and decision of purpose, and his dignified and stately
bearing rendered Lord Mayo an ideal viceroy. His great work consisted
in cementing an alliance with the Afghan Ameer, in imposing an
income-tax to rehabilitate the finances of India, and suppressing a
rebellious movement among the Wahabee fanatics.

Early in May telegrams were received in London announcing that Dr.
Livingstone, the African explorer, as to whose safety much anxiety had
been felt, had been discovered by Mr. Stanley, a special correspondent
on the staff of the _New York Herald_, who had been despatched by
Mr. J. Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of that journal, to look for
the missing traveller. The Queen received these tidings with the
deepest gratification, not unmingled with regret that the honour of
the discovery should pass to an American expedition. Her interest
in Livingstone, and in his last efforts to discover the sources of
the Nile, was well known--indeed, when in England the explorer had a
private interview with her Majesty, of which an account is given in Mr.
Blaikie’s “Personal Life of Dr. Livingstone.” “She [the Queen] sent
for Livingstone,” writes Mr. Blaikie, “who attended her Majesty at the
Palace without ceremony, in his black coat and blue trousers and his
cap surrounded with a stripe of gold lace. This was his usual attire,
and the cap had now become the appropriate distinction of one of her
Majesty’s Consuls--an official position to which the traveller attaches
great importance as giving him consequence in the eyes of natives and
authority over the members of the expedition. The Queen conversed
with him affably for half-an-hour on the subject of his travels. Dr.
Livingstone told her Majesty that he would now be able to say to the
natives that he had seen his chief, his not having done so before
having been a constant subject of surprise to the children of the
African wilderness. He mentioned to her Majesty also that the people
were in the habit of inquiring whether his chief were wealthy, and when
he answered them that she was very wealthy they would ask how many cows
she had got, a question at which the Queen laughed very heartily.” Mr.
Stanley had found Livingstone at Ujiji near Lake Tanganyika, and on
his way back to Zanzibar he met the English Expedition, which had been
despatched by the Royal Geographical Society, carrying succour to the
explorer. As Livingstone’s orders were to refuse this tardy aid, the
chiefs of the British Expedition had to return. Some people were at
first sceptical as to the story told by Mr. Stanley, but doubts were
set at rest on the 27th of August, when Lord Granville sent to Mr.
Stanley a gold snuff-box set with diamonds as a gift from the Queen.
Accompanying the present was the following letter:--

“I have great satisfaction in conveying to you, by command of
the Queen, her Majesty’s high appreciation of the prudence and
zeal which you have displayed in opening a communication with Dr.
Livingstone, and relieving her Majesty from the anxiety which, in
common with her subjects, she had felt in regard to the fate of
that distinguished traveller. The Queen desires me to express her
thanks for the service you have thus rendered, together with her
Majesty’s congratulations on your having so successfully carried
out the mission which you so fearlessly undertook. Her Majesty
also desires me to request your acceptance of the memorial which
accompanies this letter.”

[Illustration: THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE BURMESE EMBASSY.]

In June the Queen had to mourn the loss of a highly trusted old family
friend, Dr. Norman Macleod of Glasgow. He had been long ailing, and
when at Balmoral, in May, the Queen at her last interview with him was
so struck with his physical weakness that she insisted on his being
seated whilst he was in her presence. Macleod’s influence as a courtier
was built up partly on his ability as an eloquent pulpit orator, and
his tact as a kindly, genial, shrewd, tolerant man of the world. He had
genuine goodness of heart, and he had not only the supple diplomatic
skill of the Celt, but the Celt’s inborn and honest love and reverence
for rank and dignities. It was quite a mistake to suppose that his
“flunkeyism” made him a _persona grata_ at Court. On the contrary,
he was in the unique position of being a Royal Chaplain on whom the
Queen could not confer any favour or dignity. She could not give him a
richer living in the Church than the one he had obtained without her
patronage, and as a Presbyterian clergyman he could never be suspected
of intriguing for hierarchical rank when he approached the Sovereign.
His disinterestedness, too, was well known, for it was to Macleod’s
credit that during his long connection with the Court, though he was
frequently entrusted with missions concerning matters of delicate
family business, he never even asked for a favour either for himself or
any of his relatives. When the vague rumour of his death reached the
Queen she addressed the following letter to Dr. Macleod’s brother:--

“BALMORAL, _June 17, 1872_.

“The Queen hardly knows how to begin a letter to Mr. Donald Macleod,
so deep and strong are her feelings on this most sad and most painful
occasion, for words are all too weak to say what she feels, and what
all must feel who ever knew his beloved, excellent, and highly-gifted
brother, Dr. Norman Macleod.

“First of all to his family--his venerable, loved, and honoured mother,
his wife and large family of children--the loss of the good man is
irreparable and overwhelming! But it is an irreparable public loss, and
the Queen feels this deeply. To herself, personally, the loss of dear
Dr. Macleod is a very great one; he was so kind, and on all occasions
showed her such warm sympathy, and in the early days of her great
sorrow gave the Queen so much comfort whenever she saw him, that she
always looked forward eagerly to those occasions when she saw him here;
and she cannot realise the idea that in this world she is never to see
his kind face and listen to those admirable discourses which did every
one good, and to his charming conversation again.

“The Queen is gratified that she was able to see him this last time,
and to have had some lengthened conversation with him, when he dwelt
much on that future world to which he now belongs. He was sadly
depressed and suffering, but still so near a termination of his career
of intense usefulness and loving-kindness never struck her or any of us
as likely, and the Queen was terribly shocked on learning the sad news.
All her children, present and absent, deeply mourn his loss. The Queen
would be very grateful for all the details which Mr. D. Macleod can
give her of the last moments and illness of her dear friend.

“Pray say everything kind and sympathising to their venerable mother,
to Mrs. N. Macleod and all the family, and she asks him to accept
himself of her true heartfelt sympathy.”

The letter--one of the most remarkable ever written by a sovereign
to and of a subject--is worth quoting, not only on account of its
biographical interest, but as a model of sincerity, tenderness, and
good taste exhibited in an order of composition usually disfigured by
artificiality both of sentiment and style.

The lions of the London season of 1872 were two foreign embassies--one
from Japan and one from Burma. The Japanese were Envoys from a great
Asiatic monarch, and were nobles of the first rank specially chosen to
represent their Sovereign. Their refined manner, shrewd observations,
quick intelligence, and mastery over the English tongue, rendered them
general favourites. The so-called “Ambassadors” from Burma came to
England on a different footing, and some authorities on Eastern affairs
complained that they received an amount of attention and hospitality
far beyond their deserts or their importance. It was said that they
were officials chosen because of their low rank for the purpose of
publicly slighting England; that they were sent to this country in
order to establish a precedent for ignoring the Indian Viceroy, and
enabling the King of Burma to treat with the Queen of England as a
Peer. The Indian Viceroys had certainly been averse from permitting
the Burmese Court to form direct diplomatic relations with European
Courts; but in the East, Missions of Compliment are sometimes sent from
Sovereigns to each other, and such Missions do not necessarily engage
in diplomatic business. In this case the Burmese King Mindohn, by far
the ablest ruler of the Alompra dynasty, had accepted the arrangement
by which the diplomatic relations of Burma and the British Empire were
carried on through an agent of the Indian Viceroy at Mandalay.[47]
Indeed, one of the chief diplomatic difficulties between the two
Governments--the great “Shoe Question,” as it was called--was not one
capable of direct discussion between the Courts of St. James’s and
Mandalay.[48] As to the rank of the Burmese Envoy, misconceptions on
that point arose because Englishmen failed to understand that in Burma
there was no such thing as hereditary rank outside the royal family
of Alompra, the hunter king. Rank was conferred solely by official
position, and the head of the Burmese Mission was a high official of
the first grade, who was really President of the _Hloht_ or Council
of State. Under King Theebaw, who succeeded Mindohn, he became better
known as the Kin-Woon Mingyee, and represented the party of peace and
order at Mandalay with great ability and honesty of purpose. The Queen
was rather better informed as to the antecedents of these distinguished
visitors, and accordingly on Friday, the 21st of June, she received
them at Windsor Castle. They brought with them many costly presents to
her Majesty, of which an exceptionally magnificent bracelet, made of
seven pounds of solid gold, was much talked about at the time. They
also delivered a letter from the King, which began, “From His Great,
Glorious, and Most Excellent Majesty, King of the Rising Sun, who
reigns over Burma, to Her Most Glorious and Excellent Majesty Victoria,
Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.” After her Majesty had received the
presents, and made her acknowledgments through Major MacMahon, late
Political Agent at Mandalay, the Embassy withdrew, and returned to
London.

On the 1st of July the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh,
Princess Louise, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold visited the
National Memorial erected in Hyde Park to the memory of the late Prince
Consort. This was a strictly private visit, the monument being at the
time incomplete.

Between the 15th and 20th of August the Queen broke her journey to
Balmoral, and resided at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, for a few days.
Though her visit was private, she was so gratified with the reception
she everywhere received that she caused Viscount Halifax to address the
following letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh:--

“DEAR LORD PROVOST,--It is not the practice unless the Queen
has visited any city or town in a public manner, to address any
official communication to the chief magistrate or authority of
the place. I am commanded, however, by her Majesty to convey
to you in a less formal manner the expression of her Majesty’s
gratification at the manner in which she was received by the people
of Edinburgh in whatever part of this city and neighbourhood her
Majesty appeared. Her Majesty has felt this the more because, as
her Majesty’s visit was so strictly private, it was so evidently
the expression of their national feeling of loyalty. Her Majesty
was also very much pleased with the striking effect produced by
lighting up the park and the old chapel.”

The death of the amiable and accomplished Princess Feodore of
Hohenlohe-Langenburg on the 23rd of September plunged the Queen into
deep despondency. The Princess was half-sister to her Majesty, and
the tie that bound them together through life had been close and
affectionate. “All sympathise with you,” wrote the Princess Louis to
the Queen when she heard of her mother’s bereavement, “and feel what a
loss to you darling aunt must be, how great the gap in your life, how
painful the absence of that sympathy and love which united her life and
yours so closely.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

GOVERNMENT UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

A Lull Before the Storm--Dissent in the Dumps--Disastrous
Bye-Elections--The Queen’s Speech--The Irish University
Bill--Defeat of the Government--Resignation of the Ministry--Mr.
Disraeli’s Failure to Form a Cabinet--The Queen and the
Crisis--Lord Derby as a Possible Premier--Mr. Gladstone Returns to
Office--Power Passes to the House of Lords--Grave Administration
Scandals--The Zanzibar Mail Contract--Misappropriation of the Post
Office Savings Banks’ Balances--Mr. Gladstone Reconstructs his
Ministry--The Financial Achievements of his Administration--The
Queen and the Prince of Wales--Debts of the Heir Apparent--The
Queen’s Scheme for Meeting the Prince’s Expenditure on her
Behalf--The Queen and Foreign Decorations--Death of Napoleon
III.--The Queen at the East End--The Blue-Coat Boys at Buckingham
Palace--The Coming of the Shah--Astounding Rumours of his Progress
through Europe--The Queen’s Reception of the Persian Monarch--How
the Shah was Entertained--His Departure from England--Marriage of
the Duke of Edinburgh--Public Entry of the Duchess into London.

When the Session of 1873 opened, it is a curious fact that in London
the universal complaint was that politics had become depressingly dull.
But the lull really presaged a storm, in which the Government was
wrecked. It was known that Mr. Gladstone intended to make the question
of Irish University education the chief business of the Session, and
it was admitted that next to this question the one of most consequence
to the Government was that which was raised by the Dissenters, who
demanded the extension of School Boards, and the establishment of
compulsory education all over England, together with the repeal of the
25th clause of Mr. Forster’s Education Act. The bye-elections, which
had been disastrous to the Ministry, showed that the Dissenters were in
revolt, and that they “sulked in their tents,” instead of supporting
Ministerial candidates. The Irish University Bill could not possibly
be carried without Nonconformist support, and that could obviously not
be hoped for if anything like “concurrent endowment” for the Roman
Catholics defaced it. On the other hand, if the revenues of Trinity
College were shared with Catholic scholars, Liberals like Mr. Fawcett
and Mr. Vernon Harcourt would support Mr. Disraeli in opposing the
measure. The Cabinet resolved to neutralise the expected secession of
the small Fawcett-Harcourt group, by rendering their Bill acceptable
to their powerful Nonconformist contingent, and Liberal tacticians
were full of joyful anticipations when it leaked out that this plan
was contemplated. As will be seen, one important contingency was never
taken into consideration--the possible desertion of Mr. Gladstone’s
Roman Catholic followers; and yet it was their desertion which wrecked
the Bill and destroyed the Government.

[Illustration: QUEEN’S COLLEGE, CORK.

(_From a Photograph by W. Lawrence, Dublin._)]

The Queen’s speech was read to Parliament by Commission on the 6th of
February, and it promised an Irish Education Bill, a Judicature Bill,
a Land Transfer Bill, an Education Amendment Act, a Local Taxation
Bill, and a Railway Regulation Bill. In the debate on the Address the
Opposition leaders dwelt mainly on foreign questions, pressing the
Government to say whether they were prepared to recommend the rules
under which the _Alabama_ case had been decided to the European
Powers; and if so, whether they would recommend them as interpreted
by the legal advisers of the Crown, or as interpreted by the majority
of the arbitrators. Mr. Gladstone first said that the rules had been
recommended for adoption by the Powers, but without any special
construction being put on them. Then he had to correct himself before
the debate closed, by explaining that he had made a mistake, for the
rules had not yet been brought under the notice of Foreign Governments.
This confession naturally forced the public to conclude that the Tories
could not be far wrong when they declared that foreign affairs were
neglected because Lord Granville was indolent and Mr. Gladstone neither
knew nor cared anything about them.

[Illustration: PROFESSOR FAWCETT.

(_From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company._)]

On the 13th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced the Irish University
Education Bill. It affiliated several other educational institutions
besides Trinity College to the University of Dublin. Two of the Queen’s
Colleges, established by Sir Robert Peel, were to be associated
with the University, and the Queen’s University itself was to be
abolished. Queen’s College at Galway was to be suppressed, because
it had failed to attract students to its classrooms. The so-called
Catholic University and several other Roman Catholic seminaries were
also, in the same manner, to be attached to the Dublin University.
The new University was to have an income of £50,000 a year, a fourth
of which was taken from Trinity College, a fourth from the endowment
for Queen’s University, three-eighths from the Irish Church surplus,
whilst fees, it was expected, would make up the balance. It was
to have professors for teaching in Dublin all academical subjects
excepting history and mental philosophy, which were tabooed as too
controversial for Ireland. Bursaries, Scholarships, and Fellowships
were liberally endowed. Tests were to be abolished, the Theological
Faculty of Trinity College was to be transferred--with an endowment--to
the Disestablished Church, and the prohibited subjects, History and
Philosophy, were not to be compulsory in examinations for degrees.
The constituency of the University was to consist of all graduates of
the affiliated colleges. The governing council of twenty-five was to
be nominated in the Bill, after which, vacancies were to be filled
up alternately by co-optation and Crown nomination. After ten years,
however, equal numbers of the council were to be chosen, by the Crown,
by co-optation, by the professors, and by the graduates. The Bill,
according to the Bishop of Peterborough--by far the ablest Protestant
ecclesiastic Ireland has produced in the Victorian period--“was as
good as could be under the circumstances,” and “ought to have pleased
all parties.”[49] Unfortunately it pleased nobody, and its weak point
was obvious. It attempted to provide for separate denominational
education in the affiliated colleges, and for mixed secular education
in Trinity College and the University of Dublin, to which they were
affiliated--the one system being as incompatible with the other as
an acid with an alkali. As Mr. Gathorne-Hardy said, the exclusion of
History and Philosophy rendered the new University a monster _cui
lumen ademptum_. The proposal to make the Irish Viceroy its Chancellor
recalled, he declared, the lines of Milton,

“Its shape,
If shape it can be called, which shape had none
Distinguishable in feature, joint, or limb--”

all the more that

“What seemed its head,
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.”

At first the Bill was very well received, and there was a general
disposition to admit that, in view of the limiting conditions of the
problem, it was impossible to find a solution less offensive to the
Protestants, and more generous to the Catholics of Ireland. But in a
few days it became apparent that the measure was doomed. Ministers
had been led to believe by their colleague, Mr. Monsell, who was
the spokesman of the Catholic clergy, that the compromise would be
accepted by them. But the Catholic Bishops met in secret, and decided
to oppose the Bill.[50] As the Catholics opposed it for giving them
too little, the Protestants opposed it because it gave the Catholics
too much. The apostles of culture opposed it because it cut History
and Philosophy out of the University curriculum, and in doing so they
furnished all discontented Liberals with a good non-political excuse
for voting against the Government. The Bill was defeated on the 12th of
March by a vote of 287 to 284, the votes of 36 Catholic Members and 9
Liberals[51] having turned the scale. To the very last moment the issue
was uncertain, because it was known that if Mr. Gladstone had offered
to abandon the teaching clauses of the Bill, he would have won over a
sufficient number of Catholic votes to carry it.[52]

Mr. Gladstone’s defeat was followed by the resignation of his Ministry,
and the crisis was a most embarrassing one for the Queen. Mr. Disraeli,
when sent for by the Sovereign, attempted to form a Cabinet, but
did not succeed, mainly because Mr. Gathorne-Hardy objected to the
party holding office on sufferance. When Mr. Disraeli reported his
failure to the Queen, she again consulted Mr. Gladstone, who, however,
suggested that some other Conservative leader--obviously hinting at
Lord Derby--might succeed where Mr. Disraeli had failed. But Lord Derby
was at Nice when the crisis became acute; and though the Tory Party
felt that he was in a special sense their natural leader at such a
juncture,[53] they knew that it was decidedly inconvenient for the
Prime Minister to be a member of the Upper House, and that he would
refuse to enter into anything like rivalry with Mr. Disraeli. Yet a
restful Ministry, competent in administration, under a cool-headed,
sensible Conservative aristocrat, was what the majority of the people,
alarmed by harassed “vested interests,” desired at the time. Be that
as it may, Mr. Disraeli, when appealed to a second time by the Queen,
refused to assist her out of the difficulty, and Mr. Gladstone was
again summoned to the rescue. He returned to power with his Cabinet
unchanged and disavowed any intention to dissolve Parliament. Mr.
Disraeli’s refusal to take office had given the Queen infinite anxiety,
and his defence of his conduct was lame and halting. He was, he said,
in a minority; he had not a policy, and could not get one ready till
he had been for some time in office, so that he might see what was to
be done. He did not desire to experience the humiliation of governing
the country under a _régime_ of hostile resolutions. The Queen and
the country were alike conscious of the flimsiness of these excuses.
Mr. Disraeli never met the question--which, to the Queen, seemed
unanswerable--Why did he paralyse the existing Administration, if he
was not prepared to put another in its place?

[Illustration: QUEEN’S COLLEGE, GALWAY.]

Mr. Disraeli in refusing to govern England himself whilst he prevented
Mr. Gladstone from governing it, was pursuing a policy which was as
unconstitutional as it was unpatriotic. When he said he could not take
office because he must dissolve in May in any case, and that he could
not dissolve because he had not a policy to go to the country with, and
when he explained that till he had time to study the archives of the
Foreign Office he could not tell what ought to be done with questions
such as the Russian advance on Khiva, and the Three Rules of the
Washington Treaty, men smiled cynically. They asked each other if Lord
Palmerston in 1869 was afraid to take the place of the Tory Government
because he wanted time to form an opinion on Lord Malmesbury’s policy
towards the Italian war of Liberation. Yet Mr. Disraeli gave a truthful
account of his motives. He had no policy. Hence when he dissolved
Parliament, as he was bound to do after winding up the business of
the Session, he must have gone to the country on a purely personal
issue between himself and Mr. Gladstone. Doubtless at a time when the
nation was getting wearied of restless statesmen, a contest of the sort
would have been disastrous to Mr. Gladstone, but not when raised by
Mr. Disraeli, who was notoriously even flightier than his antagonist.
To have won a General Election on such an issue the Tories must have
fought under Lord Derby’s banner. Mr. Disraeli, however, had no
intention of giving way to Lord Derby, and his followers did not dare
to put him aside, more especially as he had in view a clever scheme of
strategy. His idea was to force Mr. Gladstone to dissolve on a positive
programme, and then to defeat him by a running fire of destructive
criticism. These tactics might bring the Tories back to office under
his own leadership, absolutely uncommitted to any definite policy
whatever.

When Mr. Gladstone resumed office it was soon seen that he had not
only wrecked his party, but compromised the _prestige_ of the House of
Commons. His was admittedly a weakened and discredited Ministry. It had
been one of Mr. Disraeli’s favourite theories that whenever a feeble
Ministry attempted to govern England, power passed from Parliament
to the Crown. At one time, no doubt, the theory seemed plausible
enough, but the Session of 1873 completely upset it. No sooner had
Mr. Gladstone returned to office than power passed from the Crown and
the House of Commons to the House of Lords. The will of the Peers was
supreme over all. They said or did what they pleased, and quashed Bill
after Bill without the least regard to the sentiments of the Queen,
the desire of the Commons, or the interests of the country. The Peers
rejected the Bill improving Church organisation contemptuously, though
it had passed the Commons without a division. By asserting obsolete
privileges of appellate jurisdiction over Scotland and Ireland, they
disfigured the Judicature Bill, which consolidated the law courts and
constituted a high court of appeal. They destroyed Mr. Stansfeld’s
useful Rating Bill almost without debate. They opened a way for the
reintroduction of purchase in the army, rejected the Landlord and
Tenant Bill without even seeing it, and quashed a Bill, promoted by Mr.
Vernon Harcourt and supported by the Government, to protect working men
against being imprisoned under the law of conspiracy for non-statutable
offences committed in the course of a strike. And the curious thing was
that from the day Mr. Gladstone returned to office to lead a moribund
Ministry and a disorganised House of Commons, the people submitted
without a murmur to the resolute and decisive despotism of the Peers.
Thus it came to pass that when the Session ended the Ministry seemed
to have sunk into a dismal swamp of humiliation--a humiliation which
was intensified by administrative scandals and internal feuds. It was
shown that Mr. Lowe, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, prepared plans of
his own for public works, without consulting the Public Works Office.
Mr. Ayrton, as head of that Department, in his place in the House of
Commons, repudiated all responsibility for the votes of money for his
department which were altered without his knowledge and consent by
Mr. Lowe. There was a painful “scene” in the House of Commons at the
end of July when these disclosures were made, and when Mr. Ward Hunt
formally asked the Government if its Chancellor of the Exchequer and
Chief Commissioner of Works were on speaking terms. Mr. Baxter created
another scandal by suddenly resigning office as Financial Secretary
to the Treasury, because Mr. Lowe had ignored him in the matter of
the Zanzibar mail contract. Mr. Lowe was proved to have given the
contract for carrying letters from the Cape to Zanzibar to the Union
Steam Company for £26,000, whereas the British India Steam Company
had offered to do the work for £16,000. Mr. Lowe declared he had
never heard of the offer; yet Lord Kimberley, the Secretary for the
Colonies, knew of it, and the tender was transmitted by the Indian
Postmaster-General to Mr. Monsell, the British Postmaster-General, who
passed it on to the Treasury. At the Treasury Mr. Lowe concealed the
papers relating to the contract from Mr. Baxter, avowedly because he
was known to be hostile to it. A Committee of the House investigated
the scandal, and disallowed the contract. This affair was also
accompanied by the final revelation of the truth as to what was known
as the telegraph scandal.

In spring the working classes were profoundly disturbed by a rumour
that the Government had seized the Savings Banks balances, and were
building great extensions of telegraph lines with the money without
consulting Parliament on the subject. The foundation for the story
was a discovery made by the Auditor-General of Public Accounts. He
reported that the Telegraph Department of the Post Office had for some
time evaded the control of the House of Commons over its expenditure.
Instead of submitting to the House estimates for proposed works,
and asking for a vote on account, Mr. Scudamore, the Chief of the
Department, a brilliant but too zealous official, took whatever money
he wanted from the Post Office receipts, and spent it as he pleased
on works of extension and improvement. He submitted no estimates
in detail, but always asked the House of Commons for a sum for new
works, which enabled him to replace the Post Office receipts which he
had used. A large portion of the money thus spent was taken from the
Savings Banks balances which everybody understood were always paid in
for safety to the Commissioners of National Debt, who invested them
in Consols. Though no money was missing, it shook public confidence
in the Government to find its administrative power so feeble that it
could not prevent its own servants from tampering with the Savings
Banks Deposits, and further investigation aggravated the scandal. It
was shown that Lord Hartington when Postmaster-General had, like Mr.
Monsell, allowed Mr. Scudamore to manage the Telegraph Department
without any supervision, and that the Treasury had so far condoned
this gross and culpable negligence that when it did business with
Mr. Scudamore it communicated with him directly, and not through
either Lord Hartington or Mr. Monsell, who had meekly submitted to be
treated as official “dummies.” It was shown that the Treasury knew of
Mr. Scudamore’s irregularities in 1871, and condoned them; that in
1872 it knew of them again, and acted so feebly that even Mr. Lowe
admitted he regretted his lack of firmness. It was utterly impossible
to defend the conduct of Mr. Lowe, Lord Hartington, Mr. Monsell, and
the Chief Commissioner of National Debt, for countenancing these
grave irregularities, and the scandal was simply disastrous to the
administrative _prestige_ of the Ministry.

The Queen was alarmed at the dismal prospect of ruling England by means
of a Cabinet so hopelessly discredited, and Mr. Gladstone was equally
conscious of the gravity of the situation. Whenever Parliament was
prorogued he tried to parry attacks on the administrative incapacity of
his Cabinet by reconstructing it. To the great relief of the Queen, he
himself took the Chancellorship of the Exchequer into his own hands,
so that the public might have a guarantee that the era of chaos at
the Treasury was closed.[54] Mr. Bruce was elevated to the Peerage as
Lord Aberdare, and became President of the Council, Lord Ripon having
retired for private reasons. Mr. Childers (also for private reasons)
vacated the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Mr. Bright
took his place and re-entered the Cabinet. Mr. Lowe was removed to the
Home Office, and ere the year closed Mr. Adam became Chief Commissioner
of Works, Mr. Ayrton taking the office of Judge-Advocate-General. Mr.
Monsell also retired from the Postmaster-Generalship, and was succeeded
by Dr. Lyon Playfair. The death of Sir William Bovill, Chief Justice
of the Common Pleas, in November, elevated Sir J. D. Coleridge to the
Bench. Mr. Henry James accordingly became Attorney-General, and, to
the amazement of the Bar, he was succeeded as Solicitor-General by Mr.
Vernon Harcourt, whose attacks on the Ministry had thus met with their
reward.

Mr. Gladstone’s hope was to reinvigorate the Government with a little
new blood, and rehabilitate it by means of his influence and reputation
as a financial administrator and Mr. Bright’s personal popularity among
the Nonconformists. Yet the financial work of the Government alone,
when administrative

[Illustration: VIEWS IN WINDSOR: OLD MARKET STREET, AND THE TOWN HALL,
FROM HIGH STREET.]

blunders were detached from it, and relegated to their true place in
political perspective, ought to have won for them the gratitude of the
nation. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, who perpetually harassed the Ministry
because of its growing expenditure--like many financial critics
with an imperfect knowledge of book-keeping--failed to see that the
apparent growth was not real because much of it was a mere matter of
accounting.[55]

[Illustration: SANDRINGHAM HOUSE.]

During their five years of power the Government had remitted £9,000,000
of taxation. They had reduced a chaotic Naval Administration to
something resembling order, and not far removed from efficiency; and
yet at the Admiralty there had been a saving of £1,500,000 on the
Estimates of their predecessors. They had taken the Army out of pawn
to its officers by abolishing Purchase, and had laid the basis for a
compact military organisation; yet they had saved £2,300,000 a year at
the War Office. The Army and Navy, though by no means efficient, were
much more efficient than they had been when Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry
came to power; and yet they were costing the country £4,000,000
less a year.[56] In spite of the great increase in Civil Service
expenditure--much of which, like the Education Vote, being morally
rather than financially reproductive, showed no “results” in figures
on the credit side of the public ledger--there had been since 1857
a decrease in the drain on the taxes of about £1,500,000.[57] Mr.
Lowe’s last Budget in 1873 did not discredit the Ministry. In spite
of his reductions of taxation in the previous year, he had obtained
£2,000,000 more than his estimated income. For the coming year (1873-4)
he estimated a surplus of £4,746,000; but he could promise no great
remission of taxation, for he had to pay the damages (£3,000,000) which
had been awarded at Geneva to the United States Government. Still, he
halved the sugar duties and took another penny off the Income Tax.
With all his faults, he was accordingly entitled to claim credit
for reducing the Income Tax to the lowest point it had ever touched
(threepence in the £) since it had been imposed by Peel in 1842.
And yet Mr. Lowe could not, even with such a Budget, refrain from
expressing his thankfulness in an acrid gibe against the populace.
Referring to the marvellous increase in the receipts from Customs and
Excise, he said he had been able to produce a good Budget because the
nation had drunk itself out of debt.

Apart from the political strife and Ministerial embarrassments which
so severely taxed the nerves of the Queen, life at Court was not very
eventful. Indeed, it centred chiefly round the Prince and Princess
of Wales, who were discharging vicariously and with great popular
acceptance most of the social duties of the Crown. This fact was
recognised by the Queen herself in a curious indirect kind of way.
The Prince of Wales, though very far from being a spendthrift, has
never shrunk from incurring expenditure which, in his judgment, was
necessary to maintain the dignity and _prestige_ of the Crown in a
manner worthy of the great nation whose Sovereignty is his heritage.
But he has always refrained from appealing to Parliament for subsidies
and subventions, either for himself or his family, other than those
to which he is equitably and legally entitled by his official
position in the State. This was all the more creditable to him, for
two reasons. He was surrounded by companions, some of whom did not
scruple to take advantage of his generosity. A considerable section
of the public during the controversy that raged over the Princess
Louise’s dowry had expressed a strong opinion in favour of limiting
future Royal grants to an additional allowance to the Heir Apparent,
for the purpose of meeting the unanticipated expenditure which he had
incurred by taking the Queen’s place as the head of English Society.
Sandringham, moreover, had not turned out a remunerative property, and
the Prince was therefore under strong temptations to give a favouring
ear to unwise counsels on this delicate subject. These, however, he
put aside with manly common sense, and his affairs were arranged on
a business-like basis, which would have met with the approval of his
father, who was always of opinion that matters of the sort were best
managed inside the family circle. The only public indication that was
given of arrangements which must necessarily be spoken of with great
reserve was afforded by Mr. Gladstone when, on the 21st of July, he
introduced a Bill enabling the Queen to bequeath real property to the
Prince of Wales, so that he could alienate it at will. The obvious
advantage of such a measure was that it imparted a fresh elasticity to
the financial resources of the Heir Apparent. For he had discovered
a fact hitherto unrevealed in the history of his dynasty in England,
namely, that though the Sovereign could bequeath to the Heir Apparent
alienable personality, such as hard cash, land or real property
so bequeathed, became, when vested in his person on ascending the
Throne, the property of the State, and therefore inalienable. In fact,
supposing the Queen had left Balmoral, an estate which she and her
husband bought out of their private purse, to her eldest son, then,
though it had been her own private property, it must become public
property whenever the Prince of Wales became King. The state of the
law on the subject was inequitable and inconvenient. For if the Queen
wished to aid her eldest son in meeting expenses which he was every day
incurring on her behalf, she had either to sell her private estates,
endeared to her by a thousand tender family associations, or appeal
to Parliament for a grant, a course which was as objectionable to her
as to the Prince. On the other hand, if these private estates, when
inherited by the Prince at her death, could be treated as private
property, the Heir Apparent could easily obtain any additional
subsidies he might need, by mortgaging his expectations. And yet the
generous intentions of the Queen, and the honest purposes of the Prince
which formed the motives for the Bill, were snappishly and churlishly
misrepresented by several Radicals, and by at least one aristocratic
Whig. Mr. George Anderson opposed the Bill because Sovereigns kept
their wills secret. Sir Charles Dilke objected to it because he said it
allowed the indefinite accumulation of private property in the hands
of the Sovereign. His argument, in fact, came to this, that profligacy
in the Monarch should be encouraged by the posthumous confiscation
of his private estates. As for Mr. Bouverie, he asked what business
the Sovereign had to possess large private means? The Bill, however,
passed, and an incident which at one time threatened to be unpleasant
for the Queen and her children was discreetly closed.

In March, the Queen’s refusal to permit the persons who represented
England at the French Exhibition of 1867 to accept decorations, was
made the subject of debate by Lord Houghton in the House of Lords. Her
Majesty’s prejudice against introducing Foreign Orders and titles into
England had often given offence to naturalised stockjobbers and pushing
_parvenus_. She never even took kindly to the use of the title of
“Baron” by the Rothschilds, though she tolerated it for reasons of an
entirely exceptional nature. But if the Orders were admitted the titles
must soon follow, and society might be inundated some day with Russian
“Counts,” who, as the French say, had “a career behind them,” or with
Austrian “Barons,” who had bought their honours out of the profits of
financial gambling. The English Court, for this reason, has such strong
opinions on the point that even English nobles, inheriting foreign
titles, conceal them so successfully that few people ever suspect that
the Duke of Wellington is a Portuguese prince, the head of the House
of Hamilton a French duke, or Lord Denbigh a Prince of an uncrowned
branch of the Imperial House of Hapsburg. It need not be said that Lord
Houghton’s complaints were generally admitted to be frivolous, and that
the Queen’s feeling that she must be the sole fountain of honour in
England, was shared by the nation. If the services which an individual
has rendered abroad have benefited England or mankind, or if it is
possible to form a correct estimate of their value in England, the
Queen held she must either reward them herself, or retain the right to
permit the individual to receive a foreign decoration for them. There
never has been any practical difficulty in dealing with such cases,
and no self-respecting person has ever felt aggrieved because he was
debarred from accepting Foreign Orders.[58]

On the 4th of January the Queen was grieved to hear of the death of
the ex-Emperor of the French, at Chislehurst. Her tender sympathy
was freely bestowed on the ex-Empress, who was prostrated by her
misfortunes and her sorrow. Five years before, the death of this
strange man, whose Imperial life seemed ever shadowed by the great
crime of the _coup d’état_, would have convulsed Europe. Now the world
seemed quite indifferent to it, and when politicians spoke of it, all
they said was that by disorganising the Imperialist party in France,
it lessened the labours of M. Thiers in founding the Third Republic.
The English people, whom Napoleon III. had kept in feverish dread for
two decades, and whose support and friendship he had rewarded with
the perfidy of the Benedetti Treaty, did not pretend to mourn over
his grave. They spoke of his character, which was a moral paradox,
and his career, which was a political crime, without prejudice or
ill-feeling. But as they thought of the horrors of the Crimean War,
the wasted millions which Palmerston spent in fortifying the South
Coast, and the final act of treachery which the German Government had
revealed in July, 1870, there were some who considered that the Queen
might have been less demonstrative in her manifestations of sorrow.
But Her Majesty has never been free from the defects of her qualities.
Quick to resent betrayal, her anger passes away as swiftly, when the
betrayer broken by an avenging Destiny, and prostrate amid the wreck
of his fortunes and his reputation, appeals to her sympathies. When
Louis Philippe stood before her as a hunted fugitive, the Queen forgot
the Spanish marriages. When Charles Louis Bonaparte fled for refuge to
Chislehurst, she was too generous to remember his scheme for stealing
Belgium.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO VICTORIA PARK.]

When spring came round, “the great joyless city,” as Mr. Walter Besant
calls the East End of London, was gladdened by the Queen, for on the
2nd of April her Majesty went there to visit Victoria Park. She was
accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, and drove from Buckingham Palace
to the park in an open carriage. Her route was along Pall Mall, Regent
Street, Portland Place, Marylebone Road, and Euston Road to King’s
Cross, up Pentonville Hill to the “Angel” at Islington, beyond which
point along Upper Street, Essex Road, Ball’s Pond Road, through Dalston
and Hackney, surging crowds of people lined both sides of the entire
way. Streamers of gaudy bunting floated overhead from house to house
across Islington Green. The Dalston and Hackney stations of the North
London Railway, the Town Hall, and shops of Hackney were conspicuously
decorated, and it was noticed that the Queen went among the poor of
the East End without any military escort, a feat that few European
Sovereigns would have dared to emulate. At the Town Hall she halted
and received a bouquet, while the people sang the National Anthem.
At the temporary entrance to Victoria Park a triple arch, of triumph
had been erected, deep enough to resemble a long _marquee_ in three
compartments, open at both ends. It was handsomely fitted up in scarlet
and gold, and here was stationed a guard of honour of the Fusiliers,
while an escort of Life Guards was in waiting to conduct her Majesty
round the park. Even the slums in this dismal quarter exhibited meagre
decorations, eloquent alike of loyalty and indigence. A poor shoemaker,
having nothing better to show, hung out his leather apron, on which the
Queen saw with a thrill of interest that he had chalked up in flaming
red letters, “Welcome as flowers in May. The Queen, God bless her.” The
enthusiasm of the populace on this occasion was due to a curious idea
that prevailed all over the East End. This visit, they said, was no
ordinary one, because the Queen had come of her own free will to see
the East End--a very different thing from the East End going westwards
to see her. Hence a hurricane of cheers greeted the Queen wherever she
went, and was more gladsome to her ears than the ornate language of the
loyal addresses which she received. Her Majesty returned by Cambridge
Heath Road, and when she came to Shoreditch the way was rendered almost
impassable by an eager crowd. From Bishopsgate Street to the Bank she
was hailed with passionate loyalty, which seemed to lose all restraint
when on passing the Mansion House she rose in her carriage and
smilingly bowed to the Lord Mayor, who stood in his State robes under
the portico and saluted her. She then drove along the Embankment to
the Palace, having charmed the sadder quarters of London with a visit
which the people took to mean that they were not forgotten or ignored
by their Queen.

On the 3rd of April, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the Duke of
Cambridge, as President of Christ’s Hospital--the famous Blue-coat
School--visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace to present the boys
of the Mathematical School, who had come to exhibit their drawings
and charts to her Majesty. A number of gentlemen connected with
the Hospital had the honour of being presented by the Duke to the
Queen when she entered the Drawing-room. Her Majesty then inspected,
apparently with great interest, the maps and charts which were held
before her by each boy separately.

The foreign curiosity of the London season in 1873 was the Shah of
Persia. Soon after the Queen’s visit to the East End ceased to be
discussed, the coming of the Shah was the favourite topic of talk. At
the end of April his departure from Teheran amidst the blessings of
an overawed crowd of 80,000 subjects was chronicled. On the 12th of
May he was heard of, painfully navigating the waters of the Caspian
in a Russian steamer, and wonderful tales of his progress were told.
He had three wives, and nobody knew how many other ladies in his
train holding brevet-matrimonial rank. Was he going to bring them to
England? If so, could more than one of them be received, and in that
case how were the rest to be disposed of? A cloud of despondency began
to settle over the subordinates in the Lord Chamberlain’s department.
Would it be possible, it was asked, to persuade the Queen to invite
each of the Shah’s wives separately--one to Buckingham Palace, one to
Windsor, and one to Osborne? Later on it was reported that not only
was the Shah bringing his harem, but his Cabinet Ministers also. Was
his visit likely to be free from danger? Might not people begin to
cherish strange fancies, if the Shah thus gave them ocular proof that
an ancient country could get on wonderfully well without a sovereign
and without a government? Gradually astounding rumours of his wealth
were sent round. He had brought only half a million sterling for
pocket-money, because there had just been a famine in Persia; still
the sum would meet the modest wants of his exalted position. Indeed,
through a telegraphic blunder, the sum was first stated as £5,000,000.
He was said to be covered with jewels and precious stones, and he wore
a dagger which blazed with diamonds, so that one could only view it
comfortably through ground glass. In June the officials of the Court
were relieved from a supreme anxiety. Ere he got half-way over Europe
the Shah had sent his harem back to Persia. As he approached England he
was described as looking terribly bored, and his black velvet doublet,
covered with diamonds, and ornamented with emerald epaulettes, was said
by one irreverent journalist to give him the appearance of “a dark
shrub under the early morning dew.” To the good English people he was
a mighty Asiatic potentate, representing an ancient dynasty, and the
popular cry was that he must be impressed with the power of England.
Had they understood that his great grandfather was a petty chief, who
at a time of revolution established a dynasty, and promptly began,
with the aid of his relatives, to ruin Persia, and that their visitor
himself ruled over a country with the population of Ireland and twice
the area of Germany, they might have made themselves less ridiculous.
Mr. Gladstone was even pestered on the subject, and had to turn the
matter off with a smiling suggestion that it would be well to let the
Shah fix his own programme, and not put him in chains when he landed
on our shores. But in Court circles it was whispered with dread that
it might be well to fetter the bedizened barbarian, for he had odd
notions of etiquette, and had even rudely poked the august arm of the
German Empress, when he wanted to call her attention at the theatre to
something on the stage. On the 18th of June, however, the long-expected
guest landed at Dover from Ostend. The cannon of the Channel fleet
thundered forth a salute, and the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Arthur
welcomed him as he stepped

[Illustration: BLUE-COAT BOYS AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE.]

[Illustration: THE SHAH OF PERSIA PRESENTING HIS SUITE TO THE QUEEN AT
WINDSOR.]

on the pier. His Majesty arrived at Charing Cross in the evening,
and London forthwith went mad about him. It talked and thought about
nothing else, much to the disgust of the Tory wirepullers, who saw with
sorrow the scandal of the Zanzibar mail contract absolutely wasted
on a frivolous metropolis. It may be recorded that when he appeared
the Shah disappointed sightseers, who were looking out for the black
velvet tunic powdered with diamonds, and ornamented with epaulettes of
emeralds. His Majesty, in fact, was clad in a blue military frock-coat,
faced with rows of brilliants and large rubies; his belt and the
scabbard of his scimitar were likewise bright with jewels, and so was
his cap.

The _suite_ of apartments placed at the disposal of his Imperial
Majesty in Buckingham Palace had been put in direct telegraphic
communication with Teheran, and though it was expected he would be
impressed by being able to talk to anybody in his capital without
leaving his room, the arrangement seemed rather to bore him than
otherwise. An infinite variety of entertainments was prepared for him,
and the programme he had to work through seemed too extensive for human
endurance during the last ten days of his visit. On the 20th of June
the Queen, who was at Balmoral when he arrived, came to Windsor to
receive the Persian monarch in State.

The preparations for the Shah’s public welcome were worthy of the
Royal borough. As the train steamed into Windsor Station, the Princes
and others in waiting to receive him welcomed him as he stepped out,
arrayed in a State uniform flashing with gems. The Mayor and Recorder
then read an Address, to which the Shah briefly replied, both the
Address and reply being translated by Sir Henry Rawlinson. Accompanied
by Prince Arthur and Prince Leopold he was driven to the Castle, where
the Queen received him. The reception was held in the White Drawing
Room, and the Shah conferred upon the Queen the Persian Order, and also
the new Order which he had then, with a gallantry hardly to be expected
of an Asiatic, just instituted for ladies. Luncheon was served in the
Oak Room, after which the Queen accompanied her guest to the foot of
the staircase on his leaving the Castle.

In the evening a splendid entertainment was given to his Majesty by the
Lord Mayor at Guildhall, to which 3,000 persons were invited. At this
banquet the Shah was placed on a daïs with the Princess of Wales, the
Lord Mayor on his left hand, and the Czarevna, wife of the Czarewitch,
on his right. The Shah wore a blue uniform with a belt of diamonds,
and the ribbon and Star of the Garter, which had been conferred on him
at Windsor in the afternoon. The scene at the ball which followed was
unusually brilliant and picturesque. When the Shah had taken his seat
the first quadrille was formed. He did not dance, but when the company
had gone through four dances he joined the supper-party. About midnight
his Majesty and the Royal Family left the scene. This magnificent
entertainment was the first of many. The Shah was hurried in rapid
succession to a Review of Artillery at Woolwich, and another of the
Fleet at Spithead, to a State performance at the Italian Opera, to
the International Exhibition, to a concert in the Royal Albert Hall,
and to a Review in Windsor Park of 8,000 troops. At this Review what
impressed him most were the batteries of Light Artillery, the physique
and drill of the Highlanders, and the brilliant skirmishing of the
Rifles. When the spectacle was over he presented his scimitar to the
Duke of Cambridge. An odd sight was witnessed when the Shah visited
the West India Dock and Greenwich on the 25th of June. He went in an
open carriage from Buckingham Palace to the Tower Wharf, and embarked
amidst a salvo of artillery. The river was filled with an extraordinary
collection of ships, barges, boats, and vessels of every description.
Crowds, cheering and shouting like crazy beings, swarmed on decks,
rigging, wharves, roadways, and even on the roofs and crane stages of
the warehouses. A striking effect was produced during this trip by the
floating steam fire-engines of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which,
closely lashed together, all at once saluted the Shah as he passed, by
casting up many perpendicular jets of water to a great height in the
air. On the evening of this day, by command of the Queen, a State ball
was given at Buckingham Palace, at which the Persian Sovereign and
the British Princes and Princesses were present. After a short visit
to Liverpool, the Shah left England on the 5th of July, no abatement
having taken place in the entertainments in his honour up to the last.

The Shah’s departure from London, and his embarkation for Cherbourg on
board the French Government yacht _Rapide_, was the final act of these
remarkable proceedings. He was accompanied to the Victoria Station by
the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Arthur, the Duke of
Cambridge, and Prince Christian, all in full uniform. The Shah having
been made a Knight of the Garter during his visit to England, her
Majesty presented him with the badge and collar set in diamonds. He in
turn gave his photograph set in diamonds to the Queen and the Prince
of Wales. To Earl Granville he offered his jewelled portrait, but that
wily diplomatist, knowing what was meant, demurely said he could only
accept the portrait if the precious stones were removed from it. London
never had such a lion before or since, and the fuss made over him led
many to imagine that his visit was of high political importance. It
was certainly odd that the heir to the Russian throne, who must have
been satiated with the Shah’s society in St. Petersburg, persisted in
being seen everywhere in his train in London. Perhaps at his interview
with Lord Granville he had asked for some promise of protection against
Russian encroachment, and as it was impossible for Russia to conquer
the Tekke Turcomans unless she could draw her supplies from the Golden
Province of Khorassan, such a promise, if given and kept, would have
effectually barred the march of the Cossack towards Herat. If these
matters were talked of, events subsequently showed that no such
promises had been made, and that Lord Granville, like his predecessors,
firmly adhered to the fatal policy initiated by England in order to
buy the aid of the Czar against Napoleon I.--the policy of abandoning
Persia to Russian “influence.”

It was semi-officially announced in the middle of July that the Duke
of Edinburgh had been betrothed (11th July) to the Grand Duchess Marie
Alexandrovna, the only daughter of the Czar of Russia. The affair had
been the subject of some difficult and delicate negotiations, not so
much because there was some difference of religion between the bride
and bridegroom, but because, being an only daughter, the parents
of the Grand Duchess felt that parting with her would be a bitter
heart-wrench. She was devoted to her father, as he was to her, and it
was said that if he had given his crown to the English Prince he could
not have testified more strongly his esteem for him than he had done
by bestowing on him his daughter’s hand. “I hear,” writes the Princess
Louis of Hesse from Seeheim (9th July), to the Queen, “Affie [the
Duke of Edinburgh] comes on Thursday night. Poor Marie is very happy,
and so quiet.... How I feel for the parents, this only daughter (a
character of _Hingebung_ [perfect devotion] to those she loves)--the
last child entirely at home, as the parents are so much away that the
two youngest, on account of their studies, no longer travel about.”[59]

This alliance was unusually interesting, for the Duke of Edinburgh
was practically within the Royal succession.[60] Nothing but an Act
of Parliament barring him from the succession, such as men talked of
passing against the hated Duke of Cumberland, who conspired with the
loyal Orangemen of Ulster to oust the Queen from the throne, could
prevent the Duke from succeeding to the Crown if the Prince of Wales
and his children did not survive the Queen. There was a very general
feeling that this marriage was worthy of the country. Apart from her
great wealth, the only daughter of the Czar of All the Russias appeared
to the average British elector to be a much more fitting mate for a
Prince who stood very near the English throne, than an impecunious
young lady from a minor Teutonic “dukery”--if we may venture to borrow
a term which Lord Beaconsfield made classical. Thoughtful observers of
public life were grateful to the Queen for establishing a precedent
which enlarged the area of matrimonial selection for English Princes.
Since the reign of George II. this had been so closely limited to
Germany, that the Royal Family of England from generation to generation
had been purely and exclusively German. There was, therefore, no
popular outcry against a Parliamentary settlement for the Duke of
Edinburgh. Mr. Gladstone, on the 29th

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.]

of July, carried a resolution in the House of Commons, giving the Duke
of Edinburgh an annuity of £25,000 a year, and securing to the Grand
Duchess Marie £6,000 a year of jointure in the event of her becoming
a widow. The Minister was not met with any formidable opposition.
When Mr. Holt and Mr. Newdegate began to attack the Grand Duchess’s
religion, the House instantly flew into a passion and hooted them
into silence. When the resolution was debated two days afterwards,
Mr. Taylor, who objected to the vote on the ground that the bride was
one of the richest heiresses in Europe, was literally effaced by Mr.
Gladstone. Amid deafening cheers from all parts of the House, he asked
Mr. Taylor if he dared to stand up before his own constituents and beg
the Russian Czar to accept a poor English Prince for a son-in-law on
the plea that his daughter had a large fortune? The grant was carried
by a vote of 170 to 20.

[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF EDINBURGH.

(_From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey._)]

The marriage itself was solemnised on the 23rd of January, 1874, at
the Czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in accordance with the
Greek and the Anglican rite. All that wealth and absolute power could
do to invest the ceremony with Imperial pomp and splendour was done.
Among those invited were members of the Holy Synod, and of the High
Clergy of Russia; the members of the Council of the Empire, Senators,
Ambassadors, and other members of the Corps Diplomatique, with the
ladies of their families, general officers, officers of the Guard, of
the Army and Navy. The great Russian ladies wore the national costume,
while the nobles and gentlemen were in full uniform. The Queen of
England was represented by Viscount Sydney and Lady Augusta Stanley.
On their arrival at the church the Duke and Grand Duchess took their
places in front of the altar, where were standing the Metropolitan
of St. Petersburg and the chief priests, attired in magnificent
vestments. The Czar and Czarina were on the right of the altar, the
Prince of Wales and the Russian Grand Dukes standing opposite. The most
interesting portions of the ceremony were the handing of the rings to
the bride and bridegroom, the crowning of the Royal couple, and the
procession of the newly wedded pair, with the Metropolitan and clergy,
Prince Arthur, and the Grand Dukes round the analogion or lectern, the
bride and bridegroom carrying lighted candles in their left hands. On
the conclusion of this part of the ceremony, the bride and bridegroom
proceeded to the Salle d’Alexandre, where the Anglican ceremony was
performed by Dean Stanley, the bride being given away by the Emperor,
while Prince Arthur officiated as his brother’s groomsman. The Duke of
Edinburgh and the Grand Duchess Marie used prayer books which had been
sent to them by the Queen, and the Grand Duchess carried a bouquet of
myrtle from the bush at Osborne, which had been so often laid under
tribute for the marriages of the Queen’s children. The wedding-day was
celebrated in the principal towns of Great Britain with much popular
rejoicing.

The Queen deeply regretted her inability to be present at a ceremony
so interesting to her, and, in some respects, momentous for her House.
Nor was she the only member of the Royal circle who entertained the
same feeling. Her daughter, the Princess Louis of Hesse, writing to her
from Darmstadt on the 23rd of January, 1874, says, “On our dear Affie’s
[Prince Alfred’s] birthday, a few tender words. It must seem so strange
to you not to be near him. My thoughts are constantly with them all,
and we have only the _Times_ account, for no one writes here. They are
all too busy, and, of course, all news comes to you. What has Augusta
[Lady Augusta Stanley] written, and Vicky and Bertie? Any extracts or
other newspaper accounts but what we see would be most welcome.... God
bless and protect them, and may all turn out well.” Artless passages
like these are worth quoting, if for no better reason than this,
that they illustrate the strength of the sentiment of domesticity
which has not only bound the Royal children to the Queen, but to each
other, all through life. Even after the Queen had complied with her
daughter’s request, and sent her some letters about the ceremony, the
Princess recurs to the same theme, saying, “Dear Marie [the Duchess of
Edinburgh] seems to make the same impression on _all_. How glad I am
she is so quite what I thought and hoped. Such a wife must make Affie
happy, and do him good, and be a great pleasure to yourself, which I
always liked to think.” And again, a few days later, she writes to the
Queen as follows:--“I have a little time before breakfast to thank you
so much for the enclosures, also the Dean’s [Stanley’s] letter through
Beatrice. We are most grateful for being allowed to hear these most
interesting reports. It brings everything so much nearer. How pleasant
it is to receive only satisfactory reports.”[61]

The Grand Duchess, when she came to her new home, brought her own
weather with her. She was introduced by the Queen to London and the
Londoners on the 12th of March, in the midst of a bleak and blinding
snowstorm. That dense crowds of people should line the street, and
stand for hours in the half-frozen slush, for an opportunity of bidding
the Grand Duchess welcome to her new home, afforded an impressive
testimony to the deep-seated loyalty of the capital. The Queen, the
Grand Duchess, the Duke of Edinburgh, and other members of the Royal
Family, left Windsor Castle at 11 o’clock in closed carriages for
the railway station, under a brilliant escort of Scots Greys. The
Royal train steamed to Paddington terminus, which was all ablaze
with Russian and English colours. The people thronged the windows,
balconies, the house-tops, and the pavements, and each side of the
roadway, all along from Paddington to Buckingham Palace, and the
Queen and the Royal couple showed their appreciation of the splendid
reception which was given to them by braving the snowstorm in an open
landau. The Queen, who was dressed in half-mourning, smilingly bowed
in acknowledgment of the hearty cheering, and the Grand Duchess, who
sat by her side, attired in a purple velvet mantle edged with fur, a
pale blue silk dress and white bonnet, was evidently surprised at the
warm greeting she received. The route was lined by the military and
police. The streets were full of loyal but bedraggled decorations,
and grimly festive with limp flags and illegible mottoes. Nothing
could be more gracious than the smiling demeanour of the Queen and
her new daughter-in-law, and nothing more pitiable than the obvious
discomfort of the poor ladies-in-waiting, who sat palpably shivering
in their carriages. At night the chief thoroughfares were brilliantly
illuminated. “I hope,” writes the Princess Louis of Hesse to the
Queen, “you were not the worse for all your exertions.... Such a
warm reception must have touched Marie, and shown how the English
cling to their Sovereign and her House.” Yet, after the first flush
of excitement had passed away, the Russian Princess began to suffer
from the common complaint of all Northern women--_nostalgia_, or
home-sickness. “Marie must feel it very deeply,” writes the Princess
Louis to the Queen (7th April), “for to leave so delicate and loving a
mother must seem almost wrong. How strange this side of human nature
always seems--leaving all you love most, know best, owe all debts of
gratitude to, for the comparatively unknown! The lot of parents is
indeed hard, and of such self-sacrifice.” This incident seems to have
led to a curious correspondence between the Queen and her daughter, in
which her Majesty apparently gave her some solemn warnings about the
evil done by parents who bring up their daughters for the sole purpose
of marrying them. “This,” observes the Princess Louis in her reply to
her

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.

(_From the Picture by N. Chevalier._)]

mother, “is said to be a too prominent feature in the modern English
education of the higher classes.... I want to bring up the girls
without _seeking_ this as the sole object for the future--to feel that
they can fill up their lives so well otherwise.... A marriage for the
sake of marriage is surely the greatest mistake a woman can make....
I know what an absorbing feeling that of devotion to one’s parent is.
When I was at home it filled my whole soul. It does still in a great
degree, and _heimweh_ [home-sickness] does not cease after so long an
absence.”

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CONSERVATIVE REACTION.

Questions of the Recess--The Dissenters and the Education Act--Mr.
Forster’s Compromise--The Nonconformist Revolt--Mr. Bright Essays
Conciliation--Sudden Popularity of Mr. Lowe--His “Anti-puritanic
Nature”--Mr. Chamberlain and the Dissidence of Dissent--Decline of
the Liberal Party--Signs of Bye-elections--A Colonial Scandal--The
Canadian Pacific Railway--Jobbing the Contract--Action of the
Dominion Parliament--Expulsion of the Macdonald Ministry--The
Ashanti War--How it Originated--A Short Campaign--The British
in Coomassie--Treaty with King Koffee--The Opposition and the
War--Skilful Tactics--Discontent among the Radical Ranks--Illness
of Mr. Gladstone--A Sick-bed Resolution--Appeal to the Country--Mr.
Gladstone’s Address--Mr. Disraeli’s Manifesto--Liberal
Defeat--Incidents of the Election--“Villadom” to the Front--Mr.
Gladstone’s Resignation--Mr. Disraeli’s Working Majority--The
Conservative Cabinet--The Surplus of £6,000,000--What will Sir
Stafford do with it?--Dissensions among the Liberal Chiefs--Mr.
Gladstone and the Leadership--The Queen’s Speech--Mr. Disraeli and
the Fallen Minister--The Dangers of Hustings Oratory--Mr. Ward
Hunt’s “Paper Fleet”--The Last of the Historic Surpluses--How
Sir S. Northcote Disposed of it--The Hour but not the Man--Mr.
Cross’s Licensing Bill--The Public Worship Regulation Bill--A
Curiously Composed Opposition--Mr. Disraeli on Lord Salisbury--The
Scottish Patronage Bill--Academic Debates on Home Rule--The
Endowed Schools Bill--Mr. Stansfeld’s Rating Bill--Bill for
Consolidating the Factory Acts--End of the Session--The Successes
and Failures of the Ministry--Prince Bismarck’s Contest with
the Roman Catholic Church--Arrest of Count Harry Arnim--Mr.
Disraeli’s Apology to Prince Bismarck--Mr. Gladstone’s Desultory
Leadership--“Vaticanism”--Deterioration in Society--An Unopposed
Royal Grant--Visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to
Birmingham--Withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court--A
Dispute over Precedence--Visit of the Czar to England--Review of
the Ashanti War Soldiers and Sailors--The Queen on Cruelty to
Animals--Sir Theodore Martin’s Biography of the Prince Consort--The
Queen tells the Story of its Authorship.

Two questions disturbed the recess of 1873-74--would Mr. Gladstone
attempt to conciliate the Dissenters, and would Mr. Bright, at their
bidding, denounce the Education Act which had been recently passed by a
Government of which he was a leading and authoritative member?

The great grievance of the Dissenters was, that the 25th Clause of the
Education Act sanctioned the payment of denominational school-fees for
pauper children out of the school-rate. The Dissenters argued that
it was as wicked to make them pay rates for Anglican teaching in a
school, as it was to make them pay tithes for it in a church. Their
opposition was mainly led and organised by Mr. Chamberlain and the
Birmingham Secularists, who had so effectually made war on the Liberal
Party at bye-elections, that even Mr. Forster deemed it prudent to
conciliate them early in 1873. He offered them a compromise in his
Education Amendment Act, which passed before Parliament rose. This
Act repealed the 25th Clause, which ordered the payment out of the
school rate of fees for pauper children in denominational schools.
Instead of that it compelled Boards of Guardians to pay the fees to
the indigent parent, leaving it to him to select a school for his
child. He might choose a denominational school if he preferred it,
only it must be an efficient school under Government inspection. This
compromise had, however, been rejected by Mr. Chamberlain, who also
complained bitterly that Mr. Forster refused to make the formation of
School Boards compulsory in every parish. Nor was the bitterness of the
Nonconformists assuaged by an indiscreet speech which Mr. Gladstone
had made during the recess at Hawarden, in which he advised the people
of that parish to be content with their Church Schools, and not to
elect a School Board. The attempts which were made to explain away this
speech were not successful, and so when Mr. Bright came before his
constituents at Birmingham, he found the Dissenters in open revolt. He
therefore deemed it prudent to condemn the Education Act, and oppose
Mr. Forster’s Education policy. As he had joined a Cabinet in which
Mr. Forster held high rank, Mr. Bright’s utterances on the subject did
the Government more harm than good. The Dissenters put no faith in
them, because, they said, amidst all the Ministerial changes that had
occurred, Mr. Forster was still at the Education Office. Independent
supporters of the Ministry were, on the other hand, surprised to
find a statesman of Mr. Bright’s reputation condemning on high moral
principles an Act which he had himself helped to pass only a year
before. Mr. Bright’s unfortunate position was further aggravated by the
defence which was put forward on his behalf. It was contended that he
had no responsibility for Mr. Forster’s Education Act. All he had seen
was the draft of the Bill, and of that he had, as a Cabinet Minister,
formed a favourable impression. But his illness had withdrawn him from
active work, and when the measure was passing through the House of
Commons evil changes, it was argued, were made in it, and for these
Mr. Bright could not be blamed. Unfortunately it was written in the
inexorable chronicles of _Hansard_ that the only changes made in the
Bill were all in favour of the Dissenters. Mr. Bright was accordingly
too clearly responsible for the original measure, which was infinitely
more odious to the Nonconformists than the one that was finally passed,
and which he now disowned and denounced on account of its injustice.

Curiously enough, it was Mr. Lowe who was most successful in winning
popularity for the Ministry during the recess. The police found in him
a zealous defender. The working-classes heard with pleased surprise a
rumour to the effect that he had drafted a Bill conceding the demand
of Trade Unionists for a reform of the Labour Laws. His manner of
receiving deputations had suddenly become bland and suave. When, for
example, the representatives of the Licensed Victuallers went to
complain to him of the Licensing Laws, he was so sympathetic that the
leader of the deputation sent a graphic account of the interview to the
Press. He explained how he and his colleagues had waited on the new
Home Secretary in fear and trembling, but how delighted they were to
find that “the great scholar and debater cheered the meeting with many
sunny glimpses of his own Anti-puritanic nature.”

Still, in spite of Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe, the Liberal cause was
waning among the electors. Every day Mr. Chamberlain was driving deeper
and deeper into the heart of the Liberal Party the wedge of Dissenting
dissension, that ultimately split its electoral organisation in twain.
On the whole, the bye-elections favoured the Conservatives. But Mr.
Henry James, the new Attorney-General, carried Taunton, and Captain
Hayter, owing to an imprudent letter which Mr. Disraeli wrote in
support of the Tory candidate, was successful at Bath.[62]

A Colonial scandal and a Colonial war also attracted much attention
during the recess, and though the scandal did not affect the Ministry,
the war somewhat chilled the sympathies of many of their strongest
supporters.

The story of the scandal was as follows:--The Canadian Government
had decided to construct a Pacific Railway that would bridge the
wildernesses by which Nature had separated those Provinces, which
were united by the British North American Act. The project was deemed
so hopeless as a commercial undertaking that the money to carry it
on could not be raised. But during the negotiations which ended in
the Treaty of Washington, Canada, at the instance of the British
Commissioners, made certain concessions, in return for which the
British Government undertook to guarantee a loan for the construction
of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The money was then raised without
delay, and Sir Hugh Allen, the richest capitalist in Canada, formed a
syndicate, who applied for and obtained the contract for constructing
the railway from the Government of Sir John Macdonald, which then held
office in the Dominion. It was soon alleged that Sir John Macdonald
and his colleagues in the Canadian Cabinet had been bribed to “job”
away the contract into Sir Hugh Allen’s hands. The Canadian House of
Commons believed in the charge, insisted on an investigation, and
appointed a Committee of Inquiry. Vigorous efforts were made to hush
up the scandal, and by means of the veto of the Crown the Committee
was paralysed. An Act authorising it to examine witnesses on oath was
passed by the Dominion Parliament, but was vetoed by the Crown on
technical grounds. The Members of the Opposition, however, defeated
this attempt to stifle effective inquiry, by refusing to serve on
what they declared would be a sham tribunal, and public opinion was
so incensed that the Government were compelled to appoint to the
vacant seats in the Committee persons of high judicial position. When
under examination by the Commissioners Sir Hugh Allen admitted that
he paid Sir John Macdonald £36,000 in order to secure the election of
candidates pledged to support his Ministry in the Canadian Parliament.
Sir John Macdonald and his colleagues admitted that they received this
money, and that they had used it to carry seats in the Province of
Ontario for their faction. After the money was paid the contract was
given to Sir Hugh Allen. But in this transaction Sir John Macdonald
denied that there was any taint of bribery. Like his celebrated
countryman, Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, he said, “Dinna ca’t breebery.
It ’s juist geenerosity on the ae haun’, an’ grawtitude on the ither.”
In Canada and England a different view was taken of the matter. The
Macdonald Ministry was driven from office amidst public execration, and
even Lord Dufferin the Governor-General, and the Colonial Office did
not escape censure, when it became clear that they were at least privy
to the matter.

[Illustration: COOMASSIE.]

The Colonial war broke out on the West Coast of Africa. In
consideration of being permitted to annex as much of Sumatra as they
could subdue, the Dutch had handed over to England their possessions on
the West Coast of

[Illustration: KING KOFFEE’S PALACE, COOMASSIE.]

Africa. The English Government soon became involved in a dispute with
the King of the Ashantis over a subvention which the Dutch had always
paid him. The Ashantis attacked the English settlements near Elmina,
but were beaten off by a small party of English troops. When the
cool season came it was decided to send Sir Garnet Wolseley with an
expedition strong enough to march to Coomassie, the Ashanti capital,
and, if need be, lay the country waste. Sir Garnet arrived before his
troops, and engaged with success in several unimportant skirmishes. The
main army left England in December, and on the 5th of February, 1874,
it entered Coomassie in triumph. The place was so unhealthy that it had
to be evacuated almost immediately. But ere the troops left a Treaty
was signed by which King Koffee renounced his claim to sovereignty
over the tribes who had been transferred from the Dutch to the British
Protectorate. The management of the expedition was not perfect. But
it at all events showed that the administrative departments of the
Army had improved somewhat since the Crimean War, and that whilst
the English private soldier had lost none of his superb fighting
qualities, he was now led by officers possessed of a considerable
degree of professional skill. And yet the Ashanti War failed to arrest
the decay of public confidence in the Government. With masterly tact
the Tory leaders put forward Lord Derby to deprecate wasteful military
enterprises and extensions of territory in pestilential climes, whilst
Sir Stafford Northcote attacked the Ministry fiercely in September
for engaging in such a war without consulting the House of Commons.
The effect of this criticism was soon manifest. The sympathies of
a large section of the Radicals and of the entire Peace Party were
alienated from the Ministry, who now found the arguments they had
used to embarrass Mr. Disraeli during the Abyssinian War, turned
against themselves. Mr. Bright, in joining a Cabinet which waged
a costly war on some wretched African savages without the consent
of Parliament, sacrificed the last remnant of authority which his
inconsistent attitude to the Education Act had left him. Nor did he
regain this authority by writing a letter early in January, in which
he expressed an opinion that all difficulties with Ashanti might be
settled by arbitration. As the country was actually at war with
King Koffee, Mr. Bright’s suggestion was taken to mean that England
should, by an act of surrender, pave the way for arbitration between
herself and the Ashantis. This could not possibly be the opinion of the
Government which was vigorously prosecuting the war, and it was clear
that on this subject, as on the Education question, there was chaos
in the Cabinet. In these circumstances the question came to be would
Ministers dissolve, or would they meet Parliament and attempt to regain
popularity through the work of a reconstructed Cabinet, whose latest
and most influential recruit never spoke in public without showing
that, when he did not abandon his principles, he was at variance with
his colleagues? Various rumours were current as to a conflict of
opinion on the subject between Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues and the
Queen. Ultimately it was decided that there should be no dissolution
before spring.

Worn with anxiety, irritated by the failure of his plans for recovering
popularity through a reconstruction of his Cabinet, sick in body and
mind, the Prime Minister in January fell seriously ill. A fortnight
before the opening of the Session he paralysed his Party with amazement
by deciding to dissolve Parliament. Seldom has so momentous a decision
been arrived at in circumstances so strange and so peculiar. Writing
to Lord Salisbury on the 26th of January, 1874, Mr. Hayward says:
“Alderson (whom I saw yesterday) thought it unlikely that you would be
brought back earlier than you intended by the Dissolution, which has
come on every one by surprise. The thought first struck Gladstone as he
lay rolled up in blankets to perspire away his cold, was mentioned as
a thought to daughter and private secretary, then rapidly ripened into
a resolution and submitted to the Cabinet. The secret was wonderfully
well kept by everybody. The Liberals are delighted, and the Disraelites
puzzled and amazed.”[63]

Parliament was dissolved on the 20th of January, and it was reckoned
that the new House of Commons would be elected by St. Valentine’s
Day. Mr. Gladstone’s Address to the electors of Greenwich set forth
at great length the reasons for his sudden appeal to the country. But
Mr. Forster gave the best and briefest explanation, when he told his
constituents at Bradford that the Dissolution was due to the petty
defeats and humiliations which the Government had suffered since
Mr. Disraeli’s refusal to relieve them of the cares of office, and
to a desire that the electors should decide whether Mr. Disraeli or
Mr. Gladstone should have the spending of the enormous surplus of
£6,000,000 at the disposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr.
Gladstone in his declarations of policy referred to the Ashanti War as
a warning against “equivocal and entangling engagements.” He complained
that the House of Commons was overburdened with work, and, with an eye
to the Irish vote, he approved of delegating some of its business to
“local and subordinate authorities” under the “unquestioned control”
of Parliament. He held out no hopes of effecting any great changes in
the Education Act, but he promised a measure of University Reform,
supported the extension of Household Franchise to the Counties, and
pledged himself to abolish the Income Tax. His meagre references to
Foreign Affairs seemed to show that Mr. Bright had forced the Cabinet
to accept the unpopular policy of selfish and self-contained isolation,
which virtually ignored the higher international duties of England as
one of the brotherhood of European nations.

Mr. Disraeli’s manifesto was not at first sight captivating. Instead
of attacking Mr. Gladstone’s proposal to abolish the Income Tax as
an attempt to secure a Party majority by taking a _plébiscite_ on a
Budget which had not yet come before Parliament, Mr. Disraeli fell in
gladly with the idea. The abolition of the Income Tax was apparently
to him what emigration was to Mr. Micawber when he had it suggested
to him for the first time--the dream of his youth, the ambition of
his manhood, and the solace of his declining years. The Tory chief
also over-elaborated his complaints that Mr. Gladstone had imperilled
freedom of navigation in the Straits of Malacca by recognising the
right of the Dutch to conquer the Acheenese if they could. Nor was
he apparently successful in attacking the Government for entering on
the Ashanti War without waiting to ask Parliament for leave to repel
Ashanti assaults on our forts. But when he demanded “more energy” in
Foreign Affairs than Mr. Gladstone had exhibited, and when he said
that measures could be devised to improve the condition of the people
without incessant “harassing legislation,” he cut the Government to the
quick.

The elections ended in a signal disaster to the Liberal Party. Nobody
was ready for the fray. Everybody was irritated at being taken
unawares. The influences and the “interests” that had caused the decay
of Mr. Gladstone’s Administration have been already described. It will
be enough to say here that they smote it with defeat at the polls.
The attempt to neutralise these influences by promising to spend the
surplus in abolishing the Income Tax and readjusting local taxation
completely failed. The working classes were not eager to take off a tax
which they did not pay. The majority of the Income Tax payers argued
that Mr. Disraeli’s manifesto showed that he was prepared to give
them whatever relief was possible. Independent electors felt that it
was desirable to censure a project which might establish a precedent
for including the Budget in an electoral manifesto,[64] and throwing
the financial system of the country into the crucible of a General
Election.[65] The City of London decisively abandoned Liberalism. The
counties were swept by Tory candidates. The working classes refused to
support candidates of their own order, save in Stafford and Morpeth,
where the miners returned Mr. Macdonald and Mr. Burt to Parliament. Men
of high capacity, unless their names were known to newspaper readers,
were ruthlessly rejected. The electors preferred either candidates
of loudly-advertised eminence, rich local magnates, or young men of
family--especially if they had titles. Only two tenant-farmers were
chosen--Mr. Clare Read, a moderate Conservative, and Mr. McCombie, a
moderate Liberal. The “professors” and academic politicians went down
helplessly in the _mêlée_--even Mr. Fawcett failing to hold his seat
at Brighton, though shortly after Parliament met he was returned by
Hackney, where a vacancy accidentally occurred. The Home counties,
where “villadom”--to use Lord Rosebery’s term--reigns supreme, went
over to Conservatism, and the success of the Tories in the largest
cities was amazing. The middling-sized towns, and, generally speaking,
the electors north of the Humber, were pretty faithful to Liberalism.
But in Ireland the Liberal Party almost ceased to exist--the Irish
electors preferring to return either Home Rulers or Tories. Roughly
speaking, Mr. Disraeli could count on a steady working majority of
fifty, even reckoning the Irish Home Rulers as Liberals.

[Illustration: LORD SALISBURY.

(_From a Photograph by Bassano, Old Bond Street, W._)]

Mr. Gladstone tendered his resignation at once when the results of
the Elections were known, and Mr. Disraeli on being sent for formed
a Cabinet, in which the offices were distributed as follows:--First
Lord of the Treasury, Mr. Disraeli; Lord Chancellor, Lord Cairns;
Lord President of the Council, Duke of Richmond; Lord Privy Seal,
Lord Malmesbury; Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby; Secretary for India,
Lord Salisbury; Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon; Home Secretary,
Mr. R. A. Cross; War Secretary, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy; First Lord of the
Admiralty, Mr. Ward Hunt; Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford
Northcote; Postmaster-General, Lord John Manners. The minor offices
were distributed either among administrators and men of business, or
young men of high birth and promising abilities, who were thus put in
training for the duties of leadership in the future.[66]

Ministers and ex-Ministers soon had their troubles thick upon them. The
“interests” were impatient for satisfaction, and there was an ugly rush
after the surplus. Deputations of Income Tax repealers, Local Taxation
Leaguers, clergymen demanding subsidies to Consular chaplains, brewers
demanding the repeal of their licence, Malt Tax repealers, Sugar Duty
repealers, clerical supporters of voluntary schools, who, according
to Lord Sandon, virtually asked for the suspension of payment by
results, waited on Sir Stafford Northcote to claim their share of Mr.
Gladstone’s surplus. Other Ministers, too, were pestered by the various
“interests” who had worked for the Tory Party at the General Election
on the understanding that Mr. Gladstone’s “harassing” legislation would
be undone if Mr. Disraeli came back to power. The new Government were
sufficiently courageous to resist this pressure. Indeed, they were
generous enough to retract much of the hostile criticism which in the
heat of electioneering contests had been hurled against Mr. Gladstone’s
Administration. The Liberal Party, on the other hand, was not only
shattered, but practically leaderless. Its chiefs, it was said, were
fighting among themselves. Stories flew about to the effect that Mr.
Lowe declared he would never again follow Mr. Gladstone, that Sir
William Harcourt was convinced he must lead the Party himself if it was
to be saved from extinction, and that Sir Henry James vowed that he
would never permit Mr. Gladstone to sit as his colleague in any future
Liberal Cabinet. Naturally Mr. Gladstone retired from the duties of
leadership, but pressure was put upon him to resume them. He consented,
but only on the understanding that his service was to be temporary,
and that he should not be expected to be in regular attendance in the
House of Commons. His advanced age, his broken health, and his need
of rest, were the reasons which he gave publicly for his action. His
real motive, however, he confided to Mr. Hayward, who, in a letter to
Lady Emily Peel (27th of February, 1874), says, “I had a long talk with
Gladstone yesterday. He thinks the Party in too heterogeneous a state
for regular leadership, that it must be let alone to shake itself into
consistency. He will attend till Easter, and then quit the field for
a time. He does not talk of permanent abdication.”[67] Mr. Gladstone,
it would seem, at this time considered his functions as a leader ended
after he had shattered his Party. Not till it had been reorganised by
somebody else, or had reorganised itself, did he apparently deem it
worthy of his guidance.

On the 19th of March the Queen’s Speech was read to both Houses of
Parliament. It referred joyfully to the termination of the war with
the Ashantis, the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh, but mournfully
to the famine which was then devastating Bengal. It promised a Land
Transfer Bill, the extension of the Judicature Act fusing law and
equity to Ireland and Scotland, a Bill to remedy the grievances of
the publicans, a Bill dealing with Friendly Societies, and a Royal
Commission on the Labour Laws.[68] In the debate on the Address several
Peers took occasion to make sport of the great Minister who had fallen
from power. But the Commons were spared this exhibition of political
vulgarity, mainly because Mr. Disraeli snubbed most mercilessly the
first of his followers who attempted to indulge in it.

When Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, who moved the Address, taunted Mr.
Gladstone with his defeat, Mr. Disraeli assured the House that Sir
William had, contrary to custom, spoken without consulting him as to
what he should say--in fact, without consulting anybody. As for the
silence of the Liberal Members on the results of the Dissolution, “I
admire,” said Mr. Disraeli, “their taste and feeling. If I had been a
follower of a Parliamentary chief as eminent as the Right Honourable
gentleman, even if I thought he had erred, I should have been disposed
rather to exhibit sympathy than to offer criticism; I should remember
the great victories he had fought and won. I should remember his
illustrious career; its continuous success and splendour; not its
accidental or even disastrous mistakes.” Mr. Gladstone’s frank and
candid statement was a model of dignified simplicity well worthy of
Mr. Disraeli’s chivalrous admiration. The defeated Minister simply
said that his policy of fiscal reorganisation in his judgment could
not be carried save by a Government possessing the full confidence
of the country. The bye-elections--notably the Liberal defeat at
Stroud--during the recess rendered it doubtful if his Administration
possessed this confidence. His appeal to the country confirmed that
doubt. Nay, the verdict of the electors so emphatically declared their
desire to entrust power to the Tory Party, that he felt it his duty to
make way for Mr. Disraeli and his colleagues as soon as possible, and
to afford them every reasonable facility for giving effect to the will
of the people.[69] These chivalrous courtesies foretold a dull Session.
Nor did the statements of Ministers seem promising to the “young
bloods” of the Tory Party, who held it as an axiom that they were
badly led if their leaders did not show them plenty of “sport.” What
did Lord Derby mean, for example, by telling the House of Lords that
Lord Granville had left the Foreign Affairs of the country in the most
satisfactory condition? Had they not all assured their constituents
that he had brought England to such a depth of degradation that there
were now none so poor as do her reverence? What did Mr. Disraeli mean
in moving the Vote of Thanks to the Ashanti troops by praising Mr.
Cardwell for the preparations he made for bringing the war to a speedy
and victorious conclusion? Had they not all declared on the hustings
that the conduct of the war was a model of mismanagement? Moreover, was
it necessary for Lord Salisbury to exhaust the vocabulary of eulogy on
Lord Northbrook for his energy in dealing with the Indian Famine? and
was Mr. Hardy true to his followers and supporters when, on moving the
Army Estimates (30th March), he contradicted every one of the charges
that had been made against Mr. Cardwell, who had been accused of
stopping Volunteering, exhausting stores, wrecking fortifications, and
failing to arm the troops?[70] One passing gleam of hope shot across
the horizon when Mr. Ward Hunt in his speech on the Naval Estimates
stood by the wild and whirling rhetoric of Opposition criticism. He
declared that the Fleet was inefficient, and warned the House he might
need a Supplementary Estimate. Whilst he, at least, remained at the
Admiralty he would not tolerate a “fleet on paper” or “dummy ships.”
But alas! even Mr. Ward Hunt’s alarmist statement vanished in a peal
of laughter when it was discovered that all he asked for to convert
his “paper fleet” into a real one was £100,000! Cynical critics soon
reassured a scared populace. The best proof that the Services had not
been starved or rendered inefficient by Mr. Gladstone’s Administration
was afforded by Sir Stafford Northcote, who made no secret of his
intention to distribute the surplus of £6,000,000 which every one
regarded with hungry eyes.

The eventful day for the division of the spoil came on the 16th of

[Illustration: REVIEW IN WINDSOR GREAT PARK OF THE TROOPS FROM THE
ASHANTI WAR: THE MARCH PAST BEFORE THE QUEEN.]

April, when Sir Stafford Northcote made his statement. In spite of Mr.
Lowe’s remission of taxes, his payment of the _Alabama_ Claims, his
disbursement of £800,000 on the Ashanti War, the year 1873-74 ended
with a surplus in hand of £1,000,000. On the basis of existing taxation
Sir Stafford Northcote for the coming year estimated his revenue at
£77,995,000, to which he added £500,000 from interest on Government
advances for agricultural improvements heretofore added to Exchequer
balances and never reckoned in the revenue. His expenditure was taken
at £72,503,000, so that he had the magnificent surplus of £6,000,000
to play with. Never did a Finance Minister use a great opportunity
more tamely. With such a sum at his disposal he might have re-cast the
fiscal system of England and won a reputation rivalling that of Peel.
But Northcote had not the heart to climb ambition’s ladder. He pleaded
lack of time as an excuse for attempting no great stroke of financial
policy, and he frittered away his six millions as follows:--He gave
£240,000 in aid of the support of pauper lunatics; £600,000 in aid
of the Police rate; £170,000 in increased local rates on Government
property, and this sum of £1,010,000 was to be raised in succeeding
years by further payments for pauper lunatics to £1,250,000 as an
Imperial subvention to local taxation.[71] He devoted £2,000,000 to
the remission of the Sugar Duties; he took a penny off the Income Tax,
which absorbed £1,540,000, and he remitted the House Duties, which
cost him £480,000. The half-million of interest on loans which he had
included in revenue Sir Stafford Northcote used to create terminable
annuities, which would in eleven years extinguish £7,000,000 of
National Debt. The fault of the Budget was that nothing historic was
done with a surplus such as rarely occurs in the history of a nation.
Even if Sir Stafford Northcote felt unequal to the task of re-casting
the whole financial system, and giving relief to the poorer taxpayers,
he could easily have earned for his Government the enduring gratitude
of the nation. He might, for example, have created terminable annuities
to pay off twenty or thirty millions of National Debt before 1890.

Mr. Cross’s Licensing Bill was introduced early in May, when the
publicans, who had worked hard to put the Government in power, expected
Mr. Austin Bruce’s restrictions on the hours of opening public-houses
to be swept away. Mr. Cross, however, found that the magistrates and
police, and more respectable inhabitants of every town and parish,
were of opinion that these restrictions had done good. He was,
therefore, forced to disappoint his clients. He left the Sunday hours
untouched. On week-days he fixed the hours for closing at half-past
twelve in London, half-past eleven in populous places, and eleven in
rural districts.[72] He cancelled the permission given by Mr. Bruce
to fifty-four houses to remain open till one in the morning, in order
to provide refreshments for playgoers and theatrical people. Inasmuch
as the Government were at the mercy of the publican vote in a great
many constituencies, the Bill was most creditable to Mr. Cross. It
was, in truth, a Bill not in extension but in further restriction
of the hours of opening, and in passing it he risked giving offence
to Ministerialists who had won their seats under a pledge that the
existing restrictions would be relaxed.[73]

Quite unexpectedly the Ministry plunged into the stormy sea of
ecclesiastical legislation, and as was hinted at broadly, not without
encouragement from the Queen. This much might also have been inferred
from two facts. The churchmen who had most strongly influenced the
Court in matters of ecclesiastical government were Dr. Tait, the
Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr. Norman Macleod, Minister of the
Barony Parish in Glasgow. The Bill dealing with the English Church
represented the ideas of Tait. That dealing with the Kirk of Scotland
embodied the policy of Macleod. Indeed, pressure of an unusual
character must have been applied to the Prime Minister to support the
former measure, which he knew only too well must provoke dissensions in
his Cabinet. It was on the 20th of April that Dr. Tait introduced the
Public Worship Regulation Bill in the House of Lords, and the best and
briefest description of it was that which was subsequently given by Mr.
Disraeli, who said, in one of the debates in the House of Commons, that
it was a Bill “to put down Ritualism.” At first Ministers did not give
it warm support, in fact, Lord Salisbury opposed it vigorously. After
it had passed through the House of Lords the fiction that it was a
private Member’s Bill was still kept up, the Second Reading being moved
in the House of Commons by Mr. Russell Gurney. Mr. Hall, the new Tory
member for Oxford, moved an amendment to Mr. Gurney’s motion, and Mr.
Gladstone opposed the measure as an attack on congregational liberties,
which had been consecrated by usage. The three great divisions of the
Established Church, the Evangelical, Broad, and High Church Parties,
had each been allowed a large scope of liberty. Why single out the last
for an invidious assault? Mr. Gladstone, however, did not deny that
some Ritualistic practices were offensive, and he moved six resolutions
which would sufficiently protect congregations from priestly
extravagances, and yet leave the clergy ample freedom in ordering their
church service. These resolutions disintegrated both parties in the
State. Sir William Harcourt led a Liberal revolt against Mr. Gladstone.
The Secretary for War (Mr. Gathorne-Hardy) replied hotly to Sir William
Harcourt’s ultra-Erastian harangue. Mr. Disraeli here cast in his lot
with the supporters of the Bill; which, despite the opposition of Mr.
Hardy, Sir Stafford Northcote, and Lord John Manners, accordingly
became in a few days a Cabinet measure. In the House of Lords matters
grew still more serious. When the House of Commons sent the Bill back
to the Peers, one of Mr. Gladstone’s defeated amendments was speedily
inserted in it, and Lord Salisbury “utterly repudiated the bugbear of a
majority in the House of Commons.” A few days afterwards Mr. Disraeli
replied with caustic humour to the taunts of Lord Salisbury, whom he
ridiculed as “a great master,” so he called him, “of gibes, and flouts,
and sneers.” Still, the Commons accepted the Lords’ Amendments, which
were for the most part in favour of individual freedom, and so the
Bill passed. But Mr. Disraeli paid a great price for his complaisance
to the Court and its confidential ecclesiastical adviser. The High
Church Party, who had ever marched in the van of his supporters,
became disaffected, and in every future electoral contest those of
them who did not fall sulking to the rear went over to the enemy. Mr.
Disraeli’s tactical blunder in identifying his Cabinet with the Public
Worship Regulation Bill of 1874 was notoriously one of the causes of
the collapse of the Tory Party in the General Election of 1880. His
other adventure into the perilous region of ecclesiastical legislation
was not so disastrous to his Party as to the institution it was his
desire to protect and strengthen. In 1869 Dr. Macleod had headed a
deputation which waited on Mr. Gladstone, asking him to abolish lay
Patronage in the Scottish State Church. Mr. Gladstone asked if Macleod
and his colleagues had considered what view was likely to be taken of
the proposal by the other Presbyterian churches of Scotland, “regard
being had to their origin.” This phrase struck the deputation dumb.
It was as if Mr. Gladstone had asked whether they thought it right
that the clergy of the Free Church, who sacrificed their endowments in
1843 because the Party whom the deputation represented successfully
prevented the abolition of lay Patronage, should be ignored now, when
this very Party proposed that the price they agreed to pay for the
enjoyment of their benefices should no longer be exacted. The project,
according to Dr. Macleod, excited no great enthusiasm in Scotland,[74]
but the Courts of the Scottish Established Church supported it
strongly. In 1874 Mr. Disraeli, yielding to pressure, which it was
admittedly difficult to resist, permitted Lord Advocate Gordon to
introduce his Scottish Patronage Bill. It abolished the rights of
lay patrons, and vested presentations to livings in the hands of the
congregations of the Established Church of Scotland. When the patron
was a private individual he was compensated, but when the patronage to
a benefice was held by

[Illustration: THE BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH (DR. MAGEE) ADDRESSING THE
HOUSE OF LORDS.]

a Corporation it was confiscated without compensation. The idea of
the Government was that Presbyterians outside the Established Church
were deterred from joining it by the existence of lay Patronage. When
this was abolished it was supposed that they would immediately go over
to the State Church, whose services they could command gratuitously,
and leave their own pastors, whose stipends they had to pay out of
their own pockets, to starve. Mr. Disraeli did not understand that
lay Patronage, by bringing the Church courts and civil courts into
collision, was merely the occasion and not the cause of the Disruption,
and that what separated the Free Churchmen from the State Church was
a difference of opinion on the relative position of Church and State,
as wide as that which separated Dr. Pusey from an Erastian like Sir
William Harcourt. But the Patronage Bill was passed in spite of Mr.
Gladstone’s opposition, though, like the Public Worship Regulation
Bill, it failed in its object. The congregations of the non-established
Presbyterian churches refused to justify Mr. Disraeli’s cynical
estimate of their character, and therefore did not desert their
pastors. The powerful Free Kirk of Scotland, representing the principle
that the Church should be established and endowed but left free from
State control, had been debarred from joining in the Disestablishment
movement. It now, however, cast in its lot with those Presbyterian
dissenters who clamoured for Disestablishment in Scotland, which
thus for the first time came within the range of practical politics.
Perhaps, if Mr. Disraeli had insisted on the rights of patrons being
transferred to all parishioners his policy might have been more
successful. But by transferring these rights to the congregations
in actual attendance at established churches, he gave the Free
Churchmen a pretext for arguing that he had sectarianised the national
ecclesiastical endowments, and that, therefore, the State Church
could no longer be defended on principle. These endowments were not
sectarianised, but secularised, when controlled by private patrons and
civil courts, for patron and judge could alike be regarded in theory
as legal trustees for the nation. They were bad trustees according to
the Free Churchmen, but then they represented the nation officially,
and did not, like their successors, the congregations of the parish
churches, constitute a sect.

Academic debates on Parliamentary Reform and Home Rule varied the
monotony of ecclesiastical controversy which Ministers seemed to
take a morbid delight in stirring up. Their next achievement in this
direction led to a defeat. Lord Sandon unexpectedly introduced in
July an Endowed Schools Bill, which virtually undid the work of
1869. It restored the ascendency of the Church of England in Grammar
Schools, and substituted the authority of the Charity Commissioners
for that of the Endowed Schools Commission. The Bill would probably
have done much to conciliate the clergy who had been offended by the
Public Worship Regulation Act, but, on the other hand, it closed the
ranks of the Opposition, and recalled the Dissenters to the Liberal
colours. The result was that, after fierce controversy in both Houses,
Mr. Disraeli professed himself satisfied with the appointment of the
Charity Commission to superintend the working of Mr. Forster’s Act,
and postponed the contentious clauses till the following year. They
were never heard of again. Mr. Stansfeld’s Rating Bill, which the Lords
had rejected in the previous Session, was adopted by the Ministry and
passed. Mr. Mundella’s Bill for consolidating the Factory Acts, which
had been shelved in 1873, was adopted by Mr. Cross and carried.

The popular verdict on the Ministry, when the Session closed on the
8th of August, was, that as administrators they had done nothing
brilliant, and as legislators they were timidly reactionary, when
they did not adopt the ideas and measures of their predecessors. The
Premier, perhaps, suffered most in reputation. It was impossible to
admire the strategy that brought into prominence Church questions
which divided his Cabinet, and were uninteresting to the populace, or
which, like the Endowed Schools Bill, when they were of great popular
interest, were dealt with in an offensively reactionary spirit. On the
other hand, the success with which the famine in Bengal and Behar was
arrested, and indeed the whole tone of the administration at the India
Office, greatly increased Lord Salisbury’s _prestige_. Lord Carnarvon’s
management of the Colonies was sympathetic and popular. Foreign affairs
had been conducted by Lord Derby with admirable prudence. This was
aptly illustrated by his skill in avoiding entangling engagements
committing England to approve of changes in international law which
would have greatly extended the powers of invading armies in an enemy’s
country. These changes were proposed at a Conference at Brussels, which
had been promoted by Russia and Germany ostensibly to mitigate the
evils of modern warfare.

Only one cloud shadowed the Foreign policy of the Cabinet during this
uneventful year. The contest between Prince Bismarck and the Roman
Catholic Church was raging in Germany, and the personal rivalry of the
German Chancellor and Count Harry Arnim--who had been German Ambassador
at Paris--had ended in the arrest of the latter on the charge of
embezzling State documents. This arrest had been effected after Count
Harry Arnim’s house had been ransacked by the police, and the Continent
rang with the scandal. Mr. Disraeli, at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, on
the 9th of November, congratulated the country on the Conservatism of
the British working classes, who, he said, enjoyed so many liberties
that they were naturally loyal to the institutions under which their
freedom was safeguarded. “They are not,” said he, “afraid of political
arrests or domiciliary visits.” The Queen was somewhat pained at an
utterance which the German Government regarded as an impertinent
interference with its domestic affairs, but a few days afterwards the
wrath of Prince Bismarck was appeased by an official explanation in the
Times to the effect that Mr. Disraeli had not meant to refer to the
affairs of Germany, or to the arbitrary conduct of the Berlin police.
In this unfortunate speech Mr. Disraeli, however, struck a popular
note when he referred to the extension of the Empire by the annexation
of the Fiji islands, in terms that foreshadowed a policy of Colonial
expansion.

As for the Opposition, it remained in a state of disorganisation, under
Mr. Gladstone’s desultory leadership. Its prospects were not improved
by his publication of two pamphlets, in which he attacked what he
called “Vaticanism,” and attempted to prove that good Catholics, who
were mostly Liberals, must be incapable of reasoning, if they were not
traitors. That was the sum and substance of his amazing tirades against
the extravagant pretensions of the Papacy under Pius IX.

During the year the Queen seldom appeared in public, which was,
perhaps, one reason why a marked deterioration in the moral tone
of society was discernible. A curious languor crept over the upper
classes. They were consumed with a quenchless thirst for amusement,
and the genius who could have invented a new pleasure would have had
the world at his feet. Frivolity seemed to prey like a cancer on the
vitality of the nation. When the Prince of Wales gave a State Fancy
Ball in July, the _Times_ actually devoted three columns of space
to an elaborate description of the dresses. Sport became a serious
business to all classes of society, and even grave and earnest men
of affairs like Mr. Gladstone wasted their lives in the laborious
idleness of ecclesiastical controversies. The more vigorous youth of
the aristocracy now began to make their “grand tour,” not as did their
ancestors to study foreign affairs and institutions, but merely to
kill big game. Fashionable life became so costly that rents had to be
exacted with unusual rigour, and the strikes among the agricultural
labourers that mitigated the advantages of a good harvest, were
accordingly spoken of in West End drawing-rooms as if they had revived
the horrors of the _Jacquerie_. Though prices had begun to fall, the
mercantile classes vied with the aristocracy in the ostentatious
extravagance of their personal expenditure, and in the City the old
and substantial Princes of Commerce were pushed aside by gamblers who
termed themselves “financial agents,” and who had suddenly grown
rich by “placing” Foreign Loans and floating fabulously successful
Joint-Stock Companies. The pace of life was too rapid even for the
Prince of Wales, whose financial embarrassments during a dull autumn
formed the subject of some discussion. It was publicly stated that he
had incurred liabilities to the extent of £600,000, and that the Queen,
disgusted with Mr. Gladstone’s refusal to apply to Parliament for
money to discharge them, had paid them herself. From what has already
been said on this delicate subject it is hardly necessary to point
out here that this statement was not quite accurate. It was true that
the debts of the Heir Apparent amounted to one-third of his income,
but it was equally true that on the 1st of October his Controller’s
audit showed that he had a balance to his credit sufficient to meet
them. At the same time there could be no doubt that the Prince’s
expenditure far exceeded his resources, for sums varying from £10,000
to £20,000, taken from the great fund accumulated for him by the
Prince Consort’s thrifty administration of the revenues of the Duchy of
Cornwall, were sacrificed every year to prevent his debts from becoming
unmanageable.[75]

His brothers were more fortunately situated. Prince Arthur, who had
been created, in May, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of
Sussex,[76] was able to devote himself quietly to his military studies,
and lead a life of dignified simplicity. “Many thanks,” writes the
Princess Louis of Hesse to the Queen (May 4th, 1874), “for your last
dear letter, written on dear Arthur’s birthday, of which, though late,
I wrote you joy. Such a good, steady, excellent boy as he is! What a
comfort it must be to you never to have had any cause of uneasiness or
annoyance in his conduct! He is so much respected, which for one so
young is doubly praiseworthy. From St. Petersburg, as from Vienna, we
heard the same account of the steady line he

[Illustration: ALEXANDER II., CZAR OF RUSSIA.]

holds to, in spite of all chaffing, &c., from others, which shows
character.”[77] Prince Leopold was equally fortunate; indeed, his
delicate health would of itself have compelled him to shun the
exhausting gaieties of London seasons, when Society was worn out with
_ennui_ every year ere the rosebuds burst into bloom. When Parliament
voted him an income of £15,000 a year, Mr. Disraeli described Prince
Leopold as an invalid student of “no common order,” and to the Queen
it was an increasing source of delight to watch in her youngest son
the growth of the same pensive nature, the same studious habits, and
the same refined and cultured tastes which, in the Prince Consort,
Mr. Disraeli averred somewhat effusively, “gave a new impulse to our
civilisation.”

With the exception of the grant to the Duke of Edinburgh on his
marriage, this was the only Royal grant voted by Parliament which
was not made a matter of controversy. But it must be noted that in
1874 the spirit of Republicanism in the country was almost dead.
Mr. Chamberlain, by his writings and speeches, made an ineffectual
effort to keep it alive, but even he had to bow his austere knee to
the popular idols of the time, who were undoubtedly the Prince and
Princess of Wales. As if to throw out a jaunty challenge to the enemies
of the Monarchy, the Prince and Princess paid a visit to Birmingham
in November, where it was the duty of Mr. Chamberlain as Mayor to
receive them, and where they met with a welcome from the populace, the
significance of which he was quick to recognise. Mr. Chamberlain, who
had not been expected to make pleasant speeches to his guests, behaved
to them with the tact of an astute if not an accomplished courtier.
His undisguised appreciation of the Prince’s visit to his mansion,
and of the Princess’s delight in his conservatories, famed for their
priceless exotics, recalled the devotion of the Lady Margaret Bellenden
in “Old Mortality,” when Charles II. accepted the hospitalities of her
castle.

One marked feature of the London season in 1874 was the sudden
withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court ceremonials. An
attempt was made to account for this by explaining that as her Royal
and Imperial Highness was expecting to become a mother she deemed her
retirement from Society necessary.[78] According to statements current
at the time, however, her absence was due not exactly to a dispute,
but to a difficulty about her precedence, which must have considerably
embarrassed the Queen. As the daughter of a powerful Emperor, the
Duchess of Edinburgh not unnaturally thought that she had a right to
take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who was but the daughter
of a petty king. An Imperial Highness should, in her opinion, take
precedence of a Royal Highness. On the other hand, it was intolerable
to the English people that even by implication should the inferiority
of the English Monarchy to that of any Imperial House in Europe be
recognised--in fact, the kings of England had never admitted that any
of the Continental Emperors had a title to precedence over them. The
country, therefore, heard with interest a report that the Russian Czar
was about to come to England, not merely to visit his daughter, but
if possible to settle with the Queen the question of precedence that
had disturbed her family. Her Majesty was understood to be willing
to assent to any arrangement which did not confer on the wife of her
second son, the right to take precedence over the wife of the Heir
Apparent, and so matters stood when the Czar arrived at Dover on the
13th of May. He was received with the utmost cordiality by the Queen
in person at Windsor. The first effect of his visit was to replace
the Duchess of Edinburgh in the _Court Circular_ among the ladies of
the Royal Family next to the Princess of Wales, and to cause her to
be described as “Her Royal _and Imperial Highness_ the Duchess of
Edinburgh (Grand Duchess of Russia).”[79] The Czar was well received by
the people, among whom he was popular as the Liberator of the Serfs,
and after a dreary week of sightseeing and State banquets, he left
England on the 22nd of May.

On the 30th of March the Queen proceeded to Windsor Great Park to
review the troops who had been engaged in the Ashanti War. The force,
2,000 in number, went through their evolutions in gallant style, and
her Majesty with her own hands awarded the Victoria Cross to Lord
Gifford for personal bravery in the campaign. On the 13th of April the
Queen also inspected the sailors and marines of the Royal Navy who had
fought in the Ashanti War. The review took place at Gosport, and many
of the officers were, by the Queen’s desire, personally presented to
her.

The controversy then raging over Vivisection seemed to have interested
her Majesty greatly, for at the Jubilee meeting of the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals there was read a letter written by Sir
Thomas Biddulph by the Queen’s instructions, which ran as follows:--

“MY DEAR LORD,--The Queen has commanded me to address you, as
President of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
on the occasion of the assembly in this country of the foreign
delegates connected with your association and of the Jubilee of
the Society, to request you to give expression publicly to her
Majesty’s warm interest in the success of the efforts which are
being made at home and abroad for the purpose of diminishing the
cruelties practised on dumb animals. The Queen hears and reads
with horror of the sufferings which the brute creation often
undergo from the thoughtlessness of the ignorant, and she fears
also sometimes from experiments in the pursuit of science. For
the removal of the former the Queen trusts much to the progress
of education, and in regard to the pursuit of science, she hopes
that the entire advantage of those anæsthetic discoveries, from
which man has derived so much benefit himself in the alleviation of
suffering, may be fully extended to the lower animals. Her Majesty
rejoices that the Society awakens the interest of the young by the
presentation of prizes for essays connected with the subject, and
hears with gratification that her son and daughter-in-law have
shown their interest by distributing the prizes. Her Majesty begs
to announce a donation of £100 to the funds of the Society.”

On the 23rd of November her Majesty was present, with the Empress of
Russia, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and other members of the
Royal Family, at the christening of the infant son of the Duke and
Duchess of Edinburgh--Prince Alfred of Edinburgh; and on the 3rd of
December she received a deputation from France to present her with an
Address of thanks for services rendered by Englishmen to the sick and
wounded in the war of 1870-71. The Address was contained in four large
volumes, which were placed on a table for the purpose of being shown
to her Majesty. M. d’Agiout and Comte Serrurier explained the nature
of their contents. Having accepted the volumes, the Queen said to the
deputation in French, “I accept with pleasure the volumes which you
have presented, and which will be carefully preserved by me as records
of the interesting historical events which they commemorate. They are
beautiful as works of art, but their chief value in my eyes is that
they form a permanent memorial of the gratitude of the French people
for services freely and spontaneously rendered to them by Englishmen
acting under a simple impulse of humanity. Your recognition of those
services cannot fail to be appreciated by my subjects, and it will
increase the friendly and cordial feeling which I am happy to believe
exists between the two nations.” The volumes were placed in the British
Museum.

[Illustration: THE ALBERT MEMORIAL CHAPEL, WINDSOR.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._)]

On the 3rd of December her Majesty at Windsor personally presented
several seamen and marines with the medals which they had won for
conspicuous gallantry in the Ashanti War. A few days after this
ceremony the attention of the country was absorbed in the first volume
of the biography of the Prince Consort, which had been compiled with
sedulous care, delicate tact, and refined feeling by Mr. (afterwards
Sir) Theodore Martin. The verdict of the public was one of immediate
and unreserved approval. They were delighted with Mr. Martin’s
idyllic picture of Prince Albert’s domestic life, and of the tender
companionship in which he and the Queen lived lovingly together.
Glimpses, too, of the Queen’s own strength of character and of her
shrewd judgment in politics, such as, for example, her letters and
memoranda on the affair of the Spanish marriages, and her keenly-etched
portrait of the Czar Nicholas after his visit in 1844, suggested very
plainly that the Sovereign was not exactly a cipher in the State. If in
some of its lines Mr. Martin’s portrait recalled memories of William
III., it reminded the people that, like William III., the Prince,
though unable from his intellectual detachment to inspire the people
with love, won their confidence and respect through his unpretending,
but unswerving fidelity to the interests of his adopted country. But
the frankness and absence of reserve with which the book was written
displeased a few of the Queen’s foreign relatives; indeed, this feature
of the biography had been commented on by some who thought it was
derogatory to the dignity of the Royal Caste. The Princess Louis of
Hesse, if she did not share this opinion, felt it her duty to convey it
to the Queen. In a letter to her mother at the beginning of 1875, the
Princess says, “It is touching and fine in you to allow the world to
have so much insight into your private life, and allow others to have
what has been only _your_ property, and _our_ inheritance.... For the
frivolous higher classes how valuable this book will be if read with
real attention, as a record of a life spent in the highest aims, with
the noblest conception of duty as a leading star.” To this letter the
Queen replied from Osborne, 12th of January, 1875:--“If,” she wrote,
“you will reflect a few minutes, you will see how I owed it to beloved
papa to let his noble character be known and understood, as it now is,
and that to wait longer when those who knew him best--his own wife, and
a few (very few there are) remaining friends--were all gone, or too
old and too far removed from that time, to be able to present a really
true picture of his most ideal and remarkable character, would have
been really wrong. He must be known for his own sake, for the good of
England and of his family, and of the world at large. Countless people
write to say what good it does and will do. And it is already thirteen
years since he left us! Then you must also remember that endless false
and untrue things have been said about us, public and private, and that
in these days people will write and will know; therefore the only way
to counteract this is to let the real full truth be known, and as much
be told as can be told with prudence and discretion, and then no harm,
but good, will be done. Nothing will help me more than that my people
should know what I have lost!... The ‘Early Years’ volume was begun
for private circulation only, and then General Grey and many of papa’s
friends and advisers begged me to have it published. This was done.
The work was most popular, and greatly liked. General Grey could not
go on with it, and asked me to ask Sir A. Helps to continue it; and he
said that he could not, but recommended Mr. Theodore Martin as one of
the most eminent writers of the day, and hoped I could prevail on him
to undertake this great national work. I did succeed, and he has taken
seven years to prepare the whole, supplied by me with every letter and
extract; and a deal of time it took, but I felt it would be a national
sacred work.”

CHAPTER XX.

EMPRESS OF INDIA.

Mr. Disraeli recognises Intellect--Lord Hartington Liberal
Leader--The Queen’s Speech--Lord Hartington’s “Grotesque
Reminiscences”--Mr. Cross’s Labour Bills--The Artisans’
Dwellings Act--Mr. Plimsoll and the “Ship-knackers”--Lord
Hartington’s First “Hit”--The Plimsoll Agitation--Surrender of
the Cabinet--“Strangers” in the House--The Budget--Rise of Mr.
Biggar--First Appearance of Mr. Parnell--The Fugitive Slave
Circular--The Sinking of the Yacht _Mistletoe_--The Loss of the
_Vanguard_--Purchase of the Suez Canal Shares--The Prince of
Wales’s Visit to India--Resignation of Lord Northbrook--Appointment
of Lord Lytton as Viceroy of India--Outbreak of the Eastern
Question--The Andrassy Note--The Berlin Memorandum--Murder of
French and German Consuls at Salonica--Lord Derby Rejects the
Berlin Memorandum--Servia Declares War on Turkey--The Bulgarian
Revolt Quenched in Blood--The Sultan Dethroned--Opening of
Parliament--“Sea-sick of the Silver Streak”--Debates on the
Eastern Question--Development of Obstruction by Mr. Biggar and Mr.
Parnell--The Royal Titles Bill--Lord Shaftesbury and the Queen--The
Queen at Whitechapel--A Doleful Budget--Mr. Disraeli becomes Earl
of Beaconsfield--The Prince Consort’s Memorial at Edinburgh--Mr.
Gladstone and the Eastern Question--The Servian War--The
Constantinople Conference--The Tories Manufacture Failure for Lord
Salisbury--Death of Lady Augusta Stanley--Proclamation of the Queen
as Empress at Delhi.

The year 1875 opened less gloomily for the Ministry than for the
Opposition. Mr. Disraeli had sanctioned the despatch of a Polar
Expedition, and in a curious letter, since published by Mr. Froude, he
had tendered Mr. Carlyle the Grand Cross of the Bath on the ground that
“a Government should recognise Intellect.”[80] He had also offered Mr.
Tennyson--“if not a great poet, a real one,” to use his own phrase--a
baronetcy. Both offers had been refused, but the scientific and
literary classes--potent agencies for influencing public opinion--sang
loud the praises of a Ministry that was so obviously in sympathy with
them. As for the Opposition, Mr. Gladstone’s definite refusal to lead
them any longer, compelled them to elect a successor, whereupon an
infinite amount of dissension, heartburning, and jealousy was stirred
up in their ranks. Mr. Goschen, Sir William Harcourt, and Mr. W. E.
Forster were the candidates who had most partisans, and the last was
undoubtedly the one on whom the public choice would have fallen, if
the public had been permitted to arbitrate between the rivals. The
Nonconformists, however, had not yet forgiven Mr. Forster, and Mr.
Bright put him out of the field by using his powerful influence in
favour of Lord Hartington, who was finally selected. According to one
of the ablest of Liberal political critics, Lord Hartington “succeeded
in making the whole party content, if not enthusiastic, with their
choice.”[81] Lord Hartington had, in the course of the Session,
virtually nothing to do, and, like the Peers in Mr. Gilbert’s opera,
he “did it very well.” The Queen’s Speech outlined a temperately
progressive policy, and when the Opposition leader taunted Ministers
with failing to carry out the scheme of reaction to which they stood
pledged on the hustings and in the Conservative Press, Mr. Disraeli,
with demure gaiety, protested against his “grotesque reminiscences.”
Lord Hartington, he complained, sought out “the most violent speeches
made by the most uninfluential persons in the most obscure places,
and the most absurd articles appearing in the dullest and most
uninfluential newspapers,” and took these as the opinions of “the great
Conservative Party.”[82] The opinions of the Conservative Ministry, he
added, were now expressed from the front Ministerial Bench, and for
these alone did he hold himself responsible.

Mr. Cross was the popular Minister of the Session. His Artisans’
Dwellings Bill embodied a resolution which Mr. U. Kay-Shuttleworth and
Sir Sidney Waterlow had induced Mr. Gladstone’s Government to accept,
and though in practice it proved disastrous to local ratepayers, it was
taken as a kindly recognition of claims which Liberal Cabinets had too
often ignored.[83] Mr. Cross was much more successful with his Labour
Bills, drafts of which, it was said, had been prepared by Mr. Lowe. The
Home Secretary had framed his Bills to conciliate Tory members who had
eloquently denounced Trades Unions during the General Election. But
in Committee he accepted amendments which removed from the law every
trace of the evil spirit that punished breach of contract by a workman,
not as a civil offence, but as a crime. Though he fought hard against
the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, he finally surrendered
to Mr. Lowe, and not only accepted his definition of “molestation” or
“picketing,” but further agreed to his proposal to make that offence
punishable when committed by anybody--be he master or servant. The
growth of a Conservative spirit among the Trades Unions dates from the
passing of Mr. Cross’s Employers and Workmen Bill, and his Conspiracy
Bill. Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s Regimental Exchanges Bill was a reactionary
concession to “the Colonels,” for it gave rich officers facilities for
bribing poor ones to relieve them from arduous foreign service. Lord
Cairns, however, did much more harm to the Government by withdrawing
his Judicature Bill under the menaces of a secret Junta of Peers,
headed by the Duke of Buccleuch, who had resolved to restore to the
House of Lords its Appellate Jurisdiction. Whilst independent Peers
protested against this course as a slight to the Upper House, the
country considered that it indicated a deplorable want of courage. For
when Lord Cairns’ new Bill, postponing till the 1st of November, 1886,
the provisions of Lord Selborne’s Act (1873),[84] and establishing
an Intermediate Court of Appeal as a kind of judicial makeshift,
came before the House of Commons, Sir John Holker, with indiscreet
frankness, explained why the Government had dropped their own measure.
The Peers, he said, meant to retain their jurisdiction in spite of the
House of Commons, and it was, therefore, futile to resist them. This
admission that the Cabinet, which ought to be responsible only to the
Queen and to Parliament, was really controlled by a small caucus of
Peers, whose very names were kept secret, was one which Government
could now-a-days survive. The Bill, however, passed before the Session
closed.

[Illustration: MR. PLIMSOLL ADDRESSING THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.]

Ministers also lost much of their popularity through Mr. Disraeli’s
tenderness towards owners of unseaworthy ships. Mr. Plimsoll had stirred

[Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF HARTINGTON.

(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]

up public opinion against the “ship-knackers,” as he called them, who,
having over-insured vessels that were rotten, sent them away to founder
at sea with their crews, and then put the insurance money in their
pockets. The Board of Trade had rather frowned on his efforts to get
it to detain unseaworthy ships for survey, but in deference to popular
pressure the Government had promised to bring in a Merchant Shipping
Bill to check the evil which Mr. Plimsoll had discovered and denounced.
The Bill was read a second time in the Commons without opposition,
and it was one in which the Queen was said to be as much interested
as Mr. Plimsoll himself. But Mr. Disraeli had brought forward a
measure permitting farmers to receive compensation for unexhausted
improvements, and enabling landlords to deny them this compensation
by contracting themselves out of the Bill. He had contrived to get
Government business into confusion by trying to push on Ministerial
measures abreast instead of in single file, and in a fatal moment
he shelved the Merchant Shipping Bill, in order to make way for the
perfectly worthless Agricultural Holdings Bill. He announced the fact
on the 22nd of July, when Mr. Goschen entered a mild protest.

Mr. Plimsoll, however, rose quivering with rage and passion, and
moved the adjournment of the House. He not only protested against the
Government postponing a Bill that interfered with “the unhallowed
gains” of the “shipknackers,” but said that some of them sat in the
House, and mentioned by name one of “the villains” he was determined
to “unmask.” In vain the Speaker called him to order. Louder and
louder grew the turmoil, and in the midst of it Mr. Disraeli grew
visibly pale when Mr. Plimsoll rushed up the floor of the House with
his clenched fist extended in front of him. However, he did not strike
the Premier or Sir Charles Adderley--who was officially in charge of
the Bill--as had been dreaded. He merely stood on one leg, placed a
written protest on the table, and then, having shaken his fist in the
Speaker’s face, marched out of the Chamber amidst a scene of terrible
disorder. Mr. Disraeli lost his temper and, with it, touch of the
House for a moment. In angry accents he moved that Mr. Plimsoll be
reprimanded there and then, whereupon the Speaker interfered, and
said that before a motion of that sort could be put Mr. Plimsoll,
who was now standing below the bar, must be heard in his place. Mr.
Plimsoll, however, preferred immediate withdrawal, and the House was
on the eve of entering into conflict with a defiant Member, supported
by an irresistible force of democratic passion in the country, a
conflict from which it must have emerged with impaired authority,
when suddenly Lord Hartington came to the rescue. His frigid accents,
in strong contrast with Mr. Disraeli’s tremulous tones of wrath,
immediately cooled the temper of the House. Mr. Plimsoll was, said
Lord Hartington, merely suffering from “overstrain acting on a very
sensitive temperament, and before taking any strong measures against
a man so universally respected, it would be more consonant with the
dignity of the House to give him reasonable time to put himself right.”
Mr. Disraeli instantly saw that Lord Hartington’s phlegmatic sense
had suggested the course that would extricate him from the dangerous
position into which he was leading the House, and he consented to
adjourn the matter for a week. Mr. Plimsoll made an honourable apology
to the Speaker, and the matter ended happily, but the incident, to the
gratification of the country, revealed in Lord Hartington a capacity
for cool and adroit leadership, the existence of which had hitherto
been unsuspected. The day after the scene in the House of Commons a
storm of agitation broke over the country on behalf of Mr. Plimsoll.
From every constituency remonstrances couched in terms of strong
indignation poured in upon the House of Commons. Tory Members warned
the Whips that they did not dare to run athwart the wave of passion
that swept over the land. The Cabinet accordingly held a meeting in a
panic, and resolved to bring in a temporary Bill empowering the Board
of Trade to detain rotten ships and to prohibit grain cargoes from
being carried in bulk. The measure was passed, even the Peers shrinking
from the responsibility of rejecting it.

Another blunder damaged Mr. Disraeli’s leadership. In April Mr. Charles
Lewis moved that the printer of the _Times_ be summoned to the Bar
and dealt with for printing a letter reflecting on a Member of the
House of Commons, in a report of evidence given before the Foreign
Loans Committee. It was an attempt to carry out the old Standing
Order, which made it an offence for newspapers to report Parliamentary
proceedings. Mr. Disraeli first spoke against the motion, and then
voted for it. It was carried. But next day he moved that the Order be
discharged, and when Mr. Sullivan asked him if he intended to put the
relations of the Press and Parliament on a less anomalous footing, he
answered “No.” Thereupon Mr. Sullivan warned him he would insist on
carrying out the ridiculous old Standing Order, and clearing the House
of reporters every night till Mr. Disraeli yielded. Lord Hartington
induced Mr. Sullivan to refrain, but Mr. Biggar next stepped in, and
with elfish humour, one night when the Prince of Wales was listening
to a debate, rose and said he “espied strangers in the House,” which
was duly cleared of every one--including the Prince--save Members. The
two leaders then carried a motion suspending the ridiculous Order for
that evening. Mr. Disraeli, however, still refused to alter the rule or
accept a proposal from Lord Hartington for altering it. Mr. Sullivan
accordingly retorted by again “espying strangers,” clearing the
House, and compelling the Government to adjourn an important debate.
Mr. Disraeli now saw he had no choice but to surrender. He therefore
carried a new Standing Order, enabling the Speaker to exclude strangers
when he saw fit, but submitting the attempt of a private Member to
clear the House, to the check of an immediate and undebateable vote.

Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget was ominous of hard times coming.
Prices were beginning to fall, and unsound Foreign Loans, in which
rich people had invested, were beginning to collapse. Sir Stafford
Northcote, therefore, though he received half a million more revenue
than he expected, wisely made no sanguine estimate for the ensuing
year. His anticipated expenditure he put at £75,268,000, an increase of
£939,000, and his revenue at £75,685,000, showing a probable surplus
of £417,000, which was ultimately converted by supplementary estimates
into an estimated deficit of £300,000--a bad contrast to the miraculous
surplus of £6,000,000, which in the previous year he inherited from Mr.
Gladstone. There was no special feature in the Budget, save the scheme
fixing the charge for the paying up the interest and the principal
of the National Debt in future at £28,000,000 a year, and making it
obligatory to meet this sum before any surplus could be declared. It
was, in fact, a plan for establishing a rigid Sinking Fund to discharge
the National Debt, and though it was popular at the time, it failed, as
all such plans fail, because whenever a difficulty arises Ministers of
Finance always confiscate a Sinking Fund in preference to imposing new
taxes.

[Illustration: ABERGELDIE CASTLE.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._)]

Ireland, represented by the new National Party, under Mr. Butt,
gained little during 1875, but she gained something. Under a Liberal
Government half the Home Rule Party could have been bribed by places
into silence. But an ostentatiously hostile Tory Ministry could
not offer them places, and yet they had to be quieted somehow, for
the Irish people had by this time lost faith in their insincere
Parliamentary action. Fenian agents were telling the Irish peasantry
that they could expect no concessions unless they extorted them by
revolution. The Government, accordingly, relaxed the existing Coercion
Acts, and the debate on one of these--the Westmeath Act--was, on
the 22nd of April, 1875, rendered historic by the intervention of
Mr. Biggar, who talked against time for five hours, by the simple
device of reading long extracts from Blue Books.[85] Shortly after
this feat, Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, a young Wicklow squire, who
had been educated at Cambridge, and was notable for his shyness, his
aristocratic reserve, and his faltering and confused speech, took
his seat as Member for Meath, in succession to John Martin, who had
died. Nothing was known of him save that he had the reputation of
being a Protestant landlord who was on good terms with his tenants,
that from his mother--a daughter of the celebrated Commodore Stewart
of the United States Navy--he had inherited Republican ideas, that he
was a lover of field sports, and that he was a cadet of the family of
which his great-grandfather, Sir John Parnell, Chancellor of the Irish
Exchequer in 1782, was a distinguished member, and the head of which
was the present Lord Congleton. That his beautiful estate of Avondale
was heavily mortgaged was _not_ regarded as noteworthy. Mr. Joseph
Gillies Biggar, whose quaint b_ourgeois_ humour had already made him,
if not the favourite, at least one of the privileged “diversions”
of the House, and who was destined to be Mr. Parnell’s coadjutor
in organising the largest and most powerful Irish National Party of
the Victorian period, was a prosperous provision-dealer, of Scottish
extraction, trading in Belfast. His experience of affairs had been
gained as Chairman of the local Water Board.

Parliament was prorogued peacefully on the 13th of August, and, on the
whole, Ministers emerged from the Session with credit. Mr. Disraeli’s
bright wit, his cheerful temper, and his airy jocularity in meeting
serious attacks, recalled pleasant memories of Lord Palmerston, and
tempted the House to forget his occasional blunders as its Leader. The
Recess, however, brought serious peril to his Cabinet--peril which,
however, it had done little to deserve. In the middle of September
it was discovered that the Foreign Office had induced the Admiralty
to issue a Fugitive Slave Circular to naval officers. They were told
they must not receive fugitive slaves in territorial waters unless
their lives were in danger. If the fugitive slave came on board a
British ship in territorial waters, he was not to remain if it were
proved he were a slave. If received on the high seas, he must be
surrendered when the ship came within the territorial waters of the
country from which he had escaped. The Circular, in fact, defined the
legal obligations under which British ships of war must logically lie
if they chose to enter the territorial waters of slave States, with
which England was not at war. It was a Circular embodying regulations
on which every Liberal Minister had habitually acted, but the Liberal
Party immediately proceeded to make political capital out of it. An
agitation as fierce as that which was caused by the abandonment of the
Merchant Shipping Bill sprang up, and Lord Derby, at whose instance
the Admiralty issued the Circular, was accused of attempting to commit
England to a furtive partnership with slave-owners. The most that
could be said in fairness against the document was that it was so
badly drafted as to imply that the deck of a Queen’s ship was subject
to foreign jurisdiction. Moreover, the order to surrender a fugitive
slave who had taken refuge on a Queen’s ship on the high seas, was so
completely indefensible that Lord Derby himself struck it out of the
second edition of his Circular. He might as well have ordered a British
Consul in Rio to arrest and surrender a Brazilian slave who, having
gained freedom by escaping to English soil, had afterwards returned
to that port. Till Parliament met in 1876, the country rang with the
inflated protests of Liberal partisans against the amended Circular,
which was published after the original one had been suspended in
October, and cancelled in November.

But the issue and publication of the Slave Circular was not the only
blunder at the Admiralty that rendered the Government unpopular during
the Recess. They were guilty of one which gave the Queen the utmost
annoyance. When she was crossing the Solent from Osborne to Gosport
on the 18th of August her yacht ran down another yacht called the
_Mistletoe_. The owner (Mr. Heywood) and his sisters-in-law, Miss
Annie Peel and Miss Eleanor Peel, were on board, and, though the
last-named was rescued, Miss Annie Peel and the sailing-master were
drowned. The Queen happened to be on deck, and her emotion during the
scene was painful to witness. The Prince of Leiningen, as commander
of the Royal yacht, was blamed by the people for the catastrophe,
and unfortunately the Admiralty not only refused to try him by
court-martial, but, after a secret inquiry, condemned the navigating
officer. This roused public wrath, and it was ungenerously alleged
that the Queen had forced a servile Minister to protect her nephew
from just punishment. The fact is, as a subsequent case showed, the
Admiralty merely followed the stereotyped rule, which, in those days,
was to punish subordinate officers for the blunders of their superiors.
It used to be asked, What was a navigating officer on board a Queen’s
ship for, unless to take his captain’s punishment? Unfortunately for
the Prince of Leiningen, there was a tribunal from which he could not
escape--the coroner’s inquest on the bodies of those for whose death
he was morally responsible. The evidence given before the coroner
still further exasperated the ill-feeling which had been roused.
Yachtsmen--proverbially a loyal body of men--were irritated at the
tone of a letter addressed to the president of the Cowes Yacht Club
(the Marquis of Exeter), in which General Ponsonby expressed the
Queen’s wish that in future members of the Club would not approach too
closely to the Royal yacht when the Queen was on board. The insinuation
contained in this document and assumption that no blame rested on the
officers of the _Alberta_, provoked yachtsmen in every club in Great
Britain to retort that, in their painful experience, the Queen’s yachts
were navigated in the Solent with a disregard of the “rules of the
road” which rendered them a constituted nuisance.

In this particular instance the Royal yacht had been driven at the
rate of seventeen miles an hour, and the Prince of Leiningen and
his subordinates had paid no attention to the Board of Trade rule
which makes it the duty of a steamer to get well out of the way of
a sailing-vessel. The quartermasters of the yacht, too, gave their
evidence in a manner which not only cast suspicion on their testimony,
but suggested that they stood in terror of their officers. A letter
which the Queen wrote to her nephew expressing her satisfaction
with their conduct, was moreover taken to be an attempt to unduly
influence the Coroner’s Court. The first jury did not agree on a
verdict, and the outcry about the Queen’s letter was so loud that
the case had to be tried again. The Queen had for a moment forgotten
that the vast influence which she had acquired during her reign
rendered it imperative for her to be silent on all matters of
controversy--especially if they were under judicial investigation.
She forgot that the mere expression of her individual opinion gave
an advantage to one side in a dispute, the extent of which she
herself had clearly never dreamt of--an advantage so great, that it
bore unfairly against the side that had not got it. The second jury,
however, brought in a verdict of “Accidental Death,” and condemned the
officers of the Royal yacht (1), for steaming at too high a speed,
and (2), for keeping a bad look-out. The verdict was quite illogical.
If the look-out on the _Alberta_ was bad and her speed too high, and
if, as was proved, her officer had violated the rule of the road, the
verdict ought to have been one of Manslaughter. But no further steps
were taken to do justice. Mr. Anderson brought the case before the
House of Commons, and though he was defeated in his effort to make the
Government move in the affair, he created a great stir in the country,
by declaring that public funds had been used as hush-money to prevent
further inquiry.[86] So far as the verdict of the jury went, demanding
that the Royal yachts should steam at less speed in the Solent, it was
absurd. State business often forces the Queen and her messengers and
Ministers to travel fast. What the jury should have recommended was a
new rule of the road, to the effect that everything must make way on
the water for a yacht flying the Sovereign’s personal flag.

The other blunder of the Admiralty arose out of an inquiry into the
loss of two ironclads off the Wicklow coast. On the night of the 1st
of September the _Iron Duke_ rammed and sank the _Vanguard_. There was
a fog at the time, and the captain of the _Vanguard_ left the deck at
the moment of greatest peril, and was stupid enough to reduce speed
for no discernible reason without warning the _Iron Duke_, which was
coming behind him. The captain of the _Iron Duke_ was stupid enough to
increase her speed in the fog, and she was not only badly steered, but
her fog-signal was not blown. Had they been employed in the merchant
service these two officers would have been subjected to the severest
punishment. As it was, the captain of the _Vanguard_ was dismissed
the service. The captain of the _Iron Duke_, who had been condemned
by the court-martial for ramming the _Vanguard_, was acquitted, on a
review of his sentence by the Admiralty. The Admiralty then, by way
of compensation, cashiered his subordinate, Lieutenant Evans, without
a trial, and without giving him leave to make a defence. As for the
Admiral, who, from lack of skill or from negligence permitted the ships
of his squadron to sail close to each other in a fog, he was freed from
blame.

Fortunately for Mr. Disraeli, an opportunity for a great stroke of
policy occurred, which diverted public attention from these blunders,
and re-established the waning popularity of his Ministry. On the
26th of November it was announced that the Government had bought for
£4,000,000 the Khedive’s shares in the Suez Canal, and what a French
writer described as “a conquest by mortgage” was hailed by the English
people, with a shout of gratification. The impecunious ruler of Egypt
had been literally hawking

[Illustration: VIEW ON THE SUEZ CANAL.]

his Canal shares among the Powers. It was possible that at any moment
Germany or France might buy them up, and then impede the passage of
English troops to India. Not a day was to be lost, and Mr. Disraeli,
therefore, on his own responsibility, and without consulting his
Cabinet, purchased the Shares. There was joy in the City over this
operation. The bankruptcy of Turkey, declared at the end of October,
had converted Turkish Bonds into waste paper, and it was some
compensation to speculators that Mr. Disraeli’s purchase of the Canal
Shares sent up the price of Egyptian Stock by leaps and bounds. Lord
Hartington, it is true, in a speech at Sheffield (15th of December),
querulously carped at the transaction. But as his contention was that
England was in a better position to secure the neutrality of the Canal
without than with a solid proprietary interest in it, nobody paid the
least attention to his unpatriotic cavillings. They merely convinced
the country that, despite Mr. Disraeli’s bungling Parliamentary
leadership, his inaccuracy of statement, his loose hold of principle,
and the administrative blunders of his subordinates, he was the only
living statesman of first rank, in whose hands the higher interests of
the Empire were safe.

[Illustration: COUNT FERDINAND DE LESSEPS.]

It was announced in March that the Prince of Wales was to visit India
in November, with Sir Bartle Frere as his guide. In July it was decided
that his tour should be a State Progress, the expenses of which should
be paid for out of the revenues of England and India. The marine escort
was to be provided by the Admiralty at a cost of £52,000; the Indian
Treasury was to contribute £30,000; and when Mr. Disraeli asked the
House of Commons for £52,000, Lord Hartington had no complaint to make
except that he thought the vote ought to be larger. Messrs. Macdonald
and Burt, when they objected that the working-classes would not approve
of the grant, were literally “howled down” by the House. Yet all Mr.
Burt said was that as he himself lived on a salary derived from his
constituents, he could not decently vote away their money to pay the
cost of what they believed was a tour of pleasure for a rich Prince.
His argument was fair enough from his point of view. It was faulty
because he failed to see that a vote for a State pageant which meant
to individualise the Monarchy to the Indian mind, was not a grant to
the Prince as a private individual. Mr. Bright’s support of the grant,
which was voted, was useful to the Government. But as his argument
was that the visit of the Prince might be serviceable in checking the
harsh and cruel treatment to which the natives of India are subjected
by their English rulers, it was condemned as unjust to the devoted
servants of the Queen, who wear out their lives in honourable exile,
maintaining peace in an Empire that, without them, would be converted
into a pandemonium of slaughter.

The opening days of 1876 were marked by the announcement of Lord
Northbrook’s resignation as Viceroy of India. The Indian Viceroy had
for some time thwarted the policy of the Secretary of State, and the
final rupture was made when they differed in opinion as to the kind of
Envoy the Government should have at Cabul. It was a quaint controversy.
Lord Salisbury said the face of the British Envoy should be white. Lord
Northbrook contended that it should be black, whereupon Lord Salisbury
wrote Lord Northbrook a despatch, couched in terms that left him no
alternative save resignation. According to Lord Salisbury, unless a
white Envoy kept watch over the Ameer, Shere Ali, our information from
Cabul would be defective. According to Lord Northbrook, if we sent an
European Envoy to Cabul, he would be promptly assassinated, in which
case we should get no information at all, and India would be dragged
into a ruinous war of vengeance. Lord Northbrook had nothing on his
side but facts. No Afghan Ameer had ever been able to guarantee a
Christian Envoy at Cabul against assassination. When Lord Salisbury
did send an European Envoy to Cabul he was not only murdered, but,
pending his inevitable murder, the only information worth having that
came from Cabul, came from native sources. It was, moreover, a slight
on the Indian Government to say that they had not been able to train a
Mahommedan official of rank up to the duties of effective diplomatic
espionage at Cabul. However, the dispute ended in Lord Northbrook
coming back to England, and in Lord Lytton going out to India as
his successor. There was no doubt a time when the appointment of a
diplomatist who was a Peer and a passionate poet, to the Viceregal
Throne might have been useful. Unhappily, in 1876, a different type of
ruler was needed in India. The war cloud in Eastern Europe was about
to break, and it was well known that in any diplomatic contest between
Russia and England, it would be the aim of Russia to weaken England
by making trouble for her on her Indian frontier. For the stress of
the times, a man like Lord Mayo was necessary, and Lord Lytton was
everything that Lord Mayo was not.

All through 1875 there had been in Bosnia and Herzegovina disturbances
precisely similar to those in the Principalities which preceded the
Crimean War. After Lord Derby had been appealed to by Musurus Pasha,
the Turkish Ambassador in London, he suggested to Count Andrassy that
Austria should prevent her subjects on her frontier from supporting the
insurgents in the mutinous Turkish provinces, and a similar suggestion
was made to the Servian Government. His advice to the Turks was to
stamp out rebellion as quickly as possible, so as to prevent it from
spreading and provoking European intervention. The Porte, instead of
acting on this advice, desired that the Consuls of the Great Powers
should mediate between the Sultan and the rebels, and Lord Derby,
instead of adhering to his original counsels, weakly fell in with
this proposal, and consented, though with great hesitancy, to let the
British Consul join the delegation. The rebels were delighted with the
proposals of the Consuls for their better government, but refused
to lay down their arms unless the Powers guaranteed that the Turks
would carry them out. The Consuls were pleased that the demands of the
insurgents were moderate and reasonable, but could give no guarantees
for the good faith of Turkey. As they were returning from their mission
fighting began again.

From their public utterances during the recess of 1875 it was inferred
that while Lord Derby was averse from further intervention on the
part of England in the business, because in the East, he said, “we
want nothing, and fear nothing,” Mr. Disraeli was of opinion that
England had great interests in Eastern Europe, which the Government,
he said at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, “are resolved to guard and
maintain.” There are no novelties in English politics. The situation
was the same as that which led to the Crimean War, and it also had to
be dealt with by a Cabinet which, like Lord Aberdeen’s, was divided
into interventionists and non-interventionists. But an acute observer
might have detected what Mr. Disraeli failed to see, that English
opinion had changed since 1853. In 1853 the electors were in favour
of intervention, whereas, since the defeat of Palmerston by the Court
and Mr. Cobden in 1864, they had always been against it. As the
insurrection spread, the Porte promised reforms. Three Powers--Austria,
Germany and Russia, afterwards joined by France and Italy--sent a Note
to Turkey known as “the Andrassy Note” (30th of December, 1875),
condemning the misgovernment of the insurgent provinces, bewailing the
broken promises of the Porte, and demanding certain reforms in Bosnia
and Herzegovina to prevent a general rising. Lord Derby, after about
a month’s hesitation, instructed the British Ambassador to give the
Note a general support. Turkey accepted most of its proposals, and
issued another _Iradé_ to carry them out. The _Iradé_ was never made
operative, and though Lord Derby was not offended by the contumacy of
Turkey, the other Powers resented it. Count Schouvaloff persuaded him
to permit Lord Odo Russell to meet the representatives of the five
Powers at Berlin in May to consider the situation. At this meeting the
Berlin Memorandum was produced and agreed to by the Continental Powers.

[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF SAN SOPHIA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]

It assumed, that as the Porte had promised to carry out the reforms
in the Andrassy Note, the Powers had now the right to force it to
keep its pledges. It formulated the guarantees which Europe asked for
in order to give effect to the Andrassy Note, and threatened Turkey
with “more effective measures” of coercion if she failed to give them
within two months after an armistice between her and her rebellious
provinces had been concluded. The reason why the Note was minatory lay
on the surface. The Consuls of France and Germany had been murdered
by the Turks at Salonica, and before any redress could be obtained
Prince Bismarck had to send the Porte an ultimatum that meant war. Lord
Derby declined to assent to the Memorandum, on the ground that England
had not been consulted in the preparing of it, and did not believe
that it would do any good if presented. The Foreign Ministers of the
Powers in vain implored him to reconsider his decision, and then the
Memorandum was tossed into the waste-paper basket of diplomacy. Turkey,
seeing that Lord Derby had broken up the European Concert at Berlin,
behaved exactly as she did when Clarendon broke up the same instrument
of coercion at Vienna. Her contumacy was intensified, and what was
still more serious, her European vassals, seeing that diplomacy had
failed to rescue them from misrule, took up arms. Within a month after
the diplomatic triumph of England, the Turks found it had secured to
them the following advantages:--(1), The Continental Powers withdrew
from the field, and adopted an attitude of vigilant inactivity. (2),
Servia and Montenegro declared war on Turkey. (3), The soil of Bulgaria
was soaked with the blood of her Christian population, whose revolt
had been quelled by massacres and ghastly atrocities, that rendered
expulsion from Europe the manifest destiny of the Ottoman race. (4),
The Sultan Abdul Aziz was dethroned by a mob of fanatical Moslems, and
his European Empire lay wrecked in anarchy. It had been made a matter
of complaint that the Foreign Policy of England in 1853 was slow in
producing any effect. When we consider what happened in the month that
followed the failure of the Berlin Memorandum, and the collapse of the
European Concert, that complaint cannot be justly advanced against Mr.
Disraeli’s Foreign Policy in 1876.

[Illustration: HERALDS AT THE MANSION HOUSE, PROCLAIMING THE QUEEN AS
“EMPRESS OF INDIA.”]

Parliament was opened on the 8th of February by the Queen in person,
with great pomp and ceremony; and the Royal Speech promised several
useful measures dealing with the Court of Appeal, Merchant Shipping,
and Prisons. But the one that excited most public interest was the Bill
to confer on the Sovereign a new title derived from India, in gracious
acknowledgment of the enthusiastic reception given to the Prince of
Wales by the natives of that Empire. As for the Slave Circular, the
questions raised by it were to be referred to a Royal Commission.
The Foreign Policy of the Government was expressed by Mr. Disraeli,
in terms that appealed sympathetically to national feeling. It was
based on the idea that England was responsible for the good use of her
influence in the councils of Europe, and it united the Tory Party, and
caused the country to condone all Ministerial blunders. The debate
on the Eastern Question showed that Mr. Gladstone and other eminent
Liberals approved of Lord Derby’s adherence to the Andrassy Note. But
it clearly indicated that the Opposition would attack the Government
if it adopted the old Crimean policy of supporting Turkey whenever
she rejected the demands of Europe. The purchase of the Suez Canal
Shares provoked more controversy. It turned out that they had been
mortgaged by the Khedive, and could not yield dividends for nineteen
years, a fact unknown to Mr. Disraeli when he bought them. Sir Stafford
Northcote, therefore, proposed to borrow £4,000,000, and exact from
the Khedive 5 per cent. a year on that sum to cover the loss of the
mortgaged dividends. Mr. Gladstone attacked the financial details of
the transaction,[87] and though his criticism was logical it failed
to influence the country. Had the purchase of the Shares been solely
a commercial speculation, the unbusiness-like manner in which it had
been effected would have been of some importance. But it was also a
stroke of high policy, and it appealed to the imperial instincts of the
nation which, as Mr. Disraeli said, was getting “sea-sick of the silver
streak.”[88] Most of Mr. Gladstone’s prophecies have been falsified
by events. Oddly enough the only valid objections to the purchase of
the Canal Shares were not pressed by him. They were (1), That a Canal
which could be easily blocked and wrecked by an enemy’s ship, was not a
safe route to India; and (2), That the fault of Mr. Disraeli’s policy
was in his failure to carry it out to its logical conclusion--the
establishment of a British Protectorate over Egypt, which would
have rendered the final fate of Turkey, a matter of indifference to
Englishmen. Parliament ratified the policy of the Government with
enthusiasm. The appointment of the Royal Commission to examine all the
difficulties raised by the Slave Circular saved Ministers from defeat
at the end of the Debate on the issue of that stupid State Paper. The
Government was also fortunate in its domestic legislation. The Merchant
Shipping Bill, when it passed, was found to be a compromise which
remedied most of the wrongs for which Mr. Plimsoll sought redress. Lord
Sandon’s Education Act was a concession to the advocates of compulsory
education, for it prohibited the employment of children under ten, and
it prohibited the employment of children between ten and fourteen, who
had not attended school 250 times a year and passed an examination
in the Fourth Standard. In fact, the Bill legalised, not direct, but
indirect compulsion. Bills restricting the practice of vivisection,
and restoring to the House of Lords its Appellate Jurisdiction, but
adding to it Judges of Appeal, who would be Peers during their tenure
of office, and who, with the ex-Chancellor, would discharge the
judicial functions of the Upper House, were also passed. For the meagre
achievements of the Session three reasons may be given: (1), Much time
was lost over the Education Act, because not only was it necessary for
the Opposition to tone down its reactionary clauses, but concessions
to the opponents of School Boards were suddenly sprung upon the House
by Lord Sandon, which had to be fiercely resisted. (2), The policy of
obstruction which had been adopted with so much success to delay Mr.
Forster’s Ballot Bill in 1883, was now developed in an ingenious manner
by Messrs. Biggar and Parnell. They “blocked” Bills indiscriminately,
so as to bring them under the rule which forbade opposed measures to
be taken after half-past twelve at night. They moved adjournments in
various forms at half-past twelve, on the ground that the hour was too
far advanced for discussion. They were always on the watch to “count
out” the House, and they never missed a chance of “talking out” a
Bill,[89] quite regardless of its merits. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar
thus taught themselves to be formidable debaters at the expense of the
House, for, as Mr. Parnell once told a friend, the best way to learn
the rules of Parliament is to break them.[90] (3), A great deal of
time was also wasted in discussing the Royal Titles Bill, to which the
Liberals offered an amount of opposition out of all proportion to the
significance of the measure.

The Royal Titles Bill was introduced by the Prime Minister on the 7th
of February. He had some idea that it would be an offence against the
prerogative if he stated what the new title was to be, but it was
said that the Queen, ever since the Duchess of Edinburgh had claimed
precedence over her sisters-in-law, on the ground that hers was an
Imperial, whilst theirs was a Royal title, desired to be styled Empress
of India. On the other hand, most people objected to change the Queen’s
designation. Why, it was asked, should the successor of Egbert wish to
be a modern Empress? To insert India in the existing form of the Royal
title would adequately meet any

[Illustration: THE QUEEN VISITING THE WARDS OF THE LONDON HOSPITAL.]

real necessity for change. The Imperial title was also surrounded
with evil associations, and it suggested that Imperialism or personal
Government, tempered by casual appeals for support to the democracy
or the Army over the head of Parliament, was the end aimed at by the
Ministerial policy. Mr. Disraeli’s haughty refusal to communicate the
new title to the House of Commons was met by a motion that no progress
be made with the Bill till the title was revealed. The Prime Minister
accordingly yielded the point, and promised to give the necessary
explanations before the Bill was read a second time. The debate on the
Second Reading showed clearly that the House of Commons was hostile to
the Bill; but as the Government gave a pledge that the title should be
used in India only, the Second Reading was carried. This pledge was
soon broken, for the Proclamation was made, not that the new title
should be used in India, but that it might be used

[Illustration: THE ALBERT MEMORIAL, CHARLOTTE SQUARE, EDINBURGH.]

everywhere save in the United Kingdom. The Peers were as reluctant as
the Commons to sanction the adoption of any exotic titles by the Crown,
and the Court did not scruple to bring personal pressure to bear on
them for the purpose of overcoming their threatened opposition. Lord
Shaftesbury was summoned to Windsor in early spring, and as it was
twenty years since he had been the Queen’s guest, he says in his Diary
that he assumed his invitation was brought about by the controversy
then raging over the Royal Titles Bill. “I dread it [the visit],” he
writes in his Diary, on the 12th of March, “the cold, the evening
dress, the solitude, for I am old, and dislike being far away from
assistance should I be ill at night.... She [the Queen] sent for me
in 1848 to consult me on a very important matter. Can it be so now?”
The next entry showed his foreboding to be correct. He says, on the
14th of March, “Returned from Windsor. I am sure it was so, though not
distinctly avowed. Her Majesty personally said nothing.” But though
she did not discuss the views he expressed to her, a Lord-in-Waiting
formally requested him to communicate them to Mr. Disraeli. Mr.
Disraeli paid no heed to them, and Lord Shaftesbury accordingly moved
(3rd of April), in the House of Lords, an Address to the Queen praying
her not to take the title of Empress. He pointed out that in time
it would lose its present impression of feminine softness, and be
transformed into “Emperor,” whereupon “it must have an air military,
despotic, offensive, and intolerable.” To scoff as Mr. Disraeli had
done at the popular dislike to the Imperial title as a mere “sentiment”
was a mistake. “Loyalty itself,” observed Lord Shaftesbury, “was a
sentiment, and the same sentiment that attached the people to the word
Queen, averted them from that of ‘Empress.’” In the division, though
the Government obtained 137 votes in favour of what the _Saturday
Review_ called a “vulgar and impolitic innovation,” eight Dukes and
a large body of habitual courtiers voted with Lord Shaftesbury in
the minority of 91.[91] The dismal predictions of the opponents of
the measure have not been verified--possibly because their protests
convinced the Court that any ostentatious display of modern Imperialism
by an ancient Constitutional Monarchy would lead to a recrudescence of
the Republic agitation. Fortunately the heated debates on the Titles
Bill did not affect the personal popularity of the Sovereign. In the
midst of the controversy the Queen visited Whitechapel on the 6th
of March, to open a new wing of the London Hospital, which had been
built by the munificence of the Grocers’ Company. Her Majesty was
enthusiastically received, the only complaint being that she drove too
fast along the route where the populace swarmed in their thousands to
gaze on her. The visit was taken to be an intimation that the Crown was
not a mere toy of the aristocratic quarters of the capital, and that
when the Queen emerged from her seclusion it was not solely for the
purpose of benefiting the West End shopkeepers. “The bees welcome their
Queen,” was one of the mottoes displayed on the route. “I was sick and
ye visited me,” was another, and both inscriptions reflected the kindly
feeling with which her Majesty was greeted by industrial London. In
the Hospital many interesting incidents were recorded, one of the most
touching being that of a little girl who was suffering from a severe
burn, and who had said she was sure she would get better if she “could
only see the Queen.” When this was communicated to her Majesty, she
smiled, went straightway to the child’s cot, where she kissed her, and
soothed her with many tender words of comfort.

Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget was a doleful statement of increased
expenditure, and diminished income from a revenue that had ceased to be
elastic. He estimated a deficit for the coming year of £774,000, and
so he increased the income-tax to 5d. in the £, and added 4d. on the
pound to the duty on tobacco. The latter tax was a mistake. It did not
raise the price of tobacco to the poor, but it caused the manufacturers
to adulterate their tobacco with water so as to add to its weight. The
Session ended on the 15th of August, and next day the world heard with
great surprise that Mr. Disraeli had become Earl of Beaconsfield, and
to use his own jocose expression, that, “abandoning the style of Don
Juan for that of Paradise Lost,” he would in future lead the House of
Lords. Sir Stafford Northcote was left to represent him in the House of
Commons.

On the 17th of August the Queen unveiled the Scottish National
Memorial of Prince Albert, which had been erected in Charlotte Square,
Edinburgh. The monument consisted of a colossal equestrian statue of
the Prince Consort, and the four panels of the pedestal contained
bas-reliefs illustrating notable events in his Royal Highness’s career.
At each of the four corners of the platform on which the pedestal
stands were groups of statuary, symbolical of the respect paid to
Prince Albert’s memory by all classes of the community: one group
typifying Labour, another Science and Art, a third the Army and Navy,
and the fourth the Nobility. The equestrian figure and the panels
were the work of the veteran Scottish sculptor, Mr. John Steell, who
designed and superintended the construction of the memorial. The
subordinate groups were executed by Mr. D. W. Stevenson, Mr. Clark
Stanton, Mr. Brodie, and Mr. George McCallum, a young artist of high
promise, who died before his group was completed. The ceremony of
unveiling was unusually interesting. A gaily-decorated pavilion had
been raised for the occasion. The Queen was accompanied by Prince
Leopold, the Princess Beatrice, and the Duke of Connaught. Under
the command of the Duke of Buccleuch, the Royal Company of Archers
formed the bodyguard. The Duke of Roxburghe, Lord Rosebery, Sir W.
Gibson-Craig, the Earl of Selkirk, the Earl of Lauderdale, Lord
Provost Falshaw, and the Town Council, were among the distinguished
persons present. After the statue had, at her Majesty’s command, been
uncovered, she walked round it and expressed her entire satisfaction
with the memorial. To signalise her appreciation of what had been
done, and to manifest her desire to honour her “faithful city,” Mr.
Falshaw was created a baronet, and a knighthood was conferred on Mr.
John Steell, and on Mr. Herbert Oakeley, Professor of Music in the
University.

During the Recess, the country could think of nothing save the Eastern
Question. Mr. Gladstone’s taste

“For writing pamphlets and for roasting Popes”

was bent in a new direction, and he threw himself with all his might
into the controversy that ended in turning English public opinion
irrevocably against Turkey. Throughout the Session Mr. Gladstone and
Lord Hartington had, with commendable patriotism, abstained from
putting questions to Ministers with reference to their Eastern policy.
Parliament and the country were, therefore, in the dark as to what was
going on. But towards the end of

[Illustration: HOLYROOD PALACE, FROM THE SOUTH-EAST.]

June disquieting rumours flew about to the effect that there had been
a revolution in Bulgaria, and that the Turks had suppressed it by
massacres of the most revolting barbarity. The Government met these
tales with jaunty persiflage. On the 10th of July Mr. Forster put a
question on the subject, which Mr. Disraeli answered by saying that he
considered the reports exaggerated, nor did he think that torture had
been resorted to by “an Oriental people who, I believe, seldom resort
to torture, but generally terminate their connection with culprits in
a more expeditious manner.”[92] This ill-timed jest was hailed with a
great guffaw of laughter from the Ministerial Benches. It destroyed Mr.
Disraeli’s authority in the country when the awful truth was revealed,
not by the diplomatic agents of England, who strove hard to conceal
it, but by two American gentlemen, Mr. J. A. Macgahan, a distinguished
journalist, and Mr. Eugene Schuyler, the United States Consul-General
in Turkey. They went to Philippopolis on the 25th of July, and Mr.
Macgahan’s description of what he saw in the country, which had been
ravaged by the Turks, when published in the _Daily News_, sent a thrill
of horror through the

[Illustration: SIR JAMES FALSHAW.

(_From a Photograph by J. Moffat, Edinburgh._)]

civilised world. The partisans of Turkey were enraged beyond
self-control, and vowed that the worst of all outrages that had been
committed was that which was perpetrated by the publication of Mr.
Macgahan’s report on the brutalities of the Turkish soldiery. The
wild work of the Sepoys at Cawnpore was indeed merciful and humane
compared with what had been done by the Turks at Batak. Indiscriminate
butchery could alone be laid to the charge of the Indian mutineers.
But in Bulgaria, before the Turk murdered his victims, he inflicted on
them fiendish tortures and bestial outrages. The Province was one vast
desolation covered with blackened ruins, devastated fields, putrefying
corpses, and bleached skeletons. Neither age nor sex had been spared.
The land would have been as silent as a desert, save for the wailing
of the scattered remnant of the Christian population who had eluded
the vengeance of their oppressors. As for the Porte--whose promises
of reform in Bulgaria were cheerily cited by Mr. Disraeli to cast
doubt on the descriptions of these atrocities--it gave but one sign
of action. It promoted Achmed Aga, the barbarian who was responsible
for all this wickedness, to be Governor of the Province which he had
laid waste.”[93] The effect of these revelations on public opinion was
heightened by Mr. Gladstone’s pamphlet, entitled “Bulgarian Horrors,”
and by his speech at Blackheath on the 9th of September, wherein he
convicted the Government of apologising for Turkish barbarities, when
it could no longer venture to deny their existence. He laid down the
lines of the new Eastern policy which England must support. The Turkish
officials must be expelled from Bulgaria “bag and baggage,” and the
European Provinces of Turkey granted such powers of self-government
under the suzerainty of the Sultan, as would protect them from being
seized by Austria and Russia on the one hand and devastated by Asiatic
savages on the other. Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Derby, in
subsequent speeches, seemed to adopt the principle of Mr. Gladstone’s
policy. They admitted that it was the duty of England to join the
civilised Powers in preventing Turkey from opening again the floodgates
of lust, rapine, and murder in Bulgaria, and the English people for the
first time understood how, with the cries of their tortured neighbours
ringing in their ears, the Servians and Montenegrins had flown to arms.

Some Conservative writers and speakers still tried to persuade the
world that the Russian Government had bribed the Turkish Pashas
to commit and the Bulgarians to submit to outrages, in order to
discredit Ottoman rule in Europe. But their efforts were futile, and
the word went forth from all sides that never again would England
draw her sword, as in 1854, to save Turkey from the consequences of
her incurable barbarism. Strange to say, Lord Beaconsfield failed
to gauge the strength of this feeling. On the 20th of September, in
his speech at Aylesford, he neither adopted nor rejected the policy
suggested by Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Derby, but he spoke in a
querulous tone of the popular meetings which were being held all over
England expressing sympathy with Bulgaria and urging the Government
to shield her from the cruelty of her oppressors. The agitation,
he said, was “impolitic, and founded on erroneous data.” Those who
got up these meetings, he declared, were guilty of outrages on “the
principle of patriotism, worse than any of those Bulgarian atrocities
of which we have heard so much.” His negative policy which destroyed
the Berlin Memorandum without putting any counter proposals in its
place, would, he contended, have had a happy issue in negotiations.
These, however, were upset by the unexpected Servian declaration of
war against Turkey, which was prompted by “the Secret Societies.” Yet
England had signed the Andrassy Note, which warned Turkey that this
unexpected war would be waged against her by Servia, unless she granted
the reforms demanded in the Note. When Turkey, instead of granting
these reforms, massacred the population that craved for them, it was
absurd to suppose that “the Secret Societies of Europe,” rather than
the popular sympathies of the Christian Slavs, forced the Servian
Government into war. That the speech fell flat was seen by the polling
at the Buckinghamshire Election next day, when in Lord Beaconsfield’s
own county Mr. Freemantle only saved the seat from the attack of Mr.
Rupert Carrington, the Liberal candidate, by the small majority of
186. There were now two voices in the Cabinet; for on the day after
Lord Beaconsfield’s speech was made and was taken by Turkey to mean
that she had the English Cabinet on her side, Lord Derby ordered Sir
H. Elliot to go to the Sultan, and not only denounce the outrages in
Bulgaria, but, in the name of the Queen, who was profoundly shocked
by them, demand that the officials who perpetrated them be adequately
punished. It is hardly necessary to say that the Sultan, imagining that
the Prime Minister was all-powerful, paid no heed to remonstrances from
the Foreign Secretary. On the 25th of September, the day after the war
with Servia began, Sir H. Elliot pressed the Porte to make peace on
terms which Lord Derby suggested, and which were most creditable to his
diplomatic sagacity. Lord Derby’s proposals, if carried out, would have
saved Turkey from the supreme disaster which was awaiting her, for they
provided that the Porte should effectively guarantee administrative
reforms in her Christian Provinces, while Servia and Montenegro should
lay down their arms and return to the _status quo ante bellum_. The
Porte would only accept an armistice which would have been unfair
to Servia and Montenegro, and Servia would not accept a settlement
which did not provide for the withdrawal of the barbarous soldiers of
Turkey from Bulgaria. Whilst negotiations were pending, the Turks,
on the 29th of October, beat down the Servian defence at Alexinatz,
whereupon, to the mortification of England, the Czar effected in an
instant that which Lord Derby, after many weary weeks of negotiation,
had failed to accomplish. Ignatieff was instructed to tell the Porte
that if it did not accept an armistice of six weeks within forty-eight
hours, diplomatic relations between Turkey and Russia would cease.
When the same threat had been delivered by the British Ambassador,
the Turks ignored it; in fact, they were impudent enough to meet it
with a counter-proposal so absurd, that the Italian Minister said they
were obviously playing with England. Although strengthened by a great
victory, they did not, however, dare to treat the representative of
the Czar as if he were the representative of the Queen. They accepted
his ultimatum without demur or delay, and thus owing to the feebleness
of English diplomacy, Russia emerged with the honours of the game
in which, up to the last moment, Lord Derby held the winning cards.
This was, however, a minor matter. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Derby
had now given Russia not only a plausible pretext for taking the lead
in dealing with the Eastern Question, but also an opportunity for
intimating to the world that, in circumstances which extorted the
sanction of the Continental Powers, she had the right, in case of a
deadlock, to deal with it single-handed. In other words, the English
Government, by allowing the Porte to trifle with it during September,
1876, flung away at one cast the only practical results won by the
Crimean War.

[Illustration: LORD BEACONSFIELD AT THE BANQUET IN THE GUILDHALL.]

The Czar now proposed that a coercive naval demonstration by the Powers
should be made in the Bosphorus, but Lord Derby rejected the idea.
After some weeks he suggested that a Conference of the Powers should be
held to

[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF CONSTANTINOPLE.]

consider the situation on the basis of his own excellent proposals for
peace, which have been already described. The Conference was assented
to, and Lord Derby to some extent retrieved the position he lost on the
morrow of Alexinatz. The Czar had also given the English Government
the fullest assurances that he had no design on Constantinople, and
in proof of his sincerity he had withdrawn a suggestion he had thrown
out for the temporary occupation of Bosnia and Bulgaria by Austrian
and Russian troops, and frankly accepted the English proposals for
a settlement. It has been seen that during the negotiations which
led up to the Crimean War, whenever the question was on the point of
being settled somebody always interfered in England and in France to
break the accord of the Powers. On this occasion history repeated
itself. On the 9th of November Lord Beaconsfield delivered a speech
at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, which suppressed all information as to
the conciliatory mood of the Czar, and not only terrified Englishmen
into a belief that Russia was scheming to seize Bulgaria, but that
England was determined to oppose her by arms. The Czar, on the other
hand, in an address to the Notables of Moscow, said that he was “firmly
resolved to act independently if necessary” to obtain justice for
the Christian subjects of Turkey.[94] At Constantinople there was
joy among the Pashas, for they argued that after Lord Beaconsfield’s
Guildhall speech they might regard the verdict of the Conference with
indifference. The Czar, on his side, by way of emphasising his Moscow
speech, mobilised six _corps d’armée_,[95] and Sir Stafford Northcote
and Mr. Cross, in order to minimise the effect of Lord Beaconsfield’s
threats, delivered addresses showing that they thought Turkey must be
coerced if she trifled with Europe.[96] Lord Salisbury visited the
European capitals on his way to the Conference at Constantinople, at
which he was to represent England, and at each one he was informed
that he must expect no aid in supporting Turkey. An appeal was made
by the _Times_ to Prince Bismarck to check Russia--but in vain. When
Lord Salisbury had an interview with Prince Bismarck he found he
was virtually a diplomatic ally of Russia. In fact, ere he reached
Constantinople, Lord Salisbury found that Lord Beaconsfield’s policy
of applying the obsolete ideas of the Whigs of 1854 to solve the
Eastern Question in 1876, had isolated England. In the preliminary
Conference, from which the Turks were excluded, Mr. Gladstone’s plan of
giving administrative autonomy to the European Provinces of Turkey was
adopted, Lord Salisbury supporting it with great ability and skill.[97]
He even consented to allow 6,000 troops from some minor State--Belgium
was suggested--to support the International Commission for reorganising
the Government of an autonomous Bulgaria. This scheme was to have been
adopted by the Porte at a Plenary Conference. Relying on the support of
Lord Beaconsfield, and misled by the denunciations of Lord Salisbury
which appeared in the Ministerial Press--then busy manufacturing
failure for the English representatives at the Conference--the Porte
met the demands of the Powers for reform, by proclaiming a grotesque
Parliamentary Constitution for the Ottoman Empire. But it obstinately
refused to grant the reforms demanded by the Conference, which
accordingly broke up on the 20th of January, 1877. The Ambassadors
of the Powers were then recalled from Constantinople. On the 8th of
December (1876) a National Conference, under the presidency of the
Duke of Westminster, and representing not only the heads of the Whig
nobility, but most of the leaders of literature, science, and art,
the High Church clergy, the Nonconformists, and politicians of every
shade of Liberal opinion, met in St. James’s Hall to condemn Lord
Beaconsfield’s policy, and protest against England giving armed aid to
Turkey.

Early in 1876 the death of Lady Augusta Stanley, wife of the Dean of
Westminster, removed one of the Queen’s most trusted friends. She had
been for many years in personal attendance on her Majesty, and her
services were so valuable that for many years her marriage with Dean
Stanley had been postponed simply because the Royal Family could not
spare her from their domestic circle. This gentle lady, throughout
her life of unobtrusive usefulness at the Deanery of Westminster,
served as one of the connecting-links between the upper, the middle,
and the lower classes. She was as well known and as well loved in
the dismal “slums” of London as in the radiant circle of the Court,
and her death somewhat dimmed the brightness of the London season
of 1876. It was a feverish, ill-conditioned season, agitated by
financial scandals, by the pressure of hard times, by the failure
of trade due to the uncertainty of the political situation, and by
fierce and factious controversies as to the relative merits of Turks
and Eastern Christians. To be in the mode one had to affect a strong
admiration, not only for the ethics of the Koran, but for those of the
Bashi-Bazouk, and a compassionate regret that Christianity had failed
to elevate the European subjects of the Sultan, to the plane of Asiatic
civilisation. The china mania, or craze for collecting old pottery,
represented the fashionable movement in Art. Rinking, or skating on
roller-skates in very mixed assemblies,[98] was the favourite form of
physical recreation, and persons of quality kept their intellects alive
by holding the spelling competitions known as “Spelling Bees.” Besides
the “hard times” due to the collapse of investments, the Colorado
beetle and the tropical heat of summer were added to the torments
of the time; and the publication of the Domesday Book, showing that
710 individuals owned more than one-fourth of the soil of England
and Wales, still further aggravated the uneasiness of a territorial
aristocracy, whose margin of income for expenditure on luxuries was
daily diminishing. The year closed with the sudden return of the Polar
Expedition under Sir George Nares. Its record of achievement was most
meagre, and its retreat after enduring only one winter in the ice was
felt to be discreditable to the manhood of the British Navy. It was,
however, discovered that the disaster was due to a terrible outbreak
of scurvy in the crews of the Arctic ships, which was traced to their
neglect to use lime-juice. The reputation of the explorers for pluck
and endurance was thus redeemed at the expense of their intelligence.

The daily papers were filled with glowing accounts of the proclamation
of the Queen as Empress of India (Kaiser-i-Hind) at Delhi, in the
presence of the Viceroy and the great feudatories of the Empire on
the 1st of January, 1877. The ceremony was accompanied by salvoes
of artillery. A banner and a medal were given to the Princes to
commemorate the event, and five of the most powerful magnates, Holkar,
Scindiah, the Maharajah of Cashmere, the Maharajah of Travancore, and
the Maharanee of Oodeypore, were granted rank, typified by salutes of
twenty-one guns, equivalent to that of the Nizam. But as the viceregal
salute was raised to thirty-one guns, Holkar and Scindiah, whose claim
was to hold higher status than the Viceroy in their own dominions,
and equal rank with him elsewhere, went away discontented. The scenic
display was a little tawdry and theatrical, and grizzled Anglo-Indians,
who had been accustomed to see austere statesmen or stern soldiers on
the viceregal throne, were perplexed to find the Empress represented by
a Viceroy who appeared to enjoy keenly the Orientalism of the function,
and saw no absurdity in representing the majesty of Empire from the
back of an elephant, which had been painted white for the occasion.
Yet the ceremony was not without a deep meaning. It represented the
final triumph of the new system which was introduced into India by
Canning, the system by which, instead of ruling India by a paternal
bureaucracy, whose aim was to sweep away all magnates who stood between
it and the people, the hereditary rights of the native Princes were
recognised, and they themselves admitted as corner-stones in the
fabric of Empire of which the Kaiser-i-Hind was now proclaimed the
apex and crown. It was, therefore, not without significance that the
only class unrepresented at the Coronation was the Indian people. Yet
one occasionally heard of the Indian people. A quarter of a million of
them had been drowned by a cyclone in Bengal when the debates on the
Imperial title were going on in London. Eight millions of them were in
the agonies of famine in Central India when that title was proclaimed
at Delhi.

[Illustration: TROOPING THE COLOURS IN ST. JAMES’S PARK ON THE QUEEN’S
BIRTHDAY.]

[Illustration: LORD CAIRNS.

(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]

CHAPTER XXI.

THE REIGN OF JINGOISM.

Opening of Parliament--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Leadership--The
Prisons Bill--Mr. Parnell’s Policy of Scientific Obstruction--The
South Africa Confederation Bill--Mr. Parnell’s Bout with Sir
Stafford Northcote--A Twenty-six Hours’ Sitting--The Budget--The
Russo-Turkish Question--Prince Albert’s Eastern Policy--Opinion
at Court--The Sentiments of Society--The Feeling of the British
People--Outbreak of War--Collapse of Turkey--The Jingoes--The Third
Volume of the “Life of the Prince Consort”--The “Greatest War
Song on Record”--The Queen’s Visit to Hughenden--Early Meeting of
Parliament--Mr. Layard’s Alarmist Telegrams--The Fleet Ordered to
Constantinople--Resignation of Lord Carnarvon--The Russian Terms of
Peace--Violence of the War Party--The Debate on the War Vote--The
Treaty of San Stefano--Resignation of Lord Derby--Calling Out the
Reserves--Lord Salisbury’s Circular--The Indian Troops Summoned
to Malta--The Salisbury-Schouvaloff Agreement--Lord Salisbury’s
Denials--The Berlin Congress--The _Globe_ Disclosures--The
Anglo-Turkish Convention--Occupation of Cyprus--“Peace with
Honour”--The Irish Intermediate Education Bill--Consolidation
of the Factory Acts--The Monarch and the Multitude--Outbreak of
the Third Afghan War--The “Scientific Frontier”--Naval Review at
Spithead--Death of the Ex-King of Hanover--Death of the Princess
Alice.

The “green Yule,” which bodes ill-luck, ushered in the year 1877. The
attitude of the Ministry to the Eastern Question was still one of
indecision; but there was joy in City circles when, on the 11th of
January, it was announced that Lord Derby had recalled the British
Fleet from Besika Bay. This was a warning to the Sultan that England
had no sympathy with the contumacy of the Porte, which still refused to
concede the guarantees for reform in its European provinces that the
Conference insisted on.

On the 8th of February the Queen opened Parliament in person, and
was well received in the crowded streets, but Mr. Gladstone, Lord
Beaconsfield, and the Chinese Ambassador and his suite were for the
time the real heroes of the mob. The scene in the House of Lords
was one of exceptional brilliancy, and after the Speech, was read
by Lord Cairns, the Queen, descending the steps of the Throne, left
the Chamber, the ceremony, so far as her Majesty was concerned, not
occupying more than fifteen minutes. It need not be said that in both
Houses the debates on the Address centred round the Eastern Question.
The Conference had been a failure, and the Government were seriously
embarrassed. Logically, Ministers, as men of spirit, were bound to
make the demands of the Conference effective, for was it not their own
device for settling the Eastern Question, and were not its demands
their demands? That was the view which Lord Hartington vindicated in a
speech of great power and cogency.

On the other hand, it was clear that the Cabinet had no fixed aim
when it organised the Conference--that if it ever contemplated the
contingency of failure, which its supporters by their fierce attacks
on Lord Salisbury had virtually manufactured, it had hoped to tide
over the difficulty by letting matters drift. Lord Derby had begun by
assuming that it was not the right or duty of England to insist on
Turkey conceding reforms to Bulgaria. The autumnal agitation about
the atrocities induced him to change front, and to admit that it
was alike the duty and right of England, as one of the Powers whose
support maintained the Turkish Empire, to demand that its European
Provinces should not be submerged in barbarism. He had organised the
Powers in support of this demand, and now, when the Turks refused to
yield to it, he reverted to his original theory that England had no
more right to interfere with Turkey, than with Austria or France. What
made matters worse for the Cabinet was the prevailing belief that,
though they sent Lord Salisbury to Constantinople to insist on reforms,
their agents privily assured Midhat Pasha, then Grand Vizier, that
no harm would come if Turkey upset the Conference. The State Papers
furnish no confirmation of this belief. Indeed, they show that Lord
Derby told Lord Salisbury to warn the Turks that though England would
take no part in coercive measures against them, the Porte “is to be
made to understand that it can expect no assistance from England in
the case of war.”[99] The Turks, however, had a fixed conviction that
England would help them in a war with Russia. Nothing but a strong
statement from Lord Beaconsfield would have eradicated this belief,
and all that the English Government can be blamed for is, that Lord
Beaconsfield failed or refused to make this statement. According to
Prince Bismarck, no statesman who aspires to influence abroad will
permit his Government to be associated with a failure in diplomacy. Yet
not only had Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Derby permitted their project
of the Conference to be laughed to pieces by the Turks, but all they
had to say to Parliament was that they were sorry that Turkey had
misunderstood her own interests. They were quite contented to accept
the defeat of their scheme meekly. Their position appears rather abject
to those who look at it critically, and yet no other was practically
open to them. Only a small faction, led by Lord Hartington and Mr.
Gladstone, were for coercing Turkey. A still smaller faction of idle
loungers, whose favourite phrase was that “Piccadilly wanted a little
wholesome blood-letting,” were for joining Turkey in a war against
the Slav States headed by Russia. The people were divided between
their spasmodic fear of Russia and their equally spasmodic loathing
for the Turks, and Radical Russophobes, like Mr. Joseph Cowen, were
just as loud in demanding non-intervention as Radical Russophiles
like Mr. Bright. Thus the policy of the Government--that of demanding
concessions from Turkey from a love of Humanity, and tamely submitting
to a contemptuous refusal, from fear of Russia, fairly well reflected
the mind of the English democracy.

Sir Stafford Northcote’s leadership of the House of Commons was not
promising. He tolerated the obstruction of a small group of members,
who caused the Bill which closed public-houses in Ireland on Sundays
to be abandoned, after Ministers stood pledged to its principle, and
all parties in the House were willing to pass it. He permitted his
more devoted followers to oppose a Resolution moved by Mr. Clare
Read--who had left the Government because he considered that they
neglected agricultural interests--in favour of County Government
Reform. But at the last moment he put forward Mr. Sclater-Booth
to accept the Resolution in a speech which was evidently meant as
a conclusive argument against it. Mr. Cross’s Prisons Bills, too,
spread disaffection among the squirearchy. These measures reduced the
management of gaols in the three kingdoms to something like uniformity.
But they made the prisons national and not local institutions,
centralised their administration in the hands of the Imperial
Government, deposed the local justices from their position of control
over them, and charged their cost to the Consolidated Fund.

The debates in Parliament were rendered memorable by the appearance of
a cool and adroit gladiator on the Irish benches, whose business-like
methods of attacking the Prisons Bill in Committee extorted admiration
from all old Parliamentary hands. This was Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell.
It was known to be his intention to obstruct the Prisons Bill, in
defiance of the wishes of Mr. Butt, the leader of the Irish Party. But
it was assumed that a combination of the two great English Parties
would easily crush opposition of the frivolous and factious order
with which Mr. Beresford Hope and a section of the Tories had met Mr.
Forster’s Ballot Bill.[100] But Mr. Parnell had evidently foreseen this
contingency, and he met it by inventing a higher and more scientific
type of obstruction than Mr. Hope had been capable of devising. His
obstruction paralysed the two front benches, because he took care that
it was not frivolous. He had evidently spent many nights and days
in the minute dissection of the Bill, and he had manifestly toiled
without stint in reading up the whole question of Prison discipline.
It was not till he had made himself master of the entire subject that
he intervened in the Debates, and then the House, to its amazement,
found that the Home Secretary himself, when pitted against this bland
young Irish squire with his soft voice, his lugubrious intonation, his
funereal manner, and dull, prosaic Gradgrind-like form of speech, was
but a poor amateur wriggling in the firm grip of a pitiless expert. To
the dismay of the three leaders of the House--Sir Stafford Northcote,
Lord Hartington, and Mr. Butt--there was no easy means of getting rid
of Mr. Parnell, simply because his amendments--and their name was
legion--were not vamped up. Nay, with Machiavelian ingenuity he had
draughted them so skilfully that most of them appealed strongly to
the sympathies of other sections of the House than those connected
with Ireland. Indeed, but for the persistency with which Mr. Parnell
and one or two of his friends “bored” the House with the sufferings
of certain Fenian prisoners under discipline, one would have thought
that his treatment of the Bill was simply that of an English country
gentleman, who had made himself an authority on the question, and had
a genuine desire to eliminate from it stupid provisions which had
been palmed off on a credulous Home Secretary. Nor was it in mastery
of detail and skill of draughtsmanship alone that Mr. Parnell showed
himself formidable. His ingenuity in inventing amendments drawn on
lines that appealed to English popular feeling was inexhaustible. If
at one moment the Home Secretary found himself contending with Mr.
Parnell in the guise of a healthy-minded Tory squire, who was a hater
of centralisation and a champion of the rights of visiting justices,
at another he found himself battling with a philanthropist in whom
the spirit of Howard lived again. Few who witnessed the long duel
between Mr. Cross and Mr. Parnell will ever forget the pitiful and
perturbed embarrassment of the Home Secretary when he found himself at
every turn so maliciously cornered by his enemy, that he must either
surrender, offend the prejudices of the rural magistracy, who hated the
Bill, or raise up hosts of enemies in Exeter Hall and other centres
of philanthropic activity, where any proposal to humanise Prison
Discipline was hailed with delight. And when the duel was over it was
impossible to deny that whatever might be Mr. Parnell’s motive, he had
by his opposition extorted from Mr. Cross a series of concessions,
which not only improved the Bill, but converted it from a bad one into
a good one.

One more point remains to be noted. Mr. Parnell’s party practically
consisted of one--namely, Mr. Joseph Gillies Biggar. If it was Mr.
Parnell’s desire “to scorn delights and live laborious days” in
reforming the administration of English prisons, it was the firm and
austere resolve of Mr. Biggar that this great work should be done with
a solemnity of deliberation

[Illustration: HORSESHOE CLOISTERS, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

worthy of such an august Assembly as the House of Commons. The business
in hand was too serious to be transacted without a quorum--so Mr.
Biggar invariably tried to “count” out the House. Public affairs ought
not to be transacted at an hour when, to use his favourite phrase,
“no decent person would be out of _their beds_,” so Mr. Biggar would
insist on adjourning the House or the Committee about one o’clock in
the morning.[101] And Mr. Biggar played his part in the serio-comedy
with so much elfish delight and quaint, grotesque humour, that if the
House now and then roared with rage at him, it still oftener roared
with laughter. Those who saw deeper than the surface saw that something
more serious than a comedy was being produced by these new performers
from Ireland. They saw sprouting the germ of that extraordinary
policy of Parliamentary pressure by which the new school of Irish
Nationalists sought to gain their end--the policy that offered the
Imperial Government the choice of one of two alternatives--concession
of autonomy in Ireland, or the sacrifice of the ancient liberties and
privileges of Parliament.

Still Englishmen were loth to believe that an issue so grave would be
forced upon them. Indeed, the Conservative Party regarded obstruction,
so far as it had gone, with merely a Platonic hatred. It had been used
only to check legislation, and Conservative interests were not hurt by
keeping things as they were. Then it was also said that the success of
Mr. Parnell was due to the feebleness of Mr. Cross, who, however, was
in a position to smile at such innuendoes. Whether he had been strong
or weak, Mr. Cross had, at all events, got his Prisons Bill passed in
a form that brought him great credit in the country. However, in the
lobbies of the House of Commons and in the political clubs the general
opinion was, that there was no need for Conservatives to be alarmed
so long as Mr. Parnell merely delayed legislative changes. He would
not venture to obstruct administrative work, and he must assuredly
succumb if he challenged a vigorous and resolute Minister like Mr.
Gathorne-Hardy. Mr. Parnell accordingly put up Mr. O’Connor Power to
block Mr. Hardy’s Army Estimates on the 2nd of July. Mr. Power waited
till the Army Reserve Vote came on, and then he met it with a motion to
report progress, first, because money ought not to be voted away after
midnight, and secondly because Ireland, not being allowed to raise
a Volunteer Force, ought not to pay taxes to support the Volunteer
Forces of England and Scotland. Would Mr. Hardy explain why Ireland
should not have Volunteers? Mr. Hardy seemed speechless with wrath at
the audacity of the attack, and met the question with contemptuous
silence. The interest of the House was now roused. It would be seen
whether the strong Minister of the Government, would be more successful
than Mr. Cross in coping with obstruction. Of course the motion was
defeated--but eight members, including Mr. Whalley, voted for it. Mr.
Parnell, it was then seen, had a small party at his back, nay, he
had lieutenants at his call ready to serve. Mr. O’Donnell next moved
that the Chairman of Committee leave the chair, and defiantly warned
Mr. Hardy that, till he did answer Mr. Power’s question, no Supply
would be voted. Mr. Hardy still refused, and then the struggle went on
merrily, dilatory motions being moved one after the other, till at last
the Government gave up the fight, and allowed the House to be counted
out at a quarter past seven in the morning.[102] Mr. Cross was the
only Conservative member who did not appear crestfallen next day. His
“feeble” method of dealing had, at all events, borne fruit. He had got
work, and good work, done. Mr. Hardy’s vigour had simply demonstrated
to the world that six Irish members could keep the House of Commons
sitting till seven o’clock in the morning, and keep it sitting for
nothing. Sir Stafford Northcote accordingly carried the feeling of
the House with him when, at next meeting, he threatened to move that
the rules of Procedure be reconsidered. But on going into the matter
he found that this would take time. The rules were dear to Members
opposed to reform, because they were so contrived as to give the utmost
facilities for impeding legislative change. Hence, he intimated, on the
5th of July, that he would deal with the difficulty after the Recess.
Mr. Parnell’s retort was to obstruct business at that sitting till
about three in the morning. He and his friends not only opposed the
clause in the Irish Judicature Bill fixing the salaries of the Irish
Judges,[103] but they affected to have suddenly taken an absorbing
interest in the Solicitors Examination Bill which had come down from
the House of Lords. On the 23rd of July Sir Stafford Northcote, still
shrinking from altering the rules of the House, tried to meet the case
by moving that the Government should confiscate for their business the
nights allotted to private members. This enabled the Parnellite Party
to again obstruct business, as champions of Parliamentary privileges.

By this time the House of Commons was working itself up into a fit of
burning indignation. The anger of the Conservatives indeed knew no
bounds, for they saw that they must either submit to Mr. Parnell, or
surrender privileges of obstruction which they had themselves found
useful in defeating measures of reform in bygone days. Mr. Parnell’s
Party sat maliciously cool and annoyingly calm through all the turmoil;
indeed, Mr. Parnell seemed bent on provoking the Tories opposite him,
by assuming towards them a demeanour of supercilious aristocratic
superiority that cut them at every moment like a whip. His manner of
disdainful mastery indicated that he must have some dire instrument
of torture in reserve for them. And so he had. He and his friends had
picked up a Bill which nobody dreamt of seriously attacking, because
it was purely an administrative measure proposed by the Colonial
Office. It gave the Colonies and the two Dutch Republics in South
Africa the means of forming a Confederation if they chose to do so.
It was perfectly harmless and permissive, but it was unfortunately
complex and loaded with detail. Mr. Parnell and his band had devoted
their unremitting energies to mastering, not only this Bill, but
every imaginable point in South African policy. Hence, when it came
before the House, they suddenly appeared in the character of South
African “experts,” who knew infinitely more about the subject than the
unfortunate Minister in charge of the measure. The Government had also
annexed the Transvaal Republic under the erroneous impression that the
Boers desired annexation, and Lord Grey had frankly admitted in the
House of Lords that South Africa was not ripe for Confederation. A few
Radical doctrinaires, led by Mr. Courtney, alarmed at the annexation of
the Transvaal, also disliked the Bill. In fact, an ideal opportunity
for practising obstructive tactics had been presented to Mr. Parnell
by the Government, and he took advantage of it ruthlessly. He and his
Party opposed the South Africa Bill line by line, nay, almost word
by word,[104] contemptuously asking Ministers to explain why they
persisted in giving to Colonies that did not want it, the autonomy
for which Ireland sued in vain. What, however, chiefly embarrassed
the Ministry was the factiousness of several powerful Radicals,
like Mr. Chamberlain, Professor Fawcett, and Mr. Rylands, who, not
content with expressing dissent in the constitutional manner on the
Second Reading, voted with Mr. Parnell in obstructing the formal
proposal to go into Committee on the Bill.[105] It would have been
comparatively easy to rouse an overwhelming force of public opinion
against Mr. Parnell at this juncture, had not Messrs. Chamberlain,
Rylands, Courtney, and Fawcett thrown over his opposition the ægis
of their personal authority. Their unexpected alliance emboldened
Mr. Parnell, who accordingly blocked the Bill in Committee to such
an extent, that Sir Stafford Northcote, on the 25th of July, moved
that the Irish leader be suspended for two days because he had said
he had “satisfaction in preventing and thwarting the intentions of
the Government in respect of the Bill.” In the wrangle that followed,
Mr. Parnell’s cool, supercilious manner rendered the House almost
ungovernable, until several Members recalled it to reason. It was
seen that the words expressed no more in themselves than a legitimate
act of critical opposition. Mr. Whitbread moved that the debate on
the motion to suspend Mr. Parnell be adjourned for twenty-four hours.
Mr. Hardy accepted the proposal, whereupon Mr. Parnell with frigid
imperturbability rose and resumed his speech at the very sentence in
delivering which Sir Stafford Northcote had interrupted him exactly two
hours before. During that sitting, from noon till a quarter to six in
the evening, only two clauses were passed. But one point was gained.
Mr. Parnell had inflicted on Sir Stafford Northcote a personal defeat
so detrimental to his authority as leader of the House, that he was at
last compelled to consent to a modification of the rules of procedure.

On the 27th of July he moved two Resolutions, one prohibiting a Member
from moving dilatory motions of adjournments more than once on the same
night, and another enabling the Chair to put without debate a motion
silencing a Member for the rest of the debate who had been “named” as
defying the authority of the Speaker or Chairman of Committees. As
for Sir Stafford Northcote’s motion to suspend Mr. Parnell, that was
dropped at Lord Hartington’s suggestion. After apologetic explanations
were given by Lord Beaconsfield and Sir Stafford Northcote to the
Members of the Tory Party at a private meeting at the Foreign Office,
these resolutions were carried. Independent critics predicted that
they would be futile; that, indeed, no remedy short of the Continental
_clôture_, which the Conservatives dreaded much more than Mr. Parnell,
could be effective.

[Illustration: LORD DERBY.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

Mr. Parnell proceeded without delay to give a practical illustration of
the defects of the new rules. He played his game more warily, but more
persistently than ever, and every day the House of Commons found itself
an object of contempt to the nation, because it could not vindicate
its authority against one man. At last, on the 31st of July, Sir
Stafford Northcote in despair resolved to resort to physical methods.
He arranged with Lord Hartington to force the South Africa Bill through
Committee, by getting the House to sit on without a break till the
Parnellites were worn out from sheer bodily exhaustion. Relays of
Members were brought up to keep the House in Session, and Mr. Parnell
and his friends were allowed to talk themselves out. For twenty-six
consecutive hours the struggle went on with the seven Irish Members,
who, ere it was half through, lost their Radical ally, Mr. Courtney,
who flounced out of the House muttering his disgust at the hideous
scene of anarchy. At two o’clock in the afternoon of the following day,
Sir Stafford Northcote threatened “further proceedings,” and then, and
not till then, did the Irish forlorn hope give way. Mr. O’Donnell,
whose voice was now scarcely audible, said that this menace[106]
changed the situation, and the Bill was forthwith passed through
Committee. The Government triumphed, but at a terrible cost. They had
to drop all their best Bills, because Mr. Parnell kept them using up
the time at their disposal in passing a measure which was of little
interest to Englishmen, and which ultimately proved, not only useless,
but mischievous. The Session was therefore barren of legislative
fruit. Even the Budget failed to excite debate, for, as Sir Stafford
Northcote said, it was “a ready-made” one, and changed nothing.[107]
No old taxes were remitted, and no new ones imposed. Sir Stafford
Northcote perhaps underrated the depression in trade, which was even
then obviously growing. He hardly appreciated the rapidity with which
the working classes were exhausting their savings at a time when wages
were more likely to fall than rise. But otherwise his statement was
unobjectionable.

Foreign Policy was, however, the mainstay of the Ministry, and it is
curious to note how completely the anti-Turkish agitation, which Mr.
Gladstone had fomented with passionate zeal, forced the Cabinet to
change their attitude to the Eastern Question. In 1876 the Ministerial
doctrine was that England had no more to do with a quarrel between
the Sultan and his subjects than between the Austrian Emperor and his
people--the Ministerial theory, in fact, was, that if England was bound
to protect anybody, it was the Sultan, and not his subjects. In 1877
Ministers acknowledged that, as England had been mainly responsible
for keeping the Turk in Europe, she was in honour bound to protect his
Christian subjects from the torture which his Pashas inflicted on them.
There was also a change in regard to another point. In 1876 Ministers
were all for maintaining the “integrity and independence” of Turkey.
The Atrocities agitation, however, forced Lord Derby to make demands on
Turkey, and to assent to demands being made on her, which ignored her
visionary integrity and her mythical independence. It was said at the
time that the Court, having strongly supported the pro-Turkish policy
of 1876, was disappointed at the change of front in 1877. It is quite
certain that these views were not shared by the Duke and Duchess of
Edinburgh and their _entourage_. A passage in one of the letters of
the Princess Alice to the Queen makes that point tolerably clear.[108]
But as to the other question the evidence is faulty. The policy of the
Prince Consort, which was always supposed to dominate the ideas of
the Court, was certainly not pro-Turkish. In his celebrated Memorandum
to Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet in 1853 he laid down two principles: It was
the duty and interest of England to prevent Russia from imposing in
an underhand way a Protectorate on the European provinces of Turkey
“incompatible with their own independence.” It was also the duty and
interest of England to prevent Turkey from using English diplomacy
so as to enable the Pashas to impose “a more oppressive rule of two
millions of fanatic Mussulmans over twelve millions of Christians.”
England might go to war to prevent Bulgaria from falling into the
hands of Russia, but not for the mere maintenance of the integrity
and independence of Turkey. Nay, the Prince considered that such a
war ought to lead, in the peace which must be its object, “to the
obtaining of arrangements more consonant with the well-understood
interests of Europe, of Christianity, liberty, and civilisation, than
the re-imposition of the ignorant barbarian and despotic yoke of the
Mussulman over the most fertile and favoured portion of Europe.”[109]
Lord Aberdeen, Lord Clarendon, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Gladstone
accepted this view of English policy. On the other hand, Lord
Palmerston repudiated it. He contended that it was the duty of England
to maintain the integrity of Turkey at all hazards; that the Prince
Consort’s policy pointed to the ultimate expulsion of the Ottomans from
Europe; and that any reconstruction of Turkey such as that which the
Prince foreshadowed simply meant “its subjection to Russia, direct or
indirect, immediate or for a time delayed.”

But Lord Beaconsfield’s policy was simply a reproduction of Lord
Palmerston’s, hence it might be inferred that if the Prince Consort’s
ideas still prevailed at Court, his policy in 1876 could not have
had Royal sanction. On the other hand, there is no proof that Prince
Albert’s ideas on the subject--which in the main were those of the
great bulk of the English people--were still held as authoritative
at Court. In a curious letter, the significance of which is obvious
in its relation to the Queen’s personal opinions, written by the
Princess Alice to her mother (25th July, 1878) there occurs, after an
outburst against the advance of the Russians on Bulgaria, the following
passage: “What do the friends of the ‘Atrocity Meetings’ say now? How
difficult it has been made for the Government through them, and how
blind they have been! All this must be a constant worry and anxiety
for you.”[110] As the Princess’s letters, where they touch on English
public affairs, invariably reflect the opinions of the Queen, and as
it cannot be imagined that in a matter of bitter political controversy
she would venture to obtrude on the Queen so contemptuous a view of the
“Atrocity Meetings” and of the conduct of the Opposition, had it not
been in sympathy with the Queen’s own feelings, we may safely draw
one conclusion. Despite the conjectures which have been ingeniously
based on the Prince Consort’s Memorandum of 1853, the policy of the
Court was identified with that of the Cabinet all through 1876, and
if it was changed in 1877, it was changed in deference to the popular
hostility to Turkey, which Mr. Gladstone had aroused. Among those
persons, however, who were closest in contact with the Court, and who
usually reflected Royal ideas most correctly, there was no change
of opinion. Mr. Hayward’s correspondence teems with references to
the fierce hatred with which Mr. Gladstone and the Opposition were
denounced by “the upper ten thousand;”[111] in fact, Society vilipended
Mr. Gladstone with the same obloquy that it had bestowed on him for his
pamphlet denouncing the Neapolitan atrocities. But Mr. Hayward is at
pains to state that, “all that the Government have been doing in the
right direction is owing to the flame kindled by him [Mr. Gladstone]”;
and the Hayward Correspondence proves that at the different embassies
the diplomatists were at one on three points (1), the insulation of
England; (2), the necessity of protecting the Bulgarians effectually
from Turkish oppression; (3), the necessity of refusing Russia any
cession of Turkish territory in Europe; a condition which, says Mr.
Hayward in his account of a celebrated diplomatic dinner-party at the
Austrian Embassy, Russia accepted.[112]

Events justified the accuracy of Mr. Hayward’s information, for it was
the fatal error of Lord Beaconsfield’s policy that it assumed there was
no genuine accord among the Powers, and that they were neither able nor
willing to prevent Russia from seizing Turkish territory in Europe.
Indeed, Mr. Hayward seems to have been the only observer of public
affairs who clearly understood why they were drifting in the direction
indicated by the table-talk of the embassies. In a letter to Lady
Waldegrave (7th October, 1876) he says, “the power of public opinion
is a remarkable feature of the Eastern Question. Russia is so strongly
impelled by it that the Government would be endangered by holding back.
Austria is impelled by the Magyar to oppose the construction of any new
Slav State. The Porte is afraid of exasperating its Mahometan subjects
by what might be deemed unworthy concessions. The English Government
is completely controlled by public opinion.” And again in a letter to
Mr. Gladstone he says, “One of the strongest features of the situation
is, that the popular voice or national will is bettering or impelling
diplomacy and statesmanship in Russia, Austria, England, and Turkey, and

[Illustration: THE TOWER OF GALATA, CONSTANTINOPLE.]

fortunately so as concerns England. Whatever England is doing in
the right direction is owing to the popular impulse for which you
are mainly responsible, and which will redound to your lasting
honour.”[113] At the same time, there was a point at which Mr.
Gladstone and the nation parted company. He thought that if England
admitted that she ought to see that the Bulgarians were protected from
oppression, she ought to force Turkey to give effectual guarantees
for their protection. If she did not, Russia would step in as their
champion, and establish a claim to exclusive influence over European
Turkey, which it was not politic to give her even a pretext for
exercising. The great majority of Englishmen, however, held (1), that
it was not their business to waste their taxes in winning freedom for
the Bulgarians; (2), that they sufficiently discharged their duty
to them when they paralysed Turkey by withdrawing British support
from her; and (3), that the futile results of the Crimean War proved
that Austria and Germany, from their geographical position, were the
only Powers who could be safely trusted to effectively check Russian
aggression in Eastern Europe. The masses, as distinguished from the
aristocratic and academic classes, here proved themselves wiser than
their leaders, on whom they forced a policy of non-intervention, which
practically meant benevolent neutrality to the oppressed provinces of
Turkey. The manner in which the Treaty of San Stefano was transformed
into the Treaty of Berlin, every concession extorted from Russia being
obviously exacted in Austro-German interests, more than justified the
somewhat cynical anticipations of the British people.

It is not necessary to describe at length the steps which led up to
the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey on the 23rd of April,
1877. In vain did Lord Derby implore Turkey to grant of her own free
will the concessions she had refused to the abortive Conference. Russia
stood grimly on the frontier, with her hand on her sword-hilt, asking
Europe how long she was to wait ere she unsheathed her weapon. In
March a Protocol was signed by the Powers pressing Turkey to yield.
To this Russia appended a declaration that she would disarm if Turkey
accepted the advice of the Powers, and also sent an ambassador to St.
Petersburg to arrange for mutual disarmament. But otherwise Russia
clearly indicated her intention to use force. Lord Derby accepted, as
did the other Powers, this declaration, only he added, on behalf of
England, a reservation that she would consider the instrument null and
void if it did not lead to disarmament. The Turks rejected the appeal
of the Protocol. Prince Bismarck rejected a personal appeal which the
Queen made to him to hold back Russia; and so war was declared. To the
last the Turks expected that England would take their side, and they
had been confirmed in their attitude of contumacy by the appointment
of Mr. Layard, a notorious supporter of Turkey, to the British Embassy
at Constantinople on the day on which the Protocol was signed. If it
was the object of Lord Beaconsfield to prevent the outbreak of war
and to save the Ottoman Empire in Europe from ruin, his policy must
be described as an utter failure. And it failed for obvious reasons.
Lord Beaconsfield and the British diplomatic agents in Turkey talked
and wrote in terms which persuaded the Turks that, if they resisted
the demands of Europe, England would defend them, as in 1853-4. On the
contrary, if Lord Beaconsfield desired the Foreign Policy of England
to succeed, and to save Turkey from being crushed by Russia, he should
have taken steps to convince her that, even if he had the will, he had
not the power to do battle for her.

Others besides the Turks shared the opinion that Lord Beaconsfield
meant to drag England into a new Crimean War. On the 5th of May Mr.
Carlyle stated in the _Times_, “not on hearsay, but on accurate
knowledge,”[114] that Lord Beaconsfield was contemplating a feat “that
will force, not Russia only, but all Europe to declare war against
us.”[115] The idea of the Government was to occupy Gallipoli to
protect British interests. This would have forced Russia to declare
war against England, and then English public opinion would, of course,
have supported Lord Beaconsfield in fighting on the side of Turkey. But
Mr. Carlyle’s sudden revelation of the scheme roused public opinion in
favour of non-intervention, and Mr. Gladstone “took occasion by the
hand” to inflame the populace against Lord Beaconsfield’s supposed
designs. Stormy meetings were held all over England during the first
week of May, and then Ministers seemed to have changed their offensive
tone towards Russia. On the 6th of May Lord Derby buoyed out for Russia
the torpedoes called “British interests” which lay in her way. He laid
down in a polite despatch the precise conditions under which England
would remain neutral, conditions so plainly reasonable that Prince
Gortschakoff accepted them with the utmost frankness. Meanwhile Mr.
Gladstone was seriously misled by the public indignation which had
been roused against a conspiracy to fight for Turkey under the pretext
of protecting British interests. He imagined it would enable him to
carry out his own project of coercing Turkey in company with Russia. He
therefore submitted to the House of Commons six Resolutions, which were
discussed early in May. Of these, however, he was forced to withdraw
two, because a powerful section of the Liberal party considered that
they bound England to joint action with Russia. Thus Mr. Gladstone’s
formidable array of Resolutions dwindled down to the simple and
harmless proposition that the Turk was a bad man, who did not deserve
English sympathy or support. The House, however, by a majority of 131,
carried a colourless amendment declining to embarrass the Government
by any formal vote, and leaving “the determination of policy entirely
in their hands.” The debate on the Resolutions was one of those high
and sustained triumphs of Parliamentary eloquence which at great crises
display the British House of Commons at its best. It may be said to
have exhausted the controversy on the Eastern Question. Mr. Gladstone’s
speech (which would of itself have rendered the debate historical)
admittedly soared as high as the loftiest flights of Chatham and of
Burke.

There is no need to narrate the events of the war, how Osman Pasha,
from behind his earthworks at Plevna, blocked the Russian advance, and
Mukhtar held the Russians at bay in Asia Minor. As the star of fortune
shed its beams on either side, public opinion in England grew feverish
and excited, the Tories all the while clamouring for intervention on
behalf of Turkey. Some of them, indeed, seemed to hold that it was
the duty of England to head a new Crusade on behalf of Islam against
Christianity. But the public utterances of Ministers indicated their
determination to remain neutral, and Lord Derby did his best to
convince Musurus Pasha that Turkey was abandoned to her fate.

[Illustration: RUSSIAN WOUNDED LEAVING PLEVNA.]

Though the fact was not known at the time, a perfectly frank and
friendly understanding existed between the English and Russian
Governments; in fact, Russia had informed England, through her
ambassador, what terms of peace she would offer to Turkey, if Turkey
were to yield before Russian troops were compelled to cross the
Balkans. This information was given so that Lord Derby might have an
opportunity of modifying these terms if necessary for the protection of
British interests, prior to their presentation to the Porte, and Lord
Derby thought them so reasonable that he made more than one fruitless
effort to get Mr. Layard to press them on Turkey. Unfortunately the
diplomacy of 1877 was kept a profound secret, and as the people
were not aware of the good understanding between the Governments of
Russia and England, a fierce and exasperating controversy between the
Russophiles and the Russophobes raged through the land. On the 14th
and 15th of October the Turkish defence in Asia Minor collapsed. On
the 11th of December the fall of Plevna was announced, and when it was
intimated that Parliament was to meet on the 13th of January, 1878,
the country was panic-stricken. Nobody knew that Lord Derby and Count
Schouvaloff had practically agreed about the terms of peace that were
to be imposed on Turkey, and that Lord Derby had repeatedly warned the
Turks to expect no help from England. Everybody, in fact, inferred,
from the tone of the Ministerial press and of the speeches of Lord
Beaconsfield, Mr. Hardy, and Lord John Manners, that a scheme of
intervention was “in the air,” and that the early meeting of Parliament
implied a demand for supplies to carry on a war with Russia. The
Money Market rocked and swayed with excitement, and securities fell
with amazing rapidity.[116] Throughout England meetings were held by
business people protesting against any divergence from a policy of
neutrality. At night bands of young men, representing the War Party,
marched about London, the only English city which favoured war, singing
the chorus of a song then becoming popular in the music-halls, and
which began--

“We don’t want to fight,
But by Jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
And we’ve got the money too.”

[Illustration: HUGHENDEN MANOR. (_From a Photograph by Taunt and Co._)]

A new political term crept into use, namely, “Jingoism,”[117] or the
cult of the war-god Jingo, whose worshippers, however, were bellicose
rather than warlike, for they always prefaced their hymnal invocations
by the assurance that they did “_not_ want to fight.” The Ministry,
too, was divided--Lord Beaconsfield, Lord John Manners, and Mr. Hardy
leading the “Jingo” faction, whilst Lord Derby, Lord Carnarvon, and
Mr. Cross represented the Peace Party. This split in the Cabinet was
deplored at the time, and yet it was of enormous advantage to England.
It prevented her from being dragged into the war. It is true that it
buoyed up the expectant Turks with false hopes of aid from England,
and thus tempted them to reject the easy terms of peace which Russia
would have accepted after the fall of Plevna.[118] But the wrecking of
Turkey was not in 1877 a matter that deeply moved the British taxpayer,
unless he held Turkish Bonds, and if Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Hardy,
Lord John Manners, and their group, by their bellicose attitude, lured
the Ottoman race to disaster, it was for the Turkish or War Party, and
not for the nation, to call these Ministers to account.[119] As for
the policy of neutrality which the English people literally forced on
Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone, it was justified in the second
week of December, by a statement which Count Andrassy made to the
Austro-Hungarian Delegations on the 8th and 9th of that month. He
frankly said that Austrian sympathies were with the Christian subjects
of the Sultan, and that he “would not dare to stand up for the _status
quo_” in Turkey.

It needed little insight to discern that when Austria--a Power that
could have hurled 150,000 men on the flank of Russia--declared herself
against Turkey, and the _status quo_, it meant that Russia had bought
her alliance by consenting to an Austrian occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina. In such a crisis the true policy of a high-spirited
English statesman was to have safeguarded British interests in the
Ottoman Empire by “temporarily” occupying Egypt, as Austria was to
“temporarily” occupy Bosnia. Lord Beaconsfield, however, adopted
the surest means for paralysing his arm for such a bold stroke.
He summoned Parliament to meet three weeks earlier than usual, and
permitted his supporters to divert the attention of the country from
Egypt--obviously endangered by the impending fall of Turkey--to
wild schemes for occupying Gallipoli, sending a fleet to defend
Constantinople, and an army to obstruct the advance of Russia in Asia
Minor. As any one of these projects meant war with Russia, popular
excitement soon grew intense.

In this crisis it was to be expected that the policy of the Court would
be the subject of criticism, even though it were based on conjecture.
The pro-Turkish party were artful and adroit in their insinuations that
the Queen was on their side; though it is doubtful if the country would
have paid heed to them but for a curious coincidence. The third volume
of the “Life of the Prince Consort” was published at this juncture,
and it was assumed by both the partisans of Lord Beaconsfield and Mr.
Gladstone that Sir Theodore Martin had issued it by the Queen’s desire
in the form of a violent pamphlet against Russia. Perhaps it might
have been more discreet to have suppressed some passages, in which the
Prince, carried away by the excitement of the Crimean struggle, had
naturally taken a less sober and far-seeing view of European diplomacy
and English duty than he formulated in his famous Memorandum of 1853.
On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that when the work was
compiled Sir Theodore Martin, or rather the Queen, who selected the
documents for publication, could have anticipated that the London Press
and the Pall Mall clubs would be agitated by a frenzied controversy
as to whether the Cossack was a more moral man than the Bashi-Bazouk,
or Lord Beaconsfield a greater traitor than Mr. Gladstone. Nor can it
be said that a just view of the Prince Consort’s opinions would have
been obtained if his letter to Stockmar, penned in April, 1854, and his
Memorandum to the Cabinet of the 3rd of May, 1855, had been withheld.
The former expressed the Prince’s regret that the English public
were too excited to permit the Government to stand by, and, having
let Turkey dash herself to pieces against Russia, step in and take
guarantees against Russia using her victory to the prejudice of Europe.
Public opinion in 1854, the Prince regretfully admitted, recognised no
way of taking these guarantees but one--that of supporting Turkey at
the outset, so that the influence thus gained might be used to persuade
the Porte to behave decently. As for the Memorandum of May, 1855,
written during the negotiations at Vienna, it merely put on record
his strong feeling against giving Russia an excuse for enforcing,
single-handed, demands which Europe might make on Turkey. It is simply
amazing that by these documents the Russophobes pretended to prove that
the Queen was on the side of Turkey, and the Russophiles that she was
for attempting to raise another Crimean War. The natural inferences
from the documents read in connection with the Memorandum of 1853, were
(1), that as English public opinion had now changed so as to tolerate
the policy of expectancy, for which Prince Albert hinted his personal
preference, he would, if alive, have supported the “sordid” national
policy of neutrality, and that, too, all the more readily that Austria
and Germany were better able to curb Russia in 1877 than in 1854; (2),
that he would have either accepted the Berlin Memorandum, or have
taken steps to give executive effect to the demands formulated by the
Conference of Constantinople.

But another circumstance gave colour to the floating gossip as to
the Queen’s pro-Turkish sympathies.[120] She resolved to confer on
Lord Beaconsfield a distinction she had bestowed only on three of her
Premiers--Melbourne, Peel, and Aberdeen--that of paying him a visit
at his country seat. It was on the 15th of December that the Queen
arrived at High Wycombe, which she found lavishly decorated with
evergreens, flowers, and flags. At one part of her route there was
built a triumphal arch of chairs (representing the staple manufacture
of the town), in which she displayed a special interest. Accompanied
by the Princess Beatrice, her Majesty was received at High Wycombe
railway-station by Lord Beaconsfield and the Local Authorities, who
presented her with a loyal address. The Mayor’s daughter then presented
bouquets to their illustrious visitors, after which the Royal party
drove, amidst the cheers of the townspeople, to Hughenden Manor. Her
Majesty had luncheon there with the Prime Minister, and spent about two
hours in his house. She and the Princess planted trees in the grounds
in memory of their visit.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO HUGHENDEN: AT HIGH WYCOMBE RAILWAY
STATION.]

If political significance could be attributed to the visit, it must
have had some relation to the most recent action of the Government.
That had, however, consisted in sending a despatch to Russia (13th of
December) expressing a hope that, if the Russians crossed the Balkans,
they would not occupy Constantinople or menace the Dardanelles.[121]
To this Gortschakoff’s answer was a repetition of the pledge given
in July, that British interests would be respected, and that
Constantinople should only be occupied if the obstinacy of the Turks
forced that step on Russia as a military necessity.[122] That the Queen
should approve of such a despatch as that which Lord Derby sent two
days before she visited Hughenden, and of its frank warning that the
occupation of Constantinople would leave England free to take active
steps for protecting British interests, was only natural. Yet it was
out of this visit that there grew up a great fabric of foolish gossip,
the purport of which was that the Sovereign was goading the Cabinet
into war with Russia! The Ministerial Press made matters worse by
pretending that Prince Gortschakoff’s reply to the despatch of the 13th
of December was insulting to England. But on the 2nd of January, 1878,
Lord Carnarvon, addressing a South African deputation, took occasion
to contradict these assertions. The fall of Plevna, he said, had not
materially affected the policy of the Cabinet, which was still one of
neutrality, and there had been nothing in the Russian communications
with the Ministry of an insulting or discourteous character. The war
scare now subsided as if by magic, and Funds rose a quarter per cent.
But the Ministerial newspapers heaped obloquy on Lord Carnarvon,
declaring that he merely spoke for himself; and at a Cabinet Meeting
on the 3rd of January there was quite a “scene” between him and Lord
Beaconsfield. The Prime Minister condemned the speech of his colleague,
who, however, put on a bold front, and read a Memorandum before the
Cabinet vindicating his position, and re-affirming everything that
he had said. Lord Beaconsfield merely asked him for a copy of this
document, and no Minister then or at any subsequent period hinted
at a private or public disavowal of Lord Carnarvon’s statement. A
very conciliatory answer was sent on the 12th of January to Prince
Gortschakoff. It did not even suggest that the temporary military
occupation of Constantinople would endanger British interests, but it
asked Russia not to touch Gallipoli. On the 15th of January Prince
Gortschakoff answered that Russia would not occupy Gallipoli unless
Turkish troops were massed there; but he said that a British occupation
of the Peninsula would be regarded by Russia as a breach of neutrality.
On the 17th of January Parliament met, and, to its surprise, found
itself greeted with a Royal Speech couched in the most dove-like terms
of peace. The War Party were abashed. Even Lord Beaconsfield spoke not
of daggers, though he hinted vaguely at the chances of using them.
There was also a clause in the Queen’s Speech which, after admitting
that none of the conditions of British neutrality had been violated,
alluded darkly to the possibility of something occurring which might
render “measures of precaution” necessary. Lord Salisbury, however,
went out of his way to state that the Czar, so far from having
aggressive designs, had shown himself anxious to defer to the wishes of
Europe, and was possessed with “an almost tormenting desire for peace,”
so that Members went about asking each other--Why had Parliament been
summoned so soon, to the great disturbance of business and the alarm of
the nation, merely to be told that everything was going on smoothly?
The fact is, that it had been Lord Beaconsfield’s original intention to
send the Fleet to the Dardanelles.

On the 12th of January, 1878, this proposal was discussed in the
Cabinet, and it would have been necessary to follow up the step by
asking the House of Commons for a war vote. At a meeting on the 14th,
from which Lord Derby was absent, the proposal was adopted. On the
15th Lord Carnarvon sent in his resignation, but Mr. Montagu Corry
came to him with a message from Lord Beaconsfield to say that certain
telegrams had arrived which had caused the order to the Fleet to be
cancelled. These telegrams must obviously have been from Lord Augustus
Loftus, conveying Prince Gortschakoff’s pledge that Gallipoli would
not be touched, and his warning that Russia would regard the British
occupation of it as a breach of neutrality. On the 16th Lord Carnarvon
was at the Cabinet meeting, but his resignation was not returned to
him till the 18th, when Lord Beaconsfield assured him that there was
no longer any difference between them. Lord Beaconsfield, indeed,
went further in his soothing assurances to the House of Lords on the
17th. Though he had Lord Carnarvon’s resignation at that moment in
his pocket, he said “there is not the slightest evidence that there
has _ever_ been any difference between my opinions and those of my
colleagues.”[123] As for the rumours of dissensions in the Cabinet,
Lord Salisbury scornfully averred that they were only the inventions of
“our old friends the newspapers.”

To understand the events that followed, and which again threw the
country into a panic, two facts must be kept in view. First, the
resolution to send the Fleet to the Dardanelles had been taken on
the 14th of January, after the receipt of a telegram from Mr. Layard
warning the Government that the Russians were moving on Gallipoli.
This false statement had been neutralised by Lord Augustus Loftus,
who sent on the 15th the telegram conveying Gortschakoff’s renewed
pledges to respect British interests, in time to enable Lord
Beaconsfield to cancel the orders to the Fleet. But the second point
is, that the public and Parliament were kept in complete ignorance
of Gortschakoff’s fresh pledges not to approach Gallipoli, and not
to occupy Constantinople. If the one pledge was to be trusted, so
was the other, and the withdrawal of the orders to the Fleet proved
that the Government thought that the one pledge was valid. Yet Lord
Beaconsfield’s friends strove without ceasing to impress the public
with the false notion that Russia meant to seize Constantinople. On
the 17th Mr. Layard sent another alarmist telegram. The Russians,
he said, were marching on Adrianople. They were next to occupy
Constantinople, and the Sultan was making ready to fly to Broussa. On
the 22nd a deputation of the Tory War Party, representing seventy-five
malcontents in the House of Commons, urged a policy of intervention
on Sir Stafford Northcote. On the 23rd the Cabinet resolved to send
immediate orders to Admiral Hornby to take the Fleet to Constantinople.
Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon thereupon resigned. The order to the
Fleet was countermanded, and Hornby was instructed to anchor in Besika
Bay, whereupon Lord Derby returned to the Cabinet, but without Lord
Carnarvon. Lord Derby afterwards admitted that neither he nor his
colleagues had altered their opinions about the propriety of sending
the order to the Fleet, so that the Ministry and its Foreign Secretary
were now avowedly at variance as to a vital point of principle in
Foreign policy. If the Cabinet was trustworthy Lord Derby should not
have left it. If it was not trustworthy he was right to leave it,
but wrong to go back. As for Lord Beaconsfield, that he should have
permitted Lord Derby to return in such circumstances was, it need
hardly be said, discreditable to him as a man of honour. On January
24th Sir Stafford Northcote gave notice that on the 28th he would move
“a supplementary estimate for the military and naval services,” and the
Ministerial press immediately circulated the most startling accounts
of the oppressive conditions which Russia sought to impose on Turkey,
then negotiating for an armistice. The Liberal press, on the other
hand, accused Sir Stafford Northcote of breaking his promise, passed on
the opening day of the Session, that he would not ask for a Vote till
he knew what the Russian terms of peace were, and saw that they plainly
put British interests in peril.

As for the public, it had not the faintest idea that Ministers had
received assurances from Prince Gortschakoff which they had dealt with
as satisfactory. The official excuse for the War Vote now was that
Russia, by delaying to communicate the terms of peace which were the
basis of the armistice, rendered precautionary measures necessary. On
the 25th, Count Schouvaloff communicated these terms to the Foreign
Office, and they were found to be simply those which Russia had, with
unusual frankness, forewarned England and the Powers at various stages
of the war, she would exact from Turkey. On the evening of the 25th,
Lord Beaconsfield alluded to these terms as a possible basis for an
armistice. He must have regarded them as eminently moderate, for he
said that they had induced him to cancel the order to the Fleet to
proceed to Constantinople.[124] But the Ministry still persisted in
going on with the War Vote, and on the 28th of January Sir Stafford
Northcote denounced the terms of peace, in language which would have
induced Turkey to reject them had Russia not astutely kept them secret
till Turkey had accepted them. On the same day Lord Carnarvon, in the
House of Lords, explained his reasons for quitting the Cabinet.[125]

[Illustration: PRINCE GORTSCHAKOFF.]

The feeling in the House of Commons was now running high against the
Ministry, whose dissensions could no longer be concealed. But the War
Party organised with some difficulty a strong agitation in London in
their favour, and the streets and public-houses soon rang again with
the hymnal invocation to the war-god Jingo. His worshippers attacked
and broke up meetings called to protest against the War Vote, and they
themselves held meetings in Sheffield, in Trafalgar Square, and in
Exeter Hall (6th February). Still these demonstrations were empty of
real meaning, and the Opposition would not have been intimidated by
them but for a curious circumstance.

On the 7th of February the debate on the War Vote was still dragging
on, and every night the case of the Cabinet seemed to grow feebler
and feebler. The accommodating Mr. Layard, however, once more came
to their rescue. He began again to pour in his stereotyped telegrams
that the Russians, in spite of the armistice, were still marching on
Constantinople. Finally his despatches formed the basis for a rumour
that was circulated at Countess Münster’s ball, on the 6th of January,
that the Russians had actually occupied Constantinople. Next day the
panic-stricken City was literally occupied by raging “Jingoes,” and but
for the police Mr. Gladstone’s house would have been sacked. Every man
who did not bow to the war-god was a traitor and a Russian spy, and
the violence of the War Party ultimately frightened the wits out of
the Opposition. When the House of Commons met, Sir Stafford Northcote,
in reply to Lord Hartington, read Mr. Layard’s alarming telegrams, and
then the Liberal leaders ran from their guns in a panic. Mr. Forster
made haste to withdraw his Resolution against the War Vote. Nobody
would listen to Mr. Bright, who shrewdly suggested that Mr. Layard
was again misleading the Government; and the Liberal Party, deserted
by its leaders, sat in abject dismay, cowering beneath the triumphant
cheering of their opponents. But in a moment the whole scene changed,
as if by the touch of a magician. While Mr. Bright was casting doubt on
Mr. Layard’s telegrams, a note was passed on to Sir Stafford Northcote,
after reading which he grew visibly agitated. He handed it to his
colleagues, and when Mr. Bright sat down, Sir Stafford Northcote rose
and, with a shame-faced visage, said he had something of importance to
communicate. Both sides strained every ear to learn what fresh act of
Russian perfidy had been discovered; but the reaction was indescribable
when he read out an official denial from Prince Gortschakoff of Mr.
Layard’s sensational despatches. “The order,” said Gortschakoff, “has
been given to stop hostilities along the whole line in Europe and in
Asia. There is not a word of truth in the rumours which have reached
you.” Peals of derisive laughter greeted this anti-climax, only it was
difficult to know whether the Opposition and Ministers were laughing at
themselves, or at each other.

The end of the affair was that Mr. Forster could not muster up enough
courage to press his Resolution, and when a division came he and Lord
Hartington and about a hundred bewildered Liberals walked out of the
House. Hence the Vote was carried into Committee by a majority of 295
to 199. The country did not conceal its contempt for Mr. Forster’s
manœuvre. Men of sense agreed that there was only one ground on which
such a Vote could be fairly opposed. It was that till Ministers
stated definitely, whether their policy was to be that of Lord Derby
or Lord Beaconsfield, tempered at intervals by a telegraphic romance
from the British Embassy at Constantinople, not a farthing should
be granted to them. No such statement of policy was made, and the
withdrawal of the Liberals from their position served to convince
impartial observers that their opposition had been factious from the
beginning.[126] After this unexpected victory the “Jingoes” pressed the
Government to follow it up. To please them the Fleet was ordered to
Constantinople, but to soothe Lord Derby he was permitted to explain
that it went there merely to protect British residents who were
alarmed by the prevailing anarchy. The Turks, enraged at what they
deemed their betrayal by Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Layard, churlishly
refused to grant a firman opening the Straits to the Fleet. Prince
Gortschakoff said, that as the protection of Europeans from anarchy
was a duty which Russia and England ought to undertake in common for
the sake of Humanity, Russia would now, as a matter of course, occupy
the fortified lines that covered Constantinople, and, if need be,
the city itself. It was a pretty “situation” in the high comedy of
diplomacy, in which Lord Beaconsfield was, for the moment, outwitted
and outmanœuvred. He lowered the point of his foil with good temper and
good grace, but when he effected a compromise with Gortschakoff there
was wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Temple of “Jingo.” And yet
Lord Beaconsfield may be forgiven much, on account of the dexterity
with which he extricated the country from a position which rendered war
with Russia, and the immediate expulsion of the last remnant of the
Ottoman race to Asia, a dead certainty. He, or Lord Derby in his name,
promised Gortschakoff not to occupy Gallipoli nor the lines of Bulair,
if Russia would promise not to land troops on the European shore of
the Dardanelles. This compromise was accepted by Russia, with the
additional proviso that neither Power was free to occupy the Asiatic
side of the Straits.

After the Government obtained the Vote of Six Millions, they began
to spend the money as quickly as possible in the arsenals, for the
strangest part of their policy was, that their Army and Navy Estimates
were essentially peace estimates. Meantime, everybody was speculating
as to what terms of peace were being forced on Turkey, and the War
Party were busy spreading abroad the most alarming rumours about the
exactions of Russia. The veil of secrecy in which the negotiations
were wrapped excited the suspicion of the people, who, it must be
remembered, were kept in ignorance of the fact that the Russian
Government had frankly told Lord Derby the conditions on which they
would make peace. There was thus a distinct oscillation of public
feeling towards the “Jingoes.” The Treaty of Peace was signed at San
Stefano on the 3rd of March. Nineteen days afterwards the full text
of this Treaty, by which, as Prince Bismarck told General Grant,
“Ignatieff had swallowed more than Russia could digest,” was printed in
the English newspapers. At first, the War Party collapsed. It was clear
that the Russians had not touched British interests, and that to offer
to fight on behalf of Turkey after she was annihilated as a fighting
Power, and had signed a Treaty of Peace, was a palpable absurdity. Some
other basis for a policy had thus to be discovered, and it was soon
found. The ghastly phantom of “the public law of Europe” was conjured
up from the Crimean Museum of diplomatic antiquities. It was said that
England was bound to defend that law against the Treaty of San Stefano
which had violated it, by upsetting the Treaty of Paris as modified in
1871 by the Powers. Austria also took a line that again inspired the
War Party with false hopes. The Treaty of San Stefano had not arranged
for an Austrian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a counterpoise
to a Bulgaria under Russian influence. Austria therefore began to arm.
At the instance of Germany, however, she invited all the Powers to meet
in Congress and endeavour to harmonise the Treaty of San Stefano with
the general interests of Europe. As Lord Derby was blamed, somewhat
unjustly, for the failure of the project of a Congress, it may be well
to state precisely his attitude to it. Unfortunately for himself he
deemed it desirable to conceal his real objection to the scheme, which
was this: he held that more harm than good results from a discussion
among rival Powers on their competing interests in any Congress, unless
they shall have arrived beforehand at a complete agreement as to the
concessions which they will give and take.

[Illustration: RUSSO-TURKISH WAR: MAP SHOWING POSITION OF RUSSIAN AND
TURKISH LINES OUTSIDE OF CONSTANTINOPLE, AND OF THE BRITISH FLEET.]

Lord Derby’s idea evidently was to delay the Congress till the Powers
were so far agreed that their meeting would be virtually one to
register foregone conclusions. Lord Beaconsfield and the War Party,
on the other hand, knew that their only hope lay in preventing the
Congress from meeting. Up to a certain point Lord Derby and Lord
Beaconsfield could, therefore, hold common ground. But as Lord Derby’s
policy of obstructive procrastination destroyed the popularity of the
project before it had brought about such an agreement among the Powers
as would render the Congress innocuous, even in his eyes, it was easy
for Lord Beaconsfield to take some warlike step that would get rid
of Lord Derby and the Congress also. Hence throughout the period of
diplomatic conflict that followed we find Lord Derby allowed to object
to the Congress, first because Greece was not to be represented, and
lastly because the Russians did not distinctly promise to submit the
whole Treaty of San Stefano to it. The dispute finally centred round
this last point. Out of England nobody at the time could understand
Lord Derby’s objection. He seemed, from beginning to end, either to
be quibbling about words and phrases, or trying to force Russia to
enter the Congress with less liberty of action and on a lower status
of dignity and independence than the other Powers. Before England
accepted the Congress he wrote to Sir Henry Elliot, saying that she
would not enter it unless he distinctly understood that “every article
in the Treaty between Russia and Turkey will be placed before the
Congress, _not necessarily for acceptance_, but in order that it may
be ascertained what articles require acceptance or concurrence by
the several Powers, and what do not.” Russia had already admitted
that at the Congress each of the Powers “would have full liberty of
appreciation and action” as regards the Treaty of San Stefano, and on
the 9th of April Prince Gortschakoff’s Circular Note further stated
that “in claiming the same right for Russia we can only reiterate the
same declaration.” Lord Beaconsfield, on the 8th of April, complained,
in the House of Lords, that the phrase “liberty of appreciation and
action” was involved in classical ambiguity. “Delphi herself,” said
he, with a provoking sneer at the Russian Chancellor, “could hardly
have been more perplexing and august.” Yet, on the 27th of March,
Count Schouvaloff wrote to Lord Derby as follows: “The liberty of
appreciation and action which Russia thinks it right to reserve to
herself at the Congress the Imperial Cabinet defines in the following
manner. It leaves to the other Powers the liberty of raising such
questions at the Congress as they may think it fit to discuss, and
reserves to itself the liberty of accepting or not accepting the
discussion of those questions.”[127] Russia had communicated the Treaty
in its entirety to all the Powers. She had expressly and explicitly
informed Austria, who had summoned the Congress, that she admitted
the competence of that body to overhaul every clause of the Treaty in
European interests--a fact of which Lord Derby was well aware. Austria
and the Continental Powers were satisfied that Russia had sufficiently
recognised the competence of the Congress. England alone denied this,
and pressed for a declaration which would have technically left
all the Powers except Russia free not only to decide what affected
their individual interests, but free to decide what affected those of
Russia also. Lord Derby’s demand seemed as if meant to put the Russian
Government, behind which stood a great and irritable army, flushed with
victory, in the position of a criminal at the bar of Europe, and to
force from her an admission that on certain vital points she pledged
herself to bow to the decision of the Congress, though no other Power
was to be put under a similar obligation.[128] Whilst this pedantic
controversy was going on the “Jingoes” beat the war-drum with so much
sound and fury that Lord Beaconsfield was misled into the idea that
they were strong outside London. On the 26th of March the Cabinet
accordingly resolved to call out the Reserves, to summon a contingent
of native troops from India, to seize Cyprus, and land an army at a
port in Syria. Lord Derby was not much alarmed about the order to call
out the Reserves, but to seize one portion of the Turkish Empire, and
land an army on another, without a declaration of war, was to his
mind an act of piracy. Moreover, it would have instantly led to the
catastrophe which he had made every sacrifice to avoid--the Russian
occupation of Constantinople.

At this crisis Lord Derby saved his country from the direst calamity--a
war between England and Russia, in which victory could bring no other
gain to England than the privilege of restoring the liberated Turkish
provinces to barbarism, and in which, since India had been put down by
Lord Beaconsfield as one of the stakes in his game, defeat would have
meant the loss of her Asiatic and Colonial Empire. Lord Derby resigned,
and the panic caused by his withdrawal from the Cabinet compelled
Lord Beaconsfield to abandon the filibustering expedition to Cyprus
and Syria, and confine himself to those steps which did not make war
inevitable. Russia, who was strengthening her own forces, could not
object to England calling out her Reserves. As for the summons to the
Indian troops, it would have been harmless, but for a circumstance
not known at the time. It gave Prince Gortschakoff an opportunity
for carrying out a diabolically malignant scheme of vengeance. He
considered himself free to ignore the arrangement by which Russia
was bound not to interfere in the “neutral zone” between her Asiatic
Empire and the Indian frontier. Russian troops were accordingly ordered
to move towards the Oxus for the invasion of India. Russian agents
hastened in advance to the frontier to brew trouble for England in
Afghanistan. Nay, so swift and secret were these counter-strokes, that
even after the dispute between Russia and England in Europe had been
settled, Russia was unable to undo the mischief she had wrought in
Asia. England was dragged into the costly agony of another Afghan War,
and it may therefore be said that the luxury of bringing the native
troops to Europe in 1878 not only permanently disorganised the finances
of India, but cost the country hecatombs of lives and £20,000,000 of
money in 1879-80. Though the step was at first popular, the nation in
time began to appreciate the grave political and fiscal objections
which could be urged unanswerably against the employment of Indian
troops out of Asia, or out of that portion of Eastern Africa which is
practically Asiatic.

But when Lord Derby resigned it was not known that Indian troops were
to be brought to Cyprus and landed in Syria, and the Ministerial
explanations were so couched as to make it appear that he left the
Government merely because the Reserves were called out. His real
reasons could not be given at the moment, and he had to submit to a
tirade of abuse from Tory speakers and writers unparalleled in its
ferocity. Even his personal character was attacked by abominable
slanders. Violence and virulence are the outward and visible signs
of decaying power in a political Party. These evil qualities had,
however, never been displayed to a greater extent by the Tories since
the wars of the Protectionists and the Peelites in 1852, when a band
of the former one day after dinner at the Carlton Club explored the
drawing-room in order to “fling Mr. Gladstone out of the window.”[129]
Yet it is curious to observe that Lord Beaconsfield and his followers
were forced by events to adopt the policy and even the method of their
slandered colleague. They floundered deeper and deeper every day into a
quagmire of difficulties, till they actually made a secret arrangement
with Russia as to the points in the Treaty of San Stefano, about which,
however much they might wage a sham fight in the coming Congress,
neither Power would go to war.

In fact it is now evident that of the statesmen who figured in the
controversy at this crisis, Lord Derby is the one who emerges from
it with least damage to his reputation. Alike in his strength and
weakness, in his resolute determination to spend neither British blood
nor British treasure for the sake of Turkey, and in his lack of red-hot
enthusiasm for the cause of Slavic

[Illustration: THE MARINA, LARNACA, CYPRUS.]

nationality, Lord Derby’s diplomacy was the diplomacy of the British
people in their saner moments, when they were not under the spell of
passion or partisanship. His blunders--the rejection of the Berlin
Memorandum and the refusal to give an executive character to the
decisions of the Constantinople Conference--had at all events wrought
no evil to England or the world, unless it were an evil to hasten
the destruction of Ottoman tyranny in Europe, and the deliverance
of Bulgaria from barbarism.[130] As for his successes, they are
now obvious. His shrewd appreciation of British interests, and his
firmness, candour, courtesy, and lucidity in defining them at the
outset of the struggle between the belligerents, made it easy for
Russia to avoid a collision with England. That he fell short of his
opportunity in neglecting to establish British influence in Egypt was a
mistake excusable in a minister whose leader, like a character in one
of his own novels, “had but one idea in Foreign

[Illustration: SALONICA.]

Policy, and that was wrong”--the “maintenance of the integrity of the
Ottoman Empire.” But the net result of Lord Derby’s administration
was that he kept the country out of war, and out of enfeebling
and disreputable alliances. He thrust a peace policy on bellicose
colleagues. Even when they broke from his control he still forced them
back to the paths of peace by inflicting on them the penalty of his
resignation. In quitting them he left them as his legacy the secret of
going into the Congress, and bringing back from it “Peace with Honour.”

Mr. Gladstone, in a famous speech at Oxford, said, on the 30th
of January, that he had devoted his life, during the past year,
to counteract the Machiavelian designs of Lord Beaconsfield. Mr.
Gladstone, however, never appeared to less advantage than when he
made that statement. It was not Lord Beaconsfield but Lord Derby who
was the master-mind of the Cabinet during 1877-78, and who moulded
its diplomacy and controlled its action in Foreign Affairs. That Mr.
Gladstone strengthened Lord Derby’s hands by rendering a war for the
sake of Turkey unpopular is true; but that he weakened them by seeming
to advocate a military alliance with Holy Russia for a crusade against
Islam, is true also.

Lord Derby’s successor was Lord Salisbury. His first act was to
issue a Circular to the Powers, which was a furious and unrestrained
condemnation of every line of the Treaty of San Stefano. If it were to
be taken seriously it meant the condemnation even of the proposals of
the Constantinople Conference, to which he was himself a party. Prince
Gortschakoff, however, did not take it seriously. He replied to it with
polite irony in his Circular of the 9th of April, pointing out that the
difficulty Lord Salisbury put him in was that he confined himself to
saying what England did _not_ want. The situation, however, could not
be understood by the Powers till Lord Salisbury stated plainly what
she did want. The only logical answer which Lord Salisbury in terms of
his Circular could give was, “The restoration of the _status quo_ in
Turkey.” Hence it is needless to say that he did not find it convenient
to issue a direct reply to Prince Gortschakoff’s cynical despatch.

The Resolution calling out the Reserves was carried in the House of
Commons by 319 against 64, the Liberal leaders, with the exception of
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright, refusing to take part in the division.
That fewer than half the House supported the Government was bitterly
bewailed by the War Party, but was taken by the country as a good omen
of peace. So was the proposal to adjourn Parliament for a holiday of
three weeks at Easter, though, when the order summoning the Indian
troops to Malta was issued immediately after the adjournment, war
alarms again vexed the nation. Peace meetings were once more held, and
the provinces grew so restive that in the end of April Mr. Hardy and
Mr. Cross, speaking at Bradford and Preston, tried to soothe public
opinion by the most pacific assurances. When Parliament met after the
Recess the Government were taken to task because, in sending for the
Indian troops, they seemed to be endeavouring to nullify Parliamentary
control over the Army. Though the Opposition were beaten in the
division in the House of Commons, independent Conservatives did not
conceal the suspicions and the dislike with which they regarded a
proceeding which appeared more in harmony with the policy of Rome in
her decay, than of the British Empire in the full vigour of virility.
Though the War Party were more noisy than ever in London, there grew
up a strong feeling towards the end of May that the Congress would
meet after all, and that the risk of war was over. Intimidated by
the Peace demonstrations, the feeble vote of support on the motion
for calling out the Reserves, and the suspicions with which many
Conservatives viewed the employment of Asiatic troops to fight the
battles of England in Europe, the Government adopted Lord Derby’s plan,
and entered into a secret agreement with Russia as to what was to be
conceded in Congress. After that agreement it mattered little on what
terms the two Powers met. The compromise between Lord Salisbury and
Count Schouvaloff pushed back the Bulgaria of the San Stefano Treaty
from the Ægean Sea to the limit fixed by the Constantinople Conference,
cutting it off from all possible contact with England, an arrangement
not altogether disadvantageous to Russia. It divided Bulgaria into two
provinces--one to be free, but tributary to Turkey, and the other to
have an autonomous government, under a Christian Pasha, appointed by
the Porte with the sanction of the Powers. This weakened Bulgaria so as
to give Russia a dominant influence in both provinces, which was not
shaken till 1885, when their aspirations for union were realised by a
Revolution, which it was Lord Salisbury’s fate to sanction, perhaps,
indeed, in some measure to encourage. Greek populations were excluded
from the new Bulgarias, greatly to the satisfaction of Mr. Gladstone
and Lord Derby. Bayazid was restored to Turkey, but Batoum and Kars
were to be taken by Russia, who thus had the Asiatic frontier of Turkey
at her mercy. Russia was to take Bessarabia, and Turkey to cede Kolour
to Persia--obviously to earn Persian gratitude for Russia. Subject to
this compromise Lord Beaconsfield agreed not to make a _casus belli_ of
any Article in the Treaty of San Stefano, each one of which had been so
fiercely condemned by Lord Salisbury’s Circular of the 1st of April.

The intention of the Government was to keep the Salisbury-Schouvaloff
compromise secret. The people were to be left to imagine that Ministers
had won a diplomatic victory by forcing Russia into the Congress
fettered, whilst England entered it free. All the points agreed on
privately were to be fought over publicly by the representatives of
England in the Congress as if no such agreement were in existence,
and Englishmen were to be deluded into the idea that their diplomatic
agents had, by superhuman efforts at Berlin, not by private
huckstering in London, obtained enormous concessions from Russia.
But when the _Globe_ newspaper astonished the world by divulging
the secret agreement, the people--more especially the enthusiastic
Tories--refused to be

[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK.

(_From the Photograph by Loescher and Petsch, Berlin._)]

deluded. What, they asked, had Ministers made such a fuss about? Why
had they passed war votes, brought Indian troops to Malta at the risk
of violating the Constitution, and kept Europe in a fever of unrest,
if they were prepared to accept a compromise with Russia, so fatal to
the Turk as this? In fact, public opinion was so much excited that
Lord Salisbury, on the 3rd of June, had the courage to deny that the
secret compromise published by the _Globe_ on the 31st of May was
“authentic.” Ministerial organs, also tried to convince the world that
it was a forgery which had been treacherously uttered from the Russian.
Embassy.[131] For a time this denial lulled all popular suspicions. By
way of enforcing it Sir Stafford Northcote, when pressed, on the 6th of
June, as to what policy Ministers would pursue in Congress, referred
the House of Commons to the drastic Circular of the 1st of April, which
tore every Article in the Treaty of San Stefano to pieces. As a matter
of fact that Circular became a bit of waste-paper when Lord Salisbury
signed his secret agreement with Russia, the existence of which the
Government were now denying.

Three days after this compromise was arrived at, Germany, on the
3rd of June, issued invitations to the Powers to meet in Congress
at Berlin on the 14th.[132] Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury
then proceeded to represent England at the conclave in the Radziwill
Palace. Few will forget the almost breathless excitement with which
the people of England watched what they believed would be a terrible
diplomatic duel for the honour of their Queen and country between
Lord Beaconsfield and Prince Gortschakoff, for all this time the
country had accepted as true Lord Salisbury’s denial of his secret
compact with Count Schouvaloff.[133] But the tension of public feeling
suddenly relaxed in the reaction of a ludicrous anti-climax. On the
day after the Congress met (14th June) the _Globe_ published the full
text of the Secret Agreement. In vain did Sir Stafford Northcote and
the Duke of Richmond repeat Lord Salisbury’s equivocal denials of
its authenticity. Lord Grey indignantly condemned the Government for
their misleading disclaimers. Lord Houghton, a Liberal supporter of
Lord Beaconsfield’s foreign policy, said “the effect of the document
on the whole of Europe had been portentous,” and had lowered the
dignity of the Government.[134] The theory of the Ministerial Press,
that the document came from the Russian Embassy was refuted in a few
days by the Ministry. They raised criminal proceedings against Mr.
Charles Marvin, a writer in the Foreign Office, for surreptitiously
copying the paper and sending it to the _Globe_.[135] The prevarication
of Ministers and the revelations attendant on the disclosure of the
Secret Agreement shocked the confidence of the nation in the Cabinet.
Lord Salisbury and his colleagues earned for themselves at this time
an evil reputation for mendacity, which did much to bring about the
defeat of Lord Beaconsfield’s Administration at the General Election
of 1880. And yet it was difficult for them to be quite candid with
Parliament in the circumstances. On the day after they had signed the
Secret Agreement with Russia (which, it must be kept in view, bound
her to encroach no further on Turkey in Asia) they began to negotiate
a Convention with the Porte by which England promised to defend the
Asiatic frontier of Turkey, on condition that the Sultan would reform
the Government of Asia Minor, and permit the British Government to hold
Cyprus as long as Russia kept Kars. It would have been inconvenient
to divulge this scheme before Congress had decided the fate of
Bulgaria. Hence Lord Salisbury was really within the mark in saying
that the Secret Agreement with Russia did not “wholly” represent
the Government policy. On the 8th of July it was announced that the
Anglo-Turkish Convention had been signed on the 4th of June--most
reluctantly, as it seemed, by Turkey. Her hesitancy, indeed, was not
overcome till Lord Salisbury in the Congress abandoned, and Lord
Beaconsfield actively opposed, the cause of the Greeks, whom they had
buoyed up with delusive hopes. In an instant the scandal of the Secret
Agreement was forgotten. The wildest tales of the wealth that was to
be exploited in Cyprus flew from mouth to mouth. Englishmen saw with
prophetic eye, “in a fine frenzy rolling,” Asia Minor “opened up,”
under a British Protectorate, by the British prospector and pioneer.
Indeed, it was not till the 9th of November, when the nauseous wines
of Cyprus (of which such glowing accounts had been published) were
served at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, that the truth dawned on the
City. Then it was recognised that the country had been deceived as
to the teeming riches of its new possessions and positions in the
East. Cool-headed men did not, however, at the outset conceal their
opinion that the privilege of occupying Cyprus and of defending the
Asiatic frontier of Turkey was a poor substitute for the occupation
of Egypt as a means of restoring British influence in the East and
safeguarding British communications with India. Mr. Gladstone and Lord
Hartington both denounced the Anglo-Turkish Convention, as an “insane
covenant,” and the Opposition attacked it savagely in Parliament, but
without success. Independent Members attributed less importance to the
arrangement than Mr. Gladstone. They argued that, as the introduction
of reforms into Asia Minor was the condition precedent of defending the
frontier by arms, the Treaty, so far as England was concerned, would
remain a dead-letter. Great commercial interests, if created in Asia
Minor by English adventurers, might doubtless need defence. But, on
the other hand, it was impossible to create those interests so long as
Asia Minor was desolated by misgovernment, which the Sultan had not the
power, even if he had the will, to reform. Lord Beaconsfield and Lord
Salisbury returned to London on the 15th of July, bringing with them,
as they said, “Peace with Honour.” Applauding crowds welcomed them with
passionate enthusiasm. The Tories were delighted with the Anglo-Turkish
Convention, for as yet the gilt had not been rubbed off their Cyprian
toy. The Liberals, though indignant at the betrayal of Greece, were
pleased that Lord Beaconsfield had come out of the Congress without
involving England in war. They could say very little against a Treaty
the net result of which was to free eleven millions of Christian
Slavs from the direct rule of the Sultan, to render even divided
Bulgaria practically autonomous, and to create Servia and Roumania
into independent Kingdoms. On the 18th of July Lord Beaconsfield
gave the House of Lords an apologetic explanation of the Treaty of
Berlin, which was only the Treaty of San Stefano modified by the
Salisbury-Schouvaloff Agreement, and by the concession to Austria of
the right to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina. The debate raised no point
of interest, save Lord Derby’s disclosure of the Ministerial decision
in May, to send a naval Expedition to Syria, a project which was
abandoned when he quitted the Cabinet. Lord Salisbury created a scene
by comparing Lord Derby’s revelations to those of Titus Oates, and he
gave them a flat denial. But Lord Derby had spoken from a Memorandum
which he had made of the decision to which he referred at the time it
was arrived at. As Lord Salisbury’s reputation for veracity had been
sadly shaken by his statements about his Secret Agreement with Russia,
the country paid little heed to his disclaimers, and Lord Derby’s
version of the facts has ever since been taken as correct.

Triumphant majorities endorsed the policy which had been adopted
in the Congress, and at the end of the year Ministers went about
predicting for the country halcyon days of peace. Domestic affairs gave
them little trouble. Irish obstruction was bought off by the Irish
Intermediate Education Bill, which appropriated £1,000,000 to encourage
secondary schools in Ireland, by prizes, exhibitions, and capitation
grants. An attempt was made to pass a Bill, which, under the pretext
of excluding diseased cattle from English ports, might have been so
applied as to shut out foreign competition in the cattle trade. But
when it was discovered that the effect of the measure would be to raise
meat to eighteen-pence and two shillings a pound, the Tory borough
members threatened to revolt, and after a long and obstructive struggle
in Committee concessions were extorted from the Government which
satisfied the Opposition. The Government and the Opposition agreed to
pass a Bill consolidating forty-five Factory and Workshop Acts--a most
useful measure which removed many legal ambiguities. But no other Bills
of importance were carried, and no debates of much consequence raised,
save on foreign questions.

The Budget was introduced on the 4th of April. But for the money spent
under the Vote of Credit, Sir Stafford Northcote would have had a
balance in hand of £859,000. As it was he had a deficit on the accounts
of 1877-78 of £2,640,000. Supposing that no change either in taxation
or ordinary expenditure occurred in the coming year, he admitted
that he would also have a deficit in the accounts of the coming year
of £1,559,000. But besides this, Sir Stafford Northcote contended
that he must make provision for an “extraordinary expenditure” of
£1,000,000, or perhaps £1,500,000, in addition to what appeared in
the regular estimates for the Army and Navy for 1878-79. The ordinary
income and expenditure he estimated at £79,640,000, but his attempt
to introduce the vicious system of bankrupt or half-bankrupt States,
whose Governments confuse their accounts by mixing up ordinary and
extraordinary expenditure could not conceal one fact. Adding his
extraordinary expenditure to his past and estimated deficits, the
existing taxation of the country would fail to meet the expenditure of
1878-79 by at least £5,300,000. Hence it was necessary to impose new
taxes. Sir Stafford Northcote therefore added 2d. to the income-tax,
and 4d. per pound to the duty on tobacco, but even then he estimated a
deficit of about £1,500,000, which he added to the floating debt.

Parliament was prorogued on the 16th of August, and, amidst optimist
anticipations of peace, an end was put to a Session in which the House
of Commons, for the first time in the century, had permitted itself
to be treated by the Ministry like a Bonapartist _Corps Législatif_.
When it adjourned many people wondered why it had been summoned.
In the stirring crises of the year the Government had on every
momentous occasion carried out their policy without consulting it. The
legislative work that it was allowed to do might have been deferred for
another year without serious inconvenience. It had been converted into
a court of registration for the decisions of a Minister who treated it
as an ornamental appendage to a new system in which the Monarch and the
Multitude, under his guidance, were the only real governing forces.
Ministers, however, when they went down to their constituents in the
autumn, and told them to hope for peace, plenty, and

[Illustration: SHERE ALI, AMEER OF CABUL.]

reduced taxation, did not apparently know that a cunning trap had been
set for them by Russia. Before Parliament rose there were rumours
afloat that the policy of the Indian Government was becoming restless
and disquieting. Lord Lytton had put the vernacular Press under a
harsh censorship. The native Princes were threatened, or they expected
to be threatened, with a demand for the reduction of their armies. A
frontier policy of perilous adventure was mooted, greatly to the alarm
of experienced Indian officials like Lord Lawrence.

It has been already stated that Lord Salisbury, when Secretary of
State for India, had a scheme in view for covering Afghanistan with
European residents, and that Lord Northbrook resigned office rather
than further it. In 1878 Lord Lytton found an opportunity made for
him by Russia for developing this scheme, and he hastened to seize
it. He had already estranged Shere Ali, the Afghan Ameer, by his
menaces, and this prince was perhaps not indisposed to intrigue with
a rival Power. When Lord Beaconsfield brought the Indian troops to
Malta, Russia not only made secret preparations for the invasion of
India, but sent a Mission to Cabul for the purpose of securing the
co-operation of the Afghans. It does not appear that Shere Ali entered
into any bargain with the Russian Envoys, whom he sent away as soon
as he could, because whilst they were in Cabul he seems to have been
very nervous about their safety. But the Indian Government, hearing of
what was going on, demanded that they too should send an Embassy to
Cabul, urging that the reception of the Russian Mission showed that
Shere Ali’s apprehensions as to the safety of Europeans in his capital
were groundless. A Mahometan official of rank, the Nawab Gholeim Hasan
Khan, was entrusted with the task of conveying the demand to Shere
Ali, and he did his work honestly, and with great tact and skill. The
Nawab, on the 30th of August, left Peshawur, where the British Envoy,
Sir Neville Chamberlain, and his escort of a thousand troops were
waiting for the Ameer’s reply. The Nawab apparently did not see Shere
Ali till the 12th of September, who told him that he did not like the
idea of the Mission being forced on him. The advice of the Nawab, who
appears in these transactions as the only diplomatist who correctly
appreciated the situation, was to delay the Mission, “otherwise some
harm will come.” By “some harm” Gholeim Hasan Khan meant an Afghan war,
at all times a dire calamity for India, whether it ended in victory
or defeat. The Nawab, as the result of further negotiations, reported
that Shere Ali was willing to send for the British Mission, and clear
up any misunderstanding that might have arisen about his reception
of the Russian Envoys, if the Indian Government would give him time.
The Russians had come to Cabul uninvited, and they had all been sent
away, save some who were ill, and who were to be sent back whenever
they recovered. As the Nawab sensibly said, Shere Ali did not want
his people to suspect that the British Mission was thrust on him. “If
Mission,” said the Nawab, “will await Ameer’s permission, everything
will be arranged, God willing, in the best manner, and no room will
be left for complaint in future.”[136] But during September all these
details--afterwards revealed in the Blue-books--were concealed from
the British people. The Indian Government primed the correspondents
of the Press with mendacious accounts of Shere Ali’s insulting
refusal to receive a British Envoy, whereas he had not only invited a
Russian Mission to Cabul in violation of his pledges to us, but was
loading them with attentions, whilst Sir Neville Chamberlain was kept
ignominiously waiting his pleasure at Peshawur. British _prestige_,
it was said, rendered it necessary to coerce the Ameer, and so Sir
Neville Chamberlain was ordered to enter Afghan territory without the
Ameer’s permission, with a force “too large,” as Lord Carnarvon said,
“for a mission, and too small for an army.” When the advance guard of
the Mission came to the fort of Ali Musjid the Commandant stopped
it. At the time the country was told in the inspired telegrams in the
newspapers that the Commandant, Faiz Muhammed Khan, was violent and
insulting, and threatened to shoot Major Cavagnari. When the Blue-book
appeared with Major Cavagnari’s account of the affair it showed that
the Khan behaved with the greatest courtesy, and though he said he
must, in obedience to orders, oppose the advance of the Mission, he had
actually prevented his troops from firing on Cavagnari and his men.
What need to expand the story? The Mission returned. A pretext for a
quarrel with Shere Ali, which Lord Salisbury had instructed Lord Lytton
to find, was at last discovered. War was declared on Afghanistan, and
Parliament was summoned on the 5th of December to hear the news.

Of course Parliament was called into consultation too late. The Viceroy
of India had deliberately put himself into a position to invite and
receive a blow in the face from a semi-barbarous Asiatic prince. The
Government were therefore compelled either to recall Lord Lytton, and
treat the whole affair as a blunder, or avenge the rebuff which he had
received by war. They chose the latter alternative, and the hearts
of Liberal wirepullers were lifted up, because manifestly even Lord
Beaconsfield’s Administration could not survive such an escapade as
a third Afghan war. The debates on the policy of the Government were
dismal reading for those who knew what Afghan campaigns meant. The
Government shrank from resting their case on the transactions which
caused the war. It could not be concealed that on the 19th of August
Lord Salisbury asked Russia to withdraw her mission from Cabul, and
that on the 18th of September he received a scoffing reply informing
him that the Mission was only a temporary one of courtesy. As Sir
Charles Dilke put it, Lord Salisbury was naturally dissatisfied with
this reply, but being “afraid to hit Russia, yet determined to hit
somebody,” he “hit Shere Ali.” Ministers, however, took up a broader
ground of defence. They said that the Russian advances in Asia rendered
it necessary for England to secure the independence of Afghanistan. All
Indian statesmen were agreed that this could be done by guaranteeing
his throne to Shere Ali, he on his side giving the Indian Government
control over his policy. Shere Ali had been always willing to accept
the guarantee and the pledge to defend him against foreign and domestic
foes. But he would never consent to pay for it by putting his country
under a diplomatic or military protectorate. On no consideration would
he permit European agents to be stationed at Cabul, though he had no
objection to receive Mussulman agents, and neither Lord Mayo nor Lord
Northbrook thought it wise to press him on the point. They confined
themselves to a promise of aid, reserving to themselves the right of
determining when they should give it. Shere Ali was not satisfied
with this arrangement, but he had to make the best of it. In 1875
Lord Salisbury urged Lord Northbrook to find some pretext for forcing
European residents on the Ameer. Lord Northbrook refused and resigned.
Lord Lytton took his place. Lord Lytton roused Shere Ali’s suspicions
at the outset by occupying Quetta. At a conference at Peshawur in 1876,
between Sir Lewis Pelly and Shere Ali’s representative, Mir Akbor,
menaces were exchanged for persuasion, and even the conditional promise
of support given by Lord Mayo and Lord Northbrook to Shere Ali was
withdrawn. This aggravated Shere Ali’s suspicions, and it was while
he was in this frame of mind that Lord Lytton attempted to force a
British Mission upon him. The theory of the Government was that as
diplomacy had failed to make the Ameer accept our protectorate, resort
must be had to coercion. This had led to war, it was true. But war
must end in victory, and victory in the occupation of the southern
part of Afghanistan, which, as Lord Beaconsfield said, would give
India a “scientific frontier.” The objection to his idea was that to
push our outposts farther north was to put ourselves at a disadvantage
in defending India. Not only would the occupation of Afghanistan be
ruinously costly, but it would lengthen and attenuate the line of our
communications with our base--a line, moreover, which would run through
the lands of wild and fanatical hill-tribes. The debates in both Houses
perhaps served to render the war unpopular. But it had begun, and it
was absurd to refuse supplies to carry it on, because such a refusal
merely exposed British troops to disaster in the field. However, it was
notorious that in the majorities who supported the Government were many
who, like Lord Derby, felt forced to support in action a policy which
in opinion they disapproved.

During the Session of 1878 only one matter personally affecting the
interests of the Queen came up for discussion. On the 25th she sent
to both Houses a Message announcing the approaching marriage of the
Duke of Connaught with the Princess Louise, third daughter of Prince
Frederick Charles of Prussia, the celebrated cavalry leader, popularly
known as “The Red Prince.” He was a man of large private fortune, and
his daughter was described by Lord Beaconsfield as “distinguished
for her intelligence and accomplishments, and her winning simplicity
of thought and manner.” As for the Duke of Connaught, Lord Napier of
Magdala bore testimony to his efficiency as a soldier. In the House of
Commons an addition of £10,000 a year was voted to the Duke’s income,
thus raising it to £25,000, of which £6,000 a year was to be settled on
his wife in the event of her surviving him. The vote was passed without
a division, the only protest made coming from Sir Charles Dilke, who
asserted that no good precedent could be cited for such a provision for
a Prince, when it was not manifestly a provision for succession to the
Crown.

The only great public function of the year in which the Queen took part

[Illustration: THE QUEEN REVIEWING THE FLEET AT SPITHEAD.]

was the Review of the Fleet at Spithead on the 13th of August. The
spectacle was marred by the storm of wind and rain, which too often
spoils naval reviews, but it was one which had a special interest. It
was designed to show the country what kind of naval defence could be
organised on short notice, amidst rumours of war, when the Channel
Fleet was absent in foreign waters. It represented a naval force which,
but for its ordnance which was utterly obsolete and inefficient, would
have been equal in strength to the navy of any of the Continental
Powers, and the Queen saw for the first time the manœuvring of two
malevolent-looking little torpedo boats, which astonished her by
dashing about in all directions at the rate of twenty-one knots an
hour. At noon the ships were dressed. At half-past three the Royal
Yacht with the Queen on deck passed down the lines. Salutes were fired,
and yards manned, and her Majesty, accompanied by the Prince and
Princess of Wales, Princess Beatrice, and the Lords of the Admiralty,
was enthusiastically cheered. When the Queen’s vessel emerged from the
lines it was followed by a gay flotilla of yachts. Those that were
sailing craft luffed their wind and, headed by Mr. Brassey’s _Sunbeam_,
went round by starboard, the steamers going round by port, and with
the Royal Yacht in the centre the brilliant pleasure fleet came back
with the Squadron. All evolutions were countermanded on account of the
weather, but at night the Fleet was illuminated.

At Paris, on the 12th of June, there died George V., ex-King of
Hanover, Duke of Cumberland, grandson of George III. of England and
first cousin of the Queen. Court mourning was ordered for him, though
it was not very generally displayed. The old jealousy with which the
people regarded English Princes, who had interests separate from
England, accounted for their indifference to his death. Nor was there
any strong family sentiment at Court to counteract this feeling. On the
contrary, the sentiment of the Queen’s family was as anti-Hanoverian
as that of the nation. She had not forgiven the treasonable intrigues
which his father, her uncle, King Ernest Augustus of Hanover--the
most universally hated of all the sons of George III.--carried on
with the Orange Tories to set up Salic law in England, and usurp her
throne. She had unpleasant memories of his arrogance in persistently
conferring the Guelphic Order on Englishmen, not only without asking
her permission, but in defiance of her prohibition, as if in suggestive
assertion of an unsurrendered hereditary right of English sovereignty.
More recently the Queen had been still further offended by the
pretensions of his son, her cousin George V., to sanction or veto
the marriages of English princes and princesses, as male head of the
House of Brunswick-Sonneberg. His attempt to treat the marriage of the
Duchess of Teck (the Princess Mary of Cambridge) as a mere morganatic
connection, and his refusal to let the Duke of Teck sit beside the
Duchess at dinner, had also strained the relations between the Queen
and her cousin. Still, in 1866, she had, in response to his appeal,
used her influence on his behalf with the German Emperor. She had even
pressed Lord Derby and Lord Stanley to save Hanover from Prussian
annexation, and though they refused, she had induced them to mediate on
his behalf in order to secure for him a comfortable personal position
as a dethroned monarch. His misfortunes roused her sympathies, and
when he died, so far as the Queen was concerned, all feuds with the
Hanoverian branch of the Royal Family were buried in his grave.

But the end of the year brought a more bitter sorrow to the Queen than
the death of George V. The Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse,
died in extremely touching circumstances. She had spent the summer
months with her children at Eastbourne, where she had endeared herself
to the people by her sweetness of disposition, and by the personal
interest she manifested in the poor of the town. She was usually to
be seen visiting the cottages of the sick in the fishing quarter.
She had taken a keen interest in studying the management of certain
charitable institutions, evidently with a view to making use of her
knowledge when she returned to Darmstadt, and a charming visit to
Osborne completed a holiday that was for her full of happiness. Her
life was uneventful at Darmstadt till the 8th of November, when her
daughter, the Princess Victoria, was smitten with diphtheria. The
Grand Duchess was herself a skilled and scientifically-trained nurse,
and she tended her child personally. She was the first to detect the
appearance of the diphtheritic membrane in the little Princess’s
throat, and she promptly attacked it with inhalations of chlorate of
potash. In spite of careful isolation, the whole family, including the
Grand Duke, with the exception of the Princess Elizabeth, caught the
disease, and it need hardly be said that the strength of the Grand
Duchess soon began to give way under the strain of mental anxiety and
bodily fatigue. The Princess May died, but on the 25th of November
the Grand Duke recovered. On the 7th of December the Grand Duchess
went to the railway station to see the Duchess of Edinburgh, and next
day she too was prostrate with diphtheria. Lord Beaconsfield, in his
speech of condolence in the House of Lords on the 16th of December,
described her, with ornate rhetoric, as receiving “the kiss of death”
from one of her children, and he recommended the tragic incident as
fit to be commemorated by the painter, the sculptor, or the artist in
gems. There was no foundation for this histrionic flight. Nobody knew
how the Princess caught the contagion, but her biographer states “it
is supposed that she must have taken the infection when one day, in
her grief and despair, she had laid her head on her sick husband’s
pillow.”[137] Her sufferings were severe and protracted, and on the
13th of December it was seen that she must die. Still she lingered
on. In the afternoon she welcomed her husband with great joy. She saw
her lady-in-waiting, and even read two letters, the last one being
from the Queen, her mother. Then she fell asleep and never woke again.
At half-past eight on the morning of the 14th, the anniversary of
her father’s death, she passed away, quietly murmuring to herself
these words: “From Friday to Saturday, four weeks--May--dear papa!”
All through her life she had worshipped her father’s memory with
passionate devotion, and in death his name was the last on her lips.

The grief of the Queen was only equalled by that of the Prince of
Wales, who seems to have regarded the Grand Duchess as his favourite
sister. As for the English people, they mourned for her with
simple-minded sincerity. The character of the Princess Alice--so full
of sense and enterprise, and high-spirited self-helpfulness--had been
to them peculiarly attractive. She had won their gratitude by her
devotion to her mother in the first hours of her widowhood, and to
the Heir Apparent, when in 1871 his life hung in the balance. That
her daily existence was clouded with sordid cares due to straitened
means was not known to her countrymen till after her death. But they
were well aware that much domestic sorrow had entered into her life.
Her efforts to raise the condition of her sex in Germany procured for
her many enemies in a country where it is deemed desirable to reduce
the house-mothers to the position of upper servants in their families,
who, however, do their work without claiming wages. Sticklers for
Court etiquette were shocked by the unconventional activity manifested
by the Princess in furthering the organisation of charitable and
educational movements. Even the poor in most instances viewed her
visits to their homes--visits which she ultimately found prudent to
make _incognito_--with suspicious hostility. She had the character in
fact of being bent on revolutionising the domestic and social life
of Darmstadt by English ideas. She loved learning, and delighted in
the society of men of letters and artists, who were always her most
favoured guests. Hence it was bruited about that she was an infidel,
and a foe to religion. Undoubtedly at one time, when she cultivated
close relations with Friedrich Strauss, under whom she studied the
works of Voltaire, her theological views ceased to be orthodox. But
her musings on the mystery of life, the problem of duty, the conflict
between Will and Law in the world, reveal a profoundly reverent and
eagerly upstriving spirit, ever struggling towards the light. Some day
the story of the spiritual conflict that went on in the still depths
of this pure and gentle soul may be told. Here it is enough to say
that personal influences played a great part in bringing it to a happy
issue. Some time after her philosophical conclusions had crumbled away
like dust, one of her most intimate relatives writes, “She told me
herself, in the most simple and touching manner, how this change had
come about. I could not listen to her story without tears. The Princess
told me she owed it all to her child’s death, and to the influence of
a Scotch gentleman, a friend of the Grand Duke’s and Grand Duchess’s,”
who was residing with his family at Darmstadt.[138] “I owe all

[Illustration: THE ALBERT MEMORIAL, KENSINGTON.]

to this kind friend,” she said, “who exercised such a beneficial
influence on my religious views; yet people say so much that is cruel
and unjust of him, and of my acquaintance with him.”[139] In Germany,
her biographer[140] admits “her life and work were not easy,” and she
had not the intrepid intellect, the ardent temperament, the caustic wit
and the soaring ambition, which enabled her sister, the Crown Princess,
to conquer for herself a position of dominant influence in the midst
of an unsympathetic Court, and an antipathetic Society. Perhaps this
explains why through life she had every year been drawn more closely to
the land of her birth, where her worth was more justly appreciated than
in the land of her exile. “How deep was her feeling in this respect,”
writes the Princess Christian in her touching preface to her sister’s
memoirs, “was testified by a request which she made to her husband, in
anticipation of her death, that an English flag might be laid on her
coffin; accompanying the wish with a modest expression of a hope that
no one in the land of her adoption would take umbrage at her desire to
be borne to her rest with the old English colours above her.”

CHAPTER XXII.

PEACE WHERE THERE IS NO PEACE.

Ominous Bye-Elections--The Spangles of Imperialism--Disturbed state
of Eastern Europe--Origin of the Quarrel with the Zulus--Cetewayo’s
Feud with the Boers--A “Prancing Pro-Consul”--Sir Bartle Frere’s
Ultimatum to the Zulu King--War Declared--The Crime and its
Retribution--The Disaster of Isandhlwana--The Defence of Rorke’s
Drift--Demands for the Recall of Sir Bartle Frere--Censured but
not Dismissed--Sir Garnet Wolseley Supersedes Sir Bartle Frere
in Natal--The Victory of Ulundi--Capture of Cetewayo--End of the
War--The Invasion of Afghanistan--Death of Shere Ali--Yakoob
Khan Proclaimed Ameer--The Treaty of Gundamuk--The “Scientific
Frontier”--The Army Discipline Bill--Mr. Parnell attacks the
“Cat”--Mr. Chamberlain Plays to the Gallery--Surrender of the
Government--Lord Hartington’s Motion against Flogging--The Irish
University Bill--An Unpopular Budget--The Murder of Cavagnari
and Massacre of his Suite--The Army of Vengeance--The Re-capture
of Cabul--The Settlement of Zululand--Death of Prince Louis
Napoleon--The Court-Martial on Lieutenant Carey--Its Judgment
Quashed--Marriage of the Duke of Connaught--The Queen at Baveno.

From the bye-elections it was clear, when the New Year (1879) opened,
that the _prestige_ of the Ministry was waning. The spangled robe
and gaudy diadem of Asiatic Imperialism began to sit uneasily on
Constitutional England. The Treaty of Berlin had not brought Englishmen
much “honour.” But it had not even brought Europe “peace.” Austria
had to make good her hold of Bosnia and Herzegovina by war. Albania
was in the hands of a rebel League that executed “Jetdart justice”
on Turkish Pashas of the highest rank. Bulgaria and Thrace were only
saved from anarchy by the Russian army of occupation. Eastern Roumelia
was the scene of daily conflicts between the Turkish troops, and the
people of Greece were clamorous to know when Turkey would respond to
the invitation of the Conference, and rectify the Hellenic frontier.
The discovery that Cyprus was a poor pestilential island, infinitely
less valuable than most of the Ionian group, which Englishmen had
given to Greece as a gift, was a profound disappointment to popular
hopes, and led to an undue and exaggerated depreciation of its value
as a place of arms. The Anglo-Turkish Convention was already seen to
be a farce. The Sultan, after the resources of diplomatic menace had
been well-nigh exhausted, conceded to the agents of England in Asia
Minor a few illusory rights of surveillance. But he set on foot no
reforms, and he made it plain that he would resist to the death any
attempt to “open up” his Asiatic provinces under a British Protectorate
to the enterprise of the British projector and pioneer. The Afghan
War was unpopular, and though victory did not prove, as was feared,
inconstant to our arms, the people seemed convinced, from the history
of the first and second Afghan Wars, that a triumph would be almost
as disastrous in its cost to India as a defeat. It was impossible
now to conceal the fact that when the Indian troops were brought to
Malta, the country was placed in a position of far greater peril than
had been imagined. While Ministers were wasting their energies in
protecting more or less imaginary interests in Eastern Europe, they
were apparently quite ignorant that their policy had exposed the vital
interests of the Empire to attack in Asia. Nay, it was seen that their
policy of irritating and menacing the Afghan Ameer, and of terrifying
the Native Princes with enforced disarmament, had rendered it easy for
Russia, without doing more than giving our enemies and discontented
feudatories merely some unofficial support, to shake the fabric of
Indian Empire to its very centre. To put the Imperial Crown of India
down among the stakes in Lord Beaconsfield’s game with Russia in Europe
was magnificent. But men of sense and prudence now began to suspect
that it was not good business or good diplomacy. Never was England less
restful or less easy in mind. Abroad Lord Beaconsfield, as was said,
had created a situation which was neither peace with its security, nor
war with its happy chances. At home the classes were groaning over
the collapse of their most remunerative investments, and the masses
writhing under a fall of wages, which, in many trades, amounted to
fifty per cent. To complete the popular feeling of depression, it was
plain that the Government were fast drifting into another Kaffir War.
On the 3rd of February, 1879, in fact, it was officially announced that
hostilities with the Zulus had begun.

There is no difficulty in understanding the causes of the Zulu War. The
Zulu king (Cetewayo) had ever been a staunch ally of England. But he
had a blood-feud with the Boers of the Transvaal, and he claimed part
of their territory as having been originally stolen by them from his
race. When England in an evil moment annexed the Transvaal, she found
that she took over with it the quarrel of the Boers with the Zulus.
Cetewayo pressed his claims all the more confidently that a friendly
Power now held the land which had been taken from him. In every colony
there is a clique of land-speculators, who also, as a rule, form the
War Party, and, by a singular coincidence, net most of the profits
that are to be derived from a colonial war waged at the expense of the
British taxpayer. This Party in Natal ridiculed the notion of giving
Cetewayo his land. They also stirred up a war panic, vowing that the
Zulus were only waiting for a favourable opportunity to pounce upon
Natal and exterminate the Europeans. Sir Bartle Frere--“a prancing
pro-consul,” as Sir William Harcourt called him--was High Commissioner
at the Cape, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces there was Lord
Chelmsford. A more ominous combination could hardly be imagined. Sir
Bartle Frere even in India had been a hot annexationist. He had the
restless brain to devise schemes of conquest, whilst his military
colleague had neither the brain nor nerve to carry them out. The
Blue-books indicate that Sir Bartle Frere had been preparing beforehand
a grand project of conquest in South Africa.[141] Unfortunately, Sir
M. Hicks-Beach was not sharp enough to detect and blight this scheme
in the bud, and it is doubtful if he even suspected its existence till
he was galvanised into vigilance by the startling ultimatum which Sir
Bartle Frere suddenly sent to the Zulu king. The award of the British
Boundary Commissioners on the dispute between the Zulus and the Boers
had been in favour of the Zulus. It was given in June, 1878. Yet it
had been kept back by Sir Bartle Frere, apparently to stimulate the War
Party among the Zulus with the provocation of delay. Then when it was
communicated to King Cetewayo, there was tacked on to it an irrelevant
and menacing demand that King Cetewayo should immediately disband his
whole army. “To make the case our own,” wrote Lord Blachford, one
of the highest living authorities on Colonial Policy, “it is as if
the Emperor of Germany, in concluding with us a Treaty of Commerce,
suddenly annexed a notice that he would make war on us in six weeks
unless before the expiration of that time we burnt our Navy.”[142]
And the ultimatum was not only a crime, but a hideous blunder. To
annihilate instead of utilising the Zulu power was to relieve the Boers
of the Transvaal from the pressure on their flank that alone prevented
them from throwing off the British yoke. But it was of no use to argue
the case on the grounds of justice or common sense. “The men who had
been in the country”--who always come forward to defend every act of
folly that is about to be perpetrated in a distant colony--dinned their
defence of Sir Bartle Frere into the ears of Englishmen, who were at
last half persuaded that it must be the duty of England to exterminate
the Zulus, when a satrap like Sir Bartle Frere was eager to annihilate
them in the interests of Christianity. Moreover, as in the case of the
Afghan War, the people were kept in utter ignorance of the arrogant
ultimatum by which Frere had gone out of his way to fix a quarrel on
King Cetewayo.

But if the crime was rank, the retribution by which it was avenged was
swift and stern. Chelmsford’s advance guard crossed the Tugela on the
12th of January. A petty success was recorded at Ekowe on the 7th,
and then on the 22nd of January the English column at Isandhlwana was
smitten as with the sword of Gideon. Our troops were beaten not only in
the actual conflict, but they were out-manœuvred and out-generalled.
The barbarians under Cetewayo had fought like lions, and they had
inflicted on a British army a defeat so disgraceful that the history
of half a century supplies no parallel to it. Frere, like a reckless
gambler, had staked everything on this cast of the die. Neither he
nor Chelmsford had made provision for a disaster, and the result was
that the rout of Isandhlwana left the whole colony of Natal, even
then discounting the spoils of victory, open to invasion. Nothing, in
fact, stood between the Europeans in Natal and extermination, save the
little post of Rorke’s Drift. There Lieutenants Bromhead and Chard,
with a handful of men, stemmed the tide of invasion, and redeemed the
honour of England which had been smirched by the political incapacity
of Frere, and the military failure of Chelmsford. In vain did the Queen
and the Duke of

[Illustration: ISANDHLWANA: THE DASH WITH THE COLOURS.]

Cambridge send sympathetic messages to the seat of war. It was
reinforcements that were needed, if the English in South-East Africa
were not to be driven into the sea. Parliament, when it met on the 8th
of February, was as wrathful as the country. The Government had let
Sir Bartle Frere drag the country into a war, which in a few days the
disaster of Isandhlwana showed they were incompetent to conduct with
credit to the Empire. If Ministers were not able to emerge, without
ignominy, from a conflict with the Zulu king, what must have happened
had they been allowed to challenge the Czar of Muscovy to mortal
combat? Criticism was felt to be futile, in view of the pressing need
to retrieve the disgrace of a defeat, none the less ignominious that
the Government and their agents had courted it. But a stern demand was
heard on all sides for the recall of Frere and Chelmsford, a demand
which, like a vote of censure that was proposed in the House of Lords
by Lord Lansdowne on the 25th, and in the Commons by Sir Charles Dilke
on the 11th of March, Ministers evaded by administering a strong
rebuke to the High Commissioner. As a man of spirit, Frere would have
naturally resigned after this rebuke. But he held on to his place, and
this was so discreditable, that to account for his conduct a strange
theory was mooted. It was said that private letters were sent to
him by high personages, some of them connected with the Government,
assuring him that the censure of the Secretary of State was not meant
to be taken as real, but had been penned merely to save Ministers from
a Parliamentary defeat.[143] Sir M. Hicks-Beach’s despatch with the
censure ended with these words: “But I have no desire to withdraw the
confidence hitherto reposed in you.” Such was the feeble manner in
which the Government dealt with a satrap who had virtually usurped the
prerogative of the Sovereign to declare war. Soon after the Ministry
had warded off the vote of censure in Parliament, the country was
again agitated by tidings of further reverses in Zululand, and it was
not till the 21st of April that the Government could announce that
Pearson’s column, which had been locked up at Ekowe since the outbreak
of the war, had been able to save itself by retreat. The indignation of
the country grew apace, and at last it was found necessary to allay it
by superseding Sir Bartle Frere’s authority in Natal and the Transvaal.
Sir Garnet Wolseley was accordingly sent to take supreme command at the
scene of action. Ere he could arrive Chelmsford, stimulated into action
by Colonel Evelyn Wood, had however taken a decisive step. He gave the
Zulus battle at Ulundi on the 3rd of July, and won a victory which put
an end to the war. Cetewayo was taken prisoner on the 28th of August,
and, despite the efforts made by Sir Garnet Wolseley and others to set
up another Government for the one which had been destroyed, Zululand
lapsed into the confusion and anarchy in which it has since remained.

The Afghan War had been more skilfully managed. The British invaders
overcame all resistance, and when Parliament assembled General Stewart
was in possession of Candahar, and Shere Ali had fled from Cabul. Soon
afterwards he died, and his heir, Yakoob, came with his submission to
the British camp at Gundamuk. There, on the 25th of May, he signed
a Treaty which bound the Indian Government to give him a subsidy of
£60,000 a year and defend him against his enemies, in return for which
he ceded the “scientific frontier,” and agreed to manage his foreign
policy in accordance with the advice of a British Resident who was to
be received in Cabul. This gleam of success neutralised the effect
of the reverses in South Africa, and both Houses voted their thanks
to the Indian Viceroy and to the Generals who had carried out the
expedition. The Government had no difficulty in persuading Parliament
to sanction a loan of £2,000,000 without interest to India, to enable
her to pay the expenses of the campaign. In fact, when the Session
closed Ministers were jubilant at having upset the predictions of the
experienced Anglo-Indians, who had declared that it was impossible to
keep a British Resident at Cabul. They assured the nation not only that
the British Resident was there, but that the Cabulees were delighted to
receive him.

The severe winter of 1879 aggravated the distress which had settled
like a blight on the labouring and trading classes, and the existence
of which Ministers attempted to ignore. They were, indeed, so
ill-advised as to propose a grant of money for the relief of the Turks,
who were enduring great sufferings in the Rhodope district. But
some of the Tory borough Members threatened to rebel if this project
were persisted in, and it was withdrawn. The programme of domestic
legislation was long and ambitious, and Ministers very properly began
the Session by an attempt to guard against obstruction. They carried
a rule which prevented any amendment from being made to the motion
that the Speaker of the House of Commons leave the Chair on going into
Committee of Supply on Monday nights. This enabled a Minister who
came to explain his Estimates to do so at once, because it prevented
private Members from interposing, between him and the Committee, with
long and irrelevant debates on real and imaginary grievances. The
chief measure of the Session was a Bill to consolidate the Mutiny Act
and the Articles of War--a measure which still further extended the
Parliamentary control of the Army by incorporating these Articles into
an Act of Parliament. It was read a second time on the 7th of April;
but when it went into Committee it attracted the attention of Mr.
Parnell and his followers.

Mr. Parnell now appeared in the character of a British patriot and
philanthropist who took an absorbing interest in perfecting the
discipline of the Army and in ameliorating the condition of the
private soldier. As in

[Illustration: BAVENO, ON LAGO MAGGIORE.]

the case of the Prisons Bill, he had mastered every detail of the
subject, only he had become a much more formidable personage than
he had been in 1877. He had deposed Mr. Butt from the leadership of
the Irish party, and, for all practical purposes, he had taken his
place.[144] He had shown Ireland that he had been able to procure for
her, by one short year’s obstruction in 1877, not only the endowment
of her secondary education, but even the release of several Fenian
convicts in 1878--a year, said the _Times_, marked by the cessation
of obstruction, and the good relations which obtained between the
Government and the Home Rulers. In March he had discussed the Army
Estimates with an ability and knowledge which even the Minister for War
recognised; and when the Army Discipline Bill was sent before the House
in Committee Mr. Parnell was conspicuous for his cleverness in exposing
its anomalies, its obsolete applications of the principles of martial
law, and its prevailing bias in favour of the officers and against the
rank-and-file. When the 44th clause was reached, Mr. Parnell and his
friends made a stand against the continuance of flogging in the Army,
and at this stage Liberals vied with Ministerialists in denouncing
their obstructive tactics. But Mr. Parnell persisted. He had foreseen
that he was raising a popular cry. A General Election was at hand, and
he knew that the moment it was discovered that he had touched the heart
of the constituencies, it would be a question with the Liberals and
Conservatives who were then storming at him as to who should be the
first to fall into line with him. Mr. Parnell’s cynical prevision was
justified by events.

[Illustration: THE VILLA CLARA, BAVENO.]

Both parties, to do them justice, held out manfully night after night
against the pressure of this appeal to the sordid side of their
political character. But the longer the game of obstruction on the
flogging question was played, the stronger grew the feeling among the
populace against flogging, and night after night Mr. Parnell was at his
post with cold malice giving an additional turn to the electoral screw.
The first to succumb to the torture was Mr. Chamberlain, and something
like a faded smile flitted across Mr. Parnell’s stony visage when
that successful and practical politician scurried into his camp. Mr.
Chamberlain’s unexpected speech against flogging fell like a bombshell
in the House of Commons, where it was understood that Englishmen of
all parties had entered into an honourable understanding to meet Mr.
Parnell’s obstructive policy with a firm and united resistance. It was
a speech which, as Sir Robert Peel very justly said, “entirely upset
the calculations of the Government,”[145] a fact which was forgotten
or concealed by those critics of Lord Beaconsfield’s Administration
who afterwards vilipended them for their weak and vacillating attitude
to this question. No sooner had Mr. Chamberlain deserted to the Irish
ranks than he found himself the object of unsparing obloquy which
Liberals and Conservatives impartially bestowed on him. Of course other
Radicals, if they desired to save their seats in a General Election,
were forced to follow him, and as soon as Mr. Parnell found that he had
lured nearly the whole Radical party into his net, he and the Irish
Members suddenly vanished from the scene as leaders in the struggle.
They were never absent from their posts, and they never failed to
support the cause they had espoused by their votes. But they thrust
the work of obstruction and of speaking on the Liberal and Radical
Members who had tardily become their allies. The advantage they gained
was soon apparent. Mr. Chamberlain speedily lost his temper, and not
only publicly quarrelled with Lord Hartington, but one evening he
even insulted him amidst furious cries of protest from the Liberal
benches, by describing him as “the _late_ Leader of the Liberal
Party.”[146] Nothing could be more complete than the disintegration
of the Liberal Party which Mr. Chamberlain thus produced, unless it
were the perplexity of the Ministry. The Tories did not dare to stand
by the lash as a British institution unless they got what they had
been promised--the loyal support of the Opposition. Yet under Mr.
Chamberlain’s obstructive agitation, and under popular pressure from
the constituencies, it was clear that the Opposition was going over
piecemeal to the opponents of flogging. What wonder, then, that Colonel
Stanley, the Minister of War, temporised, when Mr. Chamberlain extorted
from him a damaging schedule, giving a list of the offences for which a
soldier could be flogged?

Debates instinct with a strange kind of fierce frivolity raged as to
the sort of “cat” that should be used in flogging a soldier. Infinite
time was wasted in discussing whether the word “lashes” should be used
instead of “stripes” in the Act, Mr. Chamberlain being beaten in his
effort to get the word “stripes” inserted. Endless discussions arose
as to the maximum number of lashes that should be sanctioned. When
there was any sign of hesitancy Irish obstructionists were always ready
to join in the fray, and not only screw Mr. Chamberlain up to the
“sticking point,” but ironically suggest that Liberal and Conservative
leaders would alike find it profitable to go to the country in the
coming election, with a “new cat and an old Constitution,” as a taking
“cry.” Colonel Stanley at last gave way, and offered to reduce the
_maximum_ number of lashes from fifty to twenty-five, whereupon Mr.
Chamberlain showed that he was as dangerous to run away from as Mr.
Parnell. Indeed, all through these debates Mr. Chamberlain fought
the battle of obstruction with an amount of courage and fertility of
resource that placed him in the front rank of Parliamentary gladiators.
Friends and foes alike admitted that but for his asperity of temper he
might have disputed the palm of success even with Mr. Parnell himself.
The fight was virtually won when Colonel Stanley proposed to reduce the
number of lashes from fifty to twenty-five. Even Lord Hartington then
made haste to go over to Mr. Chamberlain whilst it was yet time, just
as Mr. Chamberlain had made haste to desert to Mr. Parnell.

On the 17th of July Lord Hartington accordingly proposed that corporal
punishment should be abolished for all military offences. Though on
a division he was beaten by a majority of 106, it was felt that the
“cat-o’-nine-tails” was doomed whenever a Liberal Government came into
power. It was foreseen that at the next election many Conservative
Members would be driven from their seats, because they had been
forced to vote in the majority, and the Ministerialists denounced
Lord Hartington’s surrender to Mr. Parnell and Mr. Chamberlain with
exceeding bitterness. As Lord Salisbury said in addressing a Tory
meeting in the City of London, Lord Hartington was like the Sultan,
because, though he had a group of political Bashi-Bazouks in his party,
whom he could not control, and whose conduct he politely deprecated,
yet his motion showed he would not hesitate to profit by their
misdeeds, when the conflict of parties was fought out at the polls.
As it was, the Government were only able to obtain their majority by
agreeing to restrict corporal punishment to those offences which were
then punishable by death.

The only other Bill of importance passed during the Session was one
dealing with Irish University education. It abolished the Queen’s
University, and substituted for it the Royal University of Ireland,
an examining body like the University of London, empowered to grant
degrees, except in Theology, to all qualified students who might
present themselves.

The Budget, as might be expected, was by no means a popular one. Since
1878 extraordinary expenditure, incurred on account of an adventurous
Foreign Policy, had simply been treated as a deferred liability. On the
3rd of April Sir Stafford Northcote, in explaining his Budget, admitted
that the revenue, which he had estimated at £83,230,000, had fallen
short of that sum by £110,000. As for his expenditure, it had exceeded
his estimate by £4,388,000. He had therefore no money in hand with
which to meet the deferred liabilities of 1878-79; in fact, he was face
to face with a fresh deficit. Comparing his actual revenue with his
actual expenditure, the deficit was seen to amount to £2,291,000. The
position, then, was this. In 1878 he had paid off £2,750,000 by bills,
which he thought he would have been able to meet in 1879. Now he found
he could not meet them. These he reserved

[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT.]

for another year, adding to them a fresh set of bills for the new
deficit, which transferred to the future a lump sum of debt equal to
£5,350,000. Leaving this item out of account, and ignoring the cost
of the South African War, he estimated the expenditure of 1879-80 at
£81,153,000. The revenue, he hoped, would amount to £83,000,000, so
that the estimated surplus he expected would suffice to cover the cost
of the operations in Zululand. It was a dismal statement, at best.
But ere the Session ended it was discovered that the real position
of affairs was even worse than Sir Stafford Northcote had admitted.
In August he had to inform the House that the Zulu War was costing
the country £500,000 a month, and that he must get a Vote of Credit
of £3,000,000. This, with an addition of £64,000 to the ordinary
Estimates, raised the original estimate of expenditure to £84,217,000.
Thus the estimated surplus of £1,847,000 vanished, and in its place
there stood a deficit of £1,217,000 for 1879-80, which might probably
be increased. The plan of evading the payment of debt, so as to render
a costly policy palatable to the electors, was thus a failure. The
longer the payment of the debt was deferred the more it grew, and
it was clear that the finances of the country were drifting into
inextricable confusion.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT.]

Parliament was prorogued on the 15th of August, and it had hardly risen
when the predicted calamity in Afghanistan arrived. As experienced
Anglo-Indians had anticipated, Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British Envoy
at Cabul, was murdered, and his suite massacred (3rd September), by
the fanatical soldiers of the Ameer. During the short period of his
residence, Cavagnari had justified the arguments of those who averred
that a European Envoy would never be able to furnish his Government
with any valuable information from Cabul. The only intelligence worth
having that was received by the Indian Government came from native
sources, and it had consisted of warnings that Cavagnari’s life was in
grave peril.[147] It was necessary to order an Army of Vengeance to
enter Afghanistan, and this was done. But, in England, the verdict of
public opinion was that Lord Beaconsfield’s Afghan policy had proved an
irredeemable failure. It was no longer possible to dream of avoiding
the costly and harassing annexation of Afghanistan, by extending over
it a veiled British Protectorate, to be administered by a British Envoy
at Cabul as Political Resident. There was no alternative but a military
occupation, which meant that England must be ready to hold down by
the sword a country as large as France, as impracticable for military
movements as Switzerland, and inhabited by wild fanatical tribes as
fierce, lawless, and savage as the hordes of Ghengis Khan.[148] The
Army of Vengeance under Sir Frederick Roberts, after much toil and many
struggles, fought its way through the Shutargardan Pass, and captured
Cabul on the 12th of October. The Ameer, Yakoob Khan, was forced to
abdicate, and he was deported to Peshawur, and in the meantime Roberts
governed the country by sword and halter. The hillmen attacked his
communications. The attitude of the Cabulees was, from the first,
threatening, though General Roberts disregarded the warnings of the
Persian newswriters, who told him that Afghanistan was going to rise
about his ears. On the 14th of December the insurrection broke out in
Cabul, and Roberts had to leave the city and fight his way round to the
cantonments at Sherpore, where his supplies were stored, and where he
took refuge, and was soon besieged. In fact, in the middle of December
the public learnt with extreme anxiety that every British post in
Afghanistan was surrounded by swarms of fierce insurgents, and that a
rescuing army must be organised at Peshawur without delay. Cabul itself
was in the hands of Mahomed Jan, the victorious Afghan leader. Bitterly
did Englishmen recall Lord Beaconsfield’s speech a month before at
the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, in which he assured his audience that the
operations in Afghanistan “had been conducted with signal success,”
that the North-West frontier of India had been strengthened and
secured, and that British supremacy had been asserted in Central Asia.
Fortunately, ere the year closed, General Gough, who had advanced from
Gundamuk, was able to join hands with Roberts, who again made himself
master of Cabul.

In South Africa affairs began to assume a more hopeful aspect towards
the end of the year. After the victory of Ulundi the Zulu chiefs one
after another submitted to the British Government. Cetewayo--who, as
we have seen, had been captured on the 28th of August--was sent as a
State prisoner to Cape Town, and Sir Garnet Wolseley made peace with
the Zulu chiefs and people.[149] The Kaffir chief, Secocoeni, who had
defied the Government before the Zulu War broke out, was attacked and
subdued. He had been secretly aided by the Boers, who had warned Sir
Bartle Frere that they did not accept the annexation of the Transvaal.
At Pretoria Sir Garnet Wolseley, however, told the Boer leaders that
the annexation which they were resisting was irreversible, and the
Boers for a time confined themselves to obstructing the judicial and
fiscal administration of the British Government.

The Zulu War was marked by one incident that powerfully influenced
the destiny of Europe: it cost the heir of the Bonapartes his life.
The young Prince Louis Napoleon--or the “Prince Imperial,” as the
Bonapartists insisted on calling him--had resolved to serve with
the British Army in Zululand. His object was to acquire a military
reputation that might be useful to him as a Pretender. A proud and
self-respecting Government, however hard pressed, cannot accept the
services of a foreign mercenary, however high his rank might be. But,
in deference to Courtly influences, the Prince was permitted to proceed
to the seat of war in an ambiguous position. He held no commission,
but he was treated like a junior officer of the General Staff, and the
Duke of Cambridge requested Lord Chelmsford to let the Prince see as
much of the war as he could. Lord Chelmsford issued instructions to
the military authorities, which made the Prince a burden--perhaps, in
some degree, a nuisance--to them. When he joined Lord Chelmsford Prince
Louis seems to have been attached to the Quartermaster-General’s
Department. But he was not to be allowed to go out of the camp without
Lord Chelmsford’s permission, and even then he was to be guarded by
an escort under an officer of experience. On the 1st of June Colonel
Harrison allowed the Prince to make a reconnaissance for the purpose of
choosing the site of a camp, but without obtaining Lord Chelmsford’s
sanction. The Prince’s party was to consist of six troopers and six
Basutos, and though no officer was sent to accompany him, Lieutenant
Carey, an accomplished and intelligent soldier, happened, by an
accident, to join the band. Carey had been employed to survey and map
out some of the adjoining ground, and he asked leave to go with the
Prince to clear up a doubtful topographical point on which he and Lord
Chelmsford differed in opinion. Carey merely went for his private
convenience. He was not told to look after the Prince; in fact, he was
told that, if he went, he was not to interfere with him, because his
Imperial Highness, eager to re-gild the tarnished Eagles of his House,
desired to have all the credit of conducting the

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT.

(_From the Picture by S. P. Hall._)]

[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA (1887).

(_From a Photograph by Lafayette, Dublin._)]

[Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM, FROGMORE.]

Expedition. The Prince was in command of the party,[150] and in a fit
of boyish impatience, and in defiance of Carey’s advice, ordered it to
march without waiting for the six Basutos, who were late of putting
in an appearance. He led his little troop on for some distance, and
then, without taking the most ordinary precautions against surprise, he
halted--again against Carey’s counsel--for a rest in a deserted kraal
surrounded by a field of

tall Indian corn. This was a fatal blunder, for the cover of the
cornfield rendered the place eminently convenient for the concealment
of an ambuscade. Here the Prince waited an hour, whilst the Zulus
surrounded him. Then he gave his men the order to move. The Zulus
sprang from their hiding-places and fired on the little band, whose
startled horses were difficult to mount. It was impossible to see what
was going on in the cornfield, and it was not till the troopers had
retreated for some distance that Lieutenant Carey and his comrades
discovered that the Prince was missing. To have made a stand in the
cornfield would have been to court instant death. It appeared that the
Prince had been unable to mount his horse, which was frightened and
restive, and that the Zulus overtook him and stabbed him with their
assegais. Thanks to Carey’s knowledge of the ground, the rest of the
party, with the exception of two troopers, were saved, and Carey was
able to give Colonel Wood’s force the valuable intelligence that the
enemy, contrary to the general belief, were infesting the country in
front.

The indignation of the French Bonapartists at the death of the Prince
Imperial was without limit. The ex-Empress, who had encouraged her son
to go to South Africa, was prostrated with sorrow and remorse. Even the
tender sympathy of the Queen could not console her for the loss of one
whose life was necessary for her ambition, and whose death shattered
the last hopes of Imperialism in France. It was thought desirable
that somebody should be sacrificed to appease the ex-Empress, and
Lieutenant Carey was accordingly tried by Court-martial and promptly
condemned for “misbehaviour in front of the enemy” while in command
of a reconnoitring party. There were only two reasons for attacking
Carey. He was the officer of lowest rank who had any connection with
the Prince’s ill-fated reconnaissance, and he had absolutely nothing
whatever to do with the command of that expedition, or with the
Prince’s mismanagement of it. In fact, all that Carey could be blamed
for was for saving, by his superior knowledge of the ground, four of
the six troopers whom the Prince had led into a fatal ambuscade. It
need hardly be said that, on review, the finding of the Court-martial
was set aside by the Duke of Cambridge, and Lieutenant Carey restored
to his rank. The Duke laid all the blame on Colonel Harrison, who,
however, was not tried by Court-martial. But he also complained that
Carey made a mistake in imagining that the Prince was in command of the
party, a mistake which was not only natural but inevitable, and which
was shared by all his comrades. The melancholy and stubborn imprudence
of the Prince obviously led the expedition to disaster. The Duke of
Cambridge argued that Colonel Harrison should have warned the Prince
to be guided by Carey. Having blamed Harrison for not giving Carey
sufficiently definite instructions as to the command of the expedition,
he made Carey responsible for the defects in Harrison’s instructions.
Carey, according to the Duke, should have provided that military skill
which the Prince lacked. The truth was that Carey was warned not to
meddle with the Prince, who from first to last took command, and who,
when advice was tendered to him, rejected it in a manner that did not
encourage a spirited and self-respecting officer to press it on him.

The family life of the Court in 1879 was brightened by a Royal
wedding. On the 13th of March the marriage of the Duke of Connaught
with the Princess Louise Marguerite of Prussia was celebrated with
some display. The ceremony took place in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
At noon the four processions--those of the Queen, the Princess of
Wales, the bride and the bridegroom--quitted the quadrangle. The
Queen drove in her own carriage, drawn by four ponies, the remainder
of the Royal Family occupying the gilded State coaches, driven by
the Royal coachmen in their liveries of scarlet and gold. The display
of decorations and uniforms and costumes among the august guests
was seen to be very brilliant as the Royal party took their places
round the Communion rails, where were assembled the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Winchester, Worcester, and the Dean
of Windsor. As Mendelssohn’s march from _Athalie_ resounded through
the sacred building the Queen was observed to take her place, dressed
in a complete Court dress of black satin, with a white veil and a
flashing coronet of diamonds. The Princess Beatrice had discarded Court
mourning, and appeared in a turquoise blue costume with a velvet train
to match. The bridegroom, wearing the uniform of the Rifle Brigade, was
supported by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. The bride
was accompanied by her father, Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia,
better known as the “Red Prince,” and the German Crown Prince, who
wore the uniform of the 2nd or Queen’s Cuirassiers. The German Crown
Princess and the King of the Belgians were also present. The Red Prince
gave his daughter away. At the close of the ceremony the Queen and
Royal Family returned to the Palace amidst a salute of twenty-one guns.

On March the 25th the Queen and Princess Beatrice, attended by General
Sir H. F. Ponsonby, Lady Churchill, Sir W. Jenner, and Captain Edwards,
left Windsor Castle for the North of Italy. The Royal departure took
place in very wintry weather, snow and sleet falling heavily. In spite
of this the railway platform was crowded by visitors, who offered many
loyal salutations as the train steamed out of the station at 9.40 a.m.
Portsmouth was reached at noon, and the Royal party embarked on board
the _Victoria and Albert_, the yacht sailing at once for Cherbourg,
which was reached early in the evening. The Queen slept on board, and
left for Paris. When she arrived in Paris she found that though crowds
had collected at the station, no one was admitted to the platform
except the British Ambassador, Lord Lyons. The Queen, who was dressed
in deep mourning, though almost invisible to the people as she drove
to the English Embassy, was, nevertheless, greeted with cheers and
waving of hats all along the way. On the 27th her Majesty left Paris
for Arona. Prior to starting, she was much affected by the receipt of
a message announcing the death of her grandson, Prince Waldemar of
Prussia. She, however, went through the appointed tasks of the day
with her customary self-possession, and received President Grévy and
M. Waddington, both visits being brief and formal. The Duc de Nemours
also paid her a friendly visit, accompanied by Prince and Princess
Czartolyski. On the 28th the Queen, preserving the strictest incognito,
arrived at Modane, and after a short interval continued the journey to
Turin and Baveno on Lake Maggiore, which was her final destination. On
reaching the Italian frontier the Queen received a despatch from the
King and Queen of Italy welcoming her Majesty upon Italian soil. The
Queen sent a reply immediately, expressing her thanks in cordial terms.
On March 31st Prince Amadeus, brother of the King of Italy, arrived at
Baveno and had an audience of the Queen. During her stay in Italy her
Majesty assumed the title of the Countess of Balmoral, and occupied
the Villa Clara, which was placed at her disposal by M. Henfrey, the
owner. At first the weather was bad, but in spite of that the Queen
made many excursions to places of interest, and as her incognito was
respected, her holiday was not burdened with the wearisome formalities
of Court etiquette. Alike in France and Italy she was received with
hearty good wishes by the people. Garibaldi and the Pope vied with
King Humbert in welcoming her with congratulatory messages. On the
17th of April King Humbert and Queen Margherita and the members of
their household left Rome for Monza, and on the 18th proceeded to the
railway station to meet the train which was to bring the Queen and her
suite from Baveno. Punctually at the time arranged the Queen arrived,
and, on alighting from her carriage, warmly greeted the King and Queen
of Italy. The party then drove to the Royal Castle, where lunch was
served, after which the Queen returned to Baveno, which she left on
the 23rd of April, arriving in Paris next day. Her return was clouded,
as her setting out had been, by the shadow of death. On her arrival
at Turin she received the painful intelligence of the death at Genoa
of the Duke of Roxburghe, the husband of one of her valued friends.
She left Paris on Friday, the 25th, and before her departure she gave
away memorial tokens to several of the members of the Embassy. She
arrived at Windsor on the 27th, where the German Empress came to spend
some days with her in May. During this visit both Royal ladies became
great-grandmothers, for the Queen’s first great-grandchild was born
on the 12th of May. This was the first-born daughter of the Princess
Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen, the eldest daughter of the German Crown
Prince and Princess.

[Illustration: OSBORNE HOUSE, FROM THE GARDENS.

(_From a Photograph by J. Valentine and Sons._)]

CHAPTER XXIII.

FALL OF LORD BEACONSFIELD.

General Gloom--Fall of the Tay Bridge--Liberal Onslaught on
the Government--The Mussulman Schoolmaster and the Anglican
Missionary--The Queen’s Speech--The Irish Relief Bill--A Dying
Parliament--Mr. Cross’s Water Bill--“Coming in on Beer and Going
out on Water”--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget--Lord Beaconsfield’s
Manifesto--The General Election--Defeat of the Tories--Incidents
of the Struggle--Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister--The Fourth
Party--Mr. Bradlaugh and the Oath--Mr. Gladstone and the Emperor
of Austria--The Naval Demonstration--Grave Error in the Indian
Budget--Affairs in Afghanistan--Disaster at Maiwand--Roberts’s
March--The New Ameer--Revolt of the Boers--The Ministerial
Programme--The Burials Bill--The Hares and Rabbits Bill--The
Employers’ Liability Bill--Supplementary Budget--The Compensation
for Disturbance Bill--Boycotting--Trial of Mr. Parnell and Mr.
Dillon--The Queen’s Visit to Germany--The Queen Presents the Albert
Medal to George Oatley of the Coastguard--Reviews at Windsor--The
Queen’s Speech to the Ensigns--The Battle of the Standards--Royalty
and Riflemen--Outrages in Ireland--“Endymion”--Death of George
Eliot.

If 1880 opened cheerfully, it was solely because men felt a sense of
relief at getting rid of what they called “the bad old year.” It had
begun with bitter frosts, varied by black fogs. Its spring was a
prolonged winter. Cold gloom marked its dog-days. There was no summer
worth recording, and as for autumn, October and November saw the
crops rotting in the fields. Farmers and squires, like Sheridan, were
striving “to live on their debts.” Two great bank failures--that of the
City of Glasgow Bank and that of the West of England Bank--had shaken
the fabric of credit and reduced thousands of the well-to-do middle
class to penury, while trade seemed going from bad to worse. Even
science and invention appeared to be in a conspiracy to ruin people,
for Edison’s contrivance of the electric lamp frightened investors in
gas shares into a panic, which seriously depreciated the value of their
property. Disasters in war, which are courteously called blunders, were
followed by catastrophes by flood and field, which it is customary to
call accidents. The ghastly tale of misfortunes was completed by the
frightful hurricane that swept over the country on the last Sunday of
the old year. At half-past seven of the evening of that day a furious
gust swept down the Firth of Tay and cut a section out of the great
railway bridge that spanned the estuary. A train crossing at the moment
was blown, with the wreckage of the bridge and its precious freight
of human life, into the surly waters of the Firth.[151] Very promptly
did the Queen instruct Sir Henry Ponsonby to telegraph from Osborne a
sympathetic message from her to the relatives of the dead.[152] Her
Majesty had herself crossed the bridge on her way to Balmoral, and the
shock of the disaster struck her to the heart.

It was when the people were moodily pondering over the evil fate
of England under the Government that was to have given it rest and
prosperity, that Lord Beaconsfield’s opponents became unusually
active. Mr. Gladstone reprinted his speech on Finance which he had
delivered in Edinburgh in November (1879), and reminded the electors
how Lord Beaconsfield, after promising to repeal the Income Tax in
1874, had raised it; how in bad times he had increased expenditure,
whereas in good times the Liberals had reduced it; how he had imposed
£6,000,000 more taxes than he remitted, whereas the Liberals remitted
£12,500,000 more than they imposed; how he had transformed a surplus
into a deficit, and kept on rolling up debt, instead of paying off
the nation’s liabilities as they were incurred. There was a stroke of
high art in publishing this sombre speech when the New Year opened.
Sir Stafford Northcote had, at Leeds, essayed a mild and apologetic
reply to it. Mr. Gladstone thus considered it necessary, when men were
beginning to suspect that they were ruled by a Government of bad luck,
to answer Sir Stafford in an appendix to the November speech, which
tended to deepen the prevailing depression of spirits. Sir William
Harcourt, in his New Year orations at Oxford, on the other hand, dealt
with the Government from a comic point of view. He touched with caustic
wit on their incongruities and inconsistencies, and by contrasting
their swelling words with their small deeds, their affluence of promise
with their poverty of performance, contrived to create an impression
that Ministers were making the country the laughing-stock of the world.
When Mr. Gladstone showed that the nation was being ruined, Sir William
Harcourt immediately followed up by declaring, in speeches which
everybody read, because they were amusing and personal, that it was
being ruined by a group of mountebanks. To him succeeded Mr. Bright,
who, at a Liberal banquet at Birmingham (20th of January), elaborately
explained how that which had happened was only what might have been
looked for. He exhibited, from the treasure-house of his memory, an
interminable series of examples to illustrate one simple thesis. It was
that the history of England had ever been a tragic conflict between the
Spirits of Good and Evil--the Tory Party representing the Spirit of
Evil. His political Manichæism would not have influenced the country if
it had not been downhearted. Inasmuch as it manifestly affected public
opinion, it ought to have warned Lord Beaconsfield that the people
were out of humour with him. The Tories, however, had eyes and ears
for nothing, save Sir William Harcourt’s jokes and gibes, and flouts
and sneers. These were not highly refined or polished, but they were
just what was wanted to make the average voter laugh at Imperialism.
The Imperialists being sensitive, not to say short-tempered persons,
instead of pleading their own case rationally before the country,
spent their force in vituperative attacks on Sir William Harcourt. It
was also the misfortune of Lord Beaconsfield, that at this juncture
he became nervous over the growing hostility of the clergy of all
denominations to his foreign policy, the tone of which they deemed
anti-Christian.

A desperate effort which was made to counteract this impression,
displayed Sir Henry Layard at Constantinople--an Envoy who was supposed
to be more Turkish than the Turks--figuring as a champion of the Cross
against the Crescent. People, in fact, were startled at the beginning
of the year to learn that the Government had suspended diplomatic
relations with Turkey, because the Turkish authorities had threatened
to execute a Mussulman schoolmaster for helping an Anglican missionary
to translate the Bible.[153] Sir Henry Layard had been unmoved by the
massacre and judicial murder of thousands of Christian subjects of the
Sultan in Epirus, Macedonia, and Armenia, in defiance of Treaty law.
It was, therefore, amazing that he should have suddenly burst into a
convulsion of diplomatic wrath because a Turkish Court

[Illustration: THE FIRST TAY BRIDGE, FROM THE SOUTH.]

passed on a Turkish Mussulman the sentence appointed by the law of his
race and creed for an act which, when done by him, was legally a crime.
Still, from the point of view of the practical statesman on the eve
of a General Election, the step taken by Sir Henry Layard would not
have been open to criticism merely because of its inconsistency and
injustice. The fatal objection to it was that, whilst it failed to
conciliate the religious world, it made the Government seem ineffably
ridiculous to the electors. The foreign policy that was to give England
ascendency in the councils of Europe, had reduced her to such a poor
pass that, at Constantinople, Sir Henry Layard had to threaten war ere
the Porte would even listen to his appeal for clemency to the obscurest
of offenders against the letter of a harsh and obsolete law. Nor was
the situation improved as the quarrel developed. The Turks resolutely
refused even to deliver up Dr. Köller’s MSS., which they hardly had any
right to keep, and it was not till the German Ambassador interfered
on behalf of the English missionary that they were restored. When Sir
Henry Layard pressed for the dismissal of Hafiz Pasha, he was foiled
by the Sultan averring that he, and not the Minister, had ordered the
arrest of Ahmed Tewfik. After Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall eulogies on
the Sultan, Ministers were seriously embarrassed by this new turn in
the affair. Ultimately the intervention of Germany and Austria induced
the Sultan, who listened to the menaces of the British Government
with imperturbable serenity, to offer concessions. He still refused
Sir Henry Layard’s demand for the annulment of the sentence of death
on Ahmed Tewfik. But he offered to commute it by exiling Ahmed to a
remote Turkish island with a Christian population. He also ordered
Hafiz Pasha, the Minister of Police, to apologise.[154] The commutation
of Ahmed’s sentence meant that, though England had saved him from the
gallows, “Kismet” had destined him for a premature grave. The apology
from Hafiz was immediately converted into a further insult to the
British Government, for, as soon as it had been delivered, the Sultan
decorated him with the Grand Cordon of the Medjidie. Nor was this act
quite atoned for by the issue of an Imperial edict forbidding the
Mohammedan Press to laugh at the British Ambassador. It was, therefore,
easy to predict that the Queen’s Speech would be demure, if not
actually meek in tone, when it touched on Foreign Affairs.

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE: A PEEP FROM THE DEAN’S GARDEN.]

Parliament was opened on the 5th of February, and her Majesty’s Speech
was read by the Lord Chancellor. Events, according to the Royal
Message, still tended to safeguard the peace of Europe on the basis
of the Berlin Treaty, and the Sultan had signed a Convention for the
suppression of the Slave Trade. The abdication of the Ameer rendered
it impossible to recall the army of occupation. But the Government, in
their dealings with Afghanistan, merely desired to strengthen their
Indian frontier and preserve the independence of that State. The
success of Sir Garnet Wolseley’s policy in South Africa was touched
on. It was stated that the Irish authorities had been instructed to
make special provisions for coping with distress in Ireland, which
would necessitate an Indemnity Bill; and a Criminal Code Bill, a
Bankruptcy Bill, a Lunacy Bill, and a Conveyancing Bill were promised.
Mr. Cross had, at the end of the previous Session, also promised a
Bill to transfer the Metropolitan Water Companies to the ratepayers
of London. The debates on the Address were uninteresting. The Tories
tried to discredit their opponents by proving that in election contests
they angled for the Irish vote by promising to support an inquiry
into the demand for Home Rule. The Liberals retorted by proving that
though Lord Beaconsfield was ever ready to pass sentence of political
excommunication on Home Rulers, he was equally ready to confer honours
on Home Rulers,[155] that the Home Rule movement was started by
Tories, and that it was a rich Tory who found the money for the Fenian
candidature of O’Donovan Rossa in Tipperary.

The Irish Relief Bill was introduced on the 7th, and read a second time
on the 23rd of February. It granted loans to the amount of £1,092,985
without interest for two years and a half, but bearing 1 per cent.
interest after that time, to landlords and sanitary authorities for
works of improvement; it also permitted the Baronial Sessions to
start such works, and relaxed the law of out-door relief. Most of the
Irish members complained that as a measure of relief, the Bill was
inadequate. Some, like Mr. Synan, objected to the loans being taken
from the Irish Church surplus. Others wished Boards of Guardians to
be able to give out-door relief in money, and to take up loans for
improvements. The Bill was passed on the 15th of March, and Major Nolan
also passed a Seed Bill which enabled poor farmers to get seeds on
loan. It is now clear that the Government had no true conception of the
state of Ireland. They had been satisfied with the jaunty assurances of
the Chief Secretary, Mr. Lowther, in the previous year, that there was
no exceptional agrarian distress in that country. Yet, as a matter of
fact, a famine was imminent, and at the beginning of 1880 the Duchess
of Marlborough, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and Mr. E. Dwyer Gray,
Lord Mayor of Dublin, were compelled to start Relief Funds to avert
that dreadful calamity.

Even with this evidence before them, the Tory Ministry in 1880 fell
into a blunder worthy of the Whigs in 1847-9. They adopted the fatal
Whig principle, that the best way to relieve the Irish peasant’s
distress was to vote the relief money to be doled out in wages by
his landlord, who, by rack-renting and evictions had aggravated that
distress, and who, though in most cases an absentee, was yet for
some inexplicable reason supposed to be the best almoner the State
could find in Ireland.[156] That this mistake was made can only be
accounted for by the fact that Lord Beaconsfield’s advanced age, and
his absorption in Foreign Affairs, rendered it possible for his less
competent colleagues to control his policy.[157]

However, all Englishmen were predisposed to believe that Mr.
Gladstone’s Land Act of 1870 had averted famine for ever from Ireland.
They did not know that it had broken down because it made no provision
against rack-renting, and, therefore, no real provision against unjust
eviction. It permitted eviction in cases where a tenant was unable
to pay rent; so that, in order to evict, a landlord had merely to
put up his rent to the point at which the tenant could not pay it,
the tenant’s claim for improvements on eviction being in such a case
usually swallowed up in long out-standing arrears. It was quite obvious
to those who looked beneath the surface that the coming question was
the agrarian difficulty in Ireland. And yet the Ministry treated it
as a matter of trivial importance, a blunder which, however, was also
committed by the majority of Liberals, who were convinced that Mr.
Gladstone’s Land Act had brought content to Ireland.

Still, the Session was quiet and business-like, and the Liberal leaders
were studiously polite to Ministers. They helped to pass a Standing
Order checking obstruction, hinting that it was not strong enough. By
these tactics they artfully neutralised the insinuation that they were
fishing for the Home Rule vote.[158] But it was clear that Parliament
was moribund and quite “gravelled for lack of matter.” It could not
legally survive another year; in fact, since the sixteenth century
only four Parliaments had existed as long. Naturally public opinion
was pressing for a dissolution, and it merely remained for Ministers
to select the “psychological moment” which was most advantageous
to themselves for going to the country. Lord Beaconsfield suddenly
resolved in spring not to exhaust his mandate, and on the 8th of
March Sir Stafford Northcote intimated that the Budget would be
brought in before Easter, and that, after taking formal and necessary
business, Parliament would be dissolved. Lord Beaconsfield was guided
to this step by three considerations. He thought that the glamour of
his Asiatic Imperialism still blinded the eyes of the nation to the
disasters in Afghanistan and South Africa. He imagined that, because
the returns from three bye-elections were favourable to the Tory
Party, public opinion was still with him.[159] He trusted that Mr.
Cross’s Water Bill would consolidate the popularity of the Ministry,
not only in the Capital, but among municipal reformers all over
the country. This last forecast was most untoward. When Mr. Cross
produced his Water Bill on the 2nd of March, the _Standard_, which
was the organ of the Ministry in the Press, suddenly deserted its
Party and its leaders, and assailed Mr. Cross’s scheme with astounding
ferocity.[160] The opposition of the _Standard_ at the critical moment
not only depressed the spirits of the Tories, but also forced the hand
of the “independent” newspapers, who had up till now supported Lord
Beaconsfield loyally. They could not be more royalist than the King, so
they, too, poured forth their invective on Mr. Cross’s Bill. The effect
of this sudden attack of the whole metropolitan Press was to paralyse a
vast body of metropolitan opinion that up till then had run in favour
of the Ministry. “It came into power on beer,” said a malicious Liberal
one afternoon in the Tea-room of the House of Commons, “and it will
float out on water.” A more cautious statesman would have postponed
dissolution till a happier moment; but Lord Beaconsfield persisted
in appealing to the people, and the Government passed an Electoral
Bill repealing the law which prohibited candidates from paying for
the carriage of voters to the poll. It was obvious that in the coming
struggle the Tories were at least resolved to give the rich men on both
sides all the advantages of their opulence.

When the Budget was produced Sir Stafford Northcote had a sad tale to
tell. His revenue for the past year, instead of yielding £83,055,000,
only yielded £80,860,000, showing a deficit of £2,195,000, to which had
to be added

[Illustration: AFTER THE MIDLOTHIAN VICTORY: MR. GLADSTONE ADDRESSING
THE CROWD FROM THE BALCONY OF LORD ROSEBERY’S HOUSE, GEORGE STREET,
EDINBURGH. (_From the Picture in “The Graphic.”_)]

supplementary estimates for South Africa, bringing it up to £3,340,000.
For the coming year, however, he estimated, supposing there were no
changes of taxation, a revenue of £81,560,000, and an expenditure of
£81,486,472. But it was no longer possible to postpone payment of past
deficits. These had accumulated to a sum of £8,000,000. He proposed to
pay this off by creating £6,000,000 of annuities terminable in five
years, and meeting the yearly charge for them by adding £800,000 a
year to the service of the National Debt. As this would relieve the
Government from its existing payments for interest on Exchequer Bonds,
the fresh revenue needed to meet the payments for the new annuities
in reality came to £589,000, and not £800,000. As to the remaining
£2,000,000 of deficits, Sir Stafford Northcote seemed to trust to
luck for their payment. The additional revenue he proposed to get by
a revision of the Probate Duty. As he increased the Succession Duty
on personal property, and left that on land untouched, the Budget was
extremely unpopular with the landless class. But even his scheme as it
stood, with its £6,000,000 added for five years to the National Debt,
and its £2,000,000 of postponed deficits, involved the sacrifice of his
Sinking Fund for paying off the debt. Virtually the Government told the
electors that they had brought Britain to such a pass, that she had to
abandon for five years her scheme for paying off her National Debt, in
order to clear off £6,000,000 of their deficits.

On the 24th of March Parliament was dissolved, and the new writs were
made returnable on the 29th of April. Lord Beaconsfield’s Manifesto,
however, had been issued in the shape of a letter to the Duke of
Marlborough, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, on the 8th of March. In this
letter he called on the people to support the Ministry in order to give
England an ascendency in the councils of Europe, and check the Home
Rule movement in Ireland, which was “scarcely less disastrous than
pestilence or famine.” This movement had been patronised, he declared,
by the Liberal Party, whose “policy of decomposition” was meant to
destroy the Imperial character of the realm. On the other side, the
leaders traversed all Lord Beaconsfield’s insinuations. They scoffed
at his Foreign Policy, asserted that it was pretentious, futile,
and costly; they denounced his restless turbulence and his bankrupt
finance, and, though they declared against Home Rule, they promised
to give Ireland equal laws and equal rights with England. When the
struggle began it was predicted in London that Lord Beaconsfield’s
majority would be so vastly increased that the Liberals would be
ostracised from power for a generation. As the contest proceeded it was
noticed that at Liberal meetings no man could mention Mr. Gladstone’s
name without being stopped by prolonged outbursts of cheering. That
had happened in 1868, and it was a bad omen, whereupon it was said
that the Tories would come back with only a slight reduction in their
majority. Finally it was admitted, when the first day’s returns came
in, that Lord Beaconsfield’s majority had vanished, and that he himself
had fallen from power. The incidents of the struggle were curious.
Mr. Gladstone’s campaign in the North was a marvellous achievement,
and the sustained passion and energy of his attack on the policy of
the Government, alike in principle and detail, seemed to paralyse
the Tory leaders. Lord Hartington’s political duel with Mr. Cross in
Lancashire completed the wreck of that Minister’s reputation, already
damaged by his abortive Water Bill. Lord Derby’s letter to Lord Sefton
(12th March) intimating his inability to support the Ministry and
his adhesion to the Liberal Party, was a cruel blow, struck at the
Tory Party in their most formidable stronghold. Sir William Harcourt
and Mr. Lowe vied with each other in rendering Ministers ridiculous.
Mr. Bright roused the conscience of the nation against their warlike
policy. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke stirred the latent
socialistic sympathies of the masses. As for the Irish vote, it was
cast solidly against the Tories, in order to avenge the passage
describing Home Rule in Lord Beaconsfield’s letter. Looking back on
this historic election, it is amazing to find how few Ministerial
speeches of importance were made. Lulled into a false sense of security
by the support of the London Press and the gossip of Pall Mall clubs,
Ministers seem to have permitted their opponents to talk them down.
As for the result, why dwell on it? The first day’s Borough elections
destroyed Lord Beaconsfield’s majority. The Counties deserted him in
the most unaccountable manner. In Scotland the Tory Party was almost
obliterated.[161] In Ireland two-thirds of the Members elected were
Home Rulers. The net result was, that when the Election was over, there
were returned 351 Liberals, 237 Tories, and 65 Home Rulers. The verdict
of the country, therefore, was this: the electors were more afraid
of Lord Beaconsfield’s Foreign Policy than of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish
Nationalist sympathies. The sweeping reforms which he was pledged to
demand and support by his Midlothian speeches did not displease the
country so much as Lord Beaconsfield’s manifest reluctance to pledge
himself to a strong programme of domestic legislation.

While the elections were taking place the Queen was abroad.
Little dreaming that the verdict of the people would destroy Lord
Beaconsfield’s Ministry, she had arranged to visit Hesse-Darmstadt to
be present at the confirmation of the daughters of the late Princess
Alice, and after that ceremony to spend a brief holiday at Baden. Her
Majesty returned to England on the 17th of April, and on the 28th of
April Ministers resigned office. Lord Beaconsfield was not present on
the occasion. He had bade farewell to the Queen on the previous day.
After the results of the Election were known strenuous efforts were
made to prevent Mr. Gladstone from becoming Prime Minister. The general
opinion, however, was that, as Lord Beaconsfield’s fall from power was
due mainly to Mr. Gladstone’s energetic and persistent criticism of
his policy, Mr. Gladstone ought to take the responsibility of forming
a Government. His own views on the subject can be gleaned from two
letters which he wrote to Mr. Hayward. In one he seems to resent the
idea of taking any office lower than that of the Premiership, supposing
he took office at all.[162] In another he tries to explain away a
statement he was alleged to have made to a reporter of the _Gaulois_,
who asked him in November, 1879, if he would resume office, and to whom
he replied, “No; I am now out of the question.” He (the reporter), says
Mr. Gladstone, “rejoined, ‘_Mais vos compatriotes vont vous forcer_.’
I said, ‘_C’est à eux à déterminer, mais je n’en vois aucun signe!_’
I meant by these words to get out of this branch of the discussion as
easily as I could. My duty is clear: it is to hold fast by Granville
and Hartington, and try to promote the union and efficiency of the
Party led by them.”[163]

In the ordinary course it was the duty of the Queen to send first for
the actual Leader of the Opposition, who was Lord Granville. On the
contrary, the first Liberal statesman summoned to Windsor was Lord
Hartington, who, when he arrived there on the 22nd of April, it was
remarked, declined the use of one of the Royal carriages, and strolled
in a leisurely manner to the Castle. He informed her Majesty that
a Liberal Ministry which was not headed by Mr. Gladstone could not
command the confidence of the country. Next day the Queen sent for Lord
Granville, who went to Windsor, accompanied by Lord Hartington. His
advice was to entrust Mr. Gladstone with the formation of a Cabinet.
They returned to London, and, after an interview with them, Mr.
Gladstone proceeded to Windsor and received the Queen’s commission to
organise a Government. Whenever Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister the
Whigs (who had secretly done their utmost as a Party to prevent his
return to office) swarmed round him like a cloud of locusts. The Whigs
and moderate Liberals were, as of old, to have all the comfortable
places.

As for the Radicals, they would, it was suggested, be amply repaid for
their services by a few of the minor offices under the Government, by
including Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster in the Cabinet, and by offering
a seat to Mr. Stansfeld, whose health prevented him from accepting
it. That, however, was not the view of the Radicals. North of the
Humber they constituted the bulk of the Liberal Party. Their system
of representative Party organisation, invented in Birmingham and
popularised by Mr. Chamberlain, had enabled them to consolidate the
opposition to the Tories, to prevent double candidatures, and to win
seats that, under a looser form of discipline, it would have been
hopeless to contest. If Mr. Gladstone was the Napoleon,

[Illustration: MR. CHAMBERLAIN.

(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]

Mr. Chamberlain was the Carnot of the campaign. The cry went forth
that some uncompromising Radical must have a seat in the Cabinet, and
Mr. Chamberlain was suggested as the fittest person to select. But
what had Mr. Chamberlain done? His speeches--hard, brilliant, and
clever--were permeated with “socialism.” Good Tory matrons were said to
frighten their unruly babes with the whisper of his name. In Parliament
he had chiefly distinguished himself by his obstructive tactics and
his revolt against Lord Hartington’s leadership. He was even a more
persistent opponent of the Monarchy than Sir Charles Dilke, who had
abandoned the advocacy of Republicanism for the critical study of
Foreign Affairs. Mr. Gladstone’s chief objection to Mr. Chamberlain
was that he had no official training. Lord Hartington (who knew, to
his cost, that his obstructive opposition in the House of Commons
could be most embarrassing), on the other hand, was in favour of
including Mr. Chamberlain in the Cabinet. So was Lord Granville, who
probably thought that there was no surer way of muzzling a dangerous
Republican than that of making him a Cabinet Minister. Still, the
Whig antagonism to Mr. Chamberlain was too strong to be ignored, and
a compromise was arrived at when office was offered to Sir Charles
Dilke. He, however, refused to take any place unless one advanced
Radical, at least, was included in the Cabinet, and he said that Mr.
Chamberlain should be chosen. After much intriguing Mr. Gladstone
yielded, and Mr. Chamberlain became President of the Board of Trade.
At the end of April the Cabinet was complete. Mr. Gladstone combined
the two offices of Premier and Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord
Selborne was Lord Chancellor; Lord Granville, Foreign Secretary; Sir
William Harcourt, Home Secretary; Lord Hartington, Indian Secretary;
Mr. Childers, War Secretary; Lord Northbrook, First Lord of the
Admiralty; Lord Kimberley, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Bright, Chancellor
of the Duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary for Ireland;
the Duke of Argyll, Lord Privy Seal; Mr. Dodson, President of the
Local Government Board; Lord Spencer, Lord President of the Council.
Outside the Cabinet, Mr. Fawcett became Postmaster-General; Sir Charles
Dilke, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (the office which he
specially desired, and for which he was specially qualified); Sir Henry
James, Attorney-General; Sir Farrer Herschel, Solicitor-General; Mr.
Mundella, Vice-President of the Council; Mr. Adam (the famous Whip),
First Commissioner of Works; and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, Secretary to the
Admiralty. Mr. Lowe was sent to the Upper House with a Peerage as Lord
Sherbrooke. Mr. Goschen (whose opposition to any extension of Household
Franchise to the counties rendered him impossible as a Cabinet
Minister) was sent as a Special Ambassador to Constantinople. Sir H.
A. Layard was not recalled, but he was granted an indefinite leave of
absence. Lord Lytton having resigned the Indian Viceroyalty, Lord Ripon
was appointed in his place.

No sooner had Parliament met, on the 29th of April, than it was
apparent that one gentleman had read aright the lesson to be derived
from Mr. Chamberlain’s successful career. To prove that one’s capacity
for obstruction was not inferior to that of Mr. Parnell, to reform on
a popular basis the organisation of one’s Party, and to flout openly
on fitting occasions the authority of one’s leader, these, argued Lord
Randolph Churchill, are the keys that unlock the doors of the Cabinet.
He, together with Sir H. D. Wolff, Mr. A. J. Balfour, and Mr. Gorst,
organised a small band of Tory obstructionists called the Fourth Party,
who hoped, by their unscrupulous tactics in embarrassing Mr. Gladstone,
that their gibes at Sir Stafford Northcote’s prudent leadership would
be forgiven. Their first opportunity for wasting the time of the
House arrived when Mr. Bradlaugh, the Member for Northampton, came
forward to be sworn on the 3rd of May. Mr. Bradlaugh was notoriously
an Atheist, and he claimed to make an affirmation. At first the Fourth
Party did not move in the matter, but the Speaker doubted if he could
affirm, and a Select Committee appointed to consider the question,
reported that he could not. Lord Frederick Cavendish had, in nominating
the Committee, included several members who being Ministers would have
to stand for re-election, and Sir Drummond Wolff and his friends raised
an acrimonious debate by objecting to the names of gentlemen who were
not technically members of the House being appointed to the Committee.
On the 21st of May Mr. Bradlaugh came forward and claimed to take the
oath. This the Fourth Party opposed as revolting to their consciences,
for had not Mr. Bradlaugh publicly declared that as he was an Atheist
the religious sanction in the oath was to him meaningless? There was no
precedent for refusing to swear a member. The law seemed to be that it
was his duty to his constituents to get himself sworn. But the point
was referred to another Committee, and they reported that Mr. Bradlaugh
could not be sworn. The absurdity of this proceeding is easily
illustrated. In the Parliament of 1886, Mr. Bradlaugh was allowed to
take the oath without a word of protest from the conscience-seared
pietists of the Fourth Party. But by that time most of them had become
Ministers, and were not anxious to encourage the obstruction of public
business. On the 21st of June Mr. Labouchere, the senior member for
Northampton, moved that Mr. Bradlaugh be allowed to affirm. The motion
was rejected on the 22nd of June by a vote of 275 to 230, and when Mr.
Bradlaugh, after speaking in his defence, refused to leave the bar, Sir
Stafford Northcote carried a motion that he be imprisoned in the Clock
Tower. This step made the House the laughing-stock of the nation, and
the Tories promptly released Mr. Bradlaugh from his luxurious retreat.
On the 1st of July Mr. Gladstone moved and carried a resolution
allowing Mr. Bradlaugh to affirm at his own risk, and subject to
any penalties he might incur by doing so, if it were found by the
Courts that he had broken the law. Three points had been gained. Lord
Randolph Churchill and his friends had forced Sir Stafford Northcote
to follow their lead. They had blocked Government business. They had,
to some extent, disseminated an impression abroad that the Cabinet was
a champion of Atheism--and no doubt there were many good people who
looked with suspicion on Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright for endeavouring
to prevent Northampton from being disfranchised by a combination of
faction and bigotry in the House of Commons.

During the interval between the appointment of the Ministry and the
reading of the Queen’s Speech, a last attempt was made by the foreign
allies of Lord Beaconsfield--and not without some success--to damage
the new Government. One of the strange incidents of the Election had
been the appearance every morning in the London papers of extracts
from the Continental Press urging the English people to vote for Lord
Beaconsfield’s supporters. Lord Beaconsfield, as the candidate of the
foreigner, was pressed on the constituencies with abject servility by
Tory speakers, who, if they had reflected for a moment, must have seen
that they were deeply offending the insular instincts and prejudices
of Englishmen. But the zenith of imprudence was attained when one
morning a semi-official telegram purporting to emanate from the
British Embassy at Vienna, appeared in a Ministerial organ informing
Englishmen that it was the august desire of the Emperor of Austria that
Mr. Gladstone should be defeated in Midlothian. No Englishman will
tolerate, even from a foreign Emperor, any interference between him and
his constituents during a contested election. Mr. Gladstone accordingly
treated the Emperor of Austria as if he had been an interloper from the
Carlton Club, who had come down to Midlothian to give extraneous aid
to Lord Dalkeith, the Conservative candidate. He snubbed the successor
of the Cæsars mercilessly, and greatly to the delight of the British
Democracy. This called forth a denial from Sir Henry Elliot that the
Emperor of Austria had ever used the words attributed to him, though
Sir Henry did not explain how the correspondent of the _Standard_ had
come to publish them. Mr. Gladstone retorted that the interest of
Austria in preventing his election lay in his known determination to
upset her plans for absorbing the heritage of the rising nationalities
in Turkey. Austria had always shown herself to be an incompetent
tyrant in dealing with subject races, and his warning to the Austrian
intriguers, who hoped, if Lord Beaconsfield were returned to power, to
make a dash for Salonica, was “Hands Off.” When Mr. Gladstone became
Premier this speech was brought up for dissection. Would his Ministry
quarrel with Austria? Would Count Karolyi ask for his papers? Then
two long telegrams from Vienna were published in the Times, of date
28th of April and 6th of May, semi-officially denying that Austria was
conspiring to make a dash for Salonica. Her sole desire now was to
stand by the Treaty of Berlin. Count Karolyi had some interviews with
Lord Granville on the subject, and in return for assurances of Austrian
loyalty and goodwill, he pressed for some expression of opinion from
Mr. Gladstone that would allay irritation in Vienna. Mr. Hayward
seems to have been asked to use his influence over Mr. Gladstone
to get him to make this explanation. Mr. Gladstone accordingly, in
a letter to Count Karolyi (4th of May), declared that since he had
become a Minister he had resolved not to defend by argument polemical
language which he had used in a position of “greater freedom and less
responsibility.” He wished Austria well. He had threatened to thwart
her policy solely because the evidence at his command indicated that
she was hostile to the freedom of the rising nationalities of Turkey.
But he accepted the assurances of Count Karolyi that Austria had no
designs against that freedom, and added, “Had I been in possession
of such an assurance as I have now been able to receive, I never
would have uttered any one of the words which your Excellency justly
describes as of a painful and wounding character.” The moment this
letter was published, the Austrian organs in England, indeed, every
Tory speaker and writer, made political capital out of it. The Premier
was held up to odium for having humiliated England by an apology
which was, undoubtedly, somewhat too exuberant. The people would have
been better pleased if Mr. Gladstone had replied that an explanation
should have been sought when it was possible for him to give it as
the candidate for Midlothian. To ask for it now was to assume that a
foreign potentate had a right to expect the Prime Minister of England
to apologise for what he might choose to say, as a private person,
fighting a contested election.

[Illustration: OLD PALACE OF THE PRINCE OF MONTENEGRO, CETTIGNE.]

Difficulties of a more serious character soon gathered round the
Ministry. The Turks refused to make those concessions of territory
to Montenegro and Greece which had been recommended by the Treaty of
Berlin. Lord Granville succeeded in uniting the European Powers in a
vain attempt to induce Turkey to fulfil her obligations. The Porte was
warned that, unless Dulcigno was given up to Montenegro by a certain
date, the Powers would resort to coercion. When that date arrived
the European Fleets assembled at Ragusa, under the command of Sir
Beauchamp Seymour, to make a naval demonstration against Turkey, but,
as the captains of the ships were prohibited from firing a shot, the
naval demonstration amused rather than alarmed the Porte. At this point
Mr. Gladstone hit on a happy expedient for bringing the Sultan to
reason. He threatened to send a British fleet to Smyrna, and, though
France refused to join in the scheme, Russia and Italy were willing to
act with England. The mere threat was sufficient. The customs dues of
the port of Smyrna supplied the only ready money on which the Sultan
could depend for the payment of his household expenses. Mr. Gladstone’s
intention plainly was to intercept or impound these moneys till Turkey
fulfilled her obligations; and the Sultan, alarmed at the prospect,
instructed Dervish Pasha to hand over Dulcigno to the Montenegrins. The
Greeks were less fortunate. Finding that they could get no concessions
from Turkey by diplomacy, they threatened war. But, under pressure from
the European Powers, they were held down, and the diplomatists again
undertook to reconsider their claims.

In India Lord Lytton resigned. One of his last acts was to deliver
a contemptuous speech refuting Mr. Gladstone’s suggestion that the
finances of that Dependency were in a state of confusion. To the very
last Lord Lytton endeavoured to persuade the English people that
the Afghan War had cost only six millions of money, and his Finance
Minister (Sir John Strachey) produced a most comforting “Prosperity
Budget.” It had, however, one defect. As Lord Hartington discovered
when he went to the India Office, a trifling sum of £9,000,000 sterling
had been dropped out of the expenditure side of the Afghan War
accounts; in other words, a mistake which would have been called by a
very ugly name indeed had it been made in the office of a bank or of a
railway company, had been made at the expense of the British taxpayer
by the Indian Government. While Lord Lytton was assuring England that
the war was costing £200,000 a month, it was costing £500,000. Nay,
for two years he had been paying away this excess of expenditure over
estimates without knowing it, or getting from the Treasury a monthly
statement of the money spent on the war! But the position of affairs in
Afghanistan was rapidly becoming unendurable. England held Cabul as the
Emperor Augustus held Rome--like a man who had a wolf by the ear. Lord
Lytton recognised Shere Ali Khan as independent Wali of Candahar, and
the ex-Ameer Yakoob was a prisoner in India. But Abdurrahman Khan (a
grandson of Dost Mahommed, and an exile in Russia) was a pretender for
the throne; and so was the warlike Ayoob Khan, a son of the ex-Ameer,
Shere Ali. Ayoob was, moreover, marching from Herat against the British
at Candahar with a force of fierce irregular troops.

When Mr. Gladstone’s Government took office they began by trying to
discover a Prince who could take Afghanistan off their hands, and for
that purpose they tried to treat with Abdurrahman Khan. Unfortunately,
Candahar was not only held by a weak force under General Primrose, but
it had been decided by the Indian authorities to still further weaken
it by sending General Burrows with a moiety of its garrison--some 2,000
men--to meet Ayoob Khan, and co-operate with the troops of the Wali of
Candahar in checking the advance of the Heratees. The troops of the
Wali, however, deserted to Ayoob Khan, and on the 27th of July Burrows
and his small force were overwhelmed by the Heratees at Maiwand. The
line of their retreat was covered with the bodies of those who perished
by the way, and comparatively few survivors arrived to tell the tale
of their terrible disaster. Of course Candahar was now at the mercy of
Ayoob Khan, and it was known that the fall of that stronghold would
shake the foundations of the British Empire in India. At this critical
moment Sir Frederick Roberts saved the situation. He set forth from
Cabul with a picked force of 10,000 men, and by a marvellous series
of forced marches he arrived in time to defeat Ayoob Khan and rescue
Candahar. Ere this crowning victory was won, it had been settled that
Abdurrahman was to be the new Ameer of Afghanistan, and as the year
closed the British Army of occupation had quitted Sherpore on its
homeward march to India.

The mischievous policy of annexation which had been pursued in South
Africa was now bearing fruit. When the Transvaal Republic was annexed
Englishmen were told that the Boers desired annexation. As a matter
of fact, the Boers never meant to submit to the loss of their
independence. When the Boers in the Transvaal asked for the restoration
of their rights, they were told by Sir Bartle Frere that England would
never concede their claims; though, as a matter of fact, no sane
Englishman had ever dreamt of holding the Transvaal Republic by an
army of occupation against the will of its people. The effect of these
misrepresentations was somewhat neutralised by Boer deputations who
visited England, by Radicals like Mr. Courtney, and Home Rulers like
Mr. Parnell and Mr. F. H. O’Donnell, who warned Englishmen that the
Boers were discontented, and that they would rise in insurrection. Mr.
Gladstone, too, in his election speeches kept alive Boer aspirations
for independence, by condemning their enforced subjection to a British
Colonial bureaucracy. The Boers ultimately rebelled, the occasion of
the revolt being the refusal of a citizen at Pretoria to pay an illegal
claim made on him by the Treasury. On the 13th of December, 1880, at
Heidelberg, they proclaimed a Republic under the Triumvirate of Kruger,
Joubert, and Pretorius. A collision between the insurgents and British
troops under Colonel Anstruther occurred at Bronkhorst Spruit, which
ended in the defeat of the latter; and as the year closed, General Sir
George Pomeroy Colley was making a futile effort to quell the rising
and reconquer the Transvaal.

The Ministerial programme of domestic legislation was popular, but it

[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE: QUEEN ELIZABETH’S LIBRARY, FROM THE
QUADRANGLE.]

took a long time to carry it out. At the end of July business was
seriously in arrear, and yet Ministers said that they were determined
to push on all their Bills. Towards the end of August no great progress
had been made, and the proposal of a Session which might be prolonged
into October was seriously discussed. The obstructive strategy devised
by Mr. Parnell in Lord Beaconsfield’s Parliament was now developed with
great success by the little band of Tories called the Fourth Party,
under the leadership of Lord Randolph Churchill. Their method differed
from Mr. Parnell’s in one point. He obstructed great measures in mass,
so to speak. The Fourth Party organised persistent and systematic
obstruction in detail, that is to say, they wasted small scraps of time
all through a sitting at odd moments, the cumulative effect of which
was most serious. Nor did they on this account refrain from obstruction
on the system practised by Mr. Parnell when occasion served, only
they carried it on without raising the clamant scandals that spring
from prolonged and melodramatic sittings. At the end of August their
efforts provoked Lord Hartington into revealing the fact that in the
course of the Session Mr. Gorst had made 105 speeches and asked 18
questions, that Lord Randolph Churchill had made 74 speeches and asked
21 questions, that Sir H. Drummond Wolff had made 68 speeches and asked
34 questions, while three Irish Members had delivered 160 speeches
and asked 30 questions. In fact, six Members (Lord Randolph Churchill,
Mr. Gorst, Sir H. D. Wolff, Mr. Biggar, Mr. O’Connor, and Mr. Finigan)
had delivered during the Session 407 speeches. Still, the Government
persevered and, after Lord Hartington’s exposure of the tactics of
the Opposition, business progressed more rapidly. A Burials Bill,
allowing Dissenting ministers to hold services in parish churchyards
at the burial of their dead, was passed. Sir William Harcourt passed
a Bill giving farmers an inalienable right to kill hares and rabbits.
Mr. Dodson’s Employers’ Liability Bill was fiercely obstructed, but
it passed and gave great satisfaction to the working classes. It made
employers responsible for accidents to their work-people where the
accident was traceable to the conduct of the master’s representative,
or any workman or person who might reasonably be supposed to be his
representative. In the House of Lords, it is true, Lord Beaconsfield
succeeded in limiting the operation of the Bill to two years, but this
period was extended to seven years by the Commons. The Supplementary
Estimates had devoured the small surplus which Sir Stafford Northcote’s
Budget showed in March. Hence on the 10th of June Mr. Gladstone
brought in a Supplementary Budget, in which he abolished the Malt Tax,
substituting for it a Beer Duty, reduced the duties on light foreign
wines, increased and readjusted the licence duties on the sale of
spirits, and added a penny to the Income Tax. The general result was
that a final surplus of £381,000 could be shown on the year’s accounts.

Nothing could be more embarrassing than the condition of Ireland
when Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister. The Home Rulers returned
sixty-eight members to the House of Commons, and, though a few of
them were lukewarm Nationalists, they had organised themselves into
a separate Party, under the leadership of Mr. Parnell. He plainly
indicated that they would make use of the feuds between the Opposition
and the Government to further their own cause. Mr. Gladstone and
Mr. Forster first of all decided to rule Ireland without coercive
legislation. But during the debates on the Address to the Crown it
was made manifest that they had no clear idea of the extent to which
agrarian distress prevailed in Ireland; that they ignored the alarming
increase of harsh evictions, which were certain to excite the peasantry
to savage deeds of retaliation; that they failed to understand how
famine had been averted solely by the charitable funds raised during
the previous year; and that they accordingly did not mean to reopen
the Land Question. The Irish Party, therefore, at the outset ranged
themselves with the Opposition, and even sat beside the Tories below
the gangway on the left side of the Speaker’s chair. They began
operations by bringing in a Bill to suspend evictions for non-payment
of rent, which the Government opposed. But the case presented by the
Irish Members seemed too serious to be put aside.

It was at last admitted that there was a crisis in Ireland to be dealt
with, and Mr. Forster therefore introduced a short Bill, which so far
amended the Act of 1870 as to make disturbance for non-payment of rent,
where the tenant was too poor to pay, a case for compensation. The
Bill passed through the House of Commons after violent recriminatory
debates, in the course of which Mr. Gladstone declared that in
the distressed districts eviction was “very near to a sentence of
death.”[164] The measure was promptly rejected by the House of Lords.
Ministers acquiesced in this rebuff, and from that moment they lost
their hold over rural Ireland. They had publicly declared that 15,000
persons were to be evicted that year, in circumstances which rendered
eviction tantamount to a sentence of death. They had publicly admitted
that it was wicked to extort rack rents from these persons by threats
of eviction, and that, unless they were protected from the rapacity
of their landlords, the peace of Ireland would be imperilled. And
then they permitted the Peers to reject the protective Bill, which
Mr. Forster had pressed forward as necessary for the preservation of
tranquillity! Either the Government was wrong in introducing the Bill,
or it was wrong to remain responsible for the peace of Ireland after
the Bill had been rejected. All that Mr. Forster did in this crisis
was to promise a new Land Bill next year, and appoint a Commission
to inquire into Irish distress. Rural Ireland had by this time been
completely organised into a Land League by Mr. Michael Davitt, and this
Land League was really a gigantic trades-union, to promote a strike
against rack rents. Incidentally, its organisation was also used to
further the Home Rule cause. The leaders of the League advised the
people to resist eviction, and Mr. John Dillon used words to which
Sir W. Barttelot called attention in the House of Commons on the
17th of August, that seemed to advise a general strike against rent.
Acrimonious debates followed day after day, in the course of which
the hostility between the Parnellites and the Ministry deepened with
every turn. Mr. Parnell’s cynical argument that as Ministers could
not, because of a Parliamentary defeat, carry the Disturbance Bill,
which they admitted was essential for the good government of Ireland,
they ought, as men of honour, to free Ireland from the mischievous
interference of the Imperial Parliament, seemed to cut Mr. Forster to
the quick. At last, in Committee of Supply on the 26th of August,
it was clear that an organised attempt to coerce the Government by
obstruction was to be made. On the motion for going into Supply, Lord
Randolph Churchill raised an irrelevant and discursive debate on the
Irish policy of the Government, which had already been under bitter
discussion for the best part of a fortnight. This set the Parnellites
and the Ministerialists by the ears, and consumed a great part of the
sitting. Then, when the vote for the Irish Police was moved, Lord
Randolph Churchill and the Fourth Party vanished into the background,
and left the work of obstruction to the Parnellites, who kept it up
till one o’clock in the afternoon of the following day (Friday, the
27th of August). The debate was at this stage adjourned till next
Monday, when, after further discussion, the vote was carried. During
these exciting and troublous scenes Mr. Gladstone was absent from the
House of Commons. He had fallen ill on the 4th of July, and had gone
for a cruise in one of Sir Donald Currie’s steamers, the _Grantully
Castle_, to recover his health. During his absence his duties were
taken up by Lord Hartington, who led the House till Mr. Gladstone was
able to reappear on the 3rd of September. On the 6th of September
Parliament was prorogued. But during the recess the condition of
Ireland grew worse and worse. The landlords, dreading the forthcoming
Land Bill, pressed on evictions. The Land League urged the people to
refuse to pay rack rents, and the League had by this time become so
powerful, that it could enforce its decrees almost as surely as if it
had been the regular Government of the country. Its favourite weapon
of coercion was to pronounce against bailiff or landlord, land agent
or “land grabber”--_i.e._, a man who offered to take a farm from which
the tenant had been unjustly evicted--sentence of social ostracism.
The victim of this sentence was not assaulted or outraged, but he
was treated as if he were a leper by his neighbours, and the system
came to be known as “boycotting.”[165] Boycotting was indignantly
assailed in England, and yet it was in itself a mark of progress. Just
as slavery in primitive warfare was an improvement on cannibalism as
a means of disposing of prisoners, so boycotting, carefully carried
out within the law, was an improvement on assassination as a means of
agrarian coercion. But the demand for retaliatory measures against the
Parnellites was loud and strong among the upper and middle classes.
Mr. Forster at last yielded to it, and it was in vain that Mr. Bright
protested in one of his speeches that “force was no remedy.” Outrages
increased in Ireland. The ladies of the Tory aristocracy, and some of
the great Whig families, made arrangements for devoting their _salons_
during the coming Session, to a social campaign against Mr. Chamberlain
and the Radical section of the Cabinet. On the 2nd of November, 1880,
the Irish Attorney-General filed an indictment of nineteen counts,
against Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and various leaders of the Land
League, for conspiring to incite tenants not to pay rent or take farms
from which the occupiers had been evicted, but the trial, after lasting
for twenty days, broke down, because the jury could not agree on a
verdict. Ere the year ended it was known that the Cabinet, though it
had nearly been broken up by the decision, had at last consented to let
Mr. Forster bring in a strong Coercion Bill next Session.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN PRESENTING THE ALBERT MEDAL TO GEORGE OATLEY,
OF THE COASTGUARD.]

The year was not an eventful one in the family life of the Court.
Before Parliament was dissolved the Queen arranged to visit her
relatives in Germany. The time had come when her granddaughters, the
Princesses Victoria and Elizabeth of Hesse, were to be confirmed, and
she desired to be present at the ceremony. Her Majesty and the Princess
Beatrice (travelling as the Countess of Balmoral and the Countess
Beatrice of Balmoral), attended by Sir H. F. Ponsonby, Viscount
Bridport, and Lady Churchill, left Windsor Castle on the 25th of March,
and embarked at one o’clock on the royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_.
It was intended that the Queen should proceed to Darmstadt to visit the
Grand Duke of Hesse and the tomb of Princess Alice. There the Queen
would be joined by the Prince and Princess of Wales. On the 25th the
Queen and her suite landed at five o’clock at Cherbourg, and entered
their special train. The public were excluded from the stations on

[Illustration: REVIEW IN WINDSOR PARK: CHARGE OF THE 5TH AND 7TH
DRAGOON GUARDS.]

the route, and every effort was made to respect the Queen’s incognito.
The Royal party arrived at Baden-Baden at half-past three in the
afternoon of the 27th, and the Queen drove immediately to the Villa
Hohenlohe, which was to be her residence during her stay. As for her
suite, they were lodged at the Hotel Europe. On the 30th her Majesty,
the Princess Beatrice, and suite, left Baden-Baden by special train for
Darmstadt, where they were received by the Grand Duke and the elder
Princesses of Hesse. A carriage drawn by four horses was in waiting
to convey the Royal party to the Castle, where the Queen occupied the
Assembly Chamber, whilst apartments were allotted to the Princess
Beatrice in the Clock Tower. The Prince and Princess of Wales, who had
left Marlborough House three days before, arrived at Darmstadt on the
29th. On the 31st the Queen and Princess Beatrice, accompanied by the
Grand Duke of Hesse, proceeded at half-past four to the mausoleum on
the Rosenhöhe, where Princess Alice was buried. On the morning of the
same day the Queen, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Princess
Beatrice, the German Crown Prince, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess,
and the Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, attended the confirmation of
the Princesses Victoria and Elizabeth, daughters of the Grand Duke of
Hesse. The Queen and Princess Beatrice then returned to Baden on the
1st of April. On April the 16th, on her return from Baden, her Majesty
arrived at Laeken, and was received at the railway station by the
King and Queen of the Belgians and Mr. Lumley, the British Minister.
After visiting the park and grounds of the Palace, and partaking of
luncheon, the Queen left for Flushing. On April the 17th her Majesty
and suite left Flushing for Queenborough, _en route_ for Windsor, where
she arrived in safety, to find the station thronged with residents,
who had gathered to welcome her on her return, while crowds of kindly
spectators lined the way to the Castle. She returned just as the
electoral crisis was over, to find the Ministry she had thought so
stable overthrown, and public opinion not only clamouring for the
dismissal of Lord Beaconsfield from office, but for the return of Mr.
Gladstone to power. On the 27th of April she gave Lord Beaconsfield his
farewell audience, and for the next fortnight was deeply absorbed in
transacting the business incidental to the formation of a new Ministry
amidst distracting intrigues which were not altogether friendly to the
new Ministers.

On the 20th of May the Queen and the Princess Beatrice left Windsor for
Balmoral, and the Prince and Princess of Wales discharged her Majesty’s
social duties during her absence. On her way to her Highland home the
Queen took part in a ceremony of which she was, in fact, the promoter.
During a terrific storm on the 16th of February, a Swedish ship had
been thrown on the rocks near Peterhead. The Coastguard succeeded
in flinging a rocket over the wreck, but the crew were apparently
unable to understand the working of the apparatus. And so, in all
human probability, the vessel would have been lost with all souls
but for the bravery of George Oatley, one of the Coastguard. Oatley,
disregarding every appeal to the contrary, resolved to swim out to the
distressed ship. After a fierce conflict with the angry waves he gained
the vessel, fixed the rocket appliance, saw the crew safely conveyed
ashore, and was himself the last to take his place in the cradle. The
Duke of Edinburgh having recommended him for the Albert Medal of the
First Class, her Majesty presented it in person on the 22nd of May.
The interesting ceremony took place at Ferry Hill Junction, where
a platform had been erected for the occasion along the side of the
line. The Queen and Princess Beatrice were greeted with the heartiest
cheers as they left the saloon. Captain Best, R.N., Commander of the
coastguard division to which the hero of the day belonged, having
introduced him to her Majesty, the Queen attached the medal to Oatley’s
breast, and expressed the pleasure it afforded her to decorate him for
his gallant conduct. She then resumed her seat in the train, and her
journey was continued. The Court returned to Windsor on the 23rd of
June.

On the 13th of July a General Order was issued by the Duke of
Cambridge, by command of the Queen, conveying her congratulations to
the Volunteers on the completion of the twenty-first year of their
existence, and expressing her regret that she was unable to hold a
review of the citizen soldiers in Windsor Great Park. On the afternoon
of the following day her Majesty reviewed 11,000 regular troops in
Windsor Great Park. This was a brilliant affair, the 5th and 7th
Dragoon Guards winding up the display with a most dashing charge. On
the 19th of July the Queen and the Princess Beatrice left Windsor and
took up their quarters at Osborne where, on the 28th, her Majesty
received a party of eight officers and men of the 24th Regiment, who
brought with them the colours of that corps, which had been rescued
from the hands of the Zulus by two ensigns at the cost of their lives.
Her Majesty inspected the colours, and spoke with brief and simple
eloquence of the bravery and loyalty of the regiment, touching with
manifest emotion on the death of the ensigns who had sacrificed their
lives for their standards. Curiously enough, Indian telegrams published
about this time in the newspapers showed that at the battle of Maiwand
the majority of the officers of the 66th Regiment were killed in the
vain attempt to defend their colours; in fact, the regiment lost 400
out of its strength of 500 in this action. The attention of military
men was thus drawn to the practice of carrying colours into action,
and it was argued that it was one more honoured in the breach than the
observance. History hardly records a case where a regiment has been
rallied on its colours. On the other hand, a hundred fights besides
Isandhlwana and Maiwand testify that many valuable lives have been lost
in defending them. Nor are colours necessary as incentives to bravery,
for the Rifle regiments (whose record is one of unsullied glory) never
carried any colours, though they fought fully as well as the regiments
that encumbered themselves with flaunting banners.[166] On the 21st
of August the Queen crossed over to Portsmouth, and inspected the 1st
battalion of the Rifle Brigade previous to its departure for India. The
regiments were not drawn up in line in spick and span order, but were
visited by her Majesty as they sat at mess in undress uniform on board
the troopship, and, as she made a minute inspection of their quarters,
the novelty of the scene apparently interested and amused her very
much. The exceptional honour thus conferred on the Riflemen was due to
the close connection of the corps with the Royal Family.[167]

On the 26th of August the Court went to Balmoral, from whence, just
before Parliament was prorogued, she addressed to the Ministry a strong
Memorandum drawing attention to the frequency with which railway
accidents were occurring, and urging that steps should be taken to
provide travellers with better security for safety. In October she held
many anxious consultations with Lord Granville and Lord Hartington
on the state of Ireland, where the increase in outrages, such as the
savage murders of Mr. Boyd and Lord Mountmorres[168] gave her great
pain. The result was that Lord Hartington, when he arrived in London
from Balmoral on the 11th of October, was immediately visited by Mr.
Gladstone and Lord Granville, and in political circles it was soon
rumoured that the Irish Government was about to prosecute the leaders
of the Irish Land League. On the 10th of October the Queen and Princess
Beatrice went to spend a few days amidst the snowdrifts of the Glassalt
Sheil. The Court returned to Windsor on the 17th of December, to find
the world--for a time at least--talking of something else besides Irish
outrages.

Lord Beaconsfield had just published his last brilliant and audacious
political novel, “Endymion,” in what one of its characters describes as
“the Corinthian style, in which the Mænad of Mr. Burke was habited in
the last mode of Almack’s.” The town was in raptures over a burlesque
of Society, which blended together into amusing personalities such
opposite characters as Cardinal Wiseman and Cardinal Manning; Lord
Palmerston and Sidney Herbert; Poole the tailor, and Hudson the
railway king; which made Prince Bismarck tilt with Napoleon III. at
the Eglinton Tournament; which idealised the author as Endymion, Lady
Beaconsfield as Imogen, and Napoleon III. as Prince Florestan; which
travestied Lady Palmerston as Zenobia, caricatured Thackeray cleverly
but spitefully as Mr. St. Barbe, and George Smythe cleverly but not
spitefully as Waldershare.

[Illustration: BALLATER.]

The year closed with a more serious event in the world of literature,
the death (on the 22nd of December) of George Eliot, whose novels were
ever a perennial source of pure enjoyment to the Queen. George Eliot
was, at her death, the first of living novelists, and the womanhood of
England in the Victorian period produced no genius that in culture,
strength, tenderness, spiritual insight, and humour, could be compared
with hers. The sombre fatalism of the Greek tragedians overshadows her
“Mill on the Floss.” The humour of Shakespeare ripples through the
taproom scenes in “Silas Marner.” In “Romola,” were it not overweighted
with psychological analysis, she would have defeated Scott in the
glowing field of historical romance, and did defeat the author of
“Esmond” in an arena in which he was supposed to be peerless among
his contemporaries. In “Adam Bede,” which has probably been read more
widely than any other story of our time by the English-speaking race,
she revealed all the grace, sweetness, delicacy of feeling, nobility
of intellect, and purity of heart, that formed her fascinating and
sympathetic personality.

CHAPTER XXIV.

COERCION.

Lord Beaconsfield Attacks the Government--The Irish Crisis--The
Coercion Bills--An All-night Sitting--The Arrest of Mr.
Davitt--The Revolt of the Irish Members--The Speaker’s _Coup
d’État_--Urgency--New Rules of Procedure--The Speaker’s
_Clôture_--End of the Struggle against Coercion--Mr. Dillon’s
Irish Campaign--Mr. Forster’s First Batch of “Suspects”--The
Peers Censure the Ministry--Mr. Gladstone’s “Retort
Courteous”--Abolition of the “Cat”--The Budget--Paying off the
National Debt--The Irish Land Bill--The Three “F’s”--Resignation
of the Duke of Argyll--The Strategic Blunder of the Tories--The
Fallacy of Dual Ownership--Conflict between the Lords and
Commons--Surrender of the Peers--Passing the Land Bill--Revolt
of the Transvaal--The Rout of Majuba Hill--Death of Sir George
Colley--The Boers Triumphant--Concession of Autonomy to the
Boers--Lord Beaconsfield’s Death--His Career and Character--A
“Walking Funeral” at Hughenden--The Queen and Lord Beaconsfield’s
Tomb--A Sorrowing Nation--Assassination of the Czar--The
Queen and the Duchess of Edinburgh--Character of the Czar
Emancipator--Precautions for the Safety of the Queen--Visit of
the King and Queen of Sweden to Windsor--Prince Leopold becomes
Duke of Albany--Deaths of Dean Stanley and Mr. Carlyle--Review of
Scottish Volunteers--Assassination of President Garfield--The Royal
Family--The Highlands--Holiday Pastimes--The Parnellites and the
Irish Land Act--Arrest of Mr. Parnell--No-Rent Manifesto.

The year 1881 confronted the Government with four difficulties. The
Irish Question was growing more serious every day. With a heavy heart
England not only saw herself committed to a war of reconquest in
the Transvaal, but heard her most sanguine Imperialists admitting
that Sir Bartle Frere’s scheme for a South African Confederation had
utterly broken down. The Parliament of the Cape Colony would not even
seriously discuss it, and Sir Bartle Frere had been recalled at the
end of 1880. Victory had crowned British arms in Afghanistan, but Lord
Beaconsfield’s policy of holding Candahar, and controlling the rest
of the country by British Residents, was obviously impossible. Lord
Lytton, who now called it an “experiment,” admitted that the murder of
Cavagnari had proved it to be a failure. The claims of Greece to an
increase of territory and a better frontier, had been admitted to be
just by the Powers, but Turkey still refused to accept any compromise
which Europe suggested, and Greece pressed her demands with growing
impatience. The nation was therefore relieved to find that Parliament
was to meet earlier than usual, and when it assembled on the 6th of
January it was soon seen that the Session would be a stormy one. Among
the upper and upper middle classes the Government was denounced with a
bitterness that had no parallel, for permitting Ireland to fall into
“anarchy” under the dominion of the Land League.

In the debate on the Address in the House of Lords, Lord Beaconsfield,
appealing to the prevailing sentiment of disappointment, sought to
show that all these difficulties were due to Mr. Gladstone’s sudden
reversal of the Conservative policy when he came into office. The
speech was pitched in a strange, shrewish note of anger, and it failed
to produce much effect. Men could not forget that only a few months
before Lord Beaconsfield had taunted the Ministry with meekly and
slavishly carrying out his policy. It was not easy to forget that
Lord Beaconsfield had abandoned the Coercion Act and allowed the Land
League to fix its grip on Ireland, that the troubles in Afghanistan
were entirely due to his desire to govern that country without being
at the expense of occupying it, that the alternative policy adopted
by him after the murder of Cavagnari--that of detaching Candahar and
putting it under a Wali, who was to be friendly and independent--ended
in the fall of the Wali and the desertion of his troops to the enemy
which produced the disaster of Maiwand. As for South Africa, even the
_Times_, which had supported Lord Beaconsfield’s policy in that region,
now wrote, “what a miserable business our whole connection with the
annexation of the Transvaal has been from first to last. The original
annexation of the country was a mistake, and it has been the parent
of all the rest.” Knowing that Englishmen would never sanction a war
for the conquest of a free European people who objected to come under
British rule, Lord Beaconsfield’s agents supplied Parliament with no
information on the subject, save that which indicated that the Boers
would welcome absorption in the British Empire as the surest means of
deliverance from native difficulties. The Greek difficulty obviously
was an evil inheritance from the Treaty of Berlin by which Lord
Beaconsfield conferred on England “Peace with Honour.”

But the domestic crisis in Ireland was far too serious to permit men to
indulge in party recriminations, and Lord Beaconsfield showed his sense
in urging his followers not to do anything to weaken the Government.
Unfortunately, neither he nor Sir Stafford Northcote had much control
over the aggressive Tories who were led by the Fourth Party, and the
Fourth Party, when the Session opened, cemented more strongly than
ever their alliance with the Parnellites for purposes of obstructive
opposition. The Tory Party were ably led on two distinct lines of
attack. One wing did what it could to goad the Ministry into scourging
Ireland with coercive legislation. Another wing gave the Irish members
all the help it dared give them publicly in obstructing the domestic
legislation, and embarrassing the Foreign Policy of the Ministry.
Coercion Bills were announced on the first day of the Session, and
the consequence was that it was not till after eleven days’ wearisome
wrangling that the debate on the Address ended on the 20th of January.
On the 24th, Mr. Forster introduced his Protection of Persons and
Property (Ireland) Bill, giving the Lord-Lieutenant power to arrest by
warrant persons _suspected_ of treasonable intentions, intimidation,
and incitement to violate the laws. If he had this power, said Mr.
Forster, he could put under lock and key the “village ruffians” and
outrage-mongers who attacked people that were obnoxious to the Land
League, and then Ireland would be at peace.

The violence with which the Irish Members obstructed this Bill provoked
Mr. Bright to attack them in a speech on the 27th of January, which
rendered him and them enemies for life. Mr. Gladstone followed in the
same vein, and on Monday, the 31st of January, a scene that became
historic was enacted. The debate was prolonged all day and all night,
and on through the dull, grey hours of the morning of the 1st of
February, and still on all night without ceasing, till the enraged
and exhausted House found itself at nine in the morning of the 2nd
of February still in session and with no prospect of release. Then
the Speaker interfered, saying that it was clear to him the Bill had
been wilfully obstructed for forty-one hours. In order to vindicate
the honour of the House, whose rules seemed powerless to meet the
difficulty, he declared his determination to put the main question
without further debate. This was done amidst loud shouts of “Privilege”
from the Irish Members, who left the House in a body, and the motion
for leave to bring in the Bill, a motion rarely obstructed by any
debate, was carried by a vote of 164 to 19. For the first time in
the history of Parliament, a debate had been closed by the personal
authority of the Speaker.

Mr. Gladstone having announced that the Second Reading of the Bill
would be taken that day at noon, the Irish Members returned to the
charge. They attempted to challenge the action of the Speaker, and
moved the adjournment of the House; but in spite of the support which
they received from Lord Randolph Churchill, they were beaten on a
division, though they succeeded in wasting the whole of the sitting.
Next day (Thursday, the 3rd of February) the Irish Members began the
attack by asking if it were true that Mr. Davitt had been arrested.
“Yes, sir,” was the answer of Sir William Harcourt. Then, when Mr.
Gladstone rose to move the adoption of the new Rule of Procedure,
Mr. Dillon rose to a point of order. The Speaker requested him to be
seated, but he refused. He was then “named” for wilfully disregarding
the authority of the Chair, and, in conformity with the Standing Order,
Mr. Gladstone immediately moved his suspension for the rest of the
sitting. The motion was carried by a vote of 395 to 33, and, as Mr.
Dillon declined to withdraw, he was removed by the Serjeant-at-Arms.
After a futile attempt on the part of Mr. Sullivan to dispute the
legality of the Speaker’s action, Mr. Gladstone again rose, whereupon
The O’Donoghue moved the adjournment of the House. The Speaker ruled
that Mr. Gladstone should proceed. Mr. Parnell now moved that Mr.
Gladstone be not

[Illustration: MR. PARNELL.

(_From a Photograph by William Lawrence, Dublin._)]

heard.[169] The Speaker “named” Mr. Parnell, who was then suspended
and removed like Mr. Dillon. Mr. Finigan next repeated Mr. Parnell’s
offence, and was removed in the same manner. On this occasion
twenty-eight Irish Members were reported as refusing to leave their
seats when the Speaker ordered the House to be cleared for a division.
The Speaker “named” them all, and though Mr. Balfour and Mr. Gorst, on
behalf of the Fourth Party, feelingly remonstrated against the vote for
their suspension _en bloc_ being put, the Speaker ruled that this was
a question not of order but convenience, and the vote was carried by
410 to 4. Then the Speaker ordered them one by one to be removed. Five
others, who were not included, procured their expulsion, and, after a
struggle of three hours and a half, “the Speaker’s _coup d’état_,” as
the Nationalists called it, ended.[170]

Mr. Gladstone now, pale and worn out with the excitement, delivered
his speech in support of the new Rules of Procedure. Sir Stafford
Northcote showed that he still shared the hostility of the Tory Party
to any scheme for effectively crushing obstruction; but the conduct of
the Irish Members had so incensed the House, that he had to limit his
opposition to an amendment which but slightly weakened the force of
Mr. Gladstone’s proposal. The Rule finally adopted declared that, when
a Minister moved, after notice, that the state of public business was
urgent, the Speaker was to put the question without debate. If this
motion were carried by a majority of not less than three to one in a
House of 300 Members, then the powers of the House for the regulation
of its business should be transferred to the Speaker, who could enforce
such rules as he pleased for its management, till the state of public
business should be declared by him to be no longer urgent. A motion
could be made by a Member to terminate urgency, but it must be put
without debate. On the 9th of February the Speaker laid before the
House the new Rules which he had drawn up for the state of urgency
in which public business was now declared to be. They adopted the
principle of the _Clôture_, which Sir Stafford Northcote deprecated and
the Fourth Party abhorred, and gave the Speaker power, when supported
by a three-fourths’ majority, to close a debate by putting the question
without further discussion. No debate on a motion to go into Committee,
or on postponing the preamble of a Bill under urgency, was to be
allowed. Opportunities for moving adjournments were curtailed, and the
Speaker was to have power to order a Member to stop talking when he
became guilty of “irrelevance or tedious repetition.” In Committee the
_Clôture_ was not to be applied, but no Members (except those in charge
of Bills or those who had moved amendments) were to be allowed to speak
more than once to the same question.

Even under urgency the debate on the Coercion Bill in Committee
went on slowly, and at one time (owing to Lord Randolph Churchill,
who supported the Bill “with reluctance and distrust,” and Sir John
Holker, who contended that “liberty was more precious than coercion,”
displaying much sympathy with the opponents of the measure) it was
feared that Ministers would lose the support of a large section of the
Opposition. This fear was baseless, but the debate went on till the
21st of February, when the Speaker, on a motion summarily moved by Lord
Hartington, suddenly terminated it under the new Rules. All amendments
not disposed of after seven o’clock on the 22nd were put and divided
on without debate. The measure received the Queen’s assent on the 2nd
of March. A Bill giving the Irish police power to search houses for
arms was introduced by Sir William Harcourt on the 1st of March, read
a third time on the 4th, and passed by the House of Lords on the 18th
of March. The struggle against coercion thus lasted nine weeks, and
the violence with which the Irish Party conducted it is defended by
Mr. T. P. O’Connor on the grounds that it consolidated the Nationalist
Party, and that the scenes in the House so roused the temper of the
Irish people that the Peers were afraid to reject the Land Bill of
1881, as they did the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of 1880.[171]
On the other hand, they permanently alienated from the Irish Party the
sympathies of a large class of moderate Liberals in England, who were
anxious to legislate for Ireland in a sympathetic spirit.

After the Coercion Bill had passed, Mr. Dillon carried on a passionate
agitation against the Government in Ireland, and Mr. Forster retaliated
by imprisoning him and several other Land Leaguers as “suspects”
in May. Mr. Finigan was sent down to Coventry, where an election
was taking place, to canvass the constituency on behalf of the Tory
candidate, Mr. Eaton, a tangible expression of gratitude for the
occasional sympathy that had been extended to the Parnellites by Lord
Randolph Churchill, and some other Conservatives during the Coercion
debates. There was a lull in the storm, however, during which the Peers
censured the Government for refusing to occupy Candahar. A vote of the
House of Commons on the 25th of March reversed this censure, for the
House rejected by 336 to 216 a motion of Mr. Stanhope’s, blaming the
Government for withdrawing from Candahar “at the present time.” When
the Tories refused to commit themselves to the proposition that it was
the duty of the Government to hold Candahar permanently, and merely
demanded its occupation “at the present time,” their attack assumed
the complexion of a party demonstration. If England were to leave
Candahar at all the sooner she left it the better, for the longer her
troops stayed the more difficult it would be to establish the native
government of Abdurrahman in the Province. The Army Discipline Bill,
abolishing flogging, passed through the House of Commons without much
opposition from the Tories, and was read a third time by the House of
Lords on the 7th of April. The Budget was introduced by Mr. Gladstone
on the 4th of April, and on an estimated expenditure of £84,705,000,
and an estimated revenue of £85,900,000, he showed a probable surplus
of £1,195,000. This was reduced by £100,000, consumed in paying off
a loan for building barracks. Mr. Gladstone, therefore, reduced the
Income Tax to 5d. in the pound, and converted the deficit thereby
incurred of £275,000, into a surplus of £295,000, by levying an uniform
surtax of 4d. a gallon on foreign spirits, in accordance with the test
of standard strength applied to wines, and by minor changes in the
Probate, Legacy, and Succession Duties. The most important part of his
statement was that, during the past year, the National Debt had been
reduced by £7,000,000. He also foreshadowed a great scheme for the
extinction of £60,000,000 of debt, by the conversion of one-third of
the short annuities terminating in 1885 into long annuities terminating
in 1906. As this would make Consols scarce, it would put up their
price, and enable him or his successor, in the course of ten years, to
reduce the interest on the National Debt.

[Illustration: GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN.]

The long-expected Irish Land Bill was introduced by Mr. Gladstone on
the 7th of April. It gave tenants the right to go before a Land Court
and have “fair rents” fixed for fifteen years, a fair rent being one
that would let the tenant live and thrive. During these fifteen years
eviction, save for non-payment of rent, was to be impossible. If a
tenant wished to sell his tenant-right or goodwill, the landlord had
the pre-emptive right of buying at the price fixed by the Court. The
Court was to have power to advance to tenants desirous of buying their
farms three-fourths of the purchase-money, or even the whole if need
be, and these advances were repayable on easy terms. Advances could
also be made to promote emigration. The Bill was well received on the
whole by the country, but the landed gentry denounced it as an act
of socialism and confiscation, and the Duke of Argyll resigned his
office. On the 24th of April long and stormy debates on the Second
Reading began, and it was not till the end of July that the Bill was
sent up to the House of Lords. The Tory Party made a mistake in basing
their opposition to the measure on the ground that it was socialistic,
confiscatory, and

[Illustration: LORD BEACONSFIELD’S LAST APPEARANCE IN THE PEERS’
GALLERY OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

(_From a Drawing by Harry Furniss._)]

contrary to the laws of political economy. The principle of arranging
the business relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland by Act of
Parliament having been accepted by the country, the only practical
method of attacking the Bill was to have shown that it would not
arrange them to the mutual satisfaction of the parties interested.
The theory of the measure was, that every Irish farm is owned by two
persons--by the farmer, who owns the improvements he has made on the
soil, by the landlord who owns everything else. The Bill gave the
tenant additional means for protecting his share of the land from
being devoured by the landlord. Did it do this effectively, and if
effectively, in such a manner as to work no injustice to the landlord?
From the Tory point of view, it would have been easy to argue that no
system of dual ownership, which forces persons with hostile interests
into partnership in husbandry, can work smoothly. If prices rise the
landlord’s fixed rent will not rise with them. If prices fall the
tenant will refuse to pay the fixed rent, because it is no longer fair;
and then the old weary path of agrarian warfare has again to be trod.
A great scheme for establishing peasant proprietorship all over Ireland
with the help of the State might have saved the Irish landlords at this
juncture. But the Tories were led not by a Stein, but a Cecil, and the
golden opportunity was lost. From the Irish point of view, the Bill
bristled with weak points. It did nothing for leaseholders. It left
tenants loaded with arrears, and therefore still exposed to eviction.
Although Mr. Healy inserted a clause prohibiting the Courts from taking
a tenant’s improvements into the valuation on which a fair rent was
fixed, the Judges, by a decision in the case of Adams v. Dunseath,
virtually nullified the clause.

It was not till the 29th of July that Mr. Gladstone carried the Third
Reading of the Bill after a desperate struggle. The House of Lords
mutilated it, so that it became worse than useless, and then there
came a deep cry of indignation from the country. Mr. Gladstone sent
the Bill back practically unaltered, and as the tempest of anger in
the country rose the Peers surrendered and let the measure pass. The
Ministry, however, had to drop all their other Bills, except those
abolishing flogging in the Army and Navy. The only private Members who
carried Bills of public interest were Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Roberts.
Mr. Hutchinson’s Bill protected newspaper reports of lawful meetings
from prosecution for libel, and made it necessary to obtain the
Attorney-General’s sanction before criminal proceedings for libel could
be asked for. Mr. Roberts passed the Act closing public-houses during
Sundays in Wales.

Mr. Bradlaugh’s case, however, again vexed the angry sea of political
strife at intervals during the Session. The law courts ruled that he
could not legally make an affirmation, and so Mr. Bradlaugh resigned
his seat, and again got elected for Northampton. This time he presented
himself on the 26th of April to be sworn as a new Member. Sir Stafford
Northcote objected, and though no precedent exists for preventing a
new Member from being sworn, the Speaker referred the matter to the
House, which decided against Mr. Bradlaugh. Thereupon ensued a shocking
scene, and Mr. Bradlaugh had to be removed by force. Nothing strikes
the reader now as more absurd than the protestations of the Tories,
that to concede this claim was to sanction sacrilege. The course they
objected to was precisely the one which Mr. Bradlaugh adopted when
they were in office in 1886, and which they and the Speaker found it
expedient to permit. A Bill was now brought in to allow all Members to
affirm who could not conscientiously take the oath. This was opposed
and so successfully obstructed that it had to be dropped. After that
Mr. Bradlaugh, on the 3rd of August, cheered by an immense crowd of
sympathisers, attempted to enter the House in defiance of an order
which Sir Stafford Northcote had carried excluding him from its
precincts. There were some of his Radical sympathisers--Mr. Fawcett was
among the number--who did not quite approve of this proceeding. At all
events Mr. Bradlaugh gained nothing by it, for he was flung into Palace
Yard by the police hatless, dishevelled, and with his coat torn in the
fray.

The recall of Sir Bartle Frere did not settle the South African
difficulty. Sir G. P. Colley, in trying to avenge the defeat of
Bronkhurst Spruit, was early in the year beaten by the Boers at
Laing’s Nek and Ingogo. On the 26th of February, reinforced by Sir
Evelyn Wood, he let the Boers out-manœuvre him, and spring upon the
oddly variegated and composite force with which he had rashly occupied
Majuba Hill. Though the enemy’s troops only consisted of raw levies of
irregular sharpshooters, they soon dispersed the British host. It was
a shameful rout, in which a kind fate doomed the luckless Colley to
death. The unfortunate thing was that this fray should have happened
at all. Negotiations were actually going on between the British and
the Boers for a peaceful settlement.[172] Were they to be broken
off? After admitting by opening up these negotiations, that the war
was unjust, was a great and powerful Empire to go on with it for the
sake of _prestige_? And was it, after all, British prowess that would
be vindicated by victory? Was it not rather the fame of Sir George
Pomeroy Colley that had alone been sullied? In other words, was England
justified in slaughtering a few hundred Boer farmers, because Sir
George Colley had let them beat his heroic but mismanaged troops in
battle? It is impossible to say how the nation answered these difficult
questions. But Mr. Gladstone’s reply was an emphatic “No,” although
he had unfortunately declared, immediately after coming into office,
that he would not grant the demands of the Boers, till they laid down
their arms. The end of it was, that the Boers were allowed to set up an
autonomous Republic under a British Protectorate, British interference
being limited to controlling their foreign policy. It is curious to
observe that this was the only act ever done by Mr. Gladstone which the
European and American Press, with cordial unanimity, declared enhanced
the _prestige_ of England, as a State so confident of its giant’s
strength, that it deemed it ignoble to use it like a giant.

In the spring the shadow of mourning fell over the nation. On the
morning of the 19th of April Lord Beaconsfield, who had been ailing
for some days, passed away peacefully to his last rest. Mr. Gladstone
at once telegraphed to his relatives offering a public funeral in
Westminster Abbey, but the executors were compelled to decline the
honour. Lord Beaconsfield’s will directed that he should be buried
beside his wife, and there were also legal obstacles that even the
Queen’s personal wishes could not overcome.[173] His life, to use a
favourite phrase of his own, was “really a romance,” and his career
a long and brilliant adventure. His strength lay in his freedom from
prejudices, in his intellectual detachment from English insularity, in
his consummate knowledge of the foibles of the lower middle class whom
he enfranchised. He achieved success by skilfully avoiding the mistake
of Peel, who led his Party without educating it. Lord Beaconsfield
did both. His fame as a writer of sparkling political burlesques, his
command of invective, his wit, and his audacity won for him the ear
of a Senate which loves men who can amuse it. The defection of the
Peelites left the Tory Party, in 1846, intellectually poverty-stricken,
and though a proud aristocracy long refused to recognise their most
brilliant swordsman as their leader, they had to accept him at last.

At this period of his career the chief obstacle in Mr. Disraeli’s
path was believed to be the hostility of the Queen, who, however,
nobly atoned for it by subsequently loading him with favours. With
the exception, perhaps, of Lord Aberdeen, no Minister of the present
generation has been more sincerely beloved as a friend by his Sovereign
than Lord Beaconsfield. He had the subtle tact and the delicate
refinement of a woman, with the stubborn courage and iron will of a
man. As for his policy and his principles, the time has not yet come to
judge them fairly. He was no more to blame for bringing his generous
democratic impulses to the service of the Tory Party than the eldest
son of a Whig Peer is to blame for limping after the Radicals on the
crutch of Conservative instincts. In the one case it is the tyranny
of chance and opportunity, in the other the accident of birth, that
determines the choice. All through life Mr. Disraeli had to fight
his battle from false positions, and this gave his efforts an air of
gladiatorial insincerity. Not till 1874, when he came to power with
a large majority, was he entirely a free agent; and then it was seen
that, though comparatively indifferent to questions of administration
and questions involving the mere forms of Government, he took an eager
and practical interest in social reform. For nearly two years he was
at the zenith of his power. The House of Commons he managed with
bright urbanity, easy grace, conciliatory dexterity, and a light but
firm touch which had never been seen before. Suddenly and without the
least warning his spell seemed broken. His fine tact disappeared; his
touch grew hard and was felt to be a little irresolute; faint traces
of irritability ruffled the clear surface of his serene intelligence;
and in a sudden emergency he seemed to grow maladroit. The change first
became obvious when he attempted to deal with Mr. Plimsoll’s case
in 1875, and, as it grew, his personal ascendency over the House of
Commons slowly decayed. He seemed to live more and more in dreams, and
to grow less and less sensitive to the pulse of popular opinion. It was
in this mood that he fell into the two disastrous blunders of his life.

[Illustration: LORD BEACONSFIELD’S HOUSE, 19, CURZON STREET, MAYFAIR.]

He tried to solve the Eastern Question by applying to it the obsolete
ideas of Palmerston. When this mistake led him from one embarrassment
to another, he tried to retrieve the situation by applying his own
ideas to it. Unfortunately, when he went to find them he looked, not
into the depths of his own clear intelligence, but into a romance
written by one whom he had known in his youth, and who was styled
“D’Israeli the Younger.” “Yes,” he said to a friend who put the
question to him in those days, “I sometimes do read ‘Tancred’ now--_for
instruction_.” Because the stolid English people grew sick of vainly
trying to shape their destinies according to the Tancredian scheme of
the universe, Lord Beaconsfield fell from power at the moment when he
was most fully persuaded that monarch and multitude were alike under
the spell of his picturesque personality. Had he been ten years younger
when he obtained the majority of 1874, the crash of 1880 would probably
have been averted. There is a strange pathos in the close of this
dazzling career. According to Sir Stafford Northcote, the last words
he was understood to utter were these: “Is there any _bad_ news in the
_Gazette_?”[174]

On the 26th of April a spectacle, at once affecting and beautiful, took
place in the church at Hughenden, where Lord Beaconsfield’s funeral
was solemnised. His body had been transferred from London to High
Wycombe, and thence conveyed to Hughenden Manor, without the slightest
pomp or display of any kind. He, on whose accents the world was wont
to hang breathlessly at supreme moments in its fate, received what
is known in Bucks as “a walking funeral.” Nothing was to be seen of
the ghastly mummery of undertakers. Only one feature in the simple
obsequies gave any hint as to the place which the deceased had filled
in the State. Before the bier walked his faithful servant, carrying
on a cushion of crimson velvet an Earl’s coronet and the insignia of
the Order of the Garter. Thus was he laid, as he wished, beside his
wife. Notwithstanding his desire for privacy, nothing could prevent
vast numbers of persons of wholly unofficial position, and in many
cases indifferent to political partisanship, from attending to pay the
illustrious dead the last homage of affection and respect. Uninvited
guests in serried masses swarmed around the churchyard, and lined
the road to Hughenden Manor. Royalty was present in the persons of
the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Connaught, and Prince Leopold, the
last-named representing the Queen.[175] Behind the Princes came the
Ambassadors and representatives of foreign Powers, the friends of the
deceased nobleman who were his colleagues in the Governments of 1868
and 1874, and the general body of invited friends. Among these Lord
Beaconsfield left not a dry eye behind him. Not since the death of Fox
had any Statesman been so affectionately mourned by the people to whom
he had consecrated the powers of his brilliant genius.[176]

On the 30th of April the Queen and Princess Beatrice visited Lord
Beaconsfield’s tomb, every precaution having been observed to prevent
the fact of the Royal movements from becoming known in the district.
At four o’clock Lord Rowton and Sir Philip Rose, with the Vicar of
Hughenden, completed the arrangements for her Majesty’s reception. At
half-past four her outriders passed through the lodge gate of Hughenden
Manor, being followed rapidly by her carriage, which proceeded to the
wicket gate, and stopped immediately at the entrance to the churchyard.
Here the Queen and Princess Beatrice were received by Lord Rowton,
with whom they walked to the south porch of the church. Her Majesty
proceeded to the tomb, and, with tearful eyes, placed a votive wreath
and cross of white camellias and other flowers beside the other
offerings, which completely covered the lid of the coffin. She then
drove through the grounds to the Manor House, and partook of tea in
the saloon; after which she inspected the late Earl’s study and other
apartments, and left Hughenden for Windsor.

Although diplomatic controversies had created much ill-feeling between
the Governments of England and Russia, the Queen and the Czar had ever
maintained the friendliest personal relations. It was, therefore, with
the deepest pain that her Majesty was informed, on the 14th of March,
of the assassination of Alexander II. The Czar was returning from a
military review near St. Petersburg on Sunday, the 13th of March,
when a bomb was thrown, which exploded behind the Imperial carriage,
killing several soldiers. The Czar jumped out of the carriage to see
to the poor men who were hurt, and it was to this kindly act that he
owed his death. Another bomb was flung at his feet, which exploded and
mangled his body in the most cruel manner. The Queen did what she could
to console the Duchess of Edinburgh, who was prostrated with grief by
her father’s death. The Court was ordered to go into mourning for a
month. Both Houses of Parliament addressed messages of condolence to
her Majesty and the Duchess of Edinburgh. The nation, with hardly a
dissentient voice, echoed the sentiments of their representatives, and
the Press was filled with generous tributes of admiration and respect
for the Czar Emancipator. It was now recognised that Alexander II.
would live in history as one of the most enlightened and humane of
European Sovereigns. The great act of his life, the liberation of the
Serfs, had converted them into communal peasant proprietors, and put
them in a more secure position than any other peasantry in Europe.
His devotion to the highest interests of Russia knew no limits, and
no European Sovereign has, in our time, excelled him in the skill
and wisdom with which he guided and moderated the aspirations of his
excitable subjects. It was notorious that he was forced into the
Turkish War by a current of popular feeling he could not withstand. On
the other hand, when engaged in the war he quitted himself like a man.
Tales of his well-known kindness of heart and sympathy for suffering
spread from the camps and hospitals through Russia, and invested him in
the eyes of the Slav race with the mystic halo of a Divine Figure. His
firmness and

[Illustration: THE PRINCE OF WALES IN HIS ROBES AS A BENCHER OF THE
MIDDLE TEMPLE.

(_From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey._)]

obstinacy in pressing on the war crushed the despondent party, who
would have ended it at any price after the first disaster at Plevna.
When his policy of forcing the Balkan passes triumphed, the same
firmness and obstinacy enabled him to curb those who, flushed with
success, would have abused their victory. It was by his orders that
deference was paid to German and Austrian opinions in the settlement
of peace. It was his moderation and loyal desire to live at peace with
Britain that enabled Count Schouvaloff to build for Lord Salisbury the
golden bridge of retreat which he crossed when he signed the Secret
Agreement, that was afterwards expanded into the Treaty of Berlin.
No foreign despot ever succeeded to the same extent in winning the
personal respect of the most thoughtful portion of the British people.
The assassination of the Czar called attention to the extraordinary
destructive

[Illustration: THE PRINCESS OF WALES.

(_From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey._)]

forces which modern science had placed in the hands of the political
assassin. That the event produced a profound and prostrating effect
on the nerves of the Court was soon seen. The Queen left Windsor for
Osborne on the 6th of April, and the public were somewhat alarmed to
find that for the first time in her career precautions were taken to
protect her life, as if she were a despot travelling amidst a people
who thirsted for her blood. The Royal train was not only as usual
preceded by a pilot engine, but orders had been given to station
patrols of platelayers, each within sight of the other, along the
whole line. Every watchman was provided with flags and fog signals, so
that on the least suspicion the train could be stopped. The time of
the Queen’s departure had been announced for Tuesday. It was at the
last moment altered to Wednesday. When she arrived at Portsmouth, the
_Alberta_, in which it was supposed she was to embark, was discarded
for the _Enchantress_, which was suddenly ordered up; and from these
and other circumstances it was inferred that the Queen was afraid she
might be made the victim of a dark plot like that to which the Czar had
succumbed. Fenianism, indeed, was beginning to raise its head again in
Ireland under the stimulating application of repressive measures. Soon
afterwards attempts which were made to blow up the Mansion House and
the Liverpool Town Hall indicated that there was some justification for
the Queen’s alarm.

Court life was not so dull during 1881 as it had been in previous
years. The Queen was ever flitting to and fro between Windsor and
Osborne, and almost every month during the season she held a Drawing
Room in Buckingham Palace. State Concerts were not infrequent, and
on the 17th of May the King and Queen of Sweden visited Windsor, and
the King was invested with the Order of the Garter. On the 20th the
Queen left Windsor and proceeded to Balmoral; and on the 24th it was
announced that she had determined to revive the ancient Scottish title
of Duke of Albany and confer it on Prince Leopold. It was a title of
evil omen. The fate of the first prince who bore it supplies a dark
and tragic episode to Scott’s “Fair Maid of Perth.” The second Duke
of Albany died on the castle hill of Stirling. When conferred on the
second son of James II. of Scotland it soon became extinct. Darnley
wore it before he was married to Mary Stuart. The second son of James
VI. and the second son of Charles I. bore it. Charles Edward Stuart was
long known as Count of Albany. It was conferred on Prince Frederick,
the second son of George II. Prince Leopold had, by his thoughtful and
sagacious speeches in public, attracted to himself much admiration,
and his feeble health and devotion to his mother had made him the
object of kindly popular sympathy. The announcement of his elevation
was therefore hailed with some expression of regret that he should
be doomed to wear a title that had invariably brought ill-luck or
misfortune to those on whom it was conferred.

On the 22nd of June the Queen returned to Windsor, where she was
visited by the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany and their family
in July. A brilliant Review of 50,000 Volunteers was held before her
on the 9th of July in Windsor Great Park. On the 18th her Majesty lost
one of the most cherished friends of her family, the amiable Dean
Stanley, who died somewhat suddenly of erysipelas. Dean Stanley, it
has been well said, was the impersonation of the “sweetness and light”
which the disciples of Mr. Matthew Arnold strive to impart to modern
culture. His biography of the great Dr. Arnold has an assured place
among the classical works of the Victorian age. His influence on the
Anglican Church was that of a leader at once conciliatory and tolerant,
and singularly susceptible to popular impulses and aspirations. His
relations to the Royal Family were always close and intimate, and,
as the husband of Lady Augusta Bruce, the Queen’s faithful personal
friend and attendant for many years, his career was watched with great
interest and sympathy by her Majesty. Churchmen and dissenters of all
shades attended his funeral in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried
in Henry VII.’s Chapel under a mountain of floral wreaths, one of the
most superb being sent by the Queen. It was through Dean Stanley that
the Queen made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Carlyle, who had died
earlier in the year (the 5th of February), but without leaving behind
him the sweet and sunny memories that cluster round Stanley’s name.

On the 24th of August the Queen arrived at Edinburgh, and took up her
quarters at Holyrood Palace. In the afternoon she visited the Royal
Infirmary, and on the following day she reviewed 40,000 Scottish
Volunteers (who had come from the remotest parts of the country) in
the great natural amphitheatre of the Queen’s Park. The spectacle was
marred by the torrents of rain that fell all day, and the troops had to
march past the saluting-point in a sea of slush and mud which reached
nearly to their knees. The fine appearance and discipline of the men,
the patience and hardihood with which they carried out their programme
through all the miseries of the day, deeply touched the Queen. In
spite of entreaties to the contrary, she persisted in sharing these
discomforts with them, holding the review in an open carriage, in which
she remained seated under a deluge of rain till the last regiment had
defiled before her. From Edinburgh the Court proceeded to Balmoral.
There the Queen received the melancholy news of the death of Mr. James
A. Garfield, President of the United States, who had been shot by an
assassin named Guiteau on the 2nd of July at the railway station at
Washington. The wound was a mortal one, and, after lingering for many
weeks in great pain, the President died on the 19th of September. The
Queen sent a touching letter of sympathy to Mrs. Garfield, and ordered
the Court to go into mourning, as if Mr. Garfield had been a member
of the Royal caste. In this she had the concurrence of the people,
who were profoundly moved by his tragic fate. His career, beginning
in a log-hut in the backwoods of Ohio, and ending in the White House
at Washington, was one of heroic achievement and independence,
illustrating, in its various phases of vicissitude, the best qualities
of Anglo-Saxon manhood.

At Balmoral the Royal holiday was marked by the appearance of the Queen
at some of the local sports. The Prince and Princess of Wales were at
Abergeldie, and the retainers of the two families were frequently in
the habit of playing cricket matches with each other. One of these
took place at Abergeldie in September, when the Queen and her family
and a brilliant suite attended and witnessed the play, her Majesty
taking a keen interest in the varying fortunes of the day, and eagerly
stimulating her own people to strive for victory. After the cricket
match there were “tugs of war.” In this struggle the Abergeldie team,
who had lost the cricket match, retrieved their defeat by conquering
the Queen’s retainers. On the 23rd of November the Court returned to
Windsor, and soon afterwards it was announced that the Duke of Albany
was to be married to the Princess Hélène of Waldeck-Pyrmont. On the
16th of December her Majesty left Windsor for Osborne.

The political movements of the Recess had been followed with growing
anxiety by the Queen. Bye-elections and municipal elections seemed
to show, not only that the hold of the Government on the country was
becoming feebler, but that a working alliance between the Tories and
the Irish Party had been formed. Mr. Parnell’s followers had been
divided in opinion as to how they should treat the Land Act, some
declaring that they should impede its working, others urging that every
advantage should be taken of it. Mr. Parnell, after some hesitancy,
united his Party on the policy of “testing” the Act. The Land League
was directed to push into the Land Courts a series of “test cases,”
that is to say, of cases where average rents were levied, so that a
clear idea might be gained of the practical working of the Act. At
the same time, the Irish people were led to believe that, unless the
Act reduced the rent of Ireland from £17,000,000 to £3,000,000, that
is to say, unless it reduced rent to “prairie value,” it would not do
justice. The tenantry were warned by the Land League not to go into
Court, but to stand aside till the decisions on the test cases were
given. When Mr. Gladstone visited Leeds in the first week of October,
he fiercely attacked Mr. Parnell for interfering between the tenants
and the Law Courts. Mr. Parnell retorted in an acrid and contemptuous
speech at Wexford on the 9th of October. On the 13th of October Mr.
Parnell was arrested in Dublin as a “suspect” under the Coercion Act,
and all his more prominent followers were in quick succession lodged
in Kilmainham Jail. Mr. Healy was in England, and Mr. Biggar and Mr.
Arthur O’Connor escaped the vigilance of the police and joined him.
This _coup d’état_ was somewhat theatrically contrived. It was so timed
that Mr. Gladstone was able to announce it at a municipal banquet at
the Guildhall, where he declared that the enemy had fallen, amidst
rapturous shouts of applause. The Land Leaguers retaliated by issuing
a manifesto to the Irish people to pay no rent whilst their leaders
were in prison--a false step, for, in view of the opposition of the
clergy, a strike against rent was not feasible. The Land League was
then suppressed by Mr. Forster as an unlawful association, and agrarian
outrages began to increase every day. According to the Nationalists,
this was the natural and necessary result of locking up popular
leaders, who could alone restrain the people. Mr. Forster, however,
regarded the growth of the outrages as an act of vengeance on the part
of the League, whose leaders secretly encouraged them. In Ulster,
however, the Land Act worked well, and rents were reduced from 20 to 30
per cent. all round. Every week fresh drafts of “suspects” were lodged
in jail, and as the year closed it became evident that Ireland was fast
falling under the terrorism of the old secret societies.

[Illustration: THE ROYAL FAMILY IN THE HIGHLANDS: TUG OF WAR--BALMORAL
v. ABERGELDIE.]

CHAPTER XXV.

ENGLAND IN EGYPT.

The Duke of Albany’s Marriage Announced--Mr. Bradlaugh
Again--Procedure Reform--The Closure at Last--The Peers Co-operate
with the Parnellites--Their Attacks on the Land Act--Mr.
Forster’s Policy of “Thorough”--A Nation under Arrest--Increase
in Outrages--Sir J. D. Hay and Mr. W. H. Smith bid for the
Parnellite Vote--A Political Dutch Auction--The Radicals Outbid
the Tories--Release of Mr. Parnell and the Suspects--The
Kilmainham Treaty--Victory of Mr. Chamberlain--Resignation of Mr.
Forster and Lord Cowper--The Tragedy in the Phœnix Park--Ireland
Under Lord Spencer--Firm and Resolute Government--Coercion
Revived--The Arrears Bill--The Budget--England in Egypt--How
Ismail Pasha “Kissed the Carpet”--Spoiling the Egyptians--Mr.
Goschen’s Scheme for Collecting the Debt--The Dual Control--The
Ascendency of France--“Egypt for the Egyptians”--The Rule of
Arabi--Riots in Alexandria--The Egyptian War--Murder of Professor
Palmer--British Occupation of Egypt--The Queen’s Monument to Lord
Beaconsfield--Attempt to Assassinate Her Majesty--The Queen’s Visit
to Mentone--Marriage of the Duke of Albany.

The Parliament of 1882 was opened on the 7th of February, and
the Queen’s Speech announced the approaching marriage of the
Duke of Albany. Foreign affairs were hopefully touched on. Local
self-government, London municipal reform, bankruptcy reform, corrupt
practices at elections, the conservancy of rivers, and the codification
of the Criminal Law, were the subjects of promised legislation. Very
early in the Session Mr. Bradlaugh renewed his attempt to take the
Parliamentary Oath, but was again excluded from the precincts of the
House by a resolution moved by Sir Stafford Northcote. On the 21st of
February the House refused to issue a new writ for Northampton, and Mr.
Bradlaugh, after the division, proceeded to swear himself in at the
Clerk’s table. Sir Stafford Northcote accordingly moved and carried a
resolution expelling him from the House. This caused a fresh election
to be held at Northampton, the result of which was that Mr. Bradlaugh
was again returned by a triumphant majority. On the 6th of March Sir
Stafford Northcote proposed a resolution excluding Mr. Bradlaugh from
the precincts of the House, and then, sated with its saturnalia of
intolerance, the Opposition permitted Ministers to get on with the most
pressing question of the hour--the reform of Procedure. The proposals
of the Government were, in the main, identical with those which the
Speaker had designed to defeat obstruction in the previous Session;
but they were to be of permanent application, and not dependent on
the carrying of a vote of urgency. It was provided that a debate
might be closed, on the Speaker’s initiation, by a bare majority,
only there must, in that case, be at least two hundred Members voting
in favour of closure if as many as forty members opposed it; but if
fewer than forty opposed, at least one hundred would be required
to carry it. Non-contentious business relating to Law and Commerce
might be delegated to two Grand Committees. The Tories objected to
closure by a bare majority, and they fortunately found a Liberal--Mr.
Marriott, Q.C.--to move an amendment to this part of Mr. Gladstone’s
plan, and the debate began on the 20th of February. In the meantime
the Irish Home Rulers, who had not scrupled to impede the working
of the Land Act, found unexpected allies in the Conservative Peers.
They attacked the Act as a failure, and carried a motion appointing
a hostile Committee to inquire into its working. It has always been
the practice of the Peers, when they dared not cut down the plant of
Reform, to insist on pulling it up to see if its roots were growing,
and in this case their strategy was ingeniously adapted to suit the
policy of obstruction in the Commons. It was necessary to neutralise
the hostile vote of the Peers by a Resolution in the Commons condemning
the proposed inquiry as mischievous; and, though this was carried, it
gave the Tory and Parnellite opponents of the Government an excellent
chance of wasting time by re-opening and discussing the whole Irish
Land Question. The Procedure debates were thus suspended for about a
month, Mr. Marriott’s amendment being rejected on the 30th of March.
Negotiations for a compromise between Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr.
Gladstone were interrupted by a catastrophe which revolutionised the
Irish policy of the Government, namely, the murder of Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Mr. Thomas Burke in the Phœnix Park, Dublin.

During the first two months of the Session the Irish Party vied
with the Conservatives in assailing the Land Act. Radicals began to
murmur against the development of Mr. Forster’s coercive policy,
every incident and detail of which was subjected by the Irish Members
to bitter criticism and violent denunciation. In the meantime, Mr.
Forster’s scheme for pacifying Ireland was not prospering, and it
was seen that he had made a fatal mistake when he pledged himself to
suppress agitation, if he were only empowered to arrest the leading
agitators. From the day they were imprisoned, Ireland drifted towards
anarchy and terrorism. Then the experiment was tried of arresting, not
only the leaders, but their lieutenants. Finally Mr. Forster crowded
the prisons with the rank and file of the Home Rule host. Men began
to wonder whether the gaol accommodation of Ireland was adequate for
Mr. Forster’s policy. But the more people he put in prison the worse
the country grew, the more did evictions increase, and the less rent
was paid. A bid for the Irish vote was now made by the Tories. They
put up Sir John Hay to move that the detention of the “suspects” was
“repugnant to the spirit of the Constitution.” Through Mr. W. H. Smith,
in one of the debates on the Land Act, they offered the Nationalists
a scheme for buying out the landlords at the expense of the State,
and establishing peasant proprietorship in Ireland, such as had
been advocated by Mr. Davitt and Mr. Parnell. It was clear that the
Tory-Parnellite alliance was becoming a formidable combination, and
the Radicals urged the Government to make terms with the Nationalist
Party whilst there was yet time. But Mr. Gladstone hesitated, and
then the Radicals moved without him. An intrigue, instigated by Mr.
Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, was set on foot to get Mr. Forster
removed from his place as Irish Secretary. Through Captain O’Shea as
an intermediary, Mr. Parnell was approached. He had certainly seen
with alarm the increase in evictions, and knew that if the struggle
were prolonged the financial resources of the Leaguers must fail them.
He was, therefore, disposed to come to terms. Letters were exchanged,
in one of which Mr. Parnell said that a promise to deal with the
question of arrears would do much to bring peace to Ireland, for the
Nationalists would then be able to exert themselves, with some hope
of success, in stopping outrages. But the Land Act would have to be
extended to leaseholders, and the Purchase Clauses enlarged. If this
programme were carried out, wrote Mr. Parnell on the 28th of August
to Captain O’Shea, it “would enable us to co-operate cordially for
the future with the Liberal Party in forwarding Liberal principles;
and I believe that the Government at the end of the Session would,
from the state of the country, feel themselves thoroughly justified in
dispensing with future coercive measures.” This letter was shown to
Mr. Forster, and it seems that the Cabinet was also put in possession
of Mr. Parnell’s views. Mr. Forster was not of opinion that they
justified his release. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke thought
that they displayed a reasonable spirit which would justify a new
departure of conciliation in Irish policy. Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon,
Mr. Davitt, and the other suspects were therefore released, and Lord
Cowper, the Irish Viceroy, and Mr. Forster resigned office. Mr.
Forster was of opinion that Mr. Parnell should have been compelled
to promise publicly not to resist the law, or failing that, that a
stronger Coercion Act should have been passed before he was set at
liberty. Lord Spencer was appointed to succeed Lord Cowper, and Lord
Frederick Cavendish succeeded Mr. Forster as Chief Secretary. On
the 6th of May, within forty-eight hours of their appointment, Lord
Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke, the Under-secretary for Ireland,
were butchered by a band of assassins in broad daylight in the Phœnix
Park, Dublin. Mr. Forster, in fact, had allowed a secret society of
assassins, calling themselves “Invincibles,” to organise itself at his
own doors, whilst he was scouring the country far and wide to arrest
and imprison the patriotic but respectable _bourgeoisie_ of Ireland as
suspects. In his speech condemning the release of the suspects, whilst
he maintained that Ireland was not yet quiet, he had declared that the
country was quieter than it had been, that the Land League was crushed,
and boycotting checked! He had never suspected that the place of the
Land League had been taken by a secret society of desperadoes called
the “Invincibles” and that assassination was to be substituted for
boycotting. His administration had been indeed singularly ineffective.
With power in his hands, as absolute as that of a Russian Minister of
Police, he seems never to have suspected the existence of the band of
murderers who had organised themselves in Dublin, and who had dogged
his own steps in sight of the detectives who watched over him day after
day seeking for a chance of slaying him. This tragic event upset the
scheme for “a new departure,” which Mr. Chamberlain had induced the
Government to essay. Though Englishmen behaved with great calmness and
self-restraint after the first shock of horror which the Phœnix Park
murders sent through the nation had passed away, they were resolved to
offer no more concessions to Ireland till the Government took fresh
powers for enforcing law and suppressing outrages. Mr. Gladstone
interpreted the national will accurately when he determined not to
withdraw the conciliatory portion of his Irish programme. But he recast
his plans, and gave his coercive precedence over his remedial measures.

[Illustration: LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH.

(_From a Photograph by the London Stereoscopic Company._)]

The Irish Party were probably sincere in regretting and in condemning
the murders. The _prestige_ of their Parliamentary policy was
sullied when it ended in a new Coercion Bill for Ireland, and in the
demonstration of their impotence to control the forces which they
pretended to have in hand. The Tories and Ministerialists were alike
discredited by the untoward mishap. The alliance between the Tory Party
and the Home Rulers had influenced every Parliamentary bye-election
and every division in the House of Commons. The motion of Sir John Hay
condemning the imprisonment of the “suspects” and the offer of Mr.
W. H. Smith’s scheme for expropriating the landlords were palpable
bids for the Parnellite vote. By releasing the “suspects,” promising
to deal with the question of arrears, and to take the Land Purchase
Question in hand, the Ministry outbade their rivals. But the Opposition
and the Cabinet were alike guilty of intriguing and negotiating with
men whom in people they pretended to denounce as irreconcilable
enemies of the Empire; and the end of it all was the tragedy in the
Phœnix Park! That affair had only a coincidental relation to the
antecedent Party intrigues; but the people saw connection where there
was only coincidence. Hence Englishmen for a time lost faith in their
public men. They felt towards them as their forefathers did towards
Charles I. when the Glamorgan Treaty was revealed, and towards Lord
Melbourne and Lord John Russell when the “Lichfield House” compact
between O’Connell and the Whigs was unmasked. For a time this feeling
cowed partisans below the gangway on both sides who had been mainly
responsible for the negotiations and intrigues with the Home Rulers.
The Government tried to atone for its misfortune by continuing Lord
Spencer as Irish Viceroy and appointing Mr. George Otto Trevelyan as
Irish Secretary, Lord Spencer to be entirely responsible for Irish
policy in the Cabinet. This was the best possible selection that could
be made. Lord Spencer represented the type of Englishman who, from
his courage, common sense, love of justice, business-like habits,
administrative skill, and disinterested patriotism, was most likely to
establish an enduring and endurable system in Ireland, if that were
to be done by firm and resolute government tempered by strong popular
sympathies. Mr. Trevelyan was patient, industrious, and courteous as
an administrator, and his success as a man of letters rendered him in
some degree a _persona grata_ to the Irish Party, most of whose leaders
were writers for the Press. The new Coercion Bill was introduced on
the 11th of May, and read a second time on the 19th. It suspended
trial by jury in certain cases and in proclaimed districts; gave the
police fresh powers of arrest and search, and revived the Alien Act;
it defined as punishable offences intimidation, incitement to crime,
and participation in secret conspiracies and illegal assemblies; it
rendered newspapers liable to suppression for inciting to violence,
widened the summary jurisdiction of stipendiary magistrates, and levied
fines of compensation on districts stained with murderous outrages. It
was at once seen that the chief merit of the Bill lay in the fact that
it frankly attacked and punished criminals, thereby reversing, and by
implication condemning, the feeble and futile policy of Mr. Forster,
who attacked and imprisoned at will persons who were merely suspected
of crime or of inciting to crime. Great doubts were expressed as to
the utility of the Press clauses, Englishmen who are not political
partisans being at all times sceptical as to the good that is done
by suppressing newspapers and bottling up all their evil teaching in
private manifestoes for secret circulation in disaffected districts.
Some Radicals also thought the powers of arrest after nightfall given
to the police were rather vague, and suggested too painfully a revival
of Mr. Forster’s fatal principle of coercion on suspicion. But, on the
whole, the Bill was well received by the best men of both parties, the
responsible Tory leaders giving the Government much loyal support,
though some of their followers carped at the measure.[177] The Bill was
obstructed in the usual manner by the Irish Members, who had but few
Radical allies. On the 16th of June only seven clauses out of thirty
had gone through Committee. On the 29th it was clear a crisis had come,
and on the 30th there was a disorderly all-night sitting, which ended
in the suspension of sixteen Irish Members. Later in the day nine
others were suspended, and, after sitting for twenty-eight hours, the
Bill passed through Committee. Urgency was voted for its next stages,
and the Bill read a third time on the 7th of July. The Lords passed it
promptly, and it became law on the 12th of July.

Along with the Coercion Bill the promised Arrears Bill was introduced,
and read a second time before Whitsuntide. It applied to holdings under
£30 of rental, and empowered the Land Courts to pay half the arrears
of poor tenants out of the Irish Church Surplus--but no payment was
to exceed a year’s rent, and all past arrears were to be cancelled.
After prolonged opposition from the Conservatives and from the House
of Lords, the measure was passed on the 10th of August. These Bills
exhausted the legislative energies of the Government; indeed, Mr.
Fawcett’s Bill establishing a Parcel Post, and Mr. Chamberlain’s
Bill enabling corporations to adopt Electric Lighting by obtaining
provisional orders from the Board of Trade, were the only measures
that had not to be abandoned. The Budget estimated expenditure at
£84,630,000 and revenue at £84,935,000, a reduction of between £900,000
and £800,000 respectively on the preceding year’s disbursements and
receipts. The surplus was small. The revenue was stagnant, and there
was no scope for fiscal changes. A Vote of Credit for the Egyptian
Expedition had to be provided, which caused Mr. Gladstone to raise the
Income Tax to 6¾d. in the pound.

The Egyptian difficulty, in fact, during this Session, became acute.
It was seized by the Fourth Party as a peg on which to hang an endless
series of questions to the Government, of an embarrassing character.
From questioning, Lord Randolph Churchill proceeded to wage an
irregular guerilla warfare, most harassing to Ministers engaged in
delicate diplomatic negotiations on which depended the issues of peace
and war. In this unusual course he and his friends were supported by
Mr. Chaplin and Lord Percy, and aided by many fiery assaults made
by Lord Salisbury. Sir Stafford Northcote and the majority of the
ex-Ministers in the House of Commons disapproved, at first, of tactics
which seemed to them an unprecedented violation of the decencies of
English party warfare. But Sir Stafford’s reserve and prudence, though
appreciated by the country, were so distasteful to his followers that
ere the Session ended he found he had to submit to be their instrument
in using the foreign complications of the nation for the interests
of faction. Had he refused, the combatant section of his followers
would have rebelled against his authority. It was part of the irony
of the situation that the Egyptian difficulty was one of the evil
legacies which the Foreign Policy of the Tory Party in 1879-1880
left the country to deal with. In fact, the Egyptian crisis of 1882
was the logical consequence of the system of Dual Control with which
Lord Salisbury had afflicted Egypt when he went into partnership with
France in managing the finances of that country for the benefit of its
usurious foreign creditors. It was in 1866 that Ismail Pasha took the
first step that gradually led to his downfall. To use his own phrase,
he “kissed the carpet” at Constantinople--in other words, bribed the
Porte to grant him the title of Khedive and confirm the succession of
the Pashalik in his family. Again and again did he “kiss the carpet,”
till in 1872 he was practically an independent Sovereign wielding
absolute personal power over Egypt--the suzerainty of Turkey being
marked only by the annual tribute, the Imperial cypher on the coinage,
the weekly prayer for the Sultan in the Mosque, and the preservation of
the _jus legationis_. In 1875 he abolished the Consular Courts before
which suits between Egyptians and foreigners were tried, substituting
for them the Mixed Tribunals on which representative judges of the
Great Powers sat. At this period the crop of financial wild oats which
Ismail Pasha had sown had ripened. He had spent money lavishly not only
on the Suez Canal, but on every conceivable scheme that wily European
speculators could persuade him was an improvement. He had borrowed
this money on the principles that regulate the financial transactions
of a rich young spendthrift and a usurer of the lowest class. In 1864
he borrowed £5,700,000. In the succeeding years loans for £3,000,000,
£1,200,000, and £2,000,000 were added. In 1873 there was another
loan for £32,000,000--which, according to Mr. Cave, swallowed up
every resource of Egypt.[178] The Khedive’s private loans came to
£11,000,000, and the floating debt to £26,000,000 in 1876. How these
last loans were to be met, seeing that the 1873 loan swallowed up all
the resources of the country, was a perplexing point. The usurers would
lend the Khedive no more money, and in 1875 England helped him to meet
the interest on existing loans by giving him £4,000,000 for the Suez
Canal Shares.

[Illustration: THE KARMOUS SUBURB, ALEXANDRIA, AND POMPEY’S PILLAR.]

Something might have been done for Egypt, even at this time, if England
had occupied the country; but Mr. Disraeli lost the golden opportunity,
which did not return till France and Russia were in a position to offer
an effective resistance which could not be bought off. The Khedive
appealed for money to England, and Mr. Disraeli sent Mr. Cave to report
upon his affairs. Mr. Cave said in effect that it was impossible to
help the Khedive with money unless Englishmen were prepared to lose
it. That report, however, did not touch the position of those who held
with Mr. Edward Dicey that if England could establish a Protectorate in
Egypt, and administer her affairs like an Indian Native State, it would
be quite possible to extricate her from her financial difficulties
without inflicting injustice on her creditors. In the meantime, the
foreign bondholders sued the Khedive in his own Mixed Tribunals. They
got judgment against him, but were unable to execute it. In May, 1876,
his Highness met this judgment by a decree of repudiation, whereupon
Germany indignantly protested, and France and England followed suit on
behalf of the bondholders of their respective nationalities. It was
here that Lord Salisbury first left the traditional lines of sound
Foreign Policy. He interfered in Egypt, not on the ground that national
interests had to be safeguarded, but--like Lord Palmerston in the case
of Greece--to protect the interests of a few speculative individuals
who had a bad debt to collect from Ismail Pasha. British national
interests in Egypt, when really imperilled, can only be protected
effectively in one way--by the occupation of the country, or its
administration under a British Protectorate. They cannot be protected
by entering into an ambiguous partnership for regulating the Khedive’s
finances with Powers whose interests in Egypt are not national, but are
represented by those of their subjects who have lent Egypt money on bad
security. The Imperial interests of England demand that the government
of Egypt shall be good and effective all round, so that the highway to
India shall be through an orderly and contented people. The interests
of the other Powers demand that the government of Egypt, whether good
or bad, must be such as will enable her to give the Shylocks, whom they
represent, their pound of flesh. It was for the interest of England to
aim at a Protectorate, just as it was for the interests of the other
Powers to aim merely at obtaining financial control over Egypt; and the
fatal blunder which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury made was in
identifying England, not with British, but with foreign interests in
Egypt. The French and English bondholders could not agree on the steps
which should be taken to extort their money from the overtaxed Egyptian
peasantry; and Mr. Goschen and M. Joubert were sent out to devise a
scheme for consolidating the Egyptian debt in the common interests of
all bondholders. By estimating the annual average revenue which could
be extracted from the wretched fellaheen at £12,000,000 instead of
£8,000,000, which would have been high enough, the Goschen-Joubert
scheme showed in 1876 that the Khedive could pay, as interest and
sinking fund, seven per cent. interest on a consolidated debt of
£100,000,000. Ismail agreed to pay this at first, but soon resisted,
on the ground that the estimate of revenue was erroneous. The French
Government then determined to appoint a Commission to investigate the
resources of Egypt, which England was induced to join. This Commission
reported that as the Khedive had appropriated to himself one-fifth of
the land of Egypt,[179] the first thing he should do was to hand a
million acres of it over to the creditors of the State.

The Khedive now formed a Ministry under Nubar Pasha, in which Mr.
Rivers Wilson, the English Commissioner, was given the Ministry of
Finance. The French Government displayed so much jealousy of this
step, that Lord Salisbury, yielding to their demands, permitted the
Khedive to appoint M. de Blignières as Mr. Wilson’s colleague. This
was the beginning of the Dual Control of Egypt by two Governments
with opposite interests, from which all subsequent mischief arose.
The Khedive soon dismissed Nubar’s Ministry, and then France and
England, on the threat of Germany to interfere, arranged with the
Sultan to depose Ismail Pasha. He was succeeded by his son Tewfik, in
whose Ministry the care of finance was entrusted to M. de Blignières
and Mr. Baring, who was afterwards succeeded by Mr. Colvin. The effect
of the Dual Control was very simple. It increased the bureaucracy
but diminished its efficiency, for wherever an English official was
appointed M. de Blignières insisted on planting a French colleague by
his side to watch and hamper him. A similar vigilance was exhibited
by the English Controller. But above the Dual Ministry of Finance
there was established the International Commission of the Public
Debt, representing England, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. This
Commission watched over the administration of the Dual Ministry of
Finance. It was entitled, if it could agree on a course of action, to
demand from the Ministry of Finance more efficient management, and
of course it distributed the sum handed over by that Ministry for
payment of the public creditors. The French and English Ministers or
Controllers of Finance were not removable save by consent of their
Governments. They had the right to seats in the Ministerial Council,
and to advise on all measures of general importance. As nothing can
be done in Egypt without money, nothing could be done without them. At
first, Major Baring was the most active of the controllers. But he was
removed, and Mr. Colvin, who took his place, played a subordinate part
to M. de Blignières, who had more experience and force of character.
Virtually De Blignières governed the country. History does not record
the occasion on which England as a Great Power occupied a position more
ignominious than the one she now held in. Egypt, where her influence
had been paramount till Lord Salisbury consented to share it with
France. The government of the Dual Control was conducted on simple
principles. Egypt was managed not for the Egyptians, but for the
bondholders. Everything and everybody were sacrificed for the Budget,
and the Budget was constructed primarily with a view to securing the
Debt and the payment of the European officials, who swarmed over the
land like locusts. At the time when Cyprus was occupied it must now be
stated that Lord Salisbury conciliated France, ever

[Illustration: AHMED ARABI PASHA.

(_From the Portrait by Frederick Villiers in A. M. Broadley’s “How we
Defended Arabi and his Friends.”_)]

jealous of her Syrian interests, by supporting an extension of her
influence in Tunis. Tunis, however, in 1881 had, in spite of protests
from England and Italy, become simply a French dependency, and the
growing power of Blignières at Cairo forced acute observers to say of
Egypt--

“Mutato nomine, de te
Fabula narratur.”

The natives now grew restless under the Dual Control, and this
restlessness ended in a military revolt, headed by Colonel Arabi Bey,
whose watchword was

[Illustration: LORD WOLSELEY.

(_From a Photograph by Fradelle and Young._)]

“Egypt for the Egyptians.” This rising the Khedive pacified by
dismissing the Ministry of Riaz Pasha, who was succeeded by Cherif
Pasha. But though Cherif reigned Arabi ruled, and it soon became
evident that the partners in the Dual Control could not agree on the
course that should be adopted towards him. The Egyptian Assembly of
Notables, on the 18th of January, 1882, asserted their right to
control the Budget. The French and English Controllers disputed this
right, and then a new Ministry was formed, of which Mahmoud Samy was
the nominal, but Arabi Bey, now Minister of War, the real head. M.
Gambetta, who had vainly endeavoured to induce England to join France
in coercing Arabi and the national party, fell from power; M. de
Freycinet succeeded him, and his policy was one of non-intervention.
The Chamber of Notables refused to withdraw from their position. M.
de Blignières, finding he could get no support from M. de Freycinet,
resigned, and thus ended Lord Salisbury’s experiment of the Dual
Control. Arabi was loaded with decorations. The rank and title of Pasha
were given him, and he was virtually Dictator of the country, with
no policy save that of “Egypt for the Egyptians.” Alarmed by menaced
massacres of foreigners, France and England now sent their fleets to
Alexandria. The English and French Consuls, in a Joint Note to the
Khedive, advised the expulsion of Arabi, who had been intriguing with
the Bedouins. Arabi resigned, but no new Ministry could be formed, and
the army threatened to repudiate any authority save that of the Sultan,
who sent Dervish Pasha to quiet the country. On the 11th of June there
was a riot in Alexandria; the British Consul was injured, and many
French and English subjects were slain. This was the signal for a
stampede of the terrified foreign population of Alexandria, where the
Khedive held his Court, and of Cairo. A Cabinet, patronised by Germany
and Austria, under Ragheb Pasha, was formed; but Arabi was again
Minister of War. In July Arabi ostentatiously strengthened the forts of
Alexandria, but on the 10th Sir Beauchamp Seymour warned him that if
the forts were not surrendered for disarmament, they would be bombarded
by the British fleet. The French Government refused to join in this
coercive measure, and sent their ships to Port Said. On the 11th the
fortifications were shattered by the British cannonade; but as the town
was not occupied, it was seized by a fanatical mob, who wrought havoc
in it for two days. A force was then tardily landed by Admiral Seymour,
who restored order, and brought back the Khedive from Ramleh, where he
had fled, to Ras-el-tin. Arabi and the Egyptian army had taken up an
entrenched position at Tel-el-Kebir, but were still professedly acting
in the Khedive’s name. An English military expedition, under Sir Garnet
Wolseley, was sent to disperse them, and secure the protection of the
Canal.

A diplomatic mission under Professor Palmer of Cambridge, an
accomplished Oriental scholar, who had acquired a great personal
influence over the tribes of the Sinai, was sent to detach the Bedouins
from Arabi, and engage them to assist in defending the Canal. The
other members of the mission were Lieutenant Charrington, R.N., and
Captain Gill, R.E., officers with a record of distinguished service
which fitted them for their hazardous employment. They had no military
escort, because the presence of one would have rendered their mission
hopeless. A reconnaissance conducted with great skill by Professor
Palmer, who travelled from Joppa through the Sinai desert disguised as
a Syrian Mahometan of rank, had given every promise of success. But
the members of the expedition were led by a treacherous guide into an
ambuscade soon after starting from the Wells of Moses, and murdered
and robbed by a band of brigands[180] (10th of August). But despite
this melancholy occurrence the safety of the Canal was secured. By a
movement conducted in swift secrecy Sir Garnet Wolseley sailed with his
force from Alexandria to Ismailia on the 19th of August, his plan being
to advance on Cairo by the Freshwater Canal. On the 28th Arabi, after
a repulse at Kassassin, retired to his entrenchments at Tel-el-Kebir,
which were carried by the British, on the 13th of September, after a
long march by night over the desert sands. General Drury Lowe and a
small force of cavalry pushed on to Cairo, which surrendered to them at
the first summons, Arabi Pasha and Toulba Pasha, his lieutenant, giving
themselves up as prisoners. The Khedive was reinstated in Cairo by the
British troops, who were paraded before him on the 30th of September.

By a unique stroke of fortune, Mr. Gladstone’s Government had thus
been enabled to secure for England the position of ascendency in Egypt
which had been sacrificed by the Dual Control. France and the other
Powers, having cast on England the burden of supporting the Khedive’s
authority, had to accept a _fait accompli_, and submit to see a
British army of occupation of 10,000 men quartered in Egypt. But the
occupation was emphatically declared by Mr. Gladstone to be temporary,
and he pledged England to terminate it whenever the Khedive could
maintain himself without foreign aid. The war cost England £4,600,000,
and it did much to restore for the time the waning popularity of the
Ministry. Rewards and decorations were showered upon the victors.
Peerages were bestowed on Admiral Sir Beauchamp Seymour and Sir Garnet
Wolseley. As for Egypt, her Government was really under the control
of the British Consul-General. England forbade the restoration of the
Dual Control, and set limits to the organisation of the native Army.
The native Police was put under the command of Baker Pasha, and the
English Government rescued Arabi and the leaders of the insurgents from
the native court-martial, which would have doomed them to death. When
tried, they pleaded guilty to a charge of treason, and were exiled to
Ceylon.

On the 27th of February a monument, which the Queen had commissioned
Mr. Belt to prepare for the perpetuation of the memory of Lord
Beaconsfield, was erected in Hughenden Church. It was a touching
record of rare friendship between Sovereign and subject. The centre of
the memorial is occupied by a profile portrait carved in low relief.
Beneath, is a tablet bearing the following dedication penned by the
Queen herself:--

To
the dear and honoured Memory
of
BENJAMIN, EARL OF BEACONSFIELD,
This memorial is placed by
his grateful and affectionate
Sovereign and Friend,
VICTORIA R.I.
“Kings love him that speaketh right.”--Proverbs xvi. 13.

February 27, 1882.

[Illustration: THE DUCHESS OF ALBANY.]

The year was marked by an attempt to assassinate the Queen, which
created much public alarm. On the 2nd of March her Majesty was driving
from Windsor Station to the Castle, when a poorly-dressed man shot at
her carriage with a revolver. Before he could fire again a bystander
struck down his arm and he was arrested. He was a grocer’s assistant
from Portsmouth, named Roderick Maclean; his excuse was that he was
starving, and he probably desired to draw attention to his case. He
was tried next month at Reading Assizes, where it was shown that he
had been under treatment as a lunatic for two years in an asylum in
Weston-super-Mare, but had been dismissed cured. He was acquitted on
the ground of insanity, and ordered to be placed in custody during her
Majesty’s pleasure. The sympathy which was expressed by all classes
with the Queen, when tidings of the outrage were published, was
universal. On the night of Maclean’s arrest the National Anthem was
sung in all the theatres, and from every quarter messages came pouring
in congratulating her Majesty on her escape. These demonstrations
caused her to address a touching letter of heartfelt thanks to the
nation.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF ALBANY.]

Another outrage on the Queen has to be set down in the record of 1882.
On the 26th of May a young telegraph clerk, named Albert Young, was
tried before Mr. Justice Lopes, and found guilty of threatening to
murder the Queen and Prince Leopold. He sent a letter, purporting to
come from an Irish Roman Catholic priest and fifty of his parishioners
who had been evicted by their landlords, warning the Queen of her
peril, and saying that if paid £40 a head these men would all emigrate.
The money was to be sent to “A. Y.,” at the “M., S., & L.” Office,
Doncaster. Young was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude.

On the 14th of March her Majesty left Windsor for Portsmouth,
accompanied by the Princess Beatrice. From thence she sailed to
Cherbourg, and proceeded to Mentone, where she arrived on the 17th.
The Chalêt des Rosiers, where the Queen lived, was a newly-built
villa, standing on a small artificial plateau, fifty yards from the
railway, and a hundred from the shore, about half-a-mile from the
old town, and three-quarters of a mile from the ravine and bridge of
St. Louis which divide Italy from France. Precipices, rugged steeps,
abysmal ravines, and rocky beds of old torrents rise from behind the
villa in wild confusion. Five miles away, mountains whose bases are
traversed by terraces covered with orange groves, soar grandly into
the sky. Her Majesty was soon joined by Prince Leopold, the King and
Queen of Saxony, and Lord Lyons, and she made daily excursions in the
neighbourhood. On the 21st of March there was a great _fête_, with
splendid illuminations held in her honour, and she witnessed the scene
from the balcony of her villa. Before leaving, on the 14th of April,
the Queen thanked the authorities and the residents for contributing
so cordially to the pleasure of her visit. As a memento of it, she
presented the chief of the municipal band, who had composed a cantata
in her honour, with a diamond breast-pin.

The marriage of the Duke of Albany was now approaching, and it was
with deep regret that the Queen found it necessary to leave him at
Mentone, as he had not recovered from the effects of an accident he had
met with. The grant of £25,000 a year for his Royal Highness had been
moved by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons on the 23rd of March,
and carried by a vote of 387 to 42. Mr. Labouchere, however, opposed
the vote, because he said the savings from the Civil List ought to be
returned to the State by the Queen before any Royal grants were voted
by Parliament. Mr. Broadhurst also thought that £25,000[181] a year was
too much to vote for such a purpose in a country where the majority
lived on weekly wages. Mr. Storey opposed voting public money save
for public services, and described the House of Commons as “a large
syndicate interested in expenditure.” But there was no new point raised
in the debate, save Mr. Labouchere’s argument, based on the fact that
George III., who had £1,000,000 a year of Civil List, maintained his
own children. Mr. Gladstone, of course, challenged the precedent, by
pointing out that Parliament had not entered into an implied contract
with George III. to provide for his children. But for the first time
he admitted that savings were hoarded up out of the Civil List. Only,
he said, they were not large enough to provide for the maintenance
of the Queen’s children, and he assured the House that after he had
come to know the amount of them, his conclusion was that they were not
more than were called for by the contingencies which might occur in
such a family. As has been stated before, the Royal savings represent
an insurance fund against family emergencies, which it would not be
agreeable for the Queen to ask Parliament to meet for her.

On the 27th of April the marriage of the Duke of Albany with the
Princess Hélène of Waldeck-Pyrmont was solemnised in St. George’s
Chapel, Windsor, with a sustained pomp and splendour rarely seen even
in Royal pageants. Most extensive and elaborate arrangements had been
made for the reception and processions of the Royal and illustrious
guests, the Queen, the bridegroom, and the bride. On the morning of
the 27th the earliest aspect of animation was lent to the peaceful
tranquillity of the chapel by the arrival of a strong detachment
of the Yeomen of the Guard, arrayed in their quaint Tudor costume,
consisting of plaited ruff, low-crowned black velvet hat encircled
by red and white roses, scarlet doublet embroidered with the Royal
cognisance and initials in gold, purple sleeves, bullion quarterings,
ruddy hose, and rosetted shoes. The Yeomen of the Guard were ranged
at intervals throughout the length of the nave, and were speedily
joined by a contingent of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms,
resplendent in scarlet uniforms profusely laced with gold. After the
opening of the doors the edifice soon filled with ladies of rank,
nobles, statesmen, warriors, and diplomatists. The day was recognised
by the decorated as “a collar day”--_i.e._, the Knights did not wear
the robes of their Order, but only the ribbons of the Garter, the Bath,
the Thistle, and St. Patrick, with the collars and badges of gold.
Constellations of stars, crosses, and ribbons marked the uniforms of
the English generals, foreign ambassadors, and Ministers present in the
choir, and flashed light on the grey and timeworn walls associated with
the memories of Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Arragon, and Jane Seymour.
At noon the drapery veiling the door was thrown aside, and the first
procession--that of the Queen’s family and their Royal guests from
the Continent--entered. After this glittering group had passed into
the choir, the Queen’s procession appeared at the west door, when
the brilliant array in the nave stood up, and the organ burst into
the strains of Handel’s _Occasional Overture_. Her Majesty, who was
in excellent health and spirits, bowed her acknowledgments to the
salutations of the assembled guests. She was clad in widow’s sables
with long gauze streamers, and wore the broad riband of the Garter
and a magnificent parure of diamonds. The Koh-i-noor sparkled on her
bosom, while her head-dress was surmounted with a glittering tiara
girt by a small crown Imperial in brilliants. On entering the choir the
Queen was conducted to her seat close to the south of the altar. The
bridegroom’s procession next made its appearance. The Duke of Albany
wore the scarlet and gold uniform of a colonel of Infantry. The Prince
walked with some slight difficulty with the assistance of a stick.
The bridegroom was supported by the Prince of Wales in the uniform of
a Field Marshal, and by his brother-in-law, the Grand Duke of Hesse,
also clad in scarlet. Last came the procession of the bride, heralded
by the sound of cheering outside and the blare of trumpets. She was
supported by her father, the Prince of Waldeck and Pyrmont, and by her
brother-in-law, the King of the Netherlands, her train being borne by
eight unmarried daughters of dukes, marquises, and earls, decked in
white drapery trimmed with flowers. The celebration of the marriage
ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by an
array of Church dignitaries ranged behind the altar rails. The service
was brief, with no enlarged choral accompaniments, but the spectacle
was unusually impressive. There was not a vacant spot in the chapel;
it was gorgeous with diverse colours and flashing with jewels and with
the insignia of many grand Orders of chivalry. The scene, too, was at
intervals suddenly wrapped in gloom and as suddenly bathed in light
as the fitful sunshine streamed through the painted windows. As the
ceremony was being completed a cloud must have passed from the sun,
for its beams darted through the stained windows, and revealed the
bride and bridegroom in a tinted halo of radiance. After the ceremony
the Queen affectionately embraced her son and daughter-in-law, whose
united processions were formed and left the chapel whilst Mendelssohn’s
_Wedding March_ pealed forth from the organ and the cannon thundered in
the Long Walk. Her Majesty interchanged salutations with her relatives,
after which her own procession departed, and the regal pageant was
suddenly dissolved. After the signing of the register, which took place
in the Green drawing-room, the bride and bridegroom were conducted to
the State drawing-room, where the Royal guests had assembled, and where
the usual congratulations were exchanged. In the evening a grand State
banquet was given in St. George’s Hall, at which the health of the
bride and bridegroom and other toasts were honoured, Mr. John Brown,
her Majesty’s Scottish gillie, standing behind the Queen and giving, as
her toastmaster, the toast of the newly-wedded pair. Immediately after
the toast of the Queen--the last of the list--had been honoured, two
of the Royal pipers entered and marched twice round the tables playing
Scottish airs, to the astonishment of some of the guests, who had never
heard such music before. Then the Queen rose and left the hall, and the
other guests quitted the scene. The Duke and Duchess of Albany drove
from the Castle, amidst a shower of slippers and rice, to Claremont.

Unusual interest was taken in this wedding, partly on account of the
splendour of the ceremony, and partly because it was understood that
the Duke of Albany had won a bride admirably suited to be the companion
of his refined and studious life. As he seemed destined to form a link
between the Court and Culture, so it was hoped that the Duchess might
become

[Illustration: THE MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF ALBANY.

(_From the Picture by Sir J. D. Linton, P.R.I., by Permission of the
Glasgow Art Union._)]

the social head of a growing school ambitious of showing the world
that the lives of women of rank, need not necessarily be absorbed by
frivolity and philanthropy.

After the marriage of Prince Leopold the Queen visited the East End
to open Epping Forest, which had been saved from further enclosure by
the efforts of the Corporation of London. On the 4th of December her
Majesty also visited in State the Royal Courts of Justice.

[Illustration: MENTONE.

(_From a Photograph by Frith and Co., Reigate._)]

The death-roll of the year was a heavy one. On the 19th of April
the death of Charles Darwin robbed not only England but Europe of
a singularly original, painstaking, and conscientious scientific
investigator. No man of his stamp has so profoundly affected the
thought of the Victorian age or surveyed so wide a field of nature, in
such a fair, patient, and humble spirit. His keenness of observation
was only equalled by his wonderful fertility of resource. The caution
with which he felt his way to just inductions, the unerring instinct
with which his eye detected, amidst the maze of bewildering phenomena,
the true path that led him to the secrets he sought to discover,
and the masculine sagacity with which he reconciled, under broad
generalisations, facts seemingly irreconcilable, confer immortality
on the great work of his life. That work was his demonstration of the
extraordinary effect produced on every living thing by the pressure
of the conditions under which it lives--conditions which help or
hinder its existence or its reproduction. The organisms which are
so formed that they most easily meet the strain of these conditions
survive, and their offspring bend to the same destiny. In other words,
those organisms that inherit peculiarities of form and structure
and stamina that best fit them to survive in the struggle for life,
live. Those that do not inherit these advantages die. Such was the
Darwinian hypothesis of Evolution, or the doctrine of Survival of the
Fittest, and it gave to Science an impetus not less revolutionary and
far-reaching than that which it received from the Baconian system.

A trusted and valued friend and servant of the Queen passed away on
the 3rd of December, when Dr. Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, died
after a long and painful illness. Though he was not a man of brilliant
parts, or commanding intellect, he was the only Primate who, since
the House of Brunswick ruled England, had left a distinct mark on the
Anglican Church. He was in truth the only Primate, since the days of
Tillotson, who had a definite policy, and a will strong enough to carry
it out. Tait’s policy was to make the Church of England popular with
the governing class of his day--that is to say, with the intelligent
and respectable _bourgeoisie_. So long as they supported the Church it
could, in his opinion, defy disestablishment; and it is but fair to
say that he secured for it their support. He never alarmed the average
Englishman by intellectuality, or irritated the middle classes by any
obtrusive display of culture. He was careful not to offend them by
indecorous versatility. They were never frightened by flashing wit, or
bewildered by scholastic sophistry. He was faithful and zealous in the
discharge of his pastoral duties, generous and tolerant to opponents,
eager for what he called “comprehension,” slow in the pursuit of
heresy. In every relation of life he was the incarnation of common
sense and propriety. The Queen placed such unbounded confidence in his
judgment that it was generally supposed Dr. Tait virtually nominated
his successor. At all events, it was well known that Dr. Benson, Bishop
of Truro, who succeeded to the Primacy, was the candidate specially
favoured by the Sovereign, and that he was, of all the younger
prelates, the one whom Dr. Tait most desired to see reigning in his
stead.

The death of Garibaldi on June 2, and of M. Gambetta on December
31, profoundly moved the English people. Garibaldi’s life of heroic
adventure, unselfish patriotism, and disinterested devotion to the
cause of liberty, had endeared him to the masses. M. Gambetta’s amazing
energy in endeavouring to lift France out of the mire of defeat in 1870
had won for him the admiration of the world. His tempestuous eloquence
gave him an almost magical power over the French democracy, a power
which he wielded for no sordid personal aims. If latterly his policy
seemed to revive the restless aggressive spirit of his countrymen,
it was admitted that he sought nothing save the glory of France. And
yet for Europe it may be conceded that the death of Gambetta was not
a mishap. Had he lived it would have been hard to have avoided a
collision between France and England in Egypt. He encouraged those who,
in Paris and St. Petersburg, had for many years been intriguing for
a Russo-French alliance against Germany.[182] His death and that of
Garibaldi were followed by Signor Mancini’s disclosure to the Italian
Senate, of the adhesion of Italy to the Austro-German Alliance, and the
formation of the Triple League of Peace.[183]

[Illustration: LAMBETH PALACE.]

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE INVINCIBLES.

The Married Women’s Property Act--The Opening of
Parliament--Changes in the Cabinet--Arrest of Suspects in
Dublin--Invincibles on their Trial--Evidence of the Informer
Carey--Carey’s Fate--The Forster-Parnell Incident--National Gift
to Mr. Parnell--The Affirmation Bill--The Bankruptcy and other
Bills--Mr. Childers’ Budget--The Corrupt Practices Bill--The
“Farmers’ Friends”--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Leadership--The Bright
Celebration--Dynamite Outrages in London--The Explosives Act--M.
de Lesseps and Mr. Gladstone--Blunders in South Africa--The Ilbert
Bill--The Attack on Lady Florence Dixie’s House--Death of John
Brown--His Career and Character--The Queen and the Consumption of
Lamb--A Dull Holiday at Balmoral--Capsizing of the _Daphne_--Prince
Albert Victor made K.G.--France and Madagascar--Arrest of Rev.
Mr. Shaw--Settlement of the Dispute--Progress of the National
League--Orange and Green Rivalry--The Leeds Conference--“Franchise
First”--Lord Salisbury and the Housing of the Poor--Mr. Besant and
East London--“Slumming”--Hicks Pasha’s Disastrous Expedition in the
Soudan--Mr. Gladstone on Jam.

An unnoticed Act of Parliament came into force on New Year’s Day, 1883,
which marked the progress of what may be termed the social revolution
in England. This was the Married Women’s Property Act, which had been
passed with very little debate in the previous Session. If it be true
that the position which women hold in a State is an unerring test of
its standard of civilisation, the reign of the Queen will be notable in
history, as one in which the social progress of England has been most
rapid. In England, said J. S. Mill, Woman has not been the favourite
of the law, but its favourite victim. During the last quarter of a
century, however, this reproach has been wiped

[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

away. Year by year new avenues of employment have been opened up
to women. One of the first acts of Mr. Fawcett when he became
Postmaster-General was to admit them to the service of the State.
Parliament, under the wise guidance of Mr. Forster, decided to give
them a fair share of the public endowments set aside for secondary
education. They were afterwards admitted to the benefits of University
education; one of the learned professions--that of medicine--was thrown
open to them; and political enfranchisement is even within their
reach. But in 1883 the law for the first time recognised the fact
that married women could hold property, and abandoned the barbaric
doctrine that for women matrimony implied confiscation. The Married
Women’s Property Act, which was passed by Mr. Osborne Morgan, did for
the women of the people by law, what was done for women of the upper
classes by marriage settlements. It gave a married woman an absolute
right to her earnings, so that her husband could no longer seize them
under his _jus mariti_. It gave her, in the absence of settlements, an
indefeasible right to any property she might have before or that might
come to her after marriage, so that she could use it as she pleased
without her husband’s interference. It made her contract as regards her
own estate, as binding as if she were a man, quite irrespective of her
husband’s consent. On the other hand, it of course released the husband
from liability for all his wife’s debts, unless she contracted them as
his agent. That such an Act should have been passed by a Parliament
in which women were not represented, and in which, till recently,
arguments in favour of the emancipation of women from a state of
tutelage were disposed of by coarse jokes, speaks well for the chivalry
and high sense of justice that characterise British manhood.[184]

The autumn Session of Parliament (which opened on the 24th of October,
1882) had been spent in a struggle over the new Procedure Rules, the
Ministry endeavouring to persuade the House of Commons to adopt the
principle of Closure, which the Conservatives opposed with all their
strength. In this struggle the Ministry won. They carried their Rules
for checking obstruction, and so when Parliament met, on the 15th
of February, 1883, it was expected that the Session would be a busy
one. The composition of the Cabinet had been considerably changed
during the previous year. Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster had left it, Mr.
Bright’s secession being due to his disapproval of the bombardment of
Alexandria; Lord Derby had now become Secretary to the Colonies; Lord
Kimberley had gone to the India Office; Lord Hartington was Secretary
for War; Mr. Childers, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Mr. Dodson,
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir Charles Dilke entered the
Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board. As Under Secretary
for Foreign Affairs he was succeeded by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, a
painstaking but unsteady Whig. The din of the extra-Parliamentary
strife of the recess was stilled, and the House of Commons, like the
country, was in a mood to welcome Liberal measures carried out in a
conservative spirit. Among those announced in the Queen’s Speech were
Bills for codifying the criminal law, for establishing a Court of
Criminal Appeal, for amending the Bankruptcy, Patent, and Ballot Acts,
for reforming Local Government, and for improving the government of
London.

It was inevitable that Ireland should form the most prominent topic in
the Debate on the Address, because the country had scarcely recovered
from the tale of horror which had been unfolded by those who were
tracking the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke to
their lairs. On the 13th of January seventeen men were arrested in
Dublin, and on the 20th they were, with three others, charged with
conspiring to murder Government officials. For the most part they were
artisans of the inferior order, but one, James Carey, was a builder
and contractor, and a member of the Dublin Town Council. Under the
pressure of examination two of these men, Farrell and Kavanagh, turned
informers. Carey, finding that other members of the gang were going to
save their necks, offered to betray the conspiracy of which he had been
the guiding organiser. From his evidence, it appeared that after Mr.
Forster had put all the popular leaders of the Irish people in gaol,
a band of desperadoes, called “the Invincibles,” was formed for the
purpose of “making history,” by “removing obnoxious Irish officials.”
Though an attempt was made to show that the “Invincibles” were agents
of the Land League, the only evidence in favour of this supposition
rested on a statement which Carey admitted he had made. Two emissaries
from America furnished the “Invincibles” with their funds, and Carey
said that he thought they “perhaps” got the money from the Land League.
He also said that the knives used for the Phœnix Park murders were
delivered in Ireland by a woman, whom he took to be Mrs. Frank Byrne,
wife of a Land League official. When, however, he was confronted with
Mrs. Byrne he could not identify her. It is only just to add that the
diary of Mullett, one of the accused, was full of expressions of
scorn for the constitutional Home Rule agitators. We may therefore
safely infer that after Mr. Forster had suppressed the Land League
and put its chiefs in prison, what happened in Ireland is what has
happened in every country. For open agitation were substituted secret
societies, and midnight assassins took the place of constitutional
leaders. The conspirators appear to have long dogged Mr. Forster’s
steps, but failed to get a chance of killing him. They had no desire
to attack Lord Frederick Cavendish; indeed, till he was pointed out to
them, they did not know him by sight. He perished on the 6th of May
because he defended his companion, Mr. Burke, who had been marked for
“removal.” Carey was the man who had given the signal for the advance
of the murderers, and he was also base enough afterwards, at a meeting
of the Home Manufacturers’ Association, to propose that a vote of
condolence should be sent to Lady Frederick Cavendish. The end of it
all was that five of the conspirators, Brady, Curley, Fagan, Caffrey,
and Kelly, were hanged. Delaney, Fitzharris, and Mullett were sent
to penal servitude for life, and the others to penal servitude for
various terms. True bills were found against three individuals, Walsh,
Sheridan, and Tynan, the last said to be the envoy who supplied the
“Invincibles” with money, and who was only known to Carey as “Number
One.” Carey was shot dead at the Cape of Good Hope by a man called
O’Donnell, when on his way to a refuge in a British Colony, an offence
for which O’Donnell was tried at the Old Bailey and hanged.

It was whilst the country was thrilled by Carey’s revelations that
Mr. Gorst raised the Irish Question in an amendment to the Address,
urging that no more concessions be made by the Government to Irish
agitation. The House resounded with attacks on Mr. Parnell, who was
reminded that Sheridan, against whom a true bill of murder had been
found as the result of Carey’s evidence, was the same individual, whose
aid in suppressing outrages he had promised to the Government. Mr.
Parnell was accordingly charged with conniving at murder, the loudest
of his accusers being Mr. Forster, who raked up the old story of the
Kilmainham Treaty, when he delivered his indictment of Mr. Parnell
on the 22nd of February. Mr. Parnell did not reply till next day.
Then he contemptuously told the House that he could hold no commerce
with Mr. Forster, whom he considered as an informer in relation to
the secrets of his late colleagues, nay, as an informer who had not
even the pretext of Carey, “namely, the miserable one of saving his
own life.” The _hauteur_ and bitterness of the speech, despite its
closely-knit argument, disproving the allegation that the Home Rule
leaders were consciously associated with the “Invincibles,” or could
be held responsible for what was going on in Ireland after Mr. Forster
had locked them up, greatly inflamed public opinion. Mr. Parnell stood
charged with being the head of a constitutional agitation, some of the
agents of which were now shown to be chiefs of secret societies of
assassins. Without assuming that he had anything to do with the hidden
lives or proceedings of these men, the public condemned Mr. Parnell
because he did not, at a moment when their deeds had horrified the
country, denounce their wickedness. In Ireland, however, his conduct
excited the warmest admiration. Mr. Forster’s taunts he had met with
supercilious disdain, and he had told Parliament that he did not care
to justify himself to any one but the Irish people, who did not require
him to prove that he was not an accomplice of Carey’s. A movement
to present Mr. Parnell with a national testimonial was accordingly
started, and the subscriptions to it ultimately reached £40,000. Mr.
Forster’s attack on Mr. Parnell, at a moment when the House was excited
by Carey’s evidence, may have been ungenerous. But it is to it that Mr.

[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.]

Parnell owes the release of his family estate from the encumbrances
that he inherited. Parliament soon grew sick of the Irish Question in
1883.

Mr. Bradlaugh, however, furnished the House of Commons once more with a
personal diversion. Lord Hartington’s pledge that the Attorney-General
would bring in an Affirmation Bill was followed by an undertaking from
Mr. Bradlaugh, that he would not press his claim to be sworn till the
fate of this measure had been determined. Though the arguments for and
against such a project had already been thrashed out, it was debated
for a fortnight, the Tories straining every effort to waste time over
its discussion. Finally it was defeated by a vote of 292 to 289; and
when Mr. Bradlaugh wrote to the Speaker claiming his right to take the
oath, Sir Stafford Northcote carried a resolution prohibiting him from
doing so. On the 9th of July, in reply to Mr. Bradlaugh’s threat to
treat this decision as invalid, Sir Stafford revived the resolution
excluding him from the precincts of the House. Mr. Bradlaugh then
brought an action against the Serjeant-at-Arms for enforcing this
order, which the Attorney-General was instructed to defend.

The only real progress made by the Government with business before
Easter was with the Bankruptcy Bill, the main object of which was
to provide for an independent examination into all circumstances of
insolvency, to be conducted by officials of the Board of Trade. It
was read a second time and referred to the Grand Committee on Trade,
who sent it back to the House of Commons on the 25th of June. The
House of Lords passed it without cavil, and Mr. Chamberlain, who had
charge of the measure, was congratulated on the ability and tact which
he had displayed in conducting it. The Patents Bill, which reduced
inventors’ fees, had the same happy history as the Bankruptcy Bill,
in whose wake it followed. The Law Bills of the Ministry were less
fortunate. The Bill establishing a Court of Appeal in criminal cases
was fiercely opposed by the Tories, under the leadership of Sir Richard
Cross, Sir Hardinge Giffard, and Mr. Gibson. It was before the Grand
Committee on Law from the 2nd of April till the 26th of June, when it
was reported to the House and dropped by the Government. The Criminal
Code Bill was read a second time on the 12th of April, in spite of
the hostility of the Irish Party, who resisted one of the provisions
enabling magistrates to examine suspected persons. In the Standing
Committee, however, the Bill was so pertinaciously obstructed by Lord
Randolph Churchill, Mr. Gorst, and Sir H. D. Wolff, that Sir Henry
James abandoned it in despair. When Sir Henry James mentioned this fact
in the House of Commons on the 21st of June, Sir H. D. Wolff asked Mr.
Gladstone derisively “whether, having regard to the signal success of
the principle of delegation and devolution,” he intended to refer any
other Bills to Grand Committees. This question was accentuated by loud
outbursts of mocking laughter from Lord Randolph Churchill, which, Mr.
Gladstone declared, rendered it impossible for him even to hear the
terms of the interpellation.

The Budget was introduced on the 5th of April by Mr. Childers, who
stated that his estimated revenue and expenditure for the coming year
would be £88,480,000 and £85,789,000. This showed a comfortable surplus
which he exhausted by taking 1½d. off the Income Tax, by making
provisions to meet an expected loss on the introduction of sixpenny
telegrams, by reductions on railway passenger duty, and by slight
changes in the gun licence and in tax-collection. He also carried, in
spite of strenuous opposition, a Bill to reduce the National Debt.
By this Bill Mr. Childers created £40,000,000 of Chancery Stock into
terminable annuities for twenty years, to follow those expiring in
1885. Then he created £30,000,000 of Savings Bank Stock into shorter
annuities. As each fell in, it was to be followed by a longer one, so
as to absorb the margin between the actual interest on the Debt and
the sum set aside for its permanent service, thus hypothecating the
taxes of the future. Mr. Childers promised, by his system, to wipe out
£172,000,000 of debt in twenty years.

The Corrupt Practices Bill was read a second time on the 4th of June,
and it not only restricted expenditure on elections, but inflicted
stringent penalties for bribery and intimidation in every form, making
candidates responsible for the acts of their agents, prohibiting
the use of public-houses as committee-rooms, and the payment of
conveyances to bring voters to the poll. The Tories, the Parnellites,
and one or two Radicals like Mr. Peter Rylands, fought hard to relax
the stringency of the measure. It was obstructed in Committee, but
ultimately passed both Houses with no important alterations. The
Agricultural Holdings Bill was also strongly opposed. It gave tenants
a right to compensation for improvements, which was to be inalienable
by contract. The most important amendment, which was moved and carried
by Mr. A. J. Balfour, limiting compensation to the actual outlay,
represented the spirit in which the Opposition sought to destroy the
utility of the Bill. As Mr. Clare Sewell Read (one of the Conservatives
who represented the agricultural interests) observed, this amendment
enabled the landlord to say to the tenant, “Heads I win; tails you
lose. If your improvement succeeds, I get the profit out of it, and
you only the outlay; if it does not succeed, you get the loss.” The
amendment was struck out on Report, and, though the House of Lords
tried to mutilate the Bill, their worst amendments were rejected by the
Commons, and the measure passed. The controversy in the House of Lords
was remarkable for Lord Salisbury’s failure to hold his Party at the
end firm to the policy of resistance. A useful Bill prohibiting payment
of wages in public-houses was also passed. Nor was Ireland neglected.
The Tramways Act enabled Irish Local Authorities to construct, with
the support of Government guarantees, tramways and light railways, and
the Government further assented to provisions to promote by State aid
a scheme for transferring labourers from “congested” to thinly-peopled
districts. In August a Bill was passed setting apart a portion of the
Irish Church surplus to promote the building of fishing harbours. A
useful Irish Registration Bill was rejected by the Peers, but Mr. T. P.
O’Connor contrived to pass a Bill enabling Rural Sanitary Authorities
to borrow money from the Government for the construction of labourers’
cottages. It cannot, however, be said that the Irish Members were
grateful for these measures. They still pursued their favourite policy
of exasperation, and their alliance with the Tories led to a more
systematic and daring use of obstruction than had ever been seen in the
House of Commons. At first Sir Stafford Northcote seemed unwilling to
countenance obstructive tactics; but Lord Randolph Churchill’s bitter
attacks on his leadership in the _Times_ (April 2), and the impatience
of the Tory Party, forced the hesitating hand of their leader in the
Commons. The evil assumed such serious dimensions that Mr. Bright
denounced at Birmingham, in terms of indignant eloquence,[185] “the
men who now afflict the House, and who from night to night insult
the majesty of the British people.” Thus it came to pass, as the
_Times_ said in its review of the Session, that “the main part of the
legislation of the year, with the exception of one or two Bills, was
huddled together, and hustled through in both Houses during the month
of August, amidst an ever-dwindling attendance of Members.” There was
only one Bill which was not obstructed--the Explosives Act; in fact,
it was passed in a panic. The events that led to its production were
somewhat startling. On the night of the 15th of March an attempt was
made to blow up the Local Government Board Offices in Whitehall by
dynamite, and about the same time a similar outrage was perpetrated on
the offices of the _Times_ in Printing House Square. Guards of soldiers
and police were immediately posted at all places likely to be attacked,
and the connection of these crimes with the seizures of dynamite which
were from time to time made by the police in provincial towns, and the
arrest of eight conspirators engaged in the “dynamite war” at Liverpool
in March, could scarcely be doubted. On the 9th of April Sir William
Harcourt’s Explosives Act was therefore carried through both Houses
after an unavailing protest from Lord Salisbury, who complained that
the Peers were taken by surprise.[186] After the Bill had become law
packages of dynamite were seized at Leicester and Cupar-Fife; four men
were condemned at Liverpool as dynamitards; several arrests were made
at Glasgow; and on the 30th of October there were two explosions in the
tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway--between Westminster and Charing
Cross, and between Praed Street and Edgware Road.

[Illustration: THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, KENSINGTON.]

Egypt furnished the Opposition with many opportunities for embarrassing
the Ministry. Lord Hartington had seriously damaged the _prestige_ of
the Government by his pusillanimous declaration at the opening of the
Session that the English troops would be recalled from Egypt in six
months. Though Mr. Gladstone, on his return from Cannes, was compelled
to throw his colleague over and explain that this statement was purely
conjectural, the distrust which Lord Hartington had inspired could not
be completely eradicated. A more serious difficulty, however, arose
out of the exorbitant tolls which the Suez Canal Company levied on the
shipping trade. Yielding to the pressure of shipping and commercial
interests, Mr. Gladstone sanctioned an agreement by which M. de Lesseps
was to provide additional accommodation by digging a second canal. He
was also to reduce the tolls gradually, and admit a few Englishmen
to his Board of Management. In return the British Government were
to procure him the concession of the land for the second canal, and
enable him to raise a loan of £8,000,000 at 3¼ per cent. A storm of
opposition was raised to this project, on the ground that it recognised
M. de Lesseps’s monopoly to the canalisation of the Isthmus of Suez.
The agreement, which was announced on the 28th of April, was abandoned
on the 23rd of July.

In South Africa the policy of the Government was attacked during
the Session on the ground that it connived at the oppression of the
native chiefs by the Boers, who were not carrying out the Transvaal
Convention. The restoration and overthrow of Cetewayo also provoked
criticism, but the verdict of the country was that the debates all
ended in demonstrating one point, which was this: the existing
tangle of affairs in South Africa was entirely due to the policy of
the late Government, and the existing Government had not been able
to discover any way of satisfactorily neutralising the blunders of
their predecessors. But no question arising in British dependencies
created so much strife as the Indian Criminal Procedure Amendment
Bill, popularly called the Ilbert Bill. Lord Lytton had laid down
a rule whereby every year one-sixth of the vacancies in the Indian
Civil Service must be filled up by natives. As they advanced in the
Magistracy and became eligible for service as District Magistrates and
Sessions Judges, a difficulty arose. Either they must, like European
officials of the same grades, be allowed to try Europeans as well as
native offenders against the Criminal Law, or they must be virtually
wasted. Moreover, an offensive slight must be put on the Indian
servants of the Empress, by prohibiting them from exercising all the
functions pertaining to their grade and rank. In Presidency towns no
difficulty arose. There native magistrates of this grade were allowed
to have jurisdiction over Europeans, the theory being that they
acted under the moral censorship of a European press. But in country
districts it was alleged that they could not be trusted. In fact,
European magistrates must, according to the opponents of the Bill, be
found for every district in which even a handful of Europeans were
living. Yet, as Lord Lytton had diminished the number of Europeans in
the Service and put natives in their places, a serious administrative
difficulty might be created if the native judges were not entrusted
with the duties of the Europeans whom they had displaced. An explosion
of race-hatred was the result of the Ilbert Bill, and the same class
of Anglo-Indians who denounced “Clemency” Canning during the “White
Terror” of 1857, now denounced Lord Ripon in the same violent language.
They even attempted to induce the Volunteers to resign, and Sir Donald
Stewart, the Commander-in-Chief, who, like Sir Frederick Roberts,
supported the measure, condemned the “wicked and criminal attempts”
which the opponents of the Bill had made to stir up animosity against
the Government in the Army. Ultimately a compromise was arrived at, by
which a European when tried before a native judge could claim a jury,
of which not less than one-half must consist of Europeans or Americans.
Curiously enough, at the time this controversy was being developed
into a fierce antagonism of races in India, tidings came to England to
the effect that a tribe in Orissa had begun to worship the Queen as a
goddess.[187] When the natives on the frontier elevated General John
Nicholson to the dignity of a god, the stout soldier used to order his
worshippers to be flogged for their idolatry. Whether any official
steps were taken to discourage a cult that might have rendered the
Queen-Empress ridiculous, was never known. The sect who took her for
their deity seems to have vanished from Indian history.

The Queen played but a slight part in public life in the early part of
1883. Whilst at Osborne in January she awarded the Albert Medal to the
survivors of the gallant exploring party who distinguished themselves
by saving life at the Baddesley Colliery Explosion in May, 1882, and
she sent to the Mayor of Bradford an expression of sympathy with the
sufferers from the fall of a great chimney stack in that town at the
end of the year--a disaster involving the sacrifice of fifty-three
lives. On the 14th of February her Majesty held a Council at Windsor,
and revised the Royal Speech for the opening of the Session. On the
19th of February she attended the funeral of Pay-Sergeant Mayo, of
the Coldstream Guards, at Windsor, who had died suddenly whilst on
duty at the Castle, and on the same day, owing to the Prince of Wales
holding the opening levee of the season on her behalf, her Majesty
was able to be present as one of the sponsors at the baptism of the
infant son of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught at Windsor. On the
6th and 13th of March, however, her Majesty held Drawing Rooms at
Buckingham Palace. On the 17th of March Lady Florence Dixie alleged
that a murderous attack had been made on her in the shrubbery of her
house at Windsor, by two men disguised as women. As her ladyship had
been writing a good deal on the Irish Question, and as the town was
in a panic over the dynamite war waged by the Fenians against public
buildings, it was suggested that this outrage might have been planned
by one of the Irish Secret Societies. Investigation, however, indicated
that Lady Florence must have been labouring under a mistake, and the
incident would have passed out of sight but for its effect on the
Queen’s peace of mind. Lady Florence Dixie’s story had alarmed the
Queen, showing her, as it did, that there was peril almost at the doors
of Windsor Castle. Her Majesty sent Lord Methuen, Lady Ely, and Sir
Henry Ponsonby with messages of sympathy to Lady Florence Dixie, and
finally the Queen’s personal attendant, Mr. John Brown, was despatched
to examine the ground and report on the circumstances of the outrage.
He caught a chill in the shrubbery of Lady Florence Dixie’s villa,
and when he returned to Windsor Castle complained of being ill. He
died of erysipelas on the 27th of March, the day after the daughter of
the Duke and Duchess of Albany was christened. Brown was the son of a
tenant of Colonel Farquharson’s and began life as gillie to the Prince
Consort. For nineteen years he was the personal attendant of the Queen,
and no servant was ever so completely trusted by a royal master or
mistress. “John Brown,” writes the Queen in a note to her “Leaves from
the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “in 1858 became my regular
attendant out of doors everywhere in the Highlands. He commenced
as gillie in 1859, and was selected by Albert and me to go with my
carriage. In 1857 he entered our service permanently, and began in that
year leading my pony, and advanced step by step by his good conduct and
intelligence. His attentive care and faithfulness cannot be exceeded,
and the state of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried
and weakened, renders such qualifications most valuable, and, indeed,
most needful upon all occasions. He has since most deservedly been
promoted to be an upper servant and my permanent personal attendant
(December, 1865). He has all the independence and elevated feelings
peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward,
simple-minded, kind-hearted, and disinterested, always ready to oblige,
and of a discretion rarely to be met with.” By all accounts Brown
seems to have been an honest brusque sort of man, whose fidelity to
his master and mistress won their entire confidence. Extraordinary
stories were told in Society of his influence over the Queen, and of
the almost despotic authority which he wielded over the Royal Family.
Even the highest officers of the Royal Household had to speak him
fairly, otherwise trouble came to them. He attended the Queen in all
her walks and drives, and had the privilege of speaking to her with the
rough candour in which he habitually indulged, on any subject he chose
to talk about. He had often been engaged in services of a delicate
nature for the Royal Family, and it was said that nothing could be said
or done, no matter how secretly, at or about the Court, without his
immediately knowing of it. Löhlein, the Prince Consort’s old valet, was
the only person in the Household whom Brown never dared to meddle with.
Through the _Court Circular_ the Queen bewailed the “grievous shock”
she felt at the “irreparable loss” of “an honest, faithful, and devoted
follower, a trustworthy, discreet, and straightforward man,” whose
fidelity “had secured for himself the real friendship of the Queen.”
This grief was not only natural but eminently creditable to her.
Brown had for years been the guardian of her life, and in the case of
Connor’s attack he had defended her with the grim courage of his race.
But for him her Majesty could not have enjoyed that freedom of movement
out of doors which had been of

[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen._)]

vital consequence to her health and strength. Old servants, when
possessed of Brown’s sterling qualities of manhood, in process of time
gradually pass into the category of old friends. Their lives become
intertwined in many ways with the life of the family to which they are
attached. Their death leaves behind it in the hearts of their masters
and mistresses the sting of a personal bereavement. This was, in a
special sense, the case with the Queen, whose fate it has been to see
the circle of old familiar faces round her contracting every year. Her
expressions of sorrow over Brown’s grave, though they provoked rude
criticism, merely gave expression to a sentiment of melancholy which
was the natural outgrowth of her life of “lonely splendour.”[188]

From the 18th of April to the 8th of May the Court was at Osborne,
and the state of the Queen’s health was such as to cause her medical
advisers some concern. The dynamite scare, a slight accident that had
happened to her through slipping on the stairs at Windsor Castle, the
deaths of her friend Mrs. Stonor[189] and her attendant, Brown--all
contributed to produce an attack of nervous debility that could only be
remedied by repose.

In the third week of April the Queen created quite a panic among the
sheep farmers and the fashionable purveyors of the large towns. She had
read many gloomy articles in the papers, lamenting the decrease in the
number of English sheep. Instead of anticipating, by a few days, the
appearance of Easter lamb at the Royal table, as did Napoleon I. on one
occasion, her Majesty notified that no lamb would be consumed in her
Household. The effect of the notice was magical. The price of lamb went
down in a few hours to 4d. a pound, and farmers, who had at enormous
expense bred and fed large stocks of lamb for the Easter market, saw
bankruptcy staring them in the face. The economic fallacy was obvious.
The Queen forgot that the slaughter of lambs which were bred for the
butcher, and which but for the Easter market would not be bred at all,
was not the cause of the scarcity of sheep. In a few weeks the notice
was withdrawn.

Though the Queen was still unable to walk, yet on the 8th of May she
was so much benefited by her holiday at Osborne, that she was able,
under the care of the Princess Beatrice, to return to Windsor. On the
26th of May, though still in feeble health, she went to Balmoral.
Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent the time-table of the
Royal train on this occasion from being published, and her Majesty
sent orders from Windsor that spectators must be excluded from the
stations at which she stopped. Railway directors were not even allowed
to be present when her Majesty arrived at Ferryhill station, Aberdeen,
from whence she drove to Balmoral by the road on the south side of the
Dee--a road she had never taken before. Life at Balmoral was gloomy,
for all the old festivities had been stopped, and everybody was in deep
mourning for John Brown. The Queen hardly ever left her own grounds,
and the Court gladly returned to Windsor on the 23rd of June. On the
3rd of July a shocking accident occurred near Glasgow, which deeply
impressed the mind of the Queen. As a new steamer, the _Daphne_, was
being launched from Messrs. Stephen’s Yard she heeled over and sank.
A hundred and fifty lives were lost, and the Queen not only sent a
message of sympathy to the survivors, but a subscription of £200 to a
fund raised for their relief. The Court removed to Osborne on the 24th
of July, where a few days later the Queen received M. Waddington, the
new French Ambassador. On the 24th of August her Majesty left Osborne
for Balmoral, which she reached on the following day. She conferred the
Order of the Garter on her grandson, Prince Albert Victor of Wales,
on the 4th of September. It was thought strange that this distinction
should be granted to the Prince whilst he was still a minor: George
IV., for example, was not admitted to the Order till long after he
had come of age. What was stranger still was that the investiture
should have been a private function, conducted in the drawing-room
at Balmoral, and not a public ceremonial in St. George’s Chapel. The
exceptional character of the distinction was a proof of the high favour
in which her Majesty held her grandson. Excursions to Braemar, Glassalt
Shiel, Glen Cluny, and the neighbourhood were made during September.
The Duke and Duchess of Connaught visited her Majesty in October on
the eve of their departure for India, and the ex-Empress Eugénie, who
was at Abergeldie, came to her almost every day, and long excursions
in the bleak scenery of the Aberdeenshire mountains were organised for
the Royal party. It was not till the 21st of November that the Court
came back to Windsor--the same day on which the Duke and Duchess of
Connaught landed at Bombay. After her return the Queen seems to have
been engrossed with business to an unusual extent--much of it relating
to troublesome private matters, and it was stated that her Majesty and
Sir Henry Ponsonby during the first week had to work together for five
and six hours at a stretch, ere they could overtake their task. Every
day, however, the Queen drove in the Park, and every evening she gave
a dinner-party, to which not more than fifteen guests were invited.
On the 12th of December her Majesty received the Siamese Envoys, and
it was intimated that she intended to raise the poet Laureate to the
Peerage. On the 18th of December the Court removed to Osborne, where
Christmas-tide was spent.

Politically and socially the Recess of 1883 was full of interest. Just
as Parliament was prorogued Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville brought
an irritating controversy with France to a close. In the spring,
Admiral Pierre had been sent with a squadron to enforce French claims
of sovereignty over a portion of the north-west of Madagascar. In the
course of operations at Tamatave the Admiral had behaved rudely to
the British Consul. He had insulted the commander of H.M.S. _Dryad_,
and he had illegally arrested and imprisoned Mr. Shaw, an English
missionary. Mr. Gladstone had alluded gravely, but in terms of studied
moderation and courtesy, to these events in the House of Commons. The
Opposition, however, harried him with attacks; and all over the land
Conservative writers and speakers denounced the Government for its
cowardly subservience to France. The only effect which these indiscreet
criticisms could have was obviously to convince France that she ran
no risk in refusing reparation to the Englishmen whom her agents had
injured. Fortunately the Government of the French Republic had a keen
sense of justice. It did not misunderstand the firm but temperate tone
of the English Foreign Office; and the French Government accordingly
offered an apology and compensation to Mr. Shaw. It turned out that
Admiral Pierre, who died in France soon after his recall, had been
suffering from an exhausting disease at the time he had offended
Captain Johnstone of the _Dryad_. There was no disposition on either
side, therefore, to exaggerate the personal aspect of the question, and
the dispute ended in a manner highly creditable to the diplomacy of
both nations.

In Ireland the National League, which had been founded in 1882 as a
continuation of the old Land League, was extending its organisation.
Mr. Healy’s electoral victory in Monaghan suggested that an attack
should be made on the last stronghold of the Unionist Party in Ireland.
League meetings were therefore held in Ulster; but the Orangemen,
terrified by this invasion of Home Rulers into their loyal territory,
attempted to repel it by force. They organised rival meetings, and
planned armed attacks on the Leaguers. Occasionally Mr. Trevelyan
had to suppress the demonstrations of both “Orange” and “Green” by
proclamation. In England the Recess was one of stormy political
agitation. The Liberal Party felt that it was necessary to submit some
measure to Parliament in 1884, on which, if need be, they might risk
an appeal to the constituencies. Hence, at Leeds, their provincial
leaders and delegates resolved to press a measure of Parliamentary
Reform on the country. A small minority, who urged that the reform of
the Municipality of London and of County and Local Government should
have the first place, were overruled by those who raised the famous
cry of “Franchise first.” The Tory leaders, when they spoke on the
subject, merely suggested that the problem of Parliamentary Reform
was encumbered with difficulties. For some time the Liberal leaders
rarely spoke save to contradict each other either as to the order of
legislation in the coming Session, or as to whether, if Household
Suffrage were extended to the counties, the Redistribution of Seats
would be dealt with by a separate Bill. During the Recess, Sir Stafford
Northcote roused the Conservatism of North Wales and Ulster. Lord
Salisbury attempted to thrill his party with terror by an article in
the _Quarterly Review_, bewailing the “disintegration” of English
society under Mr. Gladstone’s malefic influence; and in another
periodical--the _National Review_--he appealed strongly for popular
support by a strong semi-Socialistic paper advocating the better
housing of the poor. In fact, the end of 1883 and the beginning of
1884 will be long remembered for an outbreak of _dilletante_ Socialism
among the upper classes. The powerful pen of a gifted novelist had
revealed, as by flashes of lightning, the unexplored regions of the
East End of London. In fact, Mr. Walter Besant’s vivid pictures of
its dull grey life of toil, varied only by hunger, and ending only in
death, had seared the conscience, if they had not touched the heart,
of a brilliant society of pleasure. Beneath the bright wit and mocking
humour of the satirist,

[Illustration:

THE PARISH CHURCH, CRATHIE. BRAEMAR CASTLE.
]

there glowed the fire and fervour of the prophet; and when a voice
which, like Mr. Besant’s, had the ear of a hundred millions of
English-speaking people, preached in the most fascinating of parables
the doctrine that Wealth owes, and ever will owe, an undischarged duty
to Poverty--a mighty impetus was given to the cause of social reform.
Hands swift to do good were stretched forth from the West End to the
East End, and a movement destined to realise, in the Jubilee Year
of the Victorian era, some of Mr. Besant’s ideals in “All Sorts and
Conditions of Men,” was now initiated. Unfortunately it was vulgarised
by much imposture at the outset. The pace of three London seasons had
been unusually rapid, and Society at this juncture had exhausted its
resources of amusement and its capacities for pleasure. The town was
fuller than usual, for Cabinet Councils had been unwontedly early;
and the great families who flock to London when they get the first
hint that the autumnal period of political intrigue has set in, had
abandoned their country houses sooner in the year than was customary.
The theatres were unattractive. The Fisheries Exhibition had closed;
and the world of fashion was hungry for some fresh object of interest.
Like Matthew Arnold’s patrician, though Society made its feast and
crowned its brows with roses in the winter of 1883-4, it was still left
lamenting that

“No easier and no quicker passed
The impracticable hours.”

The movement in philanthropy which Mr. Besant’s writings originated,
and which Lord Salisbury’s essay on the Housing of the Poor stamped
with the imprimatur of British respectability, was just what was
needed to supply a stimulus to which the blunted nerves of the idlest
pleasure-seeker would respond. In the days of Lord Tom Noddy and Sir
Carnaby Jenks persons of quality in similar circumstances would have
gone to see a man hanged. Some years later, as M. Henri Taine notes,
they would have applied for an escort of police and inspected the
thieves’ kitchens and other hideous lairs of crime. Now, under escorts
of enchanted philanthropists, lay and clerical, male and female,
curious parties were organised in the West End to visit the slums, just
as they were arranged to visit the opera. These amateur explorers were,
indeed, dubbed “slummers” by cynical writers in the Press; and the verb
to “slum” almost made good its footing in the English vocabulary. Few
of these strange visitors remained behind in the East End to help in
the work of charity whose objects excited their morbid curiosity. It
was also an untoward coincidence that of these few some of the most
fussy and bustling subsequently figured conspicuously in the Divorce
Court.

It had been the intention of the Government to reduce the number of
the troops in Egypt, and some hint of this had been given by Mr.
Gladstone at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the Guildhall. But before
the plan could be carried out a catastrophe happened in Egypt which
interfered with it. It had always been the ambition of the Khedivial
family to extend their dominion to the Equator. They had drained Egypt
of men and money to conquer that vast and difficult region known as
the Soudan, and under the pretext of suppressing the slave trade, they
had endeavoured to sanctify their policy of costly conquest. When,
however, disturbances broke out in Lower Egypt, the wild tribes of
the Soudan, ever ready to revolt against the Egyptians or “Turks,”
whom they regarded as brutal extortioners, joined the standards of a
pretended prophet, called the Mahdi, and Colonel Hicks, a retired
Indian officer, was sent with an Egyptian army to suppress the rising.
The British Government sanctioned, but gave no aid to the expedition.
By their foolish policy they made themselves morally responsible for
its fate without taking steps to make its success a certainty. In
November Hicks Pasha and his army were cut to pieces at El Obeid, and
Egyptian authority in the Soudan was represented by a few beleaguered
garrisons at such places as Khartoum, Suakim, and Sinkat. The British
Government dissuaded Tewfik Pasha from trying to re-conquer the Soudan,
but advised him merely to relieve the garrisons and hold the Red Sea
coast and the Nile Valley as far as Wady Halfa. By thus blocking the
only outlets for its produce the insurrection in the province might
be strangled. Here the Ministry delivered themselves into the hands
of their enemies. If they tried to re-conquer the Soudan the Tories
could denounce a blood-guilty policy that wasted the substance of
Egypt to gratify Khedivial ambition. If they induced Tewfik Pasha to
let the Soudan alone, they could be denounced for abandoning one of
the conquests of civilisation to barbarism and the slave trade. But in
the first weeks of 1884 there was a lull in political agitation, which
was only partially broken by Mr. Gladstone’s address to his tenants
at the Hawarden Rent Dinner on the 9th of January. It was in this
speech that he advised farmers groaning under prolonged agricultural
distress, aggravated by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, to seek
consolation in pensive reflection on the Hares and Rabbits Act, and in
an energetic application of their industry to the production of jam.

CHAPTER XXVII.

GENERAL GORDON’S MISSION.

Success of the Mahdi--Difficult Position of the Ministers--Their
Egyptian Policy--General Gordon sent out to the Soudan--Baker
Pasha’s Forces Defeated--Sir S. Northcote’s Vote of Censure--The
Errors on Both Sides--Why not a Protectorate?--Gordon in
Khartoum--Zebehr, “King of the Slave-traders”--Attacks on
Gordon--Osman Digna Twice Defeated--Treason in Khartoum--Gordon’s
Vain Appeals--Financial Position of Egypt--Abortive Conference
of the Powers--Vote of Credit--The New Speaker--Mr. Bradlaugh
_Redivivus_--Mr. Childers’ Budget--The Coinage Bill--The Reform
Bill--Household Franchise for the Counties--Carried in the
Commons--Thrown Out in the Lords--Agitation in the Country--The
Autumn Session--“No Surrender”--Compromise--The Franchise Bill
Passed--The Nile Expedition--Murder of Colonel Stewart and Mr.
Frank Power--Lord Northbrook’s Mission--Ismail Pasha’s Claims--The
“Scramble for Africa”--Coolness with Germany--The Angra Pequena
Dispute--Bismarck’s Irritation--Queensland and New Guinea--Death
of Lord Hertford--The Queen’s New Book--Death of the Duke of
Albany--Character and Career of the Prince--The Claremont
Estate--The Queen at Darmstadt--Marriage of the Princess Victoria
of Hesse--A Gloomy Season--The Health Exhibition--The Queen and the
Parliamentary Deadlock--The Abyssinian Envoys at Osborne--Prince
George of Wales made K.G.--The Court at Balmoral--Mr. Gladstone’s
Visit to the Queen.

Parliament met on the 5th of February, 1884. The Queen’s Speech
admitted that the unexpected success of the Mahdi in the Soudan had
delayed the evacuation of Cairo and the reduction of the British army
of occupation. It also referred to the steps that had been taken to
relieve Khartoum by the despatch of General Gordon--accompanied by
Colonel Stewart--to that doomed city. An imposing programme of domestic
legislation was put forward. There was to be a Reform Bill, a Bill to
improve the government of London, and legislation was promised dealing
with shipping, railways, the government of Scotland, education, Sunday
Closing in Ireland, and intermediate education in Wales. The Egyptian
Policy of the Government was naturally taken as the point for attack by
the Opposition in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons. The
position of England in Egypt was now so peculiar and embarrassing that
any policy open to the Government was open to objection. So far as the
interests of the English and Egyptian people were concerned, the best
thing that could have been done for them would have been to render the
frontier at Wady Halfa impregnable, to forbid any further interference
with the Soudan, and to leave the Egyptian garrisons and colonies there
to make the best terms they could with the Mahdi. This would not have
been a noble or heroic, but it would have been a sensible course, and
it would have prevented the perfectly useless expenditure of precious
blood and treasure. On the other hand, only a Minister unselfish enough
to brave the obloquy which would be cast on him by his rivals for
adopting a sordid policy in the interests of his country, could venture
on such a policy. It would have been possible to a Bismarck, who can
boast that he will never break the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier for
the sake of the Eastern Question. It was not possible to Mr. Gladstone,
some of whose colleagues were already in a bellicose mood. Assuredly,
too, it would in 1884 have been unpopular with the electors. In foreign
complications, involving the issues of peace or war, their

“Affections are
A sick man’s appetite, who desires most that
Which would increase his evil.”

Ministers therefore chose the course which, on the whole, divided the
country least. They decided to cut the connection between Egypt and
the Soudan, but at the same time to arrange for the safe return of the
Egyptian garrisons and colonists to Lower Egypt. They selected General
Gordon--better known as “Chinese” Gordon--who, as Gordon Pasha, had
been Viceroy of the Soudan, to make the best arrangements he could for
the future of the country, and bring back the garrisons and colonists
in safety. Gordon’s great name and unbounded popularity caused this
plan to be hailed with unalloyed delight by the people. He arrived at
Cairo on the 23rd of January, and was permitted to receive from the
Khedive a firman appointing him Governor-General of the Soudan, and
vesting him, as the Khedive’s Viceroy, with absolute power. Gordon thus
held two commissions--one from the English Government as the Agent of
the Foreign Office, another from the Khedive as Viceroy of the Soudan.
He crossed the desert without an escort, and was making his way to
Khartoum when Parliament met. It was a dramatic coincidence that when
the debate on Egypt was going on, news of a serious disaster from the
Soudan came to hand. Baker Pasha had advanced from Trinkitat on the
4th of February, and near Tokar his force was attacked by the Mahdi’s
followers and driven back to Suakim. By an accident the discussion
collapsed without any Ministerial reply being given to the Tory attack.
Then Sir Stafford Northcote, on the 7th of February, moved his vote

[Illustration: GENERAL GORDON.

(_From a Photograph by Adams and Scanlan, Southampton._)]

of censure, on the ground that the disasters in the Soudan were due to
“the vacillating and inconsistent policy” pursued by the Government.
Possibly the disaster of the division in the Commons when this motion
was rejected may have in turn been traceable to the “vacillating and
inconsistent” tactics of the Opposition. They toiled with wearisome
iteration to prove that England, having incurred responsibility for
the government of Egypt after Tel-el-Kebir, was responsible for the
massacre of Hicks Pasha and his army. So she was; but instead of
drawing the logical inference from the facts, namely, that the English
authorities in Egypt were to blame for not vetoing Hicks’s expedition,
Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Salisbury blamed the English Government
for not helping him with “advice,” and for not forcing the Khedive
to make his army strong enough for its task. Here it became manifest
to the House of Commons that the Opposition had only got up a sham
faction fight. For when Sir Stafford Northcote hotly repudiated the
notion that he would have sent a British army to reinforce Hicks or
avenge his death, he gave up his whole case. It was then seen that the
alternative policy of the Opposition was to have goaded the Egyptian
Government to a war of re-conquest in the Soudan, and in the event of
failure to leave it in the lurch. Alike in the Commons and in the Lords
the responsible leaders of the Opposition admitted that Mr. Gladstone
was right in advising Egypt to abandon the Soudan, and in refusing to
send British troops there to conduct the evacuation. What they argued
was that he was wrong in not telling the Khedive’s Cabinet how to
get out of the Soudan, though he would in that event, according to
them, have been quite right to refuse the Khedive aid, if, in acting
on Mr. Gladstone’s suggestions, his Highness met with disaster in
the rebellious province. It was a sad surprise to Lord Salisbury to
find his censure carried in the Upper House only by a vote of 181 to
81--for the majority did not represent half of a Chamber two-thirds of
which were his followers. It was, however, no surprise to Sir Stafford
Northcote to find his motion rejected in the House of Commons, though
he had the advantage of the Irish vote. As for the country, its verdict
was that there was no difference between the two parties except on one
point. The Tories would have pestered the Khedive with instructions,
but would have repudiated responsibility for them if when acted on they
had ended in failure. The Government had, through fear of incurring
this responsibility, left the Khedive too much to his own devices, and
when these brought trouble they found they could not get rid of all
responsibility for it.

What ought to have been said was what neither Lord Salisbury nor Sir
Stafford Northcote dared say. It was that England, after Tel-el-Kebir,
should have boldly proclaimed a Protectorate over Egypt, the moral
authority of which would have sufficed to hold her fretful and mutinous
provinces in awe, till steps for their reconstruction could be
taken.[190] Failure seemingly rendered the Opposition reckless. Even
the heroic and high-hearted envoy of the Government at Khartoum did
not escape the shafts of their malice. He had proclaimed the Mahdi as
Sultan of Kordofan in order to induce him to negotiate for the peaceful
withdrawal of the garrisons. He had burned in public the archives of
the Egyptian Government, in which the arrears of taxes were recorded,
as a pledge that the oppressed people of Khartoum should be no longer
the prey of corrupt extortioners. He had set free the prisoners who
were unjustly pining in the gaols. He had proclaimed that the right of
property in domestic slaves would be recognised--thereby neutralising
the intrigues of the Mahdists, who were persuading the wavering people
that if they remained true to Egypt, the Government would rob them of
their household servants. Finding it impossible to discover a less
objectionable native chief fit to undertake the task of keeping order
at Khartoum, Gordon recommended for that purpose his old enemy, Zebehr
Pasha, once known as “King of the Slave-Traders.”

The Tories now attacked Gordon and his policy with much bitterness.
They jeered at him as a madman. They denounced him for sanctioning
slavery--he who had given the best days of his life to the suppression
of the trade. They tried to rouse public opinion against the Government
for tolerating his proceedings. In fact, no effort was wanting to
embarrass him and the Ministry in solving the difficult problem of
extricating the military and civil population of Khartoum from their
dangerous position. The factiousness of the Opposition had one bad
result. It frightened the Government into refusing their sanction
to Gordon’s proposal for handing over Khartoum to Zebehr Pasha. For
at this time the Tories delighted to describe Zebehr as the kind of
monster of savagery, with whom a statesman of Mr. Gladstone’s character
naturally sought a close alliance.

When the tidings of General Baker’s defeat at Teb were followed by news
of the massacre of the garrison of Sinkat, Ministers, in obedience to
public opinion, decided to abandon their policy of inaction in the
Soudan. On the 10th of February, Admiral Hewett took supreme command
at Suakim. On the 18th a small British force under General Graham
landed at that place. By this time Tokar had fallen, but Graham,
advancing from Trinkitat, fought and beat the Arabs under Osman Digna
at El Teb. Osman retired to Tamanieb, and was attacked there by Graham
on the 13th of March. At first the British force wavered and broke
under the impetuous shock of the Arab charge, but in the end the
Arabs were defeated, and Osman Digna’s camp was destroyed. Gordon had
made an unsuccessful sortie from Khartoum on the 16th of March, and
he had found not only his army but the civil population of the city
honeycombed with treason. In vain he implored the Government to send
two squadrons of cavalry to Berber to aid the escape of two thousand
fugitives whom he proposed to send down the Nile. The Government, on
the contrary, recalled General Graham and his troops from Suakim,
thereby leading the Arabs to believe that Gordon was abandoned by his
countrymen. His negotiations with the Mahdi proved to be a failure.
In May his protests against the desertion of Khartoum were published
in official form, and the Opposition then gave expression to popular
opinion when they moved, though they did not carry, another vote of
censure on the Ministry. The defence of the Government was that Gordon
was in no danger, and that when he was, Ministers would quickly send
him aid. The financial position of Egypt was now so bad that Mr.
Gladstone resolved to ease the pressure of her debt at the expense
of the bondholders. For this purpose it was necessary to summon a
Conference of the Powers. France opposed the English project, and the
diplomatic negotiations between England and France were seriously
embarrassed by incessant interpellations from the Opposition in
Parliament, and by their abortive votes of censure. In spite of these
difficulties, however, Ministers were able, on the 23rd of June,
to announce that they had come to an arrangement with France. She
formally abandoned the Dual Control, which had really been destroyed
by the Khedive’s decree in 1882, and bound herself not to send troops
to Egypt unless on the invitation of England. England, on the other
hand, agreed to evacuate Egypt on the 1st of January, 1888, unless
the Powers considered that order could not be kept after the British
troops were recalled. The question of the debt was virtually left to
the Conference, but it was agreed that after the 1st of January, 1888,
Egypt was to be neutralised and the Suez Canal put under international
management. Even these arrangements were, however, to depend on the
decisions of the Conference, which, Mr. Gladstone said, would in turn
need Parliamentary sanction before they could be considered binding
on the British Government. The Conference broke up owing to the
impossibility of reconciling English and French interests, and Mr.
Gladstone on the 2nd of August told the House of Commons that England
had regained entire freedom of action. With this freedom the Government
acquired fresh energy. They sent Lord Northbrook to Egypt to report
upon its condition, and obtained from Parliament a Vote of Credit of
£300,000 with which to send succour to Gordon if he required it. At
this time, though Khartoum was isolated and surrounded by the Mahdi’s
troops, Lord Hartington refused to admit that Egypt was in danger from
an Arab invasion, or to give any definite promise to send Gordon aid.

The Egyptian Question sadly exhausted the energies of the House of
Commons. Mr. Arthur Peel had been chosen as Speaker on the 26th of
February, in succession to Sir Henry Brand, who was elevated to the
Peerage as Viscount Hampden. Sir Stafford Northcote again succeeded in
preventing Mr. Bradlaugh from taking his seat, and when Mr. Bradlaugh
resigned it, and was again re-elected for Northampton, the resolution
excluding him from the House was once more revived on the 21st of
February.

The Budget was not presented till the last week of April, and Mr.
Childers

[Illustration: KHARTOUM.]

then confessed that for the coming year he could not expect a surplus
of more than £260,000,[191] which admitted only of a small reduction
in the Carriage Duties. The unexpected costliness of the Parcel
Post caused Mr. Childers to abandon in the meantime the scheme for
introducing sixpenny telegrams; but he made proposals for the reduction
of the National Debt and the withdrawal of light gold coin from
circulation, that led to some controversy. Mr. Childers’ method of
dealing with the Debt was to give holders of Three per Cent. Stock the
option of taking Two and Three-quarters per Cent. or Two and a Half
per Cent. Stock at the rate of £102 and £108 respectively for every
£100 of Stock so exchanged. Mr. Childers argued that he would thus
reduce the annual burden of the charge for the Debt (after providing
for a Sinking Fund to cover the nominal increase in the capital cf
the converted Stock) by £1,310,000. His Coinage Bill was lost because
the Tories roused popular prejudice against it. Mr. Childers proposed
to demonetise the half-sovereign by putting in it a certain amount
of alloy and giving it a mere token-value. The charge that he was
“debasing the currency” wrecked his project. A Bill strengthening
the hands of the Privy Council in excluding diseased cattle was
passed. But the great measure of the Session was the Reform Bill,
which was introduced on the 28th of February. By it Mr. Gladstone
extended household franchise to the counties, and a vigorous effort
was made to compel him to introduce along with the Franchise Bill,
a Bill for the Redistribution of Seats. The Second Reading of the
Reform Bill was carried on the 7th of April, a majority of 340 to 210
having rejected the hostile amendment of the Conservatives, which
was moved by Lord John Manners. The Tories then made many futile
efforts to coerce Mr. Gladstone into disclosing his Redistribution
Scheme, which he had, however, sketched in outline in his speech
introducing the Franchise Bill. Ultimately the Third Reading was
carried on the 26th of June--_nemine contradicente_. The Bill was
read a first time in the House of Lords on the 27th of June, where
Lord Cairns and the Tory Peers opposed it by an amendment, in which
they refused to assent to any extension of the Franchise, without any
provision for a redistribution of seats. The country began to murmur
against this attitude of the Tory Peers, many of whom even deprecated
the policy of supporting Lord Cairns’s amendment. It was, however,
carried by a majority of 205 against 146. After that the Peers, by
way of conciliating public opinion, agreed, on the motion of Lord
Dunraven, to assent “to the principles of representation in the Bill.”
Ministers immediately announced that they would take steps to prorogue
Parliament in order to hold an autumn Session for the reintroduction
of the Measure. This involved the sacrifice of all their projects
of legislation, including Sir William Harcourt’s Bill for reforming
the Government of London, Mr. Chamberlain’s Merchant Shipping Bill
(prohibiting shipowners from making a profit out of the wreck of
over-insured ships), the Railway Regulation Bill (which prevented
railway companies from burdening traders and farmers with extortionate
transport rates), the Scottish Universities Bill, the Welsh Education
Bill, the Police Superannuation Bill, the Medical Acts Amendment Bill,
the Corrupt Practices at Municipal Elections Bill, the Law of Evidence
Amendment Bill, the Irish Sunday Closing Bill, and the Irish Land
Purchase Bill. These, as well as many useful measures, perished in the
legislative holocaust of the 10th of July, which the opposition of the
Peers had brought about.

The Recess was spent in violent agitation. Party leaders on both sides
strove to rouse public opinion against or on behalf of the action of
the House of Lords. The country, on the whole, seemed day by day to
gravitate towards the Liberals, and the general opinion soon came to
be that the time had come for settling the question of Parliamentary
Reform, and that, the Peers having accepted the principle of Mr.
Gladstone’s Bill, a compromise as to details ought to be effected. The
monster procession which passed through London on the 21st of July,
together with Mr. Gladstone’s political campaign in Midlothian, did
much to strengthen the hands of the Reformers. As might be expected,
the Radicals took advantage of the occasion to direct a fierce and
violent attack against the House of Lords as an institution. When the
Session opened on the 23rd of October party spirit ran high, and both
sides took “No Surrender!” as their watchword. Lord Randolph Churchill
attempted to fix on Mr. Chamberlain a charge of inciting a Radical mob
to break up a great Conservative demonstration which had been held
in Aston Park, Birmingham, on the 13th of October. Mr. Chamberlain
proved his innocence by quoting affidavits made by certain men, who
swore that “Tory roughs” had provoked the riot. The genuineness of
those affidavits was questioned, but to no purpose. When, however,
they were made the basis of legal proceedings, it was noted as a
curious coincidence that, with one exception, all the witnesses who
had supplied Mr. Chamberlain with his exculpating affidavits, somehow
vanished from the scene. The Franchise Bill was rapidly passed through
the House of Commons, and the enormous majority of 140 in favour
of the Second Reading brought the Tory Peers to a more reasonable
state of mind. Moderate Conservatives began to build a golden bridge
of retreat for their lordships. Nor was the task hard. It was soon
discovered, as the result of private communications, that there was
now no substantial difference of opinion between Conservatives like
Sir Richard Cross and Liberals like Mr. Gladstone on the general
principles of Redistribution. Nobody, in fact, had the courage to
defend the continued enfranchisement of petty boroughs while large
towns were not represented in Parliament save by the county vote. It
was finally arranged by plenipotentiaries representing both parties
that Mr. Gladstone’s draft Redistribution Bill should be submitted
confidentially to Sir Stafford Northcote and his friends--that they
should suggest, and in turn submit to Mr. Gladstone their amendments
to it--that when both Parties agreed, Mr. Gladstone should receive
from the Tories “an adequate assurance” that they meant to carry the
Franchise Bill through the House of Lords, that upon the strength
of this assurance Mr. Gladstone should introduce the Redistribution
Bill in the House of Commons, and carry it to a Second Reading while
the Peers were passing the Third Reading of the Franchise Bill. The
whole understanding rested simply on an exchange of “words of honour”
between the leaders on both sides, and it was loyally adhered to. Lord
Salisbury, Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington,
and Sir Charles Dilke, met and settled all serious disputes over the
question of redistribution, and the Bill was introduced on the 1st of
December. On the 4th of the month the measure was read a second time,
the House of Lords having passed the Franchise Bill. On the 6th of
December Parliament adjourned till the 19th of February, 1885, when the
Redistribution Bill was to be finally dealt with in Committee, _de die
in diem_.

The autumn Session did not close till the Government obtained a vote of
credit of £1,000,000 for military operations in Egypt. The decision to
send an expedition to Khartoum by way of the Nile was arrived at with
manifest reluctance by the Ministry, and of all the courses open to
them, including those which had been suggested by Gordon and rejected
by Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, it was the most objectionable and
hazardous.[192] Lord

[Illustration: SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE (AFTERWARDS LORD IDDESLEIGH).

(_From a Photograph by Barraud, Oxford Street._)]

Wolseley arrived at Cairo early in September, and the Mudir of Dongola
not only held back the Mahdi, but furnished a base of operations to
the English force. Down to the end of 1884 Lord Wolseley contrived to
shroud his proceedings in a veil of mystery. Beyond the facts that he
had railway transport to Sarras, that after that point, the expedition
and its transport were conveyed up the falling river in whaleboats
guided by Canadian boatmen,[193] that Lord Wolseley’s sanguine
anticipation of a rapid advance had been falsified, that dangers and
difficulties, which he ought to have foreseen, had been encountered,
that it had been necessary to stimulate the

[Illustration: THE CITADEL, CAIRO.]

energies of the Army by offering a money reward to the first detachment
which reached Debbeh, and that by the first week of January, 1885,
Lord Wolseley would have about 7,000 men at Ambukol, of whom, perhaps,
2,000 might be ready to dash across the desert to Shendy, from whence
the decisive blow at the Mahdi must be struck--beyond these facts
and conjectures nothing was known. Dim rumours of Gordon’s futile
sorties, of his feeling of disgust at being abandoned, and tidings
that could not be doubted of the wreck of the steamer in which he had
sent his gallant lieutenant, Colonel Stewart, and the British Consul
at Khartoum, Mr. Frank Power, down to Berber, filled the minds of the
people with the deepest anxiety. Gordon had sent Stewart to Berber with
instructions to appeal to private munificence in the United States and
British Colonies for funds with which to organise the relief expedition
which he had ceased to beg from England. Stewart and his companions
were murdered by natives after their steamer was wrecked. Hence the
journals and diaries which Stewart carried were conveyed to the Mahdi,
who, finding from them that Gordon was in dire straits, pressed the
siege with redoubled energy.

After the failure of the Conference to adjust the financial
difficulties of Egypt, England “regained her freedom of action.”
Lord Northbrook, as we have seen, was sent to Cairo to report on the
situation, which in reality was a very simple one. Egypt could not
pay the annual interest on her debt, and the Foreign Powers would
not, in the interests of the bondholders, submit to have it reduced
unless better security were given for the principal. The only course
open, therefore, was either repudiation, or the acknowledgment of
British responsibility for the financial administration of Egypt,
which would have enabled Mr. Gladstone to have cut down, not only the
bondholders’ interest, but also the taxes extorted from the Egyptian
people. Lord Northbrook’s appointment was caustically criticised by
the Tory Opposition, who connected his family name of Baring with a
mission undertaken in financial interests. His mission thus did much to
destroy the confidence of the populace in the Government, and when he
returned, his recommendations, so far as they could be discussed, still
further discredited Mr. Gladstone’s Government. For Lord Northbrook had
discovered a third course open to him in Egypt. It was to leave the
interest of Shylock untouched, but to meet the deficit in the Egyptian
Budget, caused by the payment of Shylock’s bond, by transferring from
Egypt to England the burden of supporting the Army of Occupation.[194]
As for the existing emergency, Lord Northbrook suggested temporary
repudiation, and his suggestion was adopted. The Law of Liquidation
was suspended, and the creditors of Egypt were asked to be satisfied
with less than their due, till matters could be set right. The
Queen’s Government early in December attempted to meet the financial
difficulty, by proposing to advance a 3½ per cent. loan to Egypt
on the security of the Domain lands,[195] or personal estate of the
Khedive. The Powers did not receive this proposal cordially. Necessity,
which knows no law, having compelled the Egyptian Government, with the
sanction of England, to suspend for the moment the Sinking Fund of the
Unified Debt, a distinct violation of the Liquidation Law, the Debt
Commission prosecuted the Egyptian Government before the International
Tribunals. They of course gave judgment in favour of the Commission.
Germany and Russia at this juncture insisted on their representatives
sharing all the rights and powers of the Debt Commission, indeed,
Germany, irritated by the Foreign and Colonial policy of England,
showed signs of supporting certain inconvenient claims to the Domain
lands which the ex-Khedive, Ismail Pasha, put forward.[196]

The coolness between Germany and England which marked the last half
of 1884 arose out of what was at the time termed the “scramble for
Africa.” The regions opened up by Mr. H. M. Stanley on the Congo had
been practically occupied by an International Association, the head
of which was the King of the Belgians. In fact, General Gordon was
under an engagement to take up the government of this vast tract of
land when he went to Khartoum. England, however, in order to exclude
dangerous rivals, recognised the obsolete claims of Portugal to hold
the outlet of the Congo; but, as Portuguese officials were alleged
by commercial men to be obstructive and corrupt, this policy was not
very popular. Germany, indeed, united the Powers in quashing it, and
finally it was agreed that an International Conference should meet at
Berlin to determine the conditions under which the outlet of the Congo
should be controlled. But at this point Germany was sorely irritated
by the provokingly vacillating policy of Lord Derby. There was a strip
of territory, extending from Cape Colony to the Portuguese frontier on
the Congo, in which a Bremen firm had established a trading settlement
at Angra Pequena. They applied to Prince Bismarck for protection.
He, in turn, asked Lord Granville if England claimed any sovereignty
over this region (in which there was only a small British settlement
at Walwich Bay), and whether the British Government could give the
German traders the protection which they sought. Lord Kimberley, in
his despatch to Sir Hercules Robinson of the 30th of December, had
warned him that the Government refused to extend British jurisdiction
north of the Orange River. But Lord Granville now told Prince Bismarck
that, though English sovereignty had only been proclaimed formally
at certain points along this coast, any encroachment on it by a
foreign Power would be regarded by England as an encroachment on its
rights. Again (31st of December, 1884) Prince Bismarck repeated his
question--Did England propose to give the German traders protection,
and, if so, what means had she at her disposal for that purpose? This
despatch was referred to Lord Derby. He left it unanswered for six
months, whereupon Prince Bismarck, stung by the affront, answered
it in his own way by annexing Angra Pequena to Germany. Englishmen
were indignant; but what was there to be said? The British Government
refused at first to recognise the annexation. Then they said they
would recognise it if Germany would pledge herself not to establish
a penal colony on the coast, a demand which Prince Bismarck bluntly
refused. Finally, when Lord Derby induced the Cape Colony to retaliate
by annexing the coast round Angra Pequena between the Orange River and
the Portuguese frontier, Prince Bismarck declined to recognise such an
act of annexation. After this event Germany, concealing her designs,
despatched an expedition to seize the Cameroons, over which the British
Government, in response to the desire of the native chiefs, had already
decided to extend a British Protectorate. Disputed land-claims, which
German subjects in Fiji preferred in 1874, were also revived. In 1874
England had refused even to investigate them. Now, however, Lord
Granville agreed to submit them to a mixed Commission. The British
Government surrendered to Germany on these questions, by a curious
coincidence, at the very time they issued their invitations to the
London Conference on Egypt, in which they were expecting the support
of Germany for their Egyptian policy.[197] As a matter of fact, this
support was not obtained. In the Conference Count Münster, on behalf
of Germany, stood neutral between France and England, who were unable
to reconcile their interests. But he persisted in thrusting before the
meeting the question of the imperfect administration of quarantine in
Egypt by English officials, and on the 5th of August Lord Granville
abruptly dissolved the Conference, because this matter was beyond the
scope of its discussion. Nor was Prince Bismarck wrathful against
England merely because he imagined that Lord Derby had some deep design
of thwarting the sudden desire of Germany for colonial expansion.

In a moment of weakness, and when the laurels of victory had not
quite faded from the brows of the heroes of Tel-el-Kebir, the British
Government had applied to Prince Bismarck for hints and suggestions as
to what they should do in Egypt. According to Lord Granville, Prince
Bismarck’s advice was “Take it.”[198] According to Prince Bismarck,
whilst he assured Lord Ampthill that Germany would not oppose the
British annexation of

[Illustration: BALMORAL CASTLE, FROM CRAIG NORDIE.]

(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co._)

Egypt, his advice was that England should “establish a certain security
of position in this connecting link between her European and Asiatic
possessions” by administering Egypt as a leaseholder from the Sultan.
In this way England, he thought, would attain her purpose, and yet
escape a conflict with existing treaties, and “avoid putting France and
other Powers out of temper.”[199] His counsel was not followed, which
was the first affront. The feeble course actually adopted--that of
attempting to govern Egypt by advice--had ended in a financial crisis
that alarmed all the German bondholders, and they in turn put pressure
on Prince Bismarck, that still further increased his irritation against
England. Hence, when towards the end of 1884 he meditated a stroke of
Colonial policy at the Antipodes, he showed little respect for British
susceptibilities. In this new departure he was materially assisted by
the incredible folly of Lord Derby. At the end of 1883 the Government
of Queensland had sent a police magistrate to annex New Guinea, or
rather that portion of it not claimed by the Dutch. It had already
been annexed by wandering British navigators, but rumours of foreign
designs on the island had quickened the apprehensions and action of
the Australians. Lord Derby repudiated this act of annexation. As Lord
Derby had been sedulous in warning the Colonists that in war they must
defend themselves, it was not easy to understand why he objected to
their occupying a territory which, if held by a foreign enemy, would
give him a good base of operations against Australia. Ultimately, he
nerved himself to the hazard of annexing the southern portion of New
Guinea, east of the Dutch possessions, provided the Australian Colonies
would enter into a federal engagement to bear part of the expense of
holding and governing the country. Lord Derby had not, however, taken
care in proclaiming in October, 1884, his intention of annexation to
warn foreign Powers off other portions of the island and adjacent
archipelago. He virtually invited rival Governments to slip in and
seize what he had left untouched. The end of the year, therefore, saw
the German flag flying over the unoccupied portion of New Guinea, and
the archipelago of New Ireland and New Britain, and all Australia was
in an uproar. These events stirred the sluggish heart of Lord Derby.
He promptly forestalled a project of German annexation in South Africa
by hoisting the British flag at Saint Lucia Bay and over the region
between Cape Colony and Natal, known as Pondoland.

On the 25th of January the Marquis of Hertford, one of the ornaments
of the Queen’s Court in her happier days, passed away from the scene.
Lord Hertford had distinguished himself as an ideal Lord Chamberlain
from 1874 to 1879, and he had won the confidence of her Majesty whilst
serving as Equerry to the Prince Consort. This, he used to say, was
the most interesting part of his career, and among his friends he
occasionally told many curious stories, brightly illustrative of
Court life in the Victorian period. He had a profound and warm regard
for the Prince Consort, who talked more freely to him than to most
men, chiefly, he said, because he knew his Equerry kept no diary.
Lord Hertford’s stories all tended to throw light on the singularly
unselfish nature of his Royal master. One of them, for example, was to
the effect that when the Queen and the Prince were crossing the Solent,
Lord Hertford, on appearing on deck, found the Prince pacing about
and enjoying the fresh breeze, whereas the Queen had been compelled
to retire to her cabin. He said to the Prince he was surprised to
find him on deck in such a breeze, as he had always heard that his
Royal Highness was a bad sailor. The Prince replied, “I know people
say that about me, and imagine that the Queen never suffers from
sea-sickness. It is better it should be so. The English laugh so much
at sea-sickness, that I prefer the laugh should be against me rather
than against the Queen.”

In the second week in February the Queen published a continuation
of her “Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” the
dedication of which was in these words:--“To my loyal Highlanders, and
especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful
friend, John Brown, these records of my widowed life in Scotland are
gratefully dedicated.”[200] In this volume she displayed much of the
latent Jacobitism which one is apt to develop in the atmosphere of
the northern mountains, and again and again, when she records her
visits to the scenes, rich in the storied memories of “the ’15 and the
’45,” she expresses her feeling of pride and gratitude that she has
inherited, not only the throne of the Stuarts, but the fervent loyalty
that bound so many gallant hearts to the cause of “bonnie Prince
Charlie.” Her reminiscences are somewhat tinged with melancholy, but
the great and motherly loving-heartedness of the book is its chief
charm, and secured for it an amazing popularity. It was said that the
circulating libraries ordered copies by the ton, and the Press teemed
with favourable reviews, in which her Majesty took great interest. As
usual, however, she only read those that were marked for her perusal by
her ladies. The cover was designed by the Princess Beatrice, and was in
every way tasteful and artistic. But the portraits which embellished
the work were badly reproduced. That of Brown, however, it may be
noted, was an exception, for he was “flattered” by the artist out of
all recognition.

The year 1884 was one that brought much sorrow to the Royal Family.
During the months of January and February, whilst the Court was at
Osborne, though her Majesty’s health had visibly improved, yet she
was still suffering from the effects of her accident, and was quite
unable to remain long in a standing position. On the 19th of February
the Court removed to Windsor, and it was rumoured that the Queen would
spend Easter in Germany. She was, in truth, desirous of being present
at the marriage of her granddaughter, the Princess Victoria of Hesse,
to Prince Louis of Battenberg. On the 26th of March she received
Lieutenant W. Lloyd, R.H.A., at Windsor, when he presented to her
one of the Mahdi’s flags which had been taken at Tokar, and just as
preparations for the German tour were being made, the Royal Household
was plunged into grief by sudden tidings of the death of the Duke of
Albany, on the 28th of March. He had been living at Cannes for a few
weeks. He had taken part with great glee in the festivities of the
gayest season that had ever been witnessed in Nice. He returned to
Cannes on the 27th, and it seems he had, in mounting the stairs of the
Naval Club in the afternoon, fallen and hurt his right knee. He was
attended to by Dr. Royle, and, though he went to bed, conversed quite
gaily with those round him. At half-past two on the morning of the 28th
Dr. Royle was roused by the sound of his stertorous breathing, and, on
going to his bedside, found him dying in a fit. The news of his death
reached Windsor at noon, and Sir H. Ponsonby broke it gently to the
Queen, who was at first so prostrated with grief that her condition
alarmed her attendants. As soon as she rallied her Majesty sent the
Princess Beatrice to Claremont House to

[Illustration: FUNERAL OF THE DUKE OF ALBANY: THE PROCESSION ENTERING
WINDSOR CASTLE.]

comfort the Duchess of Albany, then in a delicate state of health. In
the afternoon the ex-Empress Eugénie, clad in the deepest mourning,
visited the Queen, and stayed till about seven in the evening. She
informed those to whom she spoke when she left that her Majesty had
apparently obtained some relief by giving expression to her anguish
in the sympathetic presence of a friend who had herself suffered many
sorrowful bereavements. To none did the sad news convey so severe a
shock as to the Prince of Wales. The telegram was handed to him whilst
he was chatting with some friends in Lord Sefton’s box on the Grand
Stand at the Aintree Race-course, and at first the Prince seemed
dazed with the message. He was only able to mutter to Lord Sefton
in broken accents, “Albany is dead.” Having retired to his private
room to compose his nerves, he drove off immediately to Croxteth. The
rumour of the Duke’s death flew round the race-course, but at first
was disbelieved. Then the sports were stopped, and the stampede of the
pleasure-seekers to Liverpool, where it was hoped that the news would
be contradicted, will long be remembered. In London the event was
the theme of sympathetic discussion in every train and omnibus and
tramcar in the afternoon, as men were returning home from business. The
workmen’s clubs at night adjourned their political debates as a mark
of sympathy for the Queen. On the following day her Majesty and the
Princess Beatrice visited the Duchess of Albany, and the meeting was
most touching and mournful. All the details of the funeral arrangements
were superintended by the Queen, but the body of the Prince was brought
back to England under the personal direction and care of the Prince of
Wales, and buried on the 5th of April with solemn pomp in St. George’s
Chapel, Windsor. Six of the pall-bearers--Lord Castlereagh, Lord
Brook, Lord Harris, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Walter Campbell, and Mr.
Mills--were undergraduates with the dead Prince at Christ Church.

[Illustration: VIEW IN CLAREMONT PARK.]

The Duke of Albany once said, “I do not understand why people should
always be so kind to me.” The reason was not far to seek. He was a
young man with an interesting and amiable personality. He had a pensive
turn that recalled his father, but with a dash of gaiety of heart which
rendered him more acceptable to society than the Prince Consort ever
managed to become. His long life of suffering and pain secured for
him the sympathies of the people. Despite his ill-health he was even
in childhood a bright and promising boy. Professor Tyndall has spoken
highly of his capacity at this period, and Dean Stanley, one of his
early mentors, so deeply influenced him that at one time the Prince
indicated a desire to take Orders in the Anglican Church. At Oxford he
was prohibited by the physicians from reading for honours, and after he
became a member of the House of Lords, the Queen, noticing his eager
interest in politics, had some trouble in dissuading him from plunging
into the debates, as a free lance who loved to “drink delight of battle
with his peers.”

When he was thwarted in this design, the Prince suggested that his
services might be utilised in another direction. At the time Lord
Normanby resigned the Governorship of Victoria Prince Leopold applied
to Mr. Gladstone for the post, and the Tory newspapers and orators
of the period heaped the most extravagant abuse on Mr. Gladstone for
refusing the offer. Mr. Gladstone was even challenged in the House
of Commons on the subject, but his lips being sealed by the Queen,
he was unable to defend himself, or do more than make an evasive and
ambiguous statement. The truth, however, was that Mr. Gladstone did
not refuse the Prince’s offer. He referred it to Mr. Murray Smith,
Agent-General for Victoria in London, with a request for his opinion.
Mr. Smith replied that the appointment would give great satisfaction
in Australia, but when the matter was laid before the Queen she
peremptorily vetoed the project, assigning as a reason her fear that
the Prince’s ill-health unfitted him for the duties of the position to
which he aspired. Obvious reasons of State have, however, always made
the Sovereigns of the Hanoverian dynasty reluctant to permit Princes
of the Blood-Royal to serve as satraps in distant colonies where
aspirations to independence are not always dormant.

Prince Leopold was a pleasing and polished orator, and being the only
member of his family who spoke the English tongue without any trace
of a German accent, his platform performances were always successful.
His addresses reflected the thoughtful, cultivated mind of a young man
who had lived much in the companionship of books, and who had read
discursively without studying deeply. He was never commonplace, and
his merely formal utterances were usually marked by a distinction of
style, that well became a princely scholar. In the singularly beautiful
preface which the Princess Christian wrote for the “Biographical Sketch
and Letters” of her sister, the Grand Duchess of Hesse (Princess
Alice), she says that as the Duke of Albany was the last to see her
gifted sister in life, so he was the first of the Queen’s children
“to follow her into the silent land.” It is a curious fact that, as
with her, the shadow of early death seems to have cast itself in the
form of presentiment over his young life. Mr. Frederick Myers, in
his eulogistic reminiscences of the Duke of Albany, alludes to this
circumstance in the following passage:--“The last time I saw him [the
Duke of Albany] to speak to,” writes a friend from Cannes, March 30th,
“being two days before he died, he _would_ talk to me about death,
and said he would like a military funeral, and, in fact, I had great
difficulty in getting him off this melancholy subject. Finally, I
asked, ‘Why, sir, do you talk in this morose manner?’ As he was about
to answer he was called away, and said, ‘I’ll tell you later.’ I never
saw him to speak to again, but he finished his answer to another lady,
and said, ‘For two nights now the Princess Alice has appeared to me in
my dreams, and says she is quite happy, and that she wants me to come
and join her. That’s what makes me so thoughtful.’”[201]

The death of the Duke of Albany hushed the gaiety of a highly
promising season, and West End tradesmen were full of lamentation when
it was rumoured that the Court would shroud itself in gloom during the
whole summer, though the official period of Court mourning was to end
in May. But it was not alone in London that the Prince was mourned.
His neighbours at Esher, rich and poor alike, felt his loss severely.
They all spoke well of him and of his young wife, and recalled pleasant
memories of his kindliness--how he joined the local chess club, sang
at local concerts, and interested himself in the Duchess’s schemes for
boarding out pauper children. After the death of the Duke the Queen
announced her intention of maintaining Claremont as a residence for
the widowed Duchess, a generous act, because Prince Leopold used to
say that even with £20,000 a year to live on, Claremont kept him a
poor man. But for the £20,000 which the Queen spent on the property
during 1883 and 1884, this residence would in truth have seriously
embarrassed him.[202] As a matter of fact, the favourite dwelling of
the Duke of Albany was not Claremont but Boyton Manor, near Warminster
in Wiltshire, of which place he was tenant when he died, and in the
neighbourhood of which his memory is still lovingly cherished.[203]

Soon after the funeral of the Duke of Albany the Queen was recommended
by Sir William Jenner to go to Germany, and she thus resolved to visit
her son-in-law and grandchildren at Darmstadt, where the marriage of
the Princess Victoria of Hesse with Prince Louis of Battenberg was to
be celebrated at the end of the month (April). Sir William believed
that the change of scene and surroundings would do the Queen more
good than a mournful sojourn at Osborne, where everything must recall
reminiscences of her dead son. Her Majesty accordingly left Windsor
on the 15th of April for Port Victoria, whence she embarked on the
_Osborne_ and arrived at Flushing next morning. Therefrom she went
by rail to Darmstadt, arriving early on the morning of the 17th. The
voyage was unpleasant, and the weather between the Nore and the Scheldt
so heavy that the Queen had to remain in her cabin during the greater
part of her journey. Only the Grand Duke of Hesse and his daughters
were on the platform to meet her Majesty, who had desired her reception
to be as private as possible. Ere she left England she forwarded to the
newspapers through the Home Secretary a letter expressing her gratitude
to the people for their loving sympathy with her and the Duchess of
Albany in their bereavement.

On the 30th of April the marriage of the Queen’s granddaughter, the
Princess Victoria of Hesse, with Prince Louis of Battenberg, was
solemnised in the small whitewashed Puritanical-looking chapel at
Darmstadt, which was thronged with a brilliant crowd of specially
invited guests, among whom the Queen, in her sombre mourning, was
one of the most striking figures. With the Queen there were present,
besides the family of the bride and bridegroom, the young Princess of
Wales. The German Crown Prince led in the Princess of Wales, and the
German Crown Princess was escorted by her brother, the Prince of Wales;
Prince William of Prussia led in the Princess Beatrice, and the dark,
Jewish-looking Prince of Bulgaria (brother of the bridegroom) escorted
with obsequious gallantry the Princess Victoria of Prussia. The
ceremony was short, simple, and touching; but the sermon on the duties
of marriage which the Court preacher delivered was long and prosy. The
Queen, after the ceremony was over, retired to the Palace, and did not
attend the wedding banquet in the Schloss. The weather, which had been
cold and bleak when the Queen arrived, suddenly became fine and mild,
and she was, therefore, able to amuse herself in the public gardens.
She had gone to Darmstadt rather reluctantly, but was now glad that
she had taken Sir William Jenner’s advice. By her own wish she was
lodged in the Neue Schloss, which she had built, at a cost of nearly
£25,000, as a palace for the Princess Alice and her husband, and in
the beautiful grounds of this place she drove about every morning in
a pony-carriage with the Princess Beatrice. She took long drives every
afternoon, and visited Auerbach (the chief country seat of the Grand
Duke) and his shooting-lodge at Kranichstein. The ex-Empress Eugénie
had offered to lend Arenenberg (a charming villa near Constance) to the
Queen, but she did not desire to extend her tour beyond Darmstadt, and
so the offer was not accepted. Accompanied by the Princess Beatrice,
the Grand Duke, and the Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, her Majesty
returned to Windsor on the 7th of May.

[Illustration: THE LINN OF DEE. (_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and
Co._)]

London was still dull and gloomy. Court mourning and the absence of
the Prince of Wales (who was visiting his sister in Berlin) made
the season of 1884 melancholy. On the 10th of May the Queen, the
Grand Duke of Hesse, and the Princess Elizabeth paid a visit of
condolence to the Duchess of Albany at Claremont, and on the 22nd
her Majesty left Windsor for Balmoral. That she was much improved in
health was evident, because not only were the public admitted to the
railway-station at Perth, and Ferryhill, Aberdeen, but at the former
she was able to walk from her carriage to the reception-room with a
firm step and without assistance. It was a lovely warm day when her
Majesty and suite drove along the north side of the Dee from Ballater
to Balmoral. The sixty-fifth anniversary of her Majesty’s birthday was
observed in London officially on the 24th of May, but Ministerial State
dinners were not given owing to the Royal Family being in mourning.
The anniversary was not to be kept at Balmoral, but at last the Queen
directed that her servants, with those from Abergeldie and Birkhall,
should dine in the Ball Room of the Castle, under the presidency of her
Commissioner, Dr. Profeit. In the morning Mr. Boehm’s life-size statue
of John Brown arrived, and it was placed on a pedestal in the grounds
of Balmoral at a spot about two hundred yards north-west of the Castle,
the site being selected by the Queen. The great sculptor superintended
the ceremony of unveiling his work. On the 15th of June the Queen
attended Crathie Church, for the first time since October, 1882,
greatly to the relief of her God-fearing neighbours, who had begun to
entertain a shocking suspicion that she had given up attendance at
“public worship.” On the 25th the Court returned to Windsor, after a
delightful holiday spent in the brightest and sunniest of weather.
Every afternoon the Queen had been able to drive about Deeside, and
she had even visited, though she had not stayed at, her cottage at
the Glassalt Shiel. Though the return of the Prince of Wales to town
from Wiesbaden early in June had given a fillip to a chilling season,
Society was dull in the summer of 1884. Lord Sydney and Lord Kenmare
had gently suggested to the Queen that her refusal to permit Drawing
Rooms and State Concerts to be held was causing much disappointment
at the West End, but without avail. Her Majesty, however, showed much
tenacity in forbidding these functions, the proposal of which by the
great officers of the Household she deemed disrespectful to the memory
of her dead son. Nor was she conciliated by being reminded that during
the season of 1861, after the death of the Duchess of Kent, she had
held Drawing Rooms herself, whereas now she had the Princess of Wales
ready to relieve her of the burden of attending them. Londoners,
however, had their compensations. They discovered, in the gay and
glittering gardens of the Health Exhibition at South Kensington, with
their English and German bands and their brilliant combinations of
Chinese lanterns and electric lamps, a delightful _al fresco_ lounge.
Here in the summer evenings the pursuit of pleasure was combined with
a chastened homage to the cause of scientific enlightenment and social
improvement. This was one of a series of specialised exhibitions, the
organisation of which had been the work of the Prince of Wales, who
also earned the gratitude of the town at this time by persuading the
Queen to let him hold two Levees on her behalf. On the 20th of July
the Queen and Princess Beatrice were at Claremont, where the Duchess
of Albany gave birth to a son; after which her Majesty proceeded to
Osborne on the 30th of the month, where she was visited by the German
Crown Prince and Princess. An interesting event in the life of the
Court in the season of 1884 was the reception given by the venerable
Duchess of Cambridge at St. James’s Palace on the 25th of July to
celebrate the completion of her eighty-seventh year. The season of 1884
virtually ended with the Garden Party which the Prince of Wales gave
at Marlborough House on the same day. It ended, as it began, gloomily,
and the social chroniclers lamented the poorness of the entertainments,
the badness of the dinners, the mournfulness of the balls. They only
brightened up when they recorded, with a transient gleam of joy,
that, though all the “great houses” attended by Royalty had been
closed, three had opened their doors since Easter, namely, Devonshire
House, where Lord Hartington entertained guests twice; Norfolk House,
where Lord and Lady Edmond Talbot gave a ball that was endurable; and
Stafford House, where, at a small party in the middle of July, the
Prince and Princess of Wales made their first appearance in Society
since their mourning.

During August the Queen was much troubled as to the issue of the
political crisis arising out of the Reform Bill debates, and the
threatened conflict between the democracy and the House of Lords. She
earnestly deprecated an attack on the Peers during the Recess, and Mr.
Gladstone and his colleagues paid due deference to her opinions. She
sent twice for Lord Rowton--better known, when Mr. Disraeli’s private
secretary, as Mr. Montagu Corry--whom she regarded as the inheritor
of Lord Beaconsfield’s ideas, to consult him on the situation. She
made it clear to him that she was unwilling to use her Prerogative for
the purpose of creating new Peers to force the Reform Bill through
the Upper House. From this it was inferred that if the House of Lords
resisted to the bitter end, the Queen would prefer to coerce them
by a dissolution rather than by Prerogative. Lord Wolseley and Lord
Northbrook were also summoned about this time to consult with her
on the prospects of a campaign in Egypt. These anxious conferences
were held after she had received the Abyssinian Envoys on the 20th
of August. They had come to England bearing copies of a Treaty which
had been concluded at Adowah with King John of Abyssinia. They were
received by the Queen at Osborne, and at their audience they presented
her Majesty with letters from King John and with various gifts, among
which were a young elephant and a large monkey. Ere the Court left
Osborne the Queen surprised the country by announcing her decision to
confer the Order of the Garter on Prince George of Wales, for there
was no precedent for giving the Garter to a junior member of the Royal
Family in his minority. When the Queen came to the Throne there were
only four Royal Knights of this Order, and pedants of heraldry now
complained that there were twenty-eight, and that the Royal Knights
outnumbered the ordinary ones.

On the 1st of September the Court proceeded to Balmoral, the Queen
being accompanied by the Crown Princess and Princess Beatrice. The
arrival of the Court at Balmoral, and the visit of Mr. Gladstone to
Invercauld, had filled Braemar to overflowing. On the 18th of September
the Queen held a Council at

[Illustration: THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE ABYSSINIAN ENVOYS AT OSBORNE.]

Balmoral, at which Mr. Gladstone, Lord Fife, and Sir H. Ponsonby
were present, Mr. Gladstone afterwards dining with her Majesty. Lord
Ripon having resigned office as Viceroy of India, his successor,
Lord Dufferin, visited the Queen at Balmoral in October. One by one
the Royal guests fled southwards, and finally the Queen and Princess
Beatrice left the Highlands for Windsor on the 20th of November--her
Majesty’s return being hastened by grave political anxieties caused
by the threatened collision between the two Houses of Parliament. Mr.
Gladstone had at Balmoral so earnestly deprecated the obstinacy of
the Peers, and so clearly pointed out to the Queen the difficulty of
avoiding this collision whilst they persisted in their anti-Reform
policy, that her Majesty subsequently used all her influence to bring
about a compromise. It was with a view to renew her efforts in this
direction that she returned to Windsor at the time when Lord Granville
was offering to submit a draft Redistribution Bill for friendly but
private inspection by the Tory leaders, provided the Peers would
give a pledge to pass the Franchise Bill during the autumn Session.
The appearance of Mrs. Gladstone’s name among the list of those who
were at Lady Salisbury’s reception in Arlington Street on the 19th of
November, was taken as an auspicious omen, and as indicating that the
Conservative chiefs had not been insensible to the advice which the
Queen had given to the Duke of Richmond in the Highlands. The supreme
difficulty of bringing about the Reform compromise lay in breaking
down the resistance of Lord Salisbury and the Tory Peers, who were
resolved to force a dissolution on the basis of the old franchise. This
resistance gradually weakened after Mr. Gladstone’s visit to Balmoral.
That it finally disappeared was mainly due to the firm but gentle
pressure which the Queen put on the Duke of Richmond in order to induce
him and his colleagues to accept a compromise. The actual details of
the Treaty between Mr. Gladstone and the Peers were settled in London.
But the preliminaries of Peace were really negotiated by the Queen and
the Duke of Richmond in Aberdeenshire, after the memorable “gathering
of the clans” at Braemar in the autumn of 1884. After the return of the
Court from Scotland many guests were received at Windsor, among whom
Lord Sydney--who audits her Majesty’s private accounts, and, since the
death of the Prince Consort, has been her confidential adviser--was
one of the most favoured. On the 17th of December the Court removed to
Osborne.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE.

An _Annus Mirabilis_--Breaking up of the Old Parties--The
Tory-Parnellite Alliance--Mr. Chamberlain’s Socialism--The
Doctrine of “Ransom”--Effect of the Reform Bill and Seats
Bill--Enthroning the “Sovereign People”--Three Reform Struggles:
1832, 1867, 1885--“One Man One Vote”--Another Vote of Censure--A
Barren Victory--Retreat from the Soudan--The Dispute with
Russia--Komaroff at Penjdeh--The Vote of Credit--On the Verge of
War--Mr. Gladstone’s Compromise with Russia--Threatened Renewal
of the Crimes Act--The Tory Intrigue with the Parnellites--The
Tory Chiefs Decide to Oppose Coercion--Wrangling in the
Cabinet--Mr. Childers’ Budget--A Yawning Deficit--Increasing
the Spirit Duties--Readjusting the Succession Duties--Combined
Attack by Tories and Parnellites on the Budget--Defeat of the
Government and Fall of Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry--The Scene in the
Commons--The Tories in Power--Lord Salisbury’s Government--Places
for the Fourth Party--Mr. Parnell Demands his Price--Abandoning
Lord Spencer--Re-opening the Question of the Maamtrasna
Murders--Concessions to the Parnellites--The New Budget--Sir H. D.
Wolff sent to Cairo--The Criminal Law Amendment Act--Court Life in
1885--Affairs at Home and Abroad--The Fall of Khartoum--Death of
General Gordon--Beginning of the Burmese Question--Rebellion in
Canada--Marriage of the Princess Beatrice--The Battenbergs.

After the compromise had been arranged between the rival political
leaders on the Franchise Bill and the Bill for the Redistribution
of Seats, it has been said that Parliament adjourned to the 19th of
February, 1885--an _annus mirabilis_ in the Queen’s reign. It witnessed
the final settlement of the Reform Question which the Whigs left
unsettled in 1832. It witnessed the amazing development of the Home
Rule movement in Ireland under two influences. The first was extended
Franchise. The second was the alliance between the Parnellites and
the Tory Party, which had grown out of the intrigues of Lord Randolph
Churchill, Sir H. Drummond Wolff, and Mr. Rowland Winn, the Tory whip,
with Mr. Justin McCarthy, and other Irish Nationalist leaders. Every
day brought forth a new outward and visible sign of this alliance, and
in Ireland, when it was bruited about that the Tories were ready not
only to attack and overthrow Lord Spencer, who was still upholding
English authority at Dublin Castle almost in the same sense that
General Gordon was upholding it at Khartoum, the result was inevitable.
The large class of Irishmen who from motives of self-interest, business
connection, or personal feeling were willing to stand by the English
Government in Dublin so long as they felt sure that England would
stand by them, began to waver in their allegiance. Like the same sort
of people in the Soudan, and even in Khartoum when they saw Gordon
abandoned by those who were supposed to be truest to him, they began to
make terms with their Mahdi. If the Tories were buying the Parnellite
vote to-day, the Liberals would soon be found bidding higher for it
to-morrow, and Irishmen, whose interests and timidity alone served
to keep them loyal to Dublin Castle so long as they felt absolutely
certain of the support of both political parties in England, began in
1885 to stream over to Mr. Parnell’s camp. The stream was obviously
swollen when a coalition of the Parnellites and Tories expelled Mr.
Gladstone’s Government from office, and when it was known that the
Parnellite vote had been obtained on the faith of a promise from the
Tory leaders that they would not only abandon the Crimes Act if they
came into office, but join Mr. Parnell in opposing Mr. Gladstone’s
Government if it sought to renew it. The year also witnessed the end
of the Egyptian tragedy, the conquest of Burmah, the semi-Socialistic
propaganda of Mr. Chamberlain, the General Election which made Mr.
Parnell master of Ireland, and shattered the English Party system that
had been built up after 1846, and the rumoured adoption of Home Rule as
a part of Mr. Gladstone’s programme.

During the first weeks of 1885--the winter recess, as it might be
called--Mr. Chamberlain spread terror through the land by making a
strong Socialistic appeal to the new Electors. He was evidently bent
on breaking up the old Liberal Party--perhaps he saw his way to the
formation of a new democratic faction into which many of the “Tory
democracy,” created by Lord Randolph Churchill, might drift. Signs were
not wanting that a coalition between these successful politicians was
in certain circumstances quite a possible contingency. In the meantime,
Mr. Chamberlain and his followers preached what he called the “doctrine
of ransom.” This meant that when a man became rich he was to purchase
the privilege of keeping his wealth by paying taxes now borne by the
poor, and if need be by providing new taxes in order to give the poor
a larger share of the comforts and enjoyments of life than fell to
their lot. Mr. Chamberlain in fact offered to “ransom” the thrifty
classes from confiscation provided they taxed themselves to give the
poor free libraries, pleasure-gardens, education, improved dwellings
at “fair rents,” allotments of land, and work and employment in time
of distress. It was part of his scheme to abolish indirect taxation.
His lieutenant, Mr. Jesse Collings, formulated the portion of it which
dealt with the land by popularising the idea that it was the duty of
the ratepayers to set up agricultural labourers in the business of
farming with “three acres and a cow” to start with. Government, in
fact, was, according to Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Collings, to act as a
kind of glorified Cooperative Store, or “Universal Provider” for the
proletariat.

When the House of Commons met on the 19th of February there was a
general desire to make rapid progress with the Reform Bills. Efforts
to secure the representation of minorities, to oppose an increase in
the members of the House, to cut down the representation of Ireland,
to disfranchise the Universities, were resisted, and the alliance of
the two Front Benches crushed all opposition. One member only was
successful in carrying an amendment. This was Mr. Raikes, who had been
Chairman of Committees in Lord Beaconsfield’s Government, and who now
succeeded in reducing the perpetual penalties inflicted on voters in
corrupt boroughs. On the 11th of May the Seats Bill was read a third
time, and when it went to the House of Lords it was speedily passed.
The Tories, who objected to the compromise, found spokesmen in Mr.
James Lowther, Mr. Chaplin, and Mr. Raikes. The opposition of the
last-named was the most active, but it merely resulted in effecting a
few changes in the nomenclature of the Bill, and in what the _Times_
termed “his more than paternal solicitude for the leisurely progress of
the measure.”

No measure of reform proposed in the Queen’s reign by a responsible
politician was ever designed to produce such a mighty change in the
British Constitution as the Reform Bill of 1885. Lord Grey and Lord
John Russell, by their Bill in 1832, added not quite half a million
voters to the Electorate of the United Kingdom. The Reform Bill of
1867 increased the Electorate from 1,136,000 to 2,448,000. In 1885 it
had grown to be 3,000,000, and to this number Mr. Gladstone’s Bill
added 2,000,000 new voters.[204] The Seats Bill, which distributed
the 5,000,000 electors into electoral groups, was a much more complex
measure. The chief difficulties were two in number. First, there was
that of determining the standard by which the claim of a borough to
separate representation could be conceded; secondly, there was the
difficulty of discovering how votes should be cast in towns possessing
more than one member. Here curious contrasts can be drawn between the
old order and the new.

[Illustration: PRINCE HENRY OF BATTENBERG.

(_From a Photograph by Theodor Prümm, Berlin._)]

Redistribution of seats in 1832 meant the transfer of a vast body of
power from the aristocracy to the middle-class, and the liberation of
the Commons from the despotism of the Peers, who ruled it through the
nominees who represented their pocket boroughs. Little wonder that the
sweeping disfranchisement of these constituencies brought the country
to the verge of revolution. In 1867 it was not the aristocracy but the
middle-class which dreaded the kind of disfranchisement that proceeds
from destroying the separate representation or reducing the redundant
representation of a constituency. Hence, though the contest in 1867 was
warm, it was not fierce. But in 1885, on the other hand, no popular
excitement could be raised over the question of Redistribution, and
the nation grew sick of the controversy as to whether a Seats Bill
should be taken before, with, or after a Franchise Bill. And yet the
redistribution of power proposed

[Illustration: PRINCESS BEATRICE.

(_From a Photograph by Hughes and Mullins, Ryde._)]

by Mr. Gladstone’s Bill in 1885, and which sprang from the compromise
with the Opposition in December, 1884, effected changes vaster by far
than those that shook Society to its foundation in 1832. In 1832,
what nearly came to civil war was waged over 143 seats, liberated by
disfranchisement for redistribution.[205] In 1885 Mr. Gladstone had
178 seats representing 26·5 per cent. of the representation of the
country to redistribute. Of this number more than half--about 96--were
given to the counties, whose Electorate had been enormously increased
by the absorption of small boroughs, as well as by the extension of
household franchise, whereas in 1832, the counties only pulled 56 of
the liberated seats out of the scramble. Of the boroughs which Mr.
Gladstone disfranchised, 20 had their representation cut down to one
member in 1832, and two, Kendal and Whitby--which Lord John Russell
created as new boroughs--lost their separate representation in 1885.
The great merit of the Bill was that, as far as possible, it created
single-member constituencies on the basis of population, which was as
close an approach to equal electoral districts as Mr. Gladstone could
make. Large towns, instead of being treated as single electoral units
with cumulative voting, were cut up into single-member constituencies
as nearly as possible equal in point of population. The Bills for
Scotland and Ireland were drawn on the same lines, but adapted to local
circumstances.

Up to Whitsuntide Government business was sadly in arrears--foreign
questions diverting attention from domestic legislation. The fall of
Khartoum, the retreat of Lord Wolseley’s advance column in the Soudan,
the defeats and disasters of the campaign, the deaths of Generals
Gordon, Stewart, and Earle, together with wild rumours of an Arab
invasion of Egypt, excited Parliament to a state of high tension. The
Government called out the Reserves, announced that they would crush
the Mahdi, and ordered the war against Osman Digna to be renewed.
The Opposition in the last week of February brought forward a vote
of censure on the Ministerial policy in Egypt, calling on Ministers
to recognise British responsibility for Egypt and those parts of the
Soudan which were necessary for the security of Egypt. Mr. Gladstone
evaded any positive declaration of policy, and the Liberal party
spoke with two voices, some being for complete withdrawal from Egypt,
others being in favour of administering its affairs in the name of the
Khedive, but none being bold enough to advocate any permanent course of
action. The Ministry were saved from defeat by 302 votes to 288, and
this narrow majority was a warning of their coming doom.

A dispute then arose as to the plan adopted for rescuing Egypt from
a financial crisis. This plan was embodied in a convention with the
Powers and assented to by the Porte, by which a loan of £9,000,000
under International guarantee was advanced to Egypt to save her from
bankruptcy, in consideration of which the Powers agreed to suspend the
Law of Liquidation and cut down the interest on all Egyptian securities
by 5 per cent. That on the Suez Bonds payable to the English Government
was, however, reduced by 10 per cent. The arrangement was to last for
two years, and if Egypt was still bankrupt in 1887, then her affairs
would be subject to an International inquiry. No care had been taken
to prevent the International guarantee of the loan carrying with it
the right of International intervention in Egypt, though Ministers
repudiated the suggestion that it did. The Convention was, however,
approved by the House of Commons by a vote of 294 to 246. Soon after
this the diplomatic hostility of France, Russia, and Germany, caused
Mr. Gladstone’s Government suddenly to limit their responsibilities in
Egypt. Operations in the Red Sea were countermanded, the Suakim-Berber
railway was stopped, and it was decided to abandon Dongola and fix the
Egyptian frontier at Wady-Halfa. Mr. Gladstone, or rather Lord Derby
and Lord Granville, had produced the diplomatic isolation of England
at a most inconvenient moment, when a dispute with Russia over the
Afghan boundary reached a critical stage. The negotiations for settling
the boundary had been delayed because the Russian Commissioners under
various pretexts avoided meeting Sir Peter Lumsden, the British
Commissioner, on the frontier. Meanwhile Russian troops were stealthily
advancing and taking possession of the debateable land. English
protests against these tactics ended in an announcement from Mr.
Gladstone, on the 13th of March, that it had been agreed by Russia that
no further advances should be made on either side--the Russians having
then occupied Zulficar and Pul-i-Khisti, and entrenched themselves
near Penjdeh. Early in April it seemed that the Russian General
(Komaroff) on the Kushk, in defiance of the agreement, took Penjdeh.
This was resented by Mr. Gladstone as an “unprovoked aggression” on
the Ameer, and a violation of a binding pledge to the English Foreign
Office. The Government, therefore, called out the Reserves, and asked
and received a Vote of Credit for £11,000,000 sterling (27th of April),
to enable them to defend the interests and honour of the country
against Muscovite perfidy.[206] Mr. Gladstone’s passionate outburst of
patriotism, in which he declared that till the aggression at Penjdeh
were atoned for he could not “close the book and say we will not look
into it any more,” silenced criticism. He was fortunate enough also to
carry a large vote of credit for the Egyptian account through the House
on the tide of excitement he had raised in asking for the vote against
Russia. But his hot fit was soon succeeded by a cool one. He agreed to
“close the book” in terms of a compromise by which Russia was permitted
to hold all that she had furtively seized, pending a delimitation to
be effected in London,[207] the understanding being, however, that
Russia would surrender Zulficar to the Ameer. As to Komaroff’s attack
on Penjdeh, Russia agreed to submit to the arbitration of the King of
Denmark the question whether it constituted a breach of the agreement
announced by Mr. Gladstone on the 13th of March, but the inquiry was to
be conducted so as “not to place gallant officers on their trial.” The
only gratifying incidents in this painful transaction were the generous
offers of armed support that were made to England by her autonomous
colonies, and by the princes and peoples of India.

It was admitted by Mr. Gladstone that only non-contentious legislation
could be taken during the Session. Still, he made one exception. He
announced that he intended to renew certain “valuable and equitable
provisions of the Irish Crimes Act.” This decision arrived at, after
much discussion in the Cabinet, hurried the Ministry to their fate.
The Parnellites privately obtained assurances from some of their
influential Tory allies that if the Irish votes were so cast as to
destroy Mr. Gladstone’s Government, the Tory Government that came after
it would allow the Crimes Act to lapse, and would abandon Coercion. The
Tory leaders, according to Lord Randolph Churchill, met and resolved
to oppose any proposal to renew the Crimes Act or continue coercive
legislation for Ireland.[208] But it was desirable for them to avoid
the too open manifestation of their alliance with the Parnellites on
a question of supporting the Government in upholding law and order
in Ireland. Now that the Coalition was ready to strike, a side issue
had to be discovered on which united action might be taken without
scandal. This was furnished by Mr. Childers. It happened that, after
Whitsuntide, the Cabinet was wrangling over something else besides
Coercion--namely, the Budget--and the financial situation was not, it
must be confessed, a pleasant one. A violent popular agitation in the
autumn against the Admiralty, had produced a panic about the weakness
of the Navy.[209] Lord Northbrook had then promised to make important
additions to the Navy. Some steps were also to be taken to protect
British coaling stations abroad--and all this helped to increase the
Estimates. The Vote of Credit of £11,000,000 aggravated Mr. Childers’
difficulties. He had, in short, to face a deficit of a million in
his accounts for 1884-85, and, with a falling revenue, an expenditure
in the coming year of £100,000,000! The country remembering Mr.
Gladstone’s furious denunciations of Lord Beaconsfield’s administration
for running up public expenditure to £81,000,000 in 1879-80, was
profoundly chagrined to find that under an economic Liberal Government,
expenditure had been run up in 1885 to £100,000,000. The discussions in
the Cabinet as to how the money should be raised ended in the adoption
of the principle that Labour as well as Property must share the
burden. Mr. Childers, therefore, raised the Income Tax to 8d. in the
£, equalised the death duties on land and personal property, putting a
special tax on Corporations instead of succession duty, and imposed a
stamp duty on moveable securities. These changes, he explained in his
Budget speech (April 30th), would

[Illustration: THE QUEEN IN HER STATE ROBES (1887).

(_From the Photograph by Walery, Regent Street._)]

[Illustration: MR. GLADSTONE.

(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]

bring him in £6,000,000 of fresh revenue. By adding two shillings a
gallon to the duty on spirits, and a shilling a barrel to the duty
on beer, he expected to obtain £1,650,000. But this still left him
with a deficit of £15,000,000 to meet. He took £4,600,000 from the
Sinking Fund to meet it--leaving a balance of £3,000,000 to be paid
out of the annual revenue. The landed gentry attacked the Budget
because it levelled up the succession duties on land till they were
equal to those on personal property. The liquor trade attacked the
changes in the duties on spirits and beer--so that an excellent
opportunity had arisen for the Tory-Parnellite coalition to deal a
fatal blow at the Government on another issue than that of continuing
Coercion. Mr. Childers finding that only £9,000,000 of the Vote of
Credit (£11,000,000) would be needed, offered to halve the increase
on the spirit duty, and limit the increased beer duty to a year--but
without avail. Sir M. Hicks-Beach moved an amendment which united all
the forces of the Opposition and the Parnellites, and defeated the
Ministry on the 8th of June, by a vote of 264 to 252. Lord Randolph
Churchill’s[210] speech at Bow on the 3rd of June, was taken as a good
guarantee that the Irish Party need not fear a Coercion Bill from the
Tories if they got into office. “But,” writes Mr. T. P. O’Connor, “even
with so strong an assumption the cautious and realistic leader of the
Irish Party was not satisfied; and the Irish Members did not go into
the Lobby to vote against a Liberal Ministry about to propose coercion
until there was an assurance, definite, distinct, unmistakable, that
there would be no coercion from their successors.” The scene when
the numbers were announced will never be forgotten by those who were
present. When it was known that the Government was defeated, the
pent-up excitement of the House found vent in a terrific uproar. “Lord
Randolph Churchill,” writes Mr. Lucy, “leapt on to the bench, and,
waving his hat madly above his head, uproariously cheered. Mr. Healy
followed his example, and presently all the Irish members, and nearly
all the Conservatives below the gangway, were standing on the benches
waving hats and pocket-handkerchiefs and raising a deafening cheer.
This was renewed when the figures were read out by Mr. Winn, and again
when they were proclaimed from the Chair. From the Irish camp rose
cries of ‘Buckshot! Buckshot!’ and ‘Coercion!’ These had no relevancy
to the Budget Scheme; but they showed that the Irish members had not
forgotten Mr. Forster, and that this was their hour of victory rather
than the triumph of the Tories. Lord Randolph Churchill threatened
to go mad with joy. He wrung the hand of the impassive Rowland Winn,
who regarded him with a kindly curious smile, as if he were some wild
animal. Mr. Gladstone had resumed his letter,[211] and went on calmly
writing whilst the clerk at the table proceeded to run through the
Orders of the Day as if nothing particular had happened. But the House
was in no mood for business. Cries for the adjournment filled the
House, and Mr. Gladstone, still holding his letter in one hand and the
pen in the other, moved the adjournment, and the crowd surged through
the doorway, the Conservatives still tumultuously cheering.”[212]

On the following day (9th of June) Mr. Gladstone told the House that
the defeat of the previous evening had caused the Cabinet to submit “a
dutiful communication” to the Queen, then at Balmoral, but as an answer
to it must take some time to reach London, he moved an adjournment
till Friday (12th of June). Strangely enough, the resignation of the
Ministry was unattended by any popular excitement. It was perfectly
well known that the new Cabinet would be merely a stopgap Government,
powerless to do anything except wind up the business of Parliament
before the General Election. On the 12th of June the House was in
quite a cheerful humour when it met to hear from Mr. Gladstone that
the Queen had accepted the resignation of his Cabinet. It was curious
that even this last act of his Ministerial life in the Parliament of
1880-85 was not free from blunder. “Her Majesty’s gracious reply,” said
Mr. Gladstone, “was made upon the 11th accepting the resignation of
_Lord Salisbury_” a slip of the tongue which the Premier had to correct
amidst shouts of laughter. At first the Queen was unwilling to accept
the resignation of the Government. She could not admit that Ministers
were free to throw the State into confusion because of a defeat on
an Amendment to a Budget. In fact, it is not quite Constitutional to
coerce the free judgment of the Commons on the financial proposals
of Government by threatening Ministerial resignation if these are
not slavishly accepted in detail. Such a practice virtually ties the
hands of the House of Commons as guardians of the public purse. The
Queen, therefore, sought a personal interview with Mr. Gladstone, to
hear his full justification for the course he had adopted, but on his
instructing Lord Hartington to proceed to Balmoral, her Majesty’s
request was withdrawn. It now became apparent to her that the crisis
was too serious to be dealt with from Balmoral. In the last weeks
of the Session Parliamentary time was so valuable that it could not
prudently be wasted over a stagnant interregnum protracted by the
journeyings to and fro of Royal couriers between Aberdeenshire and
London. It was accordingly announced that the Queen would return
to Windsor at once--following the course she adopted in 1866, when
confronted with a similar inconvenience. Her Majesty arrived at
Windsor on the 17th of June, when Lord Salisbury had an interview
with her. On the following day he and Mr. Gladstone both waited on
the Sovereign--Mr. Gladstone delivering up the seals of office. There
was, however, a difficulty to be overcome in the transfer of power
which had been created by a tactical blunder of Lord Salisbury’s.
He had told the Queen that if he took office he must exact from Mr.
Gladstone a pledge that the Opposition would not embarrass her new
Ministry by attacks, but loyally co-operate with it in the conduct of
its business. Mr. Gladstone refused to waive his right of criticism,
and he pointed out that he could not, even if he tried, arbitrarily
dispose of the will of his supporters. All he could promise was that
he would endeavour to give the new Cabinet “fair play,” and deal with
it on its merits. But Lord Salisbury was not at first satisfied with
this arrangement, and the country was soon startled by hearing that he
had revived the crisis, and that even at the eleventh hour he would
withdraw his consent to serve as Premier. The Queen here intervened and
persuaded him to abandon his pragmatic objections to Mr. Gladstone’s
assurances.[213]

The Ministry was formed after some fierce struggles in the Tory
Party. Lord Randolph Churchill and his group not only insisted on
having high offices, but they demanded the expulsion of Sir Stafford
Northcote from the leadership of the House of Commons. Sir M.
Hicks-Beach deserted his old chief, and not only went over to his
enemies, but even offered himself as a candidate for his vacant post.
The result was that Lord Salisbury became Premier and Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, Sir Stafford Northcote became Earl of Iddesleigh,
and was appointed First Lord of the Treasury. Sir Hardinge Giffard
was made Lord Chancellor; Lord Cranbrook, President of the Council;
Lord Harrowby, Lord Privy Seal; Sir Richard Cross, Home Secretary;
the Duke of Richmond, President of the Board of Trade; Colonel
Stanley, Colonial Secretary; Lord Randolph Churchill, Secretary of
State for India; Mr. W. H. Smith, Secretary of State for War; Sir
M. Hicks-Beach, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House
of Commons; Lord Carnarvon, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland; Lord John
Manners, Postmaster-General; Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the
Admiralty; Mr. E. Stanhope, Vice-President of the Council of Education;
Mr. A. J. Balfour, President of the Local Government Board; Sir W.
Hart Dyke, Chief Secretary for Ireland; Mr. Ashmead Bartlett, a Civil
Lord of the Admiralty; Mr. Webster and Mr. J. E. Gorst, Attorney-and
Solicitor-General. Sir H. D. Wolff was sent on a special mission for
no very well-defined purpose to Egypt, so that every member of the
Fourth Party, who had organised the obstructive alliance between the
Parnellites and the Tories, was handsomely rewarded with remunerative
places. Sir H. D. Wolff’s appointment was severely criticised at the
time, partly because of his intimate connection with the Anglo-Egyptian
Bank. The only other striking incident in the crisis was that Mr.
Gladstone was offered an earldom by the Queen--an honour which,
however, he declined.[214]

[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM IN BUCKINGHAM PALACE.]

Very soon after Ministers took office Mr. Parnell exacted his price,
and they had to pay it. The Crimes Act was abandoned. It was announced
that the Irish Labourers’ Act would be pressed on. Lord Ashbourne[215]
promised to bring in a Land Purchase Bill. The Maamtrasna murders,
and the cases of those condemned on account of them, were to be
reconsidered--a somewhat momentous decision, for Lord Spencer’s
refusal to revise the sentence in these cases had been upheld by both
Parties as a crucial point in the policy of maintaining law and order
in Ireland. When the Government threw over Lord Spencer, and not only
refused to defend him from Mr. Parnell’s attacks, but through Lord
Randolph Churchill disparaged his resolute Irish policy, it was clear
that great Party changes were impending. Obviously no English Minister
could again feel confident in governing Ireland with a firm and
dauntless hand, after the Tories had flung Lord Spencer to the lions
of Nationalism. Supported by Mr. Parnell and his followers, Ministers
had no difficulty in hurrying through Supply. The Budget was revised
in terms of the decision of the 9th of June, and Lord George Hamilton
discovered a gross blunder in the accounts at the Admiralty, where Lord
Northbrook had spent £900,000--part of the Vote of Credit--in excess of
his estimates without having the faintest suspicion that he was doing
anything of the sort.[216] Lord Ashbourne’s Land Bill stipulated that
when all the money was advanced by the State to the purchasing tenants,
one-fifth of it should be retained by the Land Commission till the
instalments were repaid. The Scottish Sanitary Bill passed. So did a
Bill brought in by Lord Salisbury to embody the non-contentious points
of the recommendations of the Commission on Housing the Poor. A Bill
was also passed to relieve electors from disqualification on the ground
that they had obtained Poor Law medical relief, and the Session closed
with the demoralisation of parties on the 14th of August.

No event in 1885 gave the Queen more concern than the failure of Lord
Wolseley’s attempt to relieve Khartoum. The story of General Gordon’s
mission to the Soudan has already been partially told. It was on the
18th of January, 1884, that he was instructed by the Cabinet to proceed
to Khartoum to extricate the beleaguered garrisons. He writes, “It
cannot be said I was ordered to go. The subject was too complex for
any order. It was, ‘Will you go and try?’ and my answer was ‘Only too
delighted.’”[217] The truth is that Gordon doubted whether 20,000
Egyptian troops and colonists could be got out of the Soudan by a
process of pacific evacuation. Still, if any one might achieve the
feat he could, and to please the Government, he consented to “go and
try.” His and their idea was that by restoring the old native families
to power he might buy a safe-conduct for the garrisons. On the 8th of
February, when he arrived at Abu Hamed, he found that the country was
less disorganised than he had supposed it to be when discussing its
prospects with Cabinet Ministers in London. Therefore he suggested that
a light suzerainty should be exercised over the Soudan, for a time
at least, by the Khedive’s officers. This conviction grew stronger
when he reached Berber. He then said that his mission could not be
carried out with credit to England unless some form of government less
heterogeneous than that of the native chiefs were established, in place
of the Egyptian administration which he was sent to withdraw. Hence,
he suggested that Zebehr Pasha should be appointed Ruler of the Soudan
under certain conditions, and he chose Zebehr because he was not such
an atrocious slave-trader as the Mahdi; because he might be more easily
curbed, and because his high descent from the Abbasides enabled him
to exercise real authority over the Soudanese. Sir Evelyn Baring and
Nubar Pasha agreed with Gordon. So did Lord Wolseley. Mr. Gladstone and
Lord Kimberley too, though they had no love for Zebehr, thought that
Gordon’s opinion ought to be deferred to, but Lord Hartington only gave
them a feeble, half-hearted support, and Lord Granville’s opposition to
Gordon’s policy carried the Cabinet against Mr. Gladstone. Hence Zebehr
was not sent. Zebehr naturally took this decision of the Cabinet as
an insult, and forthwith, opened up a treasonable correspondence with
the Mahdi, the discovery of which led to his arrest and deportation to
Gibraltar on the 14th of March, 1885.

After the refusal to send Zebehr to the Soudan, the Government seem
to have treated Gordon as if they desired to provoke him to take the
bit in his mouth, and in a fit of indignation leave Khartoum without
definite orders. Had he done so Ministers could have successfully
argued that having deserted his post without authority, they were
no longer responsible for him. This game was keenly played between
Gordon at Khartoum and Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet in London, aided by the
Egyptian Government and its English advisers, Egerton and Baring, at
Cairo. But every point in it was won by Gordon, who in March warned
Egerton and Baring that they must decide quickly, for the sands were
running fast in the hour-glass. He also put in their hands a plan for
getting the Government out of the difficulty without sending a relief
expedition. He had not at that time so far committed the people at
Khartoum against the Mahdi that it would be dangerous to leave them
to make terms with the False Prophet. He had to prevent his armed
steamers from falling into the Mahdi’s hands, and Khartoum from being
utilised as a base of operations against Lower Egypt. He therefore told
the Government that if they held Berber, and accepted his proposal as
to Zebehr, it was worth while to keep him (Gordon) at Khartoum. But
if not, then he warned his masters that it was useless to hold on to
Khartoum, for, he wrote, “it is impossible for me to help the other
garrisons, and I shall only be sacrificing the whole of the troops and
_employés_ here. In the latter case your order to me had better be
to evacuate Khartoum.” On receipt of that order he proposed to send
his intrepid lieutenant, Colonel Stewart, and the fugitives who wished
to return to Egypt, down the Nile to Berber. He himself, and as many
of his black troops as would go with him, were then to take the armed
steamers, and the munitions of war from the arsenal of Khartoum, and
make their escape southwards up the White Nile. He guaranteed, in that
event, to hold the Bahr Gazelle country and Equatorial regions against
the slave-traders, and pin the Mahdi in Khartoum by organising a negro
State in his rear, which, like the Congo Free State, he suggested might
be put under Belgian protection. But he warned the Government that if
this plan were to be attempted he must get the order to quit Khartoum
at once, for in a few days the way of retreat to Berber would be
closed. The order never came. In fact, the only order he got from his
superiors at this time, was to hold on to Khartoum till further notice.
Had the instructions which he asked for been sent, there would have
been no Nile Expedition with its many disasters, including the fall of
Khartoum, and the massacre of its inhabitants.[218]

The tardy resolution to send a Relief Expedition to Khartoum has
already been alluded to. On the 16th of December, 1884, Lord Wolseley
joined the camp which had been pitched at Korti by Brigadier-General
Sir Herbert Stewart, and received intelligence from Gordon, informing
him that four steamers with their guns were waiting for the expedition
at Metamneh, and that Khartoum could hold out with ease for forty
days after the date of the letter (November 4th). It was not till the
30th of December that Stewart was able to dash into the desert with
the Camel Corps to seize the wells of Gakdul. On the 31st a message
from Gordon, dated the 29th of October, arrived, showing that Khartoum
still held out, but that he was in dire straits, and, on the 1st of
January, 1885, the first boats with the Black Watch reached Korti. On
the 3rd General Earle left to join his force which was proceeding up
the river to Berber. On the 5th the Naval Brigade arrived, and Sir
Herbert Stewart returned from Gakdul. On the 8th he began his march
across the Bayuda Desert with a motley force of 120 officers and 1,900
men. The Mahdi, on hearing of the occupation of Gakdul on the 2nd of
January, resolved to crush Stewart’s force at the end of its Desert
march, and Lord Wolseley’s eccentric tactics gave him thirteen clear
days in which to concentrate his forces at Abu Klea, where he barred
the way to Metamneh.[219] It was not till the 16th of January that
Stewart got touch of the enemy at Abu Klea. During the night our men
were harassed by the Arab sharp-shooters, and next day Stewart was
artfully drawn into a difficult position, and forced to march out in
square formation and give his antagonist battle. When our skirmishers
were within 200 yards of the enemy’s flags, the square was halted to
let its rear close up. Then, to the amazement of everybody, the Arabs
sprang forth from the ravine where they had been hiding, as Roderick
Dhu’s warriors rose from the heather. Stewart’s skirmishers ran back in
hot haste. The Arabs charged furiously, and, when slightly checked at a
distance of about 80 yards, they suddenly swept round to the right and
broke the rear face and angle of the British square. For a moment there
was dreadful confusion, and had the camels not checked the Arab onset
Stewart’s force would have been annihilated, like the army of Hicks
Pasha at El Obeid. However, the enemy were beaten back with great loss
of life, and the day was saved. It was in this affray that Colonel Fred
Burnaby lost his life. The square was broken first, because the Gardner
gun at the corner jammed, and was useless after the tenth round;
secondly, because General Stewart foolishly trusted cavalry men and
seamen to hold the exposed angles;[220] thirdly, because the cartridges
of some of the rifles jammed, and shook the soldier’s confidence in his
weapon.

Stewart’s losses, especially in camels, were so heavy that his first
idea was to halt at Abu Klea for reinforcements. But he decided to push
on, even at the risk of leaving his wounded behind him. The wells of
Abu Klea were occupied, and it was then ascertained that the 10,000
Arabs who had been defeated, were but the advanced guard of a great
army near Metamneh. Papers were discovered, among which was a letter
from the Emir of Berber to the Mahdi, showing that Stewart’s occupation
of Gakdul had caused the concentration of the Arabs in force at Abu
Klea. The expedition was thus at the outset marred by a fatal blunder
in generalship. If Stewart had gone straight across the Bayuda Desert,
without wasting time at Gakdul, he would have had no enemy barring his
path to Metamneh. By letting the Mahdi’s troops concentrate at Abu
Klea, he met with the check that delayed his progress till it was too
late to save Khartoum.[221]

On the 18th of January Stewart made a forced night march towards the
Nile, which he hoped to strike three miles above Metamneh. His column
got into terrible disorder in the dark, for men and cattle were utterly
exhausted from hunger and want of sleep. At 7 a.m. it came within
sight of Metamneh--men and horses and camels being scarcely able to
walk. It was resolved to rest for breakfast before attacking the town,
but the Arabs closed round Stewart’s zareba, and poured in a dropping
fire, which did serious execution. At 10.15 a.m. Stewart himself was
shot, and the command was assumed by Sir Charles Wilson, Chief of the
Intelligence Department, who happened to be the senior colonel on the
field. Sir Charles Wilson, though an officer in the Royal Engineers,
was really a scholar and diplomatist who had spent most of his life
in civil employment. Still, he did not shrink from the task which
an unforeseen accident imposed on him. He undertook the strategic
direction of the column, but prudently handed over the tactical control
to Colonel Boscawen of the Guards. Having fortified the zareba, Wilson
quickly formed his main body into a square, and determined to make
a dash for the Nile. Had he not ventured on this perilous step, the
whole column must have perished from thirst. Every inch of the way had
to be contested, but happily Wilson’s frigid temperament seemed to
have in some degree communicated itself to his men. Hence, the same
troops who at Abu Klea under Stewart’s showy but exciting leadership
got out of hand and fired wildly, were soon calm and steady, and held
in complete check by their officers. They had not proceeded far when
swarms of Arabs, as at Abu Klea, charged down upon the square from a
ridge at a place known as Abu Kru. At first Wilson’s troops began to
fire at random as at Abu Klea, and no shot told. Then he ordered the
bugles to sound “Cease firing,” and the officers coolly kept the men
at rest for five minutes, which steadied their nerves. By this time
the enemy had come within 300 yards of the square, from which volley
after volley was now suddenly poured forth, and with such deliberation
that the Arab spearmen turned and fled, not one of them getting within
fifty yards of Wilson’s position. This is the only instance where
British troops in the Soudan won a complete victory without being
themselves touched by sword or spear. The square now hastened on to
the river, and camped for the night. Next day (20th) they carried
water to their wounded comrades in the zareba. They then conveyed them
down to the camp by the Nile,[222] where they found some of Gordon’s
steamers waiting for them. Wilson’s force was now in a sorry plight,
and before he took command discontent was smouldering in its ranks. It
had been kept toiling and fighting for four days with little food and
less sleep. It had lost in killed and wounded one-tenth of its number.
And now with its General disabled, it found itself encumbered by a
heavy train of wounded, without means of communication with its base,
menaced by a formidable fortress, and assured that two great armies
were closing on it from Berber and Khartoum. Little wonder that the
soldiers murmured sulkily that they had been led into a trap. Wilson’s
orders were, that on arriving at the river he must proceed to Khartoum
with a small detachment, the mere exhibition of whose red coats Lord
Wolseley imagined would cause the Mahdi to raise the siege. But Wilson
was not to let his men even sleep in Khartoum, and he was only to
stay there long enough to confer with Gordon! In plain English, Lord
Wolseley ordered him to march twenty or thirty men into Khartoum and
come away again, after telling Gordon, who was every day awaiting his
doom, that he must expect no effective succour till far on in March.
Wilson, however, resolved, like a loyal commander, not to desert his
comrades until he had seen them safely entrenched--and till he had, by
reconnoitring, allayed their dread of an attack from Berber. The Naval
Brigade was so disabled that he was forced to use Gordon’s crews for
the steamers, and, in obedience to Gordon’s instructions, he had to
weed out of these crews all untrustworthy Egyptians. He had also to
reconnoitre the fortress of Metamneh.

This work kept Wilson busy till the 24th of January, when he proceeded
up the Nile, arriving on the 28th of January within a mile and a half
of Khartoum. He found that the city had fallen on the 26th, when the
Buri gate had been opened by treachery to the Mahdi’s troops, who
had rushed in and made the streets of the doomed town run red with
blood. Gordon it seems was killed, on refusing to surrender, by a
small party of Baggarahs, who met him coming out of his palace. While
reconnoitring Khartoum, Wilson’s two steamers were so hotly engaged
with the enemy’s batteries that he was forced to turn back.[223] On the
return voyage he adroitly foiled the plans of some of his followers who
attempted to betray him to the Mahdi, but unfortunately his steamers
were wrecked, it is supposed, by the treachery of his pilots. He
was, however, rescued by Lord Charles Beresford in one of the armed
vessels from Gubat, to which Wilson brought back his party without loss
of life.[224] Wilson found his force in safety, but sadly depressed
because they had heard nothing from headquarters. He immediately
proceeded thither in terms of his instructions, to report the fall of
Khartoum to Lord Wolseley, and urge him to relieve Gubat without delay.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN.]

Little need be said of the fall of Khartoum--the crowning disaster
of the campaign. Gordon’s Journals show how, alone and unaided, in
defending the city, during a siege that lasted 319 days, he kept at bay
the swarming hordes of the Mahdi. The romantic record of his life amply
illustrates his higher qualities--the chivalry and loyalty; the sweet,
gentle manners, the kindliness of heart, the stainless honour, the
infinite self-abnegation, the patient endurance, the stubborn valour,
the natural and acquired military skill that made him

“A soldier fit to stand by Cæsar
And give direction.”

His Khartoum “Journals” show more than that. They prove that from first
to last through the long series of transactions that led up to the fall
of the city, Gordon was the only man who kept his head cool, who acted
from firm set purpose, who was not afraid to look on the facts with
naked eyes, whose inexhaustible ingenuity in dealing practically with
every fresh difficulty as it arose never failed him or his masters,
and whose shrewd and sagacious prevision was never once ignored, save
at the cost of cruel suffering to those who refused his guidance.[225]
Valour and virtue such as his can indeed “outbuild the Pyramids.” Of
the millions of English men and English women, who mourned over the
heroic defender of Khartoum, none grieved more bitterly for his loss
than the Queen. To his sister she wrote as follows:--

“Osborne, 17th February, 1885.

“DEAR MISS GORDON,--_How_ shall I write to you, or how shall I attempt
to express _what I feel_! To _think_ of your dear, noble, heroic
Brother, who served his country and his Queen so truly, so heroically,
with a self-sacrifice so edifying to the world, not having been
rescued. That the promises of support were not fulfilled--which I so
frequently and constantly pressed on those who asked him to go--is to
me _grief inexpressible_!--indeed, it has made me ill! My heart bleeds
for you, his Sister, who have gone through so many anxieties on his
account, and who loved the dear Brother as he deserved to be. You are
all so good and trustful, and have such strong faith, that you will be
sustained even now, when real absolute evidence of your dear Brother’s
death does not exist--but I fear there cannot be much doubt of it.
Some day I hope to see you again to tell you all I cannot express. My
daughter Beatrice, who has felt quite as I do, wishes me to express her
deepest sympathy with you. I hear so many expressions of sorrow and
sympathy from _abroad_; from my eldest daughter, the Crown Princess,
and from my Cousin, the King of the Belgians, the very warmest. Would
you express to your other Sisters and your elder Brother my true
sympathy, and what I do so keenly feel--the _stain_ left upon England
for your dear Brother’s cruel, though heroic, fate!--Ever, dear Miss
Gordon, yours sincerely and sympathisingly,

“V.R.I.”[226]

After Gordon’s death public interest in the “sad Soudan” slowly faded.
The River Column under General Earle’s skilful guidance had won a
brilliant little victory at Kirbekan, where, however, its gallant
leader lost his life. He was succeeded by General Brackenbury, who
ascended the river steadily to Abu Hamed. Suddenly, however, Lord
Wolseley ordered both columns to retreat on Korti, and hold Dongola
till his autumn campaign of vengeance against the Mahdi could be
undertaken. Meanwhile, General Graham, with 9,000 men, and an Indian
and Australian Contingent,[227] was to drive back Osman Digna at
Suakin, and lay a railway from that port to Berber. Graham defeated
the Arabs in several engagements, though in one of them the skill with
which the Arabs surprised a zareba almost reproduced the disaster of
Isandhlwana. But the dispute with Russia afforded a plausible excuse
for freeing England from the incubus of the Soudan, and in April Lord
Wolseley evacuated Dongola and fell back on the line of Wady Halfa.
The Suakin railway was abandoned, and when Lord Salisbury’s Government
took office they, too, adhered to the policy of evacuation. The Mahdi
died. Osman Digna became entangled in hostilities with the Abyssinian
Ras Alula, who attempted to raise the siege of Kassala, and for a time
it seemed as if all fears of disturbances on the Egyptian frontier were
dispelled. Towards the end of the year, however, the Arabs attacked an
advanced post beyond Assouan, where they were skilfully repulsed by
General Stephenson at the battle of Kosheh.

Turning to the social events of 1885, the most remarkable was the
sudden announcement on New Year’s Day of the betrothal of the
Princess Beatrice to Prince Henry of Battenberg, the younger brother
of Prince Louis, the husband of the Princess’s niece--Victoria of
Hesse. For fourteen years the Princess Beatrice had been the close
companion of the Queen, and their lives had in time become so closely
intertwined that a separation could hardly be contemplated by either
with equanimity. It was therefore quite natural that Prince Henry of
Battenberg, whose fortune was hardly adequate to the maintenance of a
separate establishment, should permit intimation to be made that he was
to live with the Princess in attendance on the Queen. The announcement
of the marriage was as surprising to the Royal Family as it was to the
people. In the country the old prejudice against the marriage of a
Princess who claimed a dowry from the State, with a person outside the
Royal caste speedily manifested itself. Indeed, the feeling against
the arrangement was even stronger than that which prevailed when the
Princess Louise married the Marquis of Lorne. After all, the latter was
the son of a great noble on whose birth no stain of ambiguity rested.
Prince Henry of Battenberg, on the other hand, was the offspring of
a “morganatic” marriage between Prince Alexander of Hesse and the
Countess Hauke, the granddaughter of a Polish Jew, who had entered the
service of the Hessian Court in a very subordinate capacity. It was
difficult to get the populace to understand that a morganatic marriage
was in a certain sense a legal union--not void, though possibly under
pressure of State exigencies voidable by the Royal husband--that in
fact there was nothing disreputable in such an alliance, save in the
sense in which it is considered a social offence for a great noble
to marry his mother’s scullery-maid. The hostility of the German
Crown Princess and the Court of Berlin to the connection did much to
create an erroneous impression in England as to the status of Prince
Henry. The Prince’s lack of fortune did not redeem his lack of social
position--and it was most unfortunate that his nearest connection with
Royalty was through his cousin the Grand Duke of Hesse. For the divorce
suit raised by the Grand Duke against the Countess de Kalomine, a lady
whom he had “morganatically” married in secret on the very night when
his daughter, the Princess Victoria, was wedded to Prince Louis of
Battenberg, had rendered his family extremely unpopular in England.

That some friction had been created in the Royal Family by the
unexpected introduction of Prince Henry to its circle was soon made
manifest. When Prince Albert Victor of Wales, the Heir-Presumptive
to the Throne, came of age on the 8th of January, neither the Queen,
nor the Princess Beatrice, nor Prince Henry of Battenberg--then
at Osborne--graced with their presence the joyous celebrations at
Sandringham, which were attended by all the other members of the Royal
Family. It was also remarked that Prince Henry left England without
receiving the congratulations of the Prince of Wales on his betrothal.
At a Privy Council, which the Queen held at Osborne on the 26th of
January, her Majesty’s formal consent to her daughter’s marriage was
given.

Preparations had been made early in March for the Queen’s Easter visit
to Darmstadt, but owing to the death of Princess Charles of Hesse,
mother of the Grand Duke, her Majesty’s arrangements were altered,
and it was decided that she should visit Aix-les-Bains first and take
Darmstadt on the return journey. Her Majesty left Windsor on the last
day of March for the Villa Mottet, a charming residence in the grounds
of the Hôtel de l’Europe, Aix-les-Bains, while the Prince and Princess
of Wales spent their Easter in paying a State visit to Ireland. The
Queen’s holiday was sadly broken by the diplomatic controversy with
Russia as to the Afghan frontier. Piles of despatch-boxes were given
to her when she started, and as many as fifty telegraphic messages
a day in cipher were sent to her and answered. Before proceeding
to Darmstadt, her Majesty, who had been using her influence with
the German Court in order to induce Russia to accept an honourable
compromise, offered to return to Windsor if Ministers desired her
presence. Mr. Gladstone was not of opinion that this sacrifice was
necessary, and on the 23rd of April she accordingly proceeded to
Darmstadt, where she again occupied the new Palace on the Platz which
had been built for the Princess Alice. At this time her Majesty was
much grieved at the reckless and bellicose tone of London Society.
She was so anxious to counteract it that the Prince of Wales, knowing
her feeling on the subject, was supposed to have dropped some hints
at Marlborough House which suddenly imparted quite a pacific tone to
the fire-eaters of Piccadilly. Couriers passed so frequently between
the Queen and the German Emperor, who with the Crown Prince gave her
Majesty much sympathetic aid and counsel throughout the crisis, that
the German Press were alarmed lest the Emperor was about to intervene
as a mediator between Russia and England. A war between the two nations
would have been extremely inconvenient to the Royal Family--in fact,
it had been arranged in anticipation of such a calamity that the Duke
and Duchess of Edinburgh must break up their establishment in England,
and retire to Coburg. Another circumstance forced a pacific policy on
the Court. The Duke of Edinburgh had not concealed from the Sovereign
the fact that the Fleet was effective solely on paper. Indeed, had
Admiral Hoskins, who was ordered to hold himself in readiness to
proceed with his squadron to the Baltic, attempted to carry out his
instructions, he would have found himself paralysed, simply because he
had neither efficient guns nor transport. On the 2nd of May the Queen,
returned to Windsor, where she held an anxious consultation with Lord
Granville next day. On the 12th of May her Majesty held a Drawing Room
at Buckingham Palace, but as on previous occasions, she stayed only
a short time, leaving the Princess of Wales as usual to complete the
function.

On the 14th of May, Mr. Gladstone carried a resolution in the House
of Commons that an annuity of £6,000 a year should be granted to the
Princess Beatrice on her marriage; and, by way of conciliating the
House, promised that in the next Parliament a Committee would be
appointed to consider the plan on which what he called “secondary
provisions” for the younger members of the Royal Family, should be
made.[228] The proposed annuity was opposed on the old ground that the
Queen was rich enough to support her own family, and Mr. Labouchere
argued that as she never had a right to the hereditary revenues of the
Crown, the plea that she had given up her income for a Civil List was
invalid. But it is certain that in the Royal Speech, at the opening
of Parliament in 1837 the Queen said, “I place unreservedly at your
disposal those hereditary revenues which were transferred to the public
by my immediate predecessor,” and in the Address the Queen was then not
only thanked for her generosity, but promised an adequate Civil List in
return. It was also forgotten that at least four impecunious princely
families--those of the Duke of Albany, Prince Louis, Prince Henry of
Battenberg, and Prince Christian--must be a charge on the private
income of the Queen.[229]

On the 22nd of May the Court went to Balmoral. The Russian dispute was
now compromised, so that the Queen was able to thoroughly enjoy her
Highland visit. She spent much of her time in the cottages and homes
of the peasantry, to whom she was unusually lavish this year with
gifts commemorating her birthday. When she arrived she found that the
celebrated cradle and rope bridge over the Dee at Abergeldie--which
most of the Royal personages in Europe had used at different times--was
removed, and replaced by a substantial footbridge which had been
put up at her expense. But the fall of Mr. Gladstone’s Government
shortened the Queen’s sojourn in Scotland, and she had to return to
Windsor on the 17th of June. Complaints were made that she was absent
in Aberdeenshire when the Ministerial crisis occurred. But the crisis
was unexpected, and since the Prince Consort’s death the Queen has
always preferred Balmoral to Windsor during Ascot Race week. The death
of Prince Frederick Charles (the “Red Prince”) of Prussia, at the
comparatively early age of fifty-seven, deprived Germany of one of her
ablest military tacticians, and sent the English Court into mourning.
He was the father of the Duchess of Connaught, to whom he bequeathed a
large part of his vast wealth. By a strange blunder which gave infinite
annoyance to the Queen, not only did the Prince of Wales appear at
Ascot after the event, but her Majesty’s order that Court mourning
should begin on the 16th was not officially proclaimed till the 18th.
The Royal procession at Ascot on the afternoon of the “Red Prince’s”
death, caused much irritation at the Court of Berlin.

[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS BEATRICE.]

On the 9th the Court removed to Osborne--the Queen being desirous of
personally supervising the arrangements for the Princess Beatrice’s
marriage, which was to take place in Whippingham Parish Church. As
there was no precedent for a Royal marriage in a country parish church,
Sir Henry Ponsonby and the Court officials had considerable trouble
in ordering the ceremony. They were further perplexed by the various
instructions which day after day came from the Queen and the Princess.
On the 23rd of July the marriage was solemnised by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, the Dean of Windsor, and Canon
Prothero, Vicar of Whippingham. The ceremony was one of demi-state
only; and, although the wedding procession was very pretty, especially
when seen in the golden light of a July day, it was not brilliant.
The nieces of the Princess Beatrice were her bridesmaids, and most of
her near relations were present. The family of Hesse-Darmstadt was
well represented; and, with the exception of Mr. Gladstone, most of
the leading personages in English Society were present. Yet somehow
the ceremony seemed to lack the courtly importance and dignity of
other Royal marriages, and the absence of the German Crown Prince
and Princess, who were not even represented by any of their family,
was only too noticeable. The German Emperor, who had been deeply
incensed by the de Kalomine scandal, had not yet been persuaded to
look kindly on the Court of Darmstadt; but the German Empress, on the
other hand, testified her interest in the bride by sending Princess
Beatrice a Dresden china clock and bracket as a wedding gift. After the
marriage the Queen conferred the Order of the Garter on Prince Henry
of Battenberg--adding one more to the already crowded companionship
of Royal Knights. This distinction had never before been given to a
foreign personage not a monarch _de facto_, or born in the Royal caste,
and there can be no doubt that the other Royal Knights of the family
would have considered the Order of the Bath a more suitable distinction
for Prince Henry.[230] It was also intimated in the _Gazette_ (July
24th, 1885) that Prince Henry would forthwith assume the title of Royal
Highness--a rank, however, which could not be conceded to him outside
of English territory.[231]

It is remarkable that no family objections were raised to the
recognition of Lady Augusta Lennox, who had long been married to Prince
Edward of Saxe-Weimar, as the Princess Edward. Till 1885 she had only
been received in Court as the Countess Dornburg, a title which had been
“created” for her on her marriage, in spite of her high social position
as daughter of the Duke of Richmond, to satisfy the exigencies of
German etiquette.

After the close of the Parliamentary Session, the Court went from
Osborne to Balmoral (August 25th), where the Princess Beatrice and
her husband received a warm Highland reception. Life at Balmoral
was somewhat dull, but in her walks and drives the Queen was now
accompanied by Prince Henry of Battenberg as well as the Princess
Beatrice. When not in attendance on the Queen, the Prince occasionally
found amusement in deerstalking in the Balloch Pine and Abergeldie
grounds. Her Majesty remained at Balmoral till the 18th of November,
when she returned to Windsor to hold a Council, at which she sanctioned
the dissolution of Parliament. On the 9th of December, accompanied
by the Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg, the Queen
presented medals for service in the Soudan to a number of Guardsmen at
Windsor. On the 18th of December she left Windsor for Osborne. It was
now plainly intimated to her Majesty that the royal rank and precedence
conferred on Prince Henry of Battenberg would not be recognised at
Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, the Courts at which capitals
insisted on treating the marriage of the Princess Beatrice as a purely
“morganatic” one. The difficulties which arose out of this incident
were further aggravated when the Queen permitted the Count and Countess
Gleichen to assume the rank and title of Prince and Princess Victor of
Hohenlohe-Langenberg.[232]

In the spring of 1885 a rebellion of French half-breeds in the Canadian
North-West, led by Riel, one of the pardoned insurgents who had been
engaged in the Red River rising, was suppressed with great skill and
ability by the Canadian Militia, under General Sir Frederick Middleton.
Riel was tried and hanged for treason.

The misrule of Theebaw, the half-crazy King of Burmah, together
with his intrigues with the French--then busy with the conquest of
Tonquin--led to disputes between the Indian and Burmese Governments.
The result was a war which ended in the deposition of King Theebaw and
the annexation of Upper Burmah to the Indian Empire.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE BATTLE OF THE UNION.

Mr. Chamberlain’s Doctrine of “Ransom”--The Midlothian
Programme--Lord Randolph Churchill’s Appeal to the Whigs--Bidding
for the Parnellite Vote--Resignation of Lord Carnarvon--The General
Election--“Three Acres and a Cow”--Defeat of Lord Salisbury--The
Liberal Cabinet--Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule Scheme--Ulster threatens
Civil War--Secession of the Liberal “Unionists”--Defeat of Mr.
Gladstone--Lord Salisbury again in Office--Mr. Parnell’s Relief
Bill Rejected--The “Plan of Campaign”--Resignation of Lord Randolph
Churchill--Mr. Goschen becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer--Riots
in the West End of London--The Indian and Colonial Exhibition--The
Imperial Institute--The Queen’s Visit to Liverpool--The Holloway
College for Women--A Busy Season for her Majesty--The International
Exhibition at Edinburgh--The Prince and Princess Komatsu of Japan.

The closing months of 1885 were devoted to preparations for the
General Election. Mr. Chamberlain’s speeches developed his doctrine
of “ransom” with a vigour of language and directness of purpose that
terrified the Whigs. At Bradford he demanded Disestablishment, and thus
concentrated the malice of the Church on the whole Liberal Party. Mr.
Gladstone issued a moderate manifesto to his constituents, known as
the “Midlothian Programme,” in which he attempted to neutralise Mr.
Chamberlain’s “unauthorised programme.” The reform of Parliamentary
procedure, and Local Government, the reform of the Registration
Laws, and of land transfer were the famous “four points” on which he
dwelt. As for Mr. Chamberlain’s suggestions for disestablishment, for
education, graduated Income Tax, and the abolition of the House of
Lords, he put them aside, refusing to peer “into the dim and distant
courses of the future.” The Tory leaders professed themselves equally
willing to reform Procedure, the Land Laws, and Local Government,
and attacked the Whigs for their alliance with the Birmingham School
of Radicals. Lord Randolph Churchill, in fact, appealed to the Whigs
to coalesce with the Tories in resisting what Lord Hartington called
“measures of a Socialistic tendency.” Both parties in the State made
high bids for the Irish Vote. Mr. Chamberlain offered to Mr. Parnell
a scheme of Home Rule, under which Ireland would be governed by Four
Provincial Parliaments--in fact, he furbished up an old idea which the
venerable Earl Russell had shed from his mind when it was in the last
stage of decay. The Tories, through Lord Carnarvon, offered Mr. Parnell
some form of Home Rule under which Ireland was to have a Legislature
of her own with the right to levy Protective Duties on imported
goods.[233] Though Lord

[Illustration: OPENING OF PARLIAMENT IN 1880: THE ROYAL PROCESSION IN
WESTMINSTER PALACE ON THE WAY, TO THE HOUSE OF PEERS.]

Salisbury’s Newport address was ambiguous in its references to Home
Rule, it rather gave colour to the prevalent belief that if the Tories
could win a majority by the Irish vote, they would hold power by giving
Ireland Home Rule. At the same time, it is but right to say that Lord
Salisbury and his colleagues never appear to have committed the Cabinet
to Lord Carnarvon’s bargain with Mr. Parnell. Indeed, they even seem
to have told Lord Carnarvon that, personally, they disapproved of his
Irish policy. They, however, still retained his services as a Cabinet
Minister, though Lord Salisbury had discovered that he was a Home Ruler.

Mr. Parnell issued a manifesto fiercely attacking the Liberal Party,
and ordering all Irishmen to give their votes to the Government. The
Liberals, on the other hand, appealed to the people for such a majority
as would enable Mr. Gladstone to defy Mr. Parnell. The elections began
on the 24th of November. They showed that in the boroughs the Liberal
Party was shattered, though it had, through Mr. Chamberlain’s doctrine
of ransom, won in the counties all along the line.[234] The new House
of Commons it was found would contain 333 Liberals, 251 Tories, and 86
Parnellites, not one Liberal having been returned by Ireland. In the
circumstances it was hopeless for the Ministry to attempt a settlement
of the Irish Question on Lord Carnarvon’s lines.[235] They had, even
with the Irish vote, only a majority of four. But then, if they dared
to make concessions to Mr. Parnell, this majority of four would
inevitably be converted, by the secession of the Ulster Tories, into a
minority of eight. The Liberal Leaders, on the other hand, were in an
equally difficult predicament. They, too, could not hope to govern the
country save by the Irish vote. It was quite possible, moreover, for
the Government, by conceding Home Rule, to detach from the Liberals a
sufficient number of Radicals to more than counterbalance the Ulster
secession. In these circumstances Mr. Gladstone towards the end of the
year let it be known indirectly that he was in favour of giving Ireland
Home Rule.

Ere Parliament opened on the 12th of January, 1886, the resignation of
Lord Carnarvon indicated that Ministers had dissolved the connection
between the Tory Party and the Parnellites. The House of Commons
elected Mr. Peel as its Speaker, and when Mr. Bradlaugh appeared he
took the Oath in the ordinary manner. The Queen’s Speech was read on
the 21st of January by her Majesty in person, but its references to
Ireland were vague, though they foreshadowed the introduction of a
Coercion Bill. In the preliminary skirmishes Mr. Gladstone threw out
overtures to the Irish Party which Mr. Parnell and Mr. Sexton hailed
with effusive delight. The Government, on the other hand, announced
the introduction of a Coercion Bill, which would also suppress the
National League. The Liberals and Parnellites now promptly united to
support an Amendment moved by Mr. Jesse Collings, which censured the
Ministry for refusing to bring in a Labourers’ Allotments Bill, and
the Coalition defeated the Government by a vote of 329 to 258. The
opposition of Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen to the Amendment showed
that the Whigs at least were afraid of Mr. Gladstone’s return to
office, after his vague and ambiguous promises of concessions to the
Home Rulers. Lord Salisbury resigned, and when Mr. Gladstone formed
his Ministry it was seen that many of his old colleagues, such as Lord
Hartington, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Forster, Lord Selborne, Lord Northbrook,
the Duke of Argyll, Lord Cowper, and Sir Henry James, had refused to
join him. The appointment of Lord Aberdeen as Irish Viceroy was not
very significant. But that Mr. John Morley, the most pronounced of
all the English advocates of Home Rule, should have been appointed as
Chief Secretary for Ireland meant much. Lord Rosebery was made Foreign
Secretary, and Mr. Campbell-Bannerman Secretary at War. Both were known
to be Home Rulers. Lord Spencer, disgusted at his betrayal by the Tory
Party, had also become a convert to Home Rule principles, and was
appointed President of the Council. Oddly enough Mr. Chamberlain and
Mr. Trevelyan, who were both pledged against Home Rule, had joined the
Ministry. But they had been induced to do so on the assurance that, in
the meantime, the policy of the Cabinet would be merely to examine and
inquire into the Home Rule question.

During the spring nothing was done in the matter. The House of Commons
refused to press Ministers upon their Irish policy, evidently deeming
it reasonable that Mr. Gladstone should have time to work it out. Lord
Hartington and the Whigs, however, adopted an attitude of independence
which showed that Mr. Gladstone had failed to heal the divisions in the
Liberal Party. Hence, when it was announced that Mr. Chamberlain and
Mr. Trevelyan, on being informed of Mr. Gladstone’s proposals for the
reform of the Irish Government, had resigned office, it was evident
that the fate of the Ministry was sealed.

On the 8th of April Mr. Gladstone expounded the scheme, which set up in
Ireland an Executive Government, responsible to an Irish Legislature,
capable of dealing with all matters save the Crown, the Army and Navy,
Foreign and Colonial Policy, Trade, Navigation, Currency, Imperial
taxation, and the endowment of churches. The Lord-Lieutenant, on
the advice of his Ministers, was to have a power of veto. The Irish
Legislative Body was to consist of two Orders, voting apart, the first
to comprise representative peers and members elected under a £25
property qualification, and the second members chosen by household
suffrage. In the event of collision between the two Orders, the measure
in dispute was to be held in suspense for three years, or until a
dissolution. The Irish contribution to the Imperial Revenue was fixed
at £3,242,000. On the 13th of April Mr. Gladstone introduced a Land
Bill as a complementary measure to his Home Rule Bill. He proposed
to give every Irish landlord the option of selling his land to an
authority appointed by the Irish Government, who would sell it to
the tenants, the purchase-money being advanced through the Imperial
Exchequer by an issue of Consols. These advances the tenant was to
repay in instalments spread over forty-nine years, and twenty years’
purchase was taken as the basis of the price. The amount to be advanced
at first under the Bill was to be £50,000,000, but in the original
draft it was nearly £300,000,000. The repayments were to be secured on
the Irish Revenue, and paid to a British Receiver-General in Ireland.
The opponents of the whole scheme contended that it gave no effective
guarantee for Imperial unity, that it put the loyal minority entirely
in the power of the disloyal majority in Ireland, that it multiplied
the risks of collision between Ireland and the Imperial Government,
that, in point of fact, it was virtually a Bill to repeal the Union.
Mr. Gladstone’s chief argument in favour of the scheme was that the
English democracy could no longer be trusted to hold Ireland down by
repressive legislation, and that Home Rule was the only alternative to
Coercion. Moreover, as Coercion bred Irish disloyalty, it weakened the
Imperial power of England in the world. Though the Orangemen of Ulster
plainly declared that they would plunge into civil war rather than
submit to a Home Rule Government in Ireland, Mr. Parnell accepted the
Bill in principle as an adequate concession of the Nationalist claims.

The weak points in the scheme were soon detected. One of these was
the exclusion of the Irish Members from the House of Commons--the
only proposal of Mr. Gladstone’s which had been hailed with applause
from both sides of the House when he expounded his Bill. The absence
of the Irish Members from the House of Commons was taken as a visible
sign, not only that the Parliamentary Union between Ireland and the
United Kingdom was dissolved, but that the control and authority of
the Imperial Parliament over Ireland was impaired. The Purchase scheme
alarmed the taxpayers, who objected to pledge the credit of England in
order to buy the Irish landlords out of Ireland. It is now known that,
if Mr. Gladstone had made concessions by promising to reconsider the
question of retaining the Irish Members at Westminster, and to remodel
the Bill accordingly, the Second Reading would have been carried. A
meeting of Liberals was indeed held at the Foreign Office to hear what
concessions Mr. Gladstone would make. Subsequently, in explaining his
speech at this meeting to the House of Commons, his phraseology seemed
to the wavering Liberals so illusory that they refused to support
him. Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain accordingly organised their
followers (about fifty in number) into a separate Parliamentary party,
describing themselves as Liberal Unionists, and at their first meeting
a letter was read from Mr. Bright casting in his lot with theirs. They
bound themselves to vote against the Second Reading of Mr. Gladstone’s
Bills.

[Illustration: LORD TENNYSON.

(_From a Photograph by H. H. H. Cameron, Mortimer Street, W._)]

On the 7th of June the Home Rule Bill was rejected by a majority of
341 against 311. Mr. Gladstone obtained from the Queen permission
to dissolve Parliament and appeal to the country. The Ministerial
candidates, at the General Election which followed, relied mainly upon
the contention that Home Rule was the only alternative to Coercion, and
the Tories and Liberal Unionists, on the other hand, pledged themselves
to govern Ireland without Coercion, and still retain the Parliamentary
Union unbroken. The Liberal Unionists and the Tories formed an alliance
for electoral purposes similar to that which Lord Malmesbury, in 1857,
had vainly attempted to cement between the Peelites and the Derbyites.
The Irish vote failed to balance the votes of the Liberal Unionists,
and when the new House of Commons was elected it was found to consist
of 316 Tories, 76 Liberal Unionists, 192 Liberal Home Rulers, and
86 Parnellites. Mr. Gladstone resigned, and Lord Salisbury formed a
Ministry, having unsuccessfully endeavoured to persuade Lord Hartington
and the Liberal Unionist leaders to join a Coalition Cabinet. The
services rendered by Lord Randolph Churchill in rousing the fanaticism
of Ulster were rewarded with the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and
the leadership of the House of Commons. Lord Iddesleigh became Foreign
Secretary; Mr. Matthews, Q.C., who had carried one of the seats in
Birmingham, became Home Secretary; Sir M. Hicks-Beach was deposed
from the leadership of the Commons, and relegated to his old post of
Chief Secretary for Ireland. As soon as Lord Salisbury assumed office
he found that a fresh agrarian crisis was menacing Ireland. The Irish
farmers were demanding a revision even of the fixed judicial rents
in terms of the recent fall in prices. There seemed no end to the
difficulty, and, in a pessimist mood, Lord Salisbury, at the opening of
the Session, declared that he was now in favour of getting rid of the
dual-ownership of land in Ireland. In fact, he accepted the principle
of a great Land-Purchase scheme, but he also broached the theory that,
if judicial rents were cut down, the State should recoup the landlords
for their losses.

After the debates on the Address were over Mr. Parnell brought in a
Relief Bill, allowing tenants who deposited half their rent in Court
to claim from the Court a revision of their rents. The Bill was
rejected by the combined vote of the Tories and Liberal Unionists.
Mr. Dillon now advised the Irish tenants to refuse to pay more rent
than they could afford. His suggestion was that they should combine on
each estate, offer the landlord a fair rent, and if this was refused,
deposit it in the hands of trustees, and use it to resist eviction.
This was known as “The Plan of Campaign” against rack-renters, and it
was widely adopted all over Ireland. Sir M. Hicks-Beach and Sir Redvers
Buller, who had been sent to organise the police in Kerry, apparently
discovered that there was much truth in Mr. Parnell’s contention,
that the fall in prices had made judicial rents impossible. The Irish
Government, at all events, now put pressure on rack-renting landlords,
in order to prevent them from demanding full rents and from evicting
if they were not paid. But Ministers declined to legislate for Ireland
till the following Session, though they appointed Commissions to amass
materials for legislation. Parliament was prorogued on the 25th of
September.

During the autumn the schism between the Liberal Unionists and the
Liberals widened. At Leeds the Liberals pledged themselves anew to
adhere to Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule policy. On the 7th of December Lord
Hartington’s followers held a Conference in London, at which further
arrangements were made for completing their organisation as a distinct
Party pledged to maintain the Union. As the year closed various rumours
of dissensions in the Cabinet were promulgated. There had been a good
deal of agitation against the wasteful extravagance and inefficiency of
the spending departments of the State, and Lord Randolph Churchill was
called on by public opinion to redeem the pledges in favour of economy
which he gave at Blackpool on the 24th of January, 1884. In attempting
to do this he found himself thwarted by his colleagues, and, to the
astonishment of his Party, he resigned office. He was succeeded by Mr.
Goschen, who entered the Cabinet, with Lord Hartington’s sanction, as
a Liberal Unionist, thereby illustrating afresh the closeness of the
coalition between the Dissentient Liberals and the Tories.

During the year there was some agitation raised as to the sad condition
of the unemployed in London. The Tories had taken advantage of this to
revive the Protectionist Movement under pretence of advocating Fair
Trade at meetings held in Trafalgar Square. On the 8th of February,
however, the Socialists followed suit, and organised a demonstration
in favour of their panacea for poverty. The police arrangements were
somewhat defective. A crowd of roughs and thieves who hovered round the
fringe of the mob evaded the constabulary, rushed along Pall Mall and
Piccadilly smashing the windows of the clubs and sacking the principal
jewellers’ shops. The agitation proceeded, and a counter demonstration
to the Lord Mayor’s Show on the 9th of November was even planned. It
was, however, prohibited by the police.

As the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee was now within measurable
distance, already there were great manifestations of popular feeling in
favour of Imperial Unity. In this year the Imperial Federation League
was founded for the purpose of drawing closer the bonds between the
Colonies and the Mother Country. The Indian and Colonial Exhibition at
South Kensington was organised by the Prince of Wales on a scale of
sumptuous splendour which attracted visitors to London from all parts
of the globe. It was opened with great pomp and ceremony by the Queen
in person on the 4th of May, in the presence of the more prominent
members of the Royal Family, the great dignitaries in Church and State,
and the representatives of India and the Colonies. This amazing display
of the vast resources of the Empire soon degenerated into an evening
lounge. But it brought together a vast number of able men from every
quarter of the world interested in the problem of Imperial Federation,
and the Prince of Wales dexterously seized the opportunity thus
created for him to establish a centre and rallying-point for British
Imperialism. He started the movement that ended in the foundation of
the Imperial Institute. The Queen visited the Exhibition several times,
paying special attention to the Indian Court, and conversing graciously
with the Indian workmen.

On the 11th of May her Majesty visited Liverpool to open the
International Exhibition in that city. On the 13th she visited the
Seamen’s Orphanage, and afterwards sailed down the Mersey, contrasting
the scene with that on which she gazed when, in 1851, she made a
similar excursion with the Prince Consort. Then the Queen was the
guest of Lord Sefton; on this occasion she was the guest of the city
of Liverpool, the Municipality having fitted up Newsham House for her
accommodation. On the 15th she returned to Windsor, the effect of her
visit having been to vastly increase her popularity in the North of
England. On the 26th of May the Court proceeded to Balmoral. During
the absence of the Court in Scotland the Prince and Princess of Wales
stimulated the gaiety of the London Season. It was remarkable for the
prevalence of Sunday re-unions, the patronage of which by the Heir
Apparent soon made them fashionable even among serious Church-going
people. On the 30th of June the Queen opened the Royal Holloway College
for Women at Egham, an institution for the higher education of women
founded by the vendor of the famous ointment and pills. As women had
been among the chief buyers both of the ointment and the pills, there
was a touch of irony in Mr. Holloway’s bequest that recalled the legacy
left by Swift to found a madhouse for the use of the Irish people.
On the 2nd of July her Majesty reviewed 10,000 troops at Aldershot,
and on the 5th entertained a large number of the Indian and Colonial
visitors at Windsor. She attended the brilliant garden-party given by
the Prince and Princess of Wales at Marlborough House on the 10th; and
on the 20th, accompanied by the Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of
Battenberg, left Windsor for Osborne, where she was soon absorbed in
the business attendant on a change of Ministry. On the 17th of August
her Majesty left Osborne for Edinburgh, where, on the 18th, she visited
the International Exhibition. On the 20th the Queen went to Balmoral,
where she remained till the 4th of November. On the 5th she visited the
Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch at Dalkeith Palace, and inspected the
Hospital for Incurables at Edinburgh, returning to Windsor on the 6th.
On the 22nd her Majesty received at Windsor, with much ceremony, their
Imperial Highnesses the Prince and Princess Komatsu of Japan, and on
the 29th the Court removed to Osborne.

[Illustration: OPENING OF THE INDIAN AND COLONIAL EXHIBITION: THE
QUEEN’S TOUR.]

CHAPTER XXX.

THE JUBILEE.

The Fiftieth Year of the Queen’s Reign--Mr. W. H. Smith Leader
of the Commons--Sudden Death of Lord Iddesleigh--Opening of
Parliament--The Queen’s Speech--The Debate on the Address--New
Rules for Procedure--Closure Proposed by the Tories--Irish
Landlords and Evictions--“Pressure Within the Law”--Prosecution
of Mr. Dillon--The Round Table Conference--“Parnellism and
Crime”--Resignation of Sir M. Hicks-Beach--Appointment of Mr.
Balfour--The Coercion Bill--Resolute Government for Twenty
Years--Scenes in the House--Irish Land Bill--The Bankruptcy
Clauses--The National League Proclaimed--The Allotments Act--The
Margarine Act--Hamburg Spirit--Mr. Goschen’s Budget--The Jubilee
in India--The Modes of Celebration in England--Congratulatory
Addresses--The Queen’s Visit to Birmingham--The Laureate’s
Jubilee Ode--The Queen at Cannes and Aix--Her Visit to the
Grande Chartreuse--Colonial Addresses--Opening of the People’s
Palace--Jubilee Day--The Scene in the Streets--Preceding
Jubilees--The Royal Procession--The German Crown Prince--The
Decorations and the Onlookers--The Spectacle in Westminster
Abbey--The Procession--The Ceremony--The Illuminations--Royal
Banquet in Buckingham Palace--The Shower of Honours--Jubilee
Observances in the British Empire and the United States--The
Children’s Celebration in Hyde Park--The Queen’s Garden Party--Her
Majesty’s Letter to her People--The Imperial Institute--The
Victorian Age.

It was on the 20th of June, 1886, that the Queen entered on the
fiftieth year of her reign. But her Majesty naturally refused to assume
that she would live to the end of it, and she accordingly determined
that the actual celebration of her Jubilee should be put off till the
20th of June, 1887. Thus it came to pass that 1887 will be known as
the Jubilee Year of the Victorian period. It was a year that opened
badly for the Government. The sudden resignation of Lord Randolph
Churchill at the close of 1886 rendered a reconstruction of the Cabinet
necessary. Efforts were made in vain to induce some of the Whig Peers
to join the Ministry, but, as we have seen, at last Mr. Goschen was
persuaded to accept the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. The
leadership of the Commons was given to Mr. W. H. Smith, who was made
First Lord of the Treasury; whilst Lord Salisbury, who held that
office, assumed the Secretaryship of State for Foreign Affairs. This
involved the enforced retirement of Lord Iddesleigh in somewhat painful
circumstances, which were further heightened by his sudden death from
heart-disease on the 13th of January. The discreditable intrigue, which
began by deposing him from the Leadership of the House of Commons,
thus ended tragically. Some of the leaders of the Liberal and Liberal
Unionist Parties were also endeavouring to discover some means of
reconciling these now hostile factions. Parliament was opened on the
27th of January, and the Speech from the Throne plainly foreshadowed
the introduction of a Coercion Bill for Ireland. It hinted at a Land
Bill as a possible measure; indeed, had it not done so the alliance
between the Government and the Liberal Unionists would have been
weakened. Other measures promised were Bills for reforming local
government in England, Scotland, and, “should circumstances render it
possible,” in Ireland, for cheapening private Bill legislation, and
land transfer. An Allotments Bill, a Tithe Bill, a Railway Rates and
Merchandise Marks Bill, were also in the programme, which was large and
varied. But the debate on the Address showed that no opposed Bills were
likely to pass unless the House of Commons reformed its procedure, and
to this task the Tory Party had most grudgingly to apply itself. Six
sittings were spent on the Address as a general subject of discussion.
After that amendments relating to the evacuation of Egypt and the Irish
policy announced in the Queen’s Speech were debated. Three Scottish
amendments were next brought forward, so that when, at the sixteenth
sitting of the House, Mr. Dillon began to denounce jury-packing in
Dublin, the Speaker ruled him out of order. A motion for an adjournment
was defeated, and a motion to consider the condition of unemployed
labourers in England was declared by the Speaker to have been
sufficiently discussed after two speeches were delivered. The Closure,
so dreaded by the Tories in former Parliaments, was then applied by
Mr. Smith, a vote taken, and the Address disposed of on the 17th of
February.

The Government lost no time in preparing to meet the obstruction with
which their Coercion Bill was already threatened. They circulated
their new rules for debates, and on the 21st of February Mr. W. H.
Smith moved the adoption of the Closure, vesting the initiative in
applying it not in the Speaker, which was the old rule, but in a bare
majority of the House, provided always that at least 200 Members voted
for it. The Liberal Leaders supported the proposal on principle, but
complained that the new rule was still too weak, and that it ought to
be applied unconditionally. Their view was confirmed in the following
year, when Mr. W. H. Smith was forced to reduce the necessary quorum
of 200 to 100. Meanwhile events had been moving apace in Ireland. The
Chief Secretary, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, finding that the landlords were
cruelly straining their rights against the poorer tenantry, urged them
to be merciful for the sake of peace. He put upon them what he called
“pressure within the law,” which practically meant that he hinted to
them that he would refuse them the aid of the police in enforcing
warrants of the Courts. In other words, he seemed to be exercising
the “dispensing power” of the Executive, little more than a year
after Mr. Morley had been forced to apologise for even suggesting
its exercise. In Ireland evictions were resisted by force, and lurid
pictures of the state of the country were drawn by the supporters of
the Government. The prosecution of Mr. Dillon and other Irish leaders
for a conspiracy to defeat the law, because they advocated the Plan
of Campaign, broke down through the disagreement of a Dublin jury.
The negotiations between the Liberal Unionists and Liberals at the
“Round Table Conference” were said to be producing happy results, and
it was soon noised abroad that the Government not only hesitated to
demand a Coercion Bill, but that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was ruling the
Irish with a hand so light that they were lapsing into lawlessness.
The _Times_ published a series of articles designed to prove that Mr.
Parnell and the Irish Home Rule Members were secretly in league with
the Party of Assassination. Mutterings of mutiny were heard from the
Irish Tories, and at this crisis Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, against whom
these complaints were directed, suddenly resigned. This step, however,
had been rendered necessary in consequence of his failing eyesight
rather than from considerations of a political character. To his post
Lord Salisbury appointed his nephew, Mr. Arthur James Balfour, pledged
to carry out an unflinching policy of Coercion. Sir George Trevelyan,
one of the secessionists from the Liberal Party, about this time showed
by his public utterances that he had now returned to Mr. Gladstone’s
party.

On the 23rd of March Mr. Smith moved that the Crimes Bill have
precedence over all other orders--and then the battle began. It was not
till the 28th that Mr. Balfour was able to move for leave to introduce
the measure, in a speech which seemed to show either that his case was
exceptionally weak, or that he had not been able to master it.[236]
The Bill gave magistrates power to inquire into crimes where no person
was charged. It gave two resident magistrates summary jurisdiction and
power to inflict imprisonment up to six months in cases of criminal
conspiracy, boycotting, rioting, assaults on the police, and in cases
of inciting to these offences. It gave the Lord-Lieutenant power to
“proclaim” certain associations as dangerous, and to subject to the
penal clauses of the Bill any one who after that took part in them. The
Bill was to be a permanent measure, and not like former Coercion Bills,
merely passed for a fixed period of time. Violent scenes occurred
during the debates which led up to the Second Reading of the measure on
the 28th of April, and the House was in an irritable mood because it
had been forced to sacrifice most of its Easter holiday. In spite of
the frequent use of the Closure, the first clause, which was scarcely
a contentious one, was not carried in Committee till the 17th of May.
When the fourth clause was reached, on the 10th of June, Mr. W. H.
Smith moved a resolution that if the Bill were not reported at 10 p.m.
on the 17th, the remaining clauses should be put to the vote without
debate. When that hour struck Sir Charles Russell was speaking on the
sixth clause. The Chairman stopped the debate, and put the question,
the Irish Members leaving the House in a body. After the division the
Liberal Members also left, and the rest of the Bill passed without
any more opposition. It was read a third time on the 8th of July, and
having been adopted by the Peers, it received the Queen’s assent on the
19th of July. The determination of the Government to carry the Coercion
Bill was natural. It had been admitted by all clear thinkers that,
unless Home Rule were granted to Ireland, she could only be governed
under Coercion. Moreover, the introduction of the Bill before the
Liberal Unionists and Liberals had been reconciled, forced the former
to vote for Coercion, which rendered the gulf between them and the old
Liberal Party practically impassable. But ere the Liberal Unionists
thus burned their boats, they had induced the Ministry to bring in a
conciliatory Irish Land Bill in the House of Lords. The Peers sent
it down to the Commons on the 4th of July, when the Second Reading
was moved on the 12th. The Bill adopted Mr. Parnell’s proposal of the
previous year, to admit leaseholders to the benefit of the Land Act of
1881; it gave notice of eviction the same effect as the actual service
of an ejectment writ, and gave the Courts power to stay execution, and
arrange for payment of rent on easy terms when the tenants were in
distress. But when insolvent, it provided for them relief from rent and
all other debts by a process of bankruptcy, allowing them, however,
to retain their farms. Mr. Campbell-Bannerman attacked the bankruptcy
clauses, and demanded a revision of all Irish rents in terms of the
fall in prices. To a general revision of rents the Government would on
no account assent. But the revolt of one of the Liberal Unionists, Mr.
T. W. Russell, compelled them to reconsider the bankruptcy clauses.
The Tories argued that it was unjust to ask the landlord to accept a
composition for rent from the farmer, when the tradesmen to whom he
owed money were not expected to abate their claims. Mr. Parnell and Mr.
T. W. Russell contended that no analogy could be drawn between rent
and trade debts. The latter had never been disputed by the debtor. The
former had been disputed. The tenant who owed money to his grocer or
seed-merchant never denied that he had got value for it. But he did
deny that he had got value for the money his landlord claimed as rent,
and he was able to prove this in court when the rent was cut down. To
insist, as did Mr. Chamberlain, on relief from just and unjust claims
being given with equal ease under a process of gentle bankruptcy, at
which the State was asked to connive, was to make an attack on property
and on credit from which even the leaders of the Paris Commune might
have shrunk. It was tantamount to asserting that whenever a man was
able to show that one creditor had overcharged him 30 per cent. he was
entitled to refuse payment of his just debts to all creditors who had
not overcharged him, unless they too took 30 per cent. off their bills.
When this was made clear not even Mr. Chamberlain’s advocacy sufficed
to save the bankruptcy clauses, which were accordingly dropped. But by
way of conciliating the landlords the Government insisted on applying
the vicious principle to arrears of rent. No relief from unjust arrears
was to be given unless they were to be dealt with in bankruptcy
alongside just and undisputed trade debts. The result was that when
the Bill passed it had a fatal defect in it. It prohibited landlords
from evicting for unjust rents, but by this clause it left them free
to evict for the arrears which had accumulated under rents which the
Courts decided to be unjust. On the 19th of August the Lord-Lieutenant
of Ireland “proclaimed” the National League as a dangerous association,
thereby enabling Mr. A. J. Balfour to suppress any branch of it he
thought fit under the Crimes Act.

[Illustration: THE QUEEN’S VISIT TO EDINBURGH (1886): HER MAJESTY
LEAVING HOLYROOD PALACE.]

The Government were now compelled to abandon the bulk of their
legislative programme. They, therefore, made no attempt to proceed
with any measures unless they were so democratic that the Liberals
could not with decency oppose them. Hence they passed a Coal Mines
Regulation Bill, an Allotments Bill--disfigured, however, by the
obstacles in procedure which it put in the way of labourers who
applied for allotments--and a Bill to prevent substitutes for butter
known as “Margarine,” from being sold as butter. The success of this
measure led to a demand for a similar Bill to prevent publicans from
selling poisonous Hamburg spirit as “Fine Old” Cognac, or Scotch or
Irish whisky. Baron de Worms, as representative of the Board of Trade,
however, though eager to prohibit shopkeepers from selling a wholesome
animal fat as butter, was shy of prohibiting the publicans--whose votes
were of some value to the Tory Party--from selling poisonous Hamburg
alcohol as old brandy. Mr. Goschen’s Budget was introduced on the
21st of April. He described it himself as a “humdrum” Budget--though
as a matter of fact, as Lord Randolph Churchill said, if _he_ had
proposed it the country would have denounced it as a scheme full of
financial depravity. The Estimates had been taken to show a revenue of
£89,689,000, and an expenditure of £89,610,000. The actual receipts,
however, for the past year had been £90,772,000, and the actual
expenditure £88,738,000. In spite of supplementary estimates, amounting
to £1,129,000, there was a surplus on the year’s accounts of £776,000.
Mr. Goschen’s general statement showed that not only were the taxes
yielding less than they ever did, but that, though the rich and the
poor had suffered much from commercial and agricultural depression,
the profits of the middleman had not been reduced. For the coming year
he took the revenue to amount, on the existing lines of taxation, to
£91,155,000, and the expenditure he set down at £90,180,000, leaving a
surplus of £975,000. To this he added £100,000 by increasing the duty
on the transfer of Debenture Stocks, and by minor changes in the Stamp
Duty. He then added to it a further sum of £1,704,000, by reducing
the charges for the public debt. His surplus was thus inflated to
£2,779,000, of which he spent £600,000 in reducing the Tobacco Duty,
£1,560,000 in taking a penny off the Income Tax, £280,000 in relieving
Local Taxation, £50,000 in aid of Arterial Drainage in Ireland,
leaving him a probable surplus of £289,000. To manufacture a surplus
by the simple process of ceasing to pay off debt, would certainly not
have secured for any other Chancellor of the Exchequer, except Mr.
Goschen, the reputation of a financial puritan. Mr. Gladstone and
Lord Randolph Churchill demonstrated by unanswerable arguments the
unwholesomeness of the financial policy which reduced the payments for
the National Debt by cutting down the Income Tax instead of by cutting
down departmental expenditure. But Mr. Goschen’s Budget gave everybody
a little relief all round, and was accepted quite irrespective of
the unsound principles on which it was based. It was, in fact, the
first illustration afforded by a Household Suffrage Parliament of the
deteriorating influence of democracy on the financial policy of the
nation. Parliament was prorogued on the 16th of September.

But public interest in politics faded as the Session grew old. Indeed,
from the beginning of the year, the attention of the country was more
and more concentrated on the movements of the Queen. It was known that
she had nerved herself to emerge from her seclusion, and, in some
degree, discard the mourning weeds she had worn so long. The first
note of the Jubilee was struck in India, where the great Imperial
festival was celebrated on the 16th of February. In presidency towns,
inland cities, the capitals of Protected States--even in Mandalay,
the capital of the newly-conquered State of Upper Burmah, natives and
Europeans vied with each other in acclaiming the event. Announcements
of clemency, banquets, plays, the distribution of honours, reviews,
illuminations, were not the only methods adopted for celebrating
the Jubilee. At Gwalior all arrears of land-tax--amounting to
£1,000,000--were remitted. Libraries, colleges, schools, waterworks,
hospitals, and dispensaries were opened in honour of the Empress.

“These are Imperial works and worthy thee,”

might well be the comment of the chronicler on such celebrations.
All over England preparations were now being made for the great
anniversary. In every town meetings were held to decide as to the mode
of its observance, and it was curious to notice that everywhere the
people desired to localise their rejoicings. Public parks, libraries,
town-halls, museums, hospitals--in a word, the foundation of works and
institutions of public usefulness in each locality was universally
regarded as the best means of honouring the occasion. There was
only one Jubilee institution of national grandeur that won public
favour--the Imperial Institute. It was originated, as has been noted,
by the Prince of Wales, and it was to his energy and skill in appealing
for public support that the enormous funds needed for its endowment
were now collected. In March the congratulatory addresses began to
come in--the Convocation of Canterbury, whose deputation headed by
the Primate was received by the Queen at Windsor on the 8th of March,
leading the way.

On the 23rd of March Birmingham, in spite of the boisterous weather,
was _en fête_ to receive her Majesty who arrived to open the new Law
Courts in that town, and few who were present will ever forget the
mighty shout of enthusiasm that rose up from the swarming throng, when
the Queen’s procession turned into New Street. Never was Royalty more
loyally received than in the Radical capital of the Midlands. The
Democratic demonstration at Birmingham gave point to the passage in the
Laureate’s Jubilee Ode, in which he wrote:--

“Are there thunders moaning in the distance?
Are there spectres moving in the darkness?
Trust the Lord of Light to guide her people,
Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish,
And the Light is victor, and the darkness
Dawns into the Jubilee of the Ages.”

On the 29th of March her Majesty, accompanied by the Princess Beatrice
and Prince Henry of Battenberg, left Windsor for Portsmouth, where
they embarked in the Royal yacht for Cannes. On the 5th the Royal
party went to Aix-les-Bains, where the Queen occupied her old rooms
at the Villa Mottet. Aix was wonderfully free from visitors, and she,
therefore, enjoyed almost complete privacy during her stay. By the
special sanction of the Pope her Majesty, on the 23rd of April, was
allowed to visit the Monastery of the Grande Chartreuse, within whose
precincts no woman’s foot is permitted to tread. She returned to
Windsor on the 29th of April. On the 4th of May she received at the
Castle the representatives of the Colonial Governments, who presented
her with addresses congratulating her on having witnessed during her
reign her Colonial subjects increase from fewer than 2,000,000 to
upwards of 9,000,000 souls, her Indian subjects from 96,000,000 to
254,000,000, and her subjects in minor dependencies from 2,000,000 to
7,000,000. On the 9th her Majesty held a court at Buckingham Palace,
at which the Maharajah and Maharanee of Kutch Behar and the Maharajah
Sir Pertab Sing were presented to her. On the 10th she held a Drawing
Room, and afterwards visited a private performance of the feats of
the American cowboys, and Indians, and prairie-hunters at the “Wild
West Show” at Earl’s Court. On the 14th she opened the People’s Palace
at Whitechapel, an institution which had grown out of a suggestion
in Mr. Walter Besant’s romance of “All Sorts and Conditions of Men.”
The route of procession from Paddington was seven miles long, and it
was thronged with people, who gave the Queen as warm a welcome as she
had received in Birmingham. On her return her Majesty visited the
Lord Mayor at the Mansion House. This was a remarkable event, for her
Majesty had not entered the Municipal Palace since she had visited it
with her mother two years before her accession. Her Majesty partook of
tea and strawberries with her Civic hosts, with whom she spent fully
half-an-hour, charming the company with her affability. On the 20th the
Court removed to Balmoral, where the Queen found her mountain retreat
covered with snow. On the 17th of June the Court returned to Windsor,
and on the 18th her Majesty received at the Castle the Maharajah Holkar
of Indore, and several Indian princes and deputations from Native
States.

The Jubilee itself was celebrated on the 21st of June. The chief
streets of London were given over to carpenters and upholsterers,
gasmen, and floral decorators, who transformed them beyond all
possibility of recognition. On the night of the 20th the town was
swarming with people, who had come out in the hope of seeing some of
the illuminations tried. As the day dawned crowds began to stream
into the metropolis, and in the forenoon every face wore a festal
aspect. Fabulous prices had been paid for seats along the line of
procession, and those who had secured places were in possession of them
early in the morning. Everybody was in good humour, and the police
were exceptionally amiable. At the point of departure--Buckingham
Palace--there were no decorations, but the presence of the Guards
and of the seamen of the Fleet, who were on duty within the gates,
gave animation to the scene. As eleven o’clock--the hour of
starting--approached, a strange silence seemed to fall over the noisy,
gossiping crowd, as if men and women felt awed and touched at the sight
of their aged Sovereign proceeding in State from her Palace to the
old Abbey to thank God for permitting her to see the fiftieth year of
her reign. Only thrice in the history of England had a Jubilee been
celebrated, and in none of these cases was there, as now, ground for
unalloyed joy. But for the founding of our Parliamentary System, none
would care to recall the distracted reign of Henry III. That of Edward
III., glorious as it was at its beginning, was clouded with disaster
at its end. That of George III. cost the dynasty, not a Crown, but a
continent. On the Jubilee Day of Queen Victoria there was, however,
no room for any feeling save that of gratitude and pride that, under
her gentle sway, the English people had gained and not lost dominion
upon earth. It was not till the head of the procession moved along,
and the Royal carriages came in sight, that the pent-up feeling of
the dense masses of spectators found utterance in volley after volley
of cheers. The Queen’s face was tremulous with emotion, and yet there
was triumph as well as grateful courtesy in her bearing as she bowed
her acknowledgments to her subjects. Beside her were the Princess of
Wales and the German Crown Princess, the latter beaming with happiness
and delight to find that her countrymen still held her dear. The loyal
tumult all along the line literally drowned the blare of bands and
trumpets.

The first part of the procession consisted of carriages in which were
seated the sumptuously apparelled Indian Princes, in robes of cloth of
gold, and with turbans blazing with diamonds and precious gems, who
had come from the far East to celebrate the Jubilee of their Empress.
Following them came carriages with the Duchess of Teck, the Persian
and Siamese guests of the Queen, the Queen of Hawaii, the Kings of
Saxony, Belgium, and Greece, and the Austrian Crown Prince. Life Guards
followed, and behind them came two mounted lacqueys of the Court.
To them succeeded escorts of Hussars and Life Guards, followed by
outriders in scarlet. In the first part of the procession were eleven
carriages. Of these, five conveyed the Ladies-in-Waiting and the Great
Officers of the Household. The sixth conveyed the Princess Victoria
of Sleswig-Holstein, Princess Margaret of Prussia, and Prince Alfred
of Edinburgh. In the seventh were seated the Princesses Victoria and
Sophie of Prussia, Princess Louis of Battenberg, and Princess Irene
of Hesse. The eighth conveyed the Princesses Maud, Victoria, and
Louise of Wales. In the ninth were the Duchess of Connaught and the
Duchess of Albany. In the tenth were the Duchess of Edinburgh, Princess
Beatrice, Princess Louise, and Princess Christian. Between the eleventh
carriage and the Queen’s rode the brilliant procession of Princes,
whose appearance all along the route gave the signal for an outbreak
of cheering. In the first rank rode the Queen’s grandsons--Prince
Albert Victor and Prince William of Prussia being among the most
conspicuous. Following them came the Queen’s sons-in-law, the German
Crown Prince, Prince Christian, the Grand Duke of Hesse, and Prince
Henry of Battenberg. The Marquis of Lorne had started with the
procession, but his horse took fright and threw him, about 300 yards
from the Palace, whereupon he returned on foot, and, borrowing a
charger from an Artillery officer, rode by himself to the Abbey by
Birdcage Walk. Of this group, the central figure was that of the German
Crown Prince, whose white uniform and plumed silver helmet attracted
general admiration. Covered with medals and decorations, most of which
he had won by his prowess in battle, he sat his charger as proudly as a
mediæval knight, in whom the spirit of old-world German chivalry lived
again. His fair, frank face became radiant with delight, when he found
that peal after peal of applause greeted him whenever he appeared.
Partly owing to his picturesque figure, partly to his manly and heroic
character, and partly, no doubt, to honest sympathy with his sufferings
under the disease that had suddenly smitten him in the very prime of
life, the German Crown Prince received an ovation more effusive even
than that bestowed on the ever-popular Prince of Wales, and almost
equal to that which greeted the Queen herself. After her sons-in-law
came her sons, the Duke of Connaught, the Prince of Wales, and the Duke
of Edinburgh. They, too, were hailed with cheering that was prolonged,
and that deepened in volume till her Majesty’s carriage passed. A
gorgeous cavalcade of Indians brought the splendid procession to a
close. Along the route, from the Palace up Constitution Hill, round
Hyde Park Corner, on through Piccadilly, down Waterloo Place, past
Trafalgar Square, along Whitehall to Westminster Abbey, every house
was glowing with many-tinted draperies, with bunting, and with floral
decorations, and every balcony and window were crowded with bright and
happy faces framed in festoons of roses and laurel.

The scene in the Abbey was impressive. Municipal dignitaries,
representatives of the Universities, civic functionaries of the higher
order, representatives of the Church and the Law, Lords-Lieutenant
and their deputies, High Sheriffs, Officers of the Auxiliary Forces,
Diplomatists, Ministers of State in Windsor uniforms, Officers of
the Household, Foreign Princes and Potentates, and their suites--in
fact every invited guest privileged to wear robe or uniform,
contributed to the mass of varied colour that, after a time, almost
tired the eye. Among the earliest arrivals were the Princess Feodore
of Saxe-Meiningen, the Prince Albert, and the Princess Louise of
Sleswig-Holstein, the Princess Alice of Hesse, the Princesses Mary,
Victoria, and Alexandra of Edinburgh, the Princess Frederica, Baroness
Pawel von Rammingen, Baron Pawel von Rammingen, Prince and Princess
Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Prince and Princess of Leiningen, Prince
and Princess Victor of Hohenlohe, with the Countesses Feodora and
Victoria Gleichen, and Count Edward Gleichen. Then entered the swarthy
Chiefs and Princes of India, among whom the stately and resplendent
Holkar was very prominent. The Queen of Hawaii followed, and after
her came the Princess Victoria of Teck, and the Princes Adolphus,
Francis, and Alexander of Teck, Prince Frederick of Anhalt, Prince
Ernest of Saxe-Meiningen, the Duke and Duchess of Teck, the Prince
of Hohenlohe-Langenberg, Prince Ludwig of Baden, Prince Philip of
Saxe-Coburg, the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, the Hereditary Grand Duke
of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, G.C.B., Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, the Duke
of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, the Infante Don Antonio of Spain, the Infanta
Donna Eulalia of Spain, the Duc d’Aosta, the Crown Prince of Sweden,
the Crown Prince and Princess of Portugal, the Austrian Crown Prince,
the Grand Duke and Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the King of Saxony,
the King and Queen of the Belgians, Prince George of Greece, the Crown
Prince of Greece, the King of Greece, and the King of Denmark.

Half-an-hour after the appointed time the silver trumpets announced the
coming of the Queen’s procession, headed by the six minor and the six
residentiary canons of Westminster, the Bishop of London, Archbishop
of York, the Dean of Westminster,[237] the Primate, all attired
in sumptuous canonicals. They were followed by heralds and other
functionaries, who were followed by the members of the Royal procession
walking in ranks of three, in the inverse order of precedence always
enforced at Royal ceremonials. These were--

The Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen.

Prince Henry of Prussia.

The Grand Duke Serge of Russia.

Prince Henry of Battenberg.

Prince Christian of Sleswig-Holstein.

The Duke of Connaught.

Prince Christian Victor of Sleswig-Holstein.

Prince George of Wales.

Prince Albert Victor of Wales.

The German Crown Prince.

The Prince of Wales.

Prince Louis of Battenberg.

The Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse.

Prince William of Prussia.

The Marquis of Lorne.

The Grand Duke of Hesse.

The Duke of Edinburgh.

The Queen, clad in black, but with a bonnet of white Spanish lace
glittering with diamonds, and wearing the Orders of the Garter and
Star of India, entered, escorted by the Lord Chamberlain, as the
organ pealed forth the strains of the march from Handel’s “Occasional
Oratorio.” The solemnity of the spectacle, and the reflection that the
Queen-Empress is about to give thanks to God for the crowning triumph
of her life, surrounded by the ashes of her predecessors, repress
all manifestations of feeling. Reverently does her Majesty take her
place on the Royal daïs, and, when the Princes and Princesses in her
train arrange themselves, the picture is one of imposing magnificence.
Surrounding this shining group of Princes a vast throng, representing
the genius, the rank, the wealth, and the chivalry of Britain, filled
every nook of the sacred fane in which the Queen celebrated her
golden wedding with her people. Towering high above all his peers the
Imperial form of the German Crown Prince, clad in the white uniform
of the Cuirassiers, stood forth as the most majestic figure in that
magnificent pageant.

[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCE, AFTERWARDS THE EMPEROR FREDERICK III.,
OF GERMANY.

(_From a Photograph by Reichard and Lindner, Berlin._)]

The Thanksgiving Service was brief and simple. The Primate and the Dean
of Westminster officiated, and the music was largely selected from the
compositions of the Prince Consort. Prayers and responses invoking a
blessing on the Queen were intoned. The Prince Consort’s _Te Deum_
was given. Three special prayers were offered up by the Archbishop of
Canterbury,

[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCESS, AFTERWARDS THE EMPRESS VICTORIA, OF
GERMANY.

(_From a Photograph by Reichard and Lindner, Berlin._)]

after which the people’s prayer--_Exaudiat te Dominus_--was intoned.
The lesson (1 Pet. ii. 6-18) was next read by the Dean, and Dr.
Bridge’s Jubilee anthem, “Blessed be the Lord thy God, which delighted
in thee to set thee on the throne to be king for the Lord thy God,” a
piece in which the theme of the National Anthem is suggested, was sung.
Two simple prayers were then offered up, and the ceremony, impressive
from the grandeur of the surroundings, and yet thrilling and pathetic
by reason of its devotional earnestness and simplicity, ended with
the Benediction. Here the Queen, who was several times overcome with
emotion, is seen by the spectators to make a movement as if she would
rise from her seat on the sacred Coronation Stone of Scone and kneel
on the _prie-dieu_ in front of her. But she cannot reach so far, and
she sinks back into her place, veiling her bowed face with her hands.
She then glances round, and her eyes fill with tears when they rest on
her sons and her daughters, and her sons-in-law and their children.
The pent-up feeling of that dazzling group of Princes and Princesses
can no longer be restrained, and the solemn pageant of State suddenly
assumes the aspect of a family festival. The Prince of Wales bends
forward and kisses the Queen’s hand, but her Majesty raises his face
and salutes him affectionately on the cheek. The German Crown Prince
pays his homage with chivalrous grace and stately courtesy, and the
Grand Duke of Hesse follows him. But the emotion of the moment is
too strong for Court ceremonial. The Queen with an impulsive gesture
discards the Lord Chamberlain’s etiquette, and embraces the Princes and
Princesses of her house with honest and unreserved motherly affection.
Then she turns to the German Crown Prince with a loving smile, and as
he comes forward she kisses him warmly on the cheek. The Grand Duke of
Hesse is also saluted, and her Majesty, making a profound bow to her
Foreign guests, which they return, quits the scene as the “March of the
Priests” in _Athalie_ peals forth from the organ. The procession was
now formed again, and as the Sovereign returned to Buckingham Palace,
it was noticed that the reception which was given to her was even more
enthusiastic than that which greeted her on her way to the Abbey. It
is, perhaps, only once in a generation that it falls to the lot of a
monarch to be hailed in the streets of her capital with such passionate
demonstrations of loyalty, and the Queen seemed to be filled with the
emotion of the hour.

The rest of the day was kept as a public holiday by the people, and
when the shades of night fell on the metropolis its streets were
ablaze with light. The art of the illuminator was indeed exhausted in
providing novel and varied designs, and gas jets and electric lamps,
arranged so as to display every conceivable device expressive of
loyalty, turned night into day. Nor were gas and electricity the only
agents employed to give splendour to the festivity of the evening.
In many places festoons of Chinese lanterns shed their soft and
mellow radiance over a scene not unworthy of fairyland. The Queen,
who had borne the fatigue and excitement of the Thanksgiving pageant
wonderfully well, rested a little while after her return to Buckingham
Palace, and there, as a special compliment to the “Senior Service,”
she came out and held a review of the 500 seamen of the Fleet who had
formed her guard of honour at the Palace doors. In the evening she gave
a grand banquet, at which sixty-four royal personages were present.

All over England and in the North of Ireland the Jubilee was also
celebrated as enthusiastically as in London. The illumination of the
city of Edinburgh was said to be even more effective as a brilliant
spectacle than that presented by the metropolis. It was only in Cork
and Dublin that riotous demonstrations of disloyalty took place. Eight
peerages, thirteen baronetcies, and thirty-three knighthoods were
conferred in honour of the event. A Royal amnesty to deserters from the
army was also proclaimed. In the Colonies the day was celebrated even
more joyously than in England. In foreign lands the British residents
also held Jubilee festivals. But in the United States the citizens
of the Republic freely joined the British residents, honouring the
occasion as if it were one of as much interest to them as to their kith
and kin in the old home of their race. The most glowing of all the
Jubilee orations was in fact spoken by Mr. Hewitt, Mayor of New York,
at the grand Thanksgiving Festival in the Opera House of that city,
in the course of which he elicited the passionate enthusiasm of his
countrymen by recalling the events of the Civil War. “In the hour of
our trial,” he exclaimed, “when the flag under whose broad folds I was
born was trailing in the dust, it was my fortune to journey to another
land on matters of great moment. There I learnt--and I know whereof I
speak--that we owed to the Queen of England the non-intervention policy
which characterised the Great Powers of the world during our struggle
for life and death. I had no purpose to open my lips here, but when you
call on me for a testimony to her who was our friend, as she is your
Queen, my lips ought to be palsied if I were such a coward as not to
give it.” A speech so simple and unexpected, received as it was by a
spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm from the American citizens in the
audience, it need hardly be said produced a profound sensation.

But of all the Jubilee celebrations perhaps the most charming and novel
was one which was held in Hyde Park. A few weeks before Jubilee Day it
occurred to a kindly and generous gentleman, Mr. Edward Lawson, well
known in society as the editor of the _Daily Telegraph_, that there
was a fatal omission in the Jubilee programme. Elaborate arrangements
had been made to interest all classes in the festival save one--the
school-children of London--the boys and girls who must form the men and
women of the next generation. Mr. Lawson contended that this defect
should be remedied, and the whole town was immediately taken with his
idea. Everybody wondered that nobody had put forward the suggestion
before, and Mr. Lawson soon found himself honorary treasurer of the
Children’s Jubilee Fund, to which he himself was one of the most
prominent subscribers. Foolish efforts were made to check the movement,
and people were warned that it was impossible to entertain 30,000
children in Hyde Park, as Mr. Lawson proposed, without accidents to
life and limb. It was, however, in vain that he was denounced as the
organiser of a juvenile Juggernaut. The fund was raised with ease, and
Mr. Lawson, by skilful organisation, not only got 27,000 children into
Hyde Park from all parts of London on the 22nd of June, but sent them
back unhurt and happy to their homes. Great ladies of fashion helped
him to carry out his arrangements. The little ones were entertained
with the sports and shows dear to boys and girls of their age, and
the Queen not only came out and greeted them in person, but she was
received with a delight that touched her profoundly. The Princes and
Princesses and many of the foreign visitors also witnessed this strange
but interesting incident in the Jubilee celebrations.[238]

On the 24th of June, an evening party was given at Buckingham Palace,
which was attended by nearly all the members of the Queen’s family, by
the foreign sovereigns and Princes then in London, and by a gay throng
of distinguished persons. On the 25th of June, a singularly beautiful
and touching letter, evidently straight from the Queen’s own pen, to
the Home Secretary, thanking the nation for their display of loyalty
and love, appeared in the _London Gazette_. In this communication it
almost seems as if the Queen laid her heart open to the people with a
frank and simple confidence rare in the relations that subsist between
sovereigns and their subjects. On the 27th her Majesty received at
Windsor Castle congratulatory deputations from municipalities, friendly
societies, professional associations, and public bodies, representing
almost every phase of English life, and thought, and enterprise. Her
Garden Party at Buckingham Palace on the following Wednesday was a
brilliant reunion at which were present several thousands of guests.
On the 2nd of July the Queen from Buckingham Palace reviewed 28,000
Metropolitan Volunteers, and military men were amazed at the skill
with which the troops were handled by their officers in the narrow
and confined space. It was, however, unfortunate that at this review
a slight was cast on the Royal Navy. As is natural in a seafaring
nation, the naval forces of the Crown always take precedence of the
land forces. Hence, the phrase “Senior Service” used to distinguish the
Navy from the Army. But at this review the claim of the Royal Naval
Volunteers for precedence over the grotesque and motley body known
as the Honourable Artillery Company of London, a force which belongs
neither to the Army, the Militia, nor the Volunteers, and which has
been permitted even to repudiate the authority of the War Office, was
disallowed.

On the 4th of July the crowning event of the Jubilee Festival occurred.
On that day the Queen laid the foundation stone of the Imperial
Institute in the Albert Hall. Noting the growing Imperialism which the
Jubilee evoked, the Prince of Wales determined to fix it by embodying
it in some permanent institution. In spite of distracted counsels,
inter-Colonial jealousy, and much anti-monarchical opposition, the
necessary funds for the purpose were raised, but it was universally
admitted that had not the Prince toiled without ceasing the scheme must
have collapsed. The Institute was and is meant to stand as an outward
and visible sign of the essential unity of the British

[Illustration: THE JUBILEE GARDEN PARTY AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE: THE ROYAL
TENT.]

Empire. It was to be a rallying-point for all Colonial movements, a
centre of instruction for those who desire information as to Colonial
trade and Colonial resources. In a word, what the Queen “inaugurated”
on the 4th of July, at Kensington, as the culminating function of her
Jubilee, was a vast and ubiquitous Intelligence Department for her
far-stretching dominions. The decoration of the building in which
the ceremony took place was chiefly floral, and, indeed, the scene
suggested sylvan freshness and beauty. Eleven thousand people were
seated in the chief pavilion.

When the Queen entered, preceded by the officers of her household and
escorted by her family, she took her seat on the draped daïs, and found
herself again surrounded by a majestic throng of Kings and Princes. The
Prince of Wales read aloud to her Majesty the Address of the organising
Committee of the Institute, describing its aims and its prospects.
The ode, written for the occasion by Mr. Lewis Morris,[239] and set
to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, was performed by the Albert Hall
Choral Society, aided by a full orchestra. After it was finished, the
Queen, assisted by the Prince of Wales and the architect, Mr. Colcutt,
laid the first solid block of the building--a piece of granite three
tons in weight. Prayers, read by the Primate, followed, after which
the Commissioners of the Exhibition of 1851 presented an Address,
congratulating the Queen on the celebration of her Jubilee. Her Majesty
then, leaning on the arm of the Prince of Wales, left the hall, while
the band struck up “Rule Britannia.” The ceremonial differed from that
which took place in the Abbey in one respect. The Thanksgiving Service
threw the minds of Sovereign and subject back on the past, with all
its trials and all its triumphs. But the function in the Royal Albert
Hall invited speculation as to the future, and as to the part which the
Monarchy must inevitably play in the evolution of the English-speaking
race, and the development of their spreading dominion over strange
lands and under strange stars. The Institute typified the inheritance
of Empire which Englishmen had won during the reign by their toil and
their enterprise. As Mr. Morris sang,

“To-day we would make free
The millions of their glorious heritage.
Here, Labour crowds in hopeless misery;
There, is unbounded work and ready wage.
The salt breeze calling, stirs our Northern blood,
Lead we the toilers to their certain goal;
Guide we their feet to where
Is spread, for those who dare,
A happier Britain ’neath an ampler air.

* * * * *

First Lady of our British Race,
’Tis well that with thy peaceful Jubilee
This glorious dream begins to be.”

With this great function of State the record of the Queen’s career
through half a century, and of the public affairs which her life
influenced and which influenced it, may close for the present. A
retrospective glance over that record suggests curious reflections.

Only seventeen years elapsed between the death of George III. and
the accession of the Queen to the sovereignty of a people who had
let a virgin continent slip from their grasp, and who were not only
exhausted by wars, but whose wars had also exhausted the nations that
trafficked with them. England had then but one hope of recovery. It
was to bind the forces of Nature to the tarrying chariot-wheels of her
Industry. To this end she bent the energies of her highest intellect
and genius. For this reason, perhaps, the Victorian period, in which
the Queen, stands out as the central figure, represents the triumph of
the applied Sciences, rather than the apotheosis of the Arts and the
Humanities. “The true founders of modern England,” says Mr. Spencer
Walpole, “are its inventors and engineers.”[240] The mighty power which
the British Empire now represents has therefore been built up under the
Queen’s sceptre, not on the red fields of war, but in the laboratory,
the workshop, and the mine. Three facts alone will serve to give the
distinctive character of the Victorian age. When the Queen was crowned
railway travelling was almost unknown; steam navigation had hardly
emerged from the region of experiment; the telegraph was but a toy of
the physicists. As we reflect on what the railway, the steamship, and
the telegraph have done for England, we can measure the extent and
discern the nature of the peaceful revolution in affairs over which
the Queen has presided. The national resolve arrived at after the
death of George IV. to recover the power and wealth which seemed to
have vanished during the last years of his reign, and to recover it by
gaining fresh dominion over the forces of Nature, naturally shaped the
whole course of public policy. If England was to be resuscitated in the
laboratory, the workshop, and the mine, the Sciences, rather than the
Arts and Humanities, must be fostered. Capital must be set free. The
dignity of Labour must be recognised. Commerce must be unshackled, and
perfect freedom, combined with unbroken order, established in the land.
The swift decay of privilege that marks the course of political reform
during the last half century, the spread of popular education, the
wide distribution of political power, the wise revision of the penal
laws, the humane legislation designed to better and brighten the lot of
Toil, the subjection of authority to opinion, the subjugation of Art to
Industry, the absorption of literature by the Press, are but natural
results of a struggle on the part of a masculine race to build up its
power on the achievements of the inventor, the experimentalist, and the
pioneer.

Nor can the harvest of its toil be deemed altogether unsatisfactory.
The poor we have still with us, but their condition has been vastly
improved since the reign of William IV. Save in one respect, that of
house rent in large towns, the necessaries of life have been cheapened,
while the purchasing capacity of the people has been increased. As for
the upper and middle classes, their wealth in comparison with their
numbers has been multiplied twofold since the Queen ascended the throne.

So far as the public life of the Queen has affected her House, these
pages prove that it has done so in one way. At her Accession the Crown
had almost entirely lost its authority as a governing order in the
State. At her Jubilee the Crown held a position of authority higher
than any to which it has attained since the time of William of Orange.
According to Mr. Gladstone, the success of the Queen’s dynastic policy
has been due to her determination to acquire influence rather than
power for the Monarchy. _Imperium facile iis artibus retinetur, quibus
initio partum est._ But if the Roman historian be right in holding
that power can be most surely kept by the means whereby it has been
acquired, he who runs may read the lesson of the Queen’s life. Its
record, showing how her influence has been won, must also show those
who will some day take her place, how alone it can be retained and
strengthened.

INDEX.

Abdul Aziz, Sultan of Turkey, Visit of, to England, II. 293;
received at Windsor Castle, _ib._;
entertainments in his honour, 294;
made Knight of the Garter, _ib._

Aberdeen, Lord (Fourth Earl), appointed Foreign Secretary, I. 97;
his ready confidence in foreign powers, 199;
his opinion of Free Trade, 208, 209;
his adroit diplomacy with the United States, 231;
the high esteem in which he was held by the Queen, 238;
his attack on the foreign policy of the Russell Government, 394;
his wish to drive Palmerston from office, 395;
appointed Premier, 518;
his sympathy with Russia, 546;
three mistakes on the part of his Cabinet, 551;
his desire for peace before the Crimean War, 555;
confidence of the Queen in his policy, 563;
speech on the Prince Consort’s position, 576;
accusations against his Russian policy, 600, 617, 638;
letter from the Queen regarding his Russian policy, 601;
Prince Albert’s opinion of his war policy, 620;
defeat of his Ministry, 627;
his efforts to improve the condition of the army, 631;
his death, II. 72;
his character, _ib._

Aberdeen, Lord (Seventh Earl), appointed Viceroy of Ireland, II. 727

Aberdeen, inauguration of a statue to the Prince Consort by
the Queen, II. 182;
statue of the Queen unveiled by the Prince of Wales, 266;
opening of water-works by the Queen, 267

Abergeldie, The bridge over the Dee at, II. 720

Abu Hamed, Gordon at, II. 711;
the River Column at, 717

Abu Klea, Battle of, II. 713

Abu Kru, Battle of, II. 714

Abyssinia, the English expedition against King Theodore, II. 300, 312;
envoys to the Queen, II. 695;
the Treaty of Adowah, _ib._

“Acres and a Cow, Three,” II. 726

Act, Bank Charter, its favourable effect, I. 182

Act, Corporation, Repeal of the, I. 23

Act, Test, The repeal of the, I. 23

Acts, Criminal Law Consolidation, The, I. 28

Adam, The Right Hon. W. P., appointed First Commissioner of Works, II. 594

Adelaide, Queen, her ball to the Princess Victoria, I. 14

Aden, its occupation by the British, I. 52;
the appearance of the town, _ib._

Admiralty, The construction of ironclad ships for
the British navy proposed by, II. 126;
reduction of its expenditure, 441;
issue of the Fugitive Slave Circular, 489;
violent popular agitation against, 704;
errors in the accounts of, 710

Adowah, Treaty of, II. 695

Adullamites, The, II. 256

Affirmation Bill brought in by the Attorney-General, II. 658;
efforts of the Tories to prevent it from coming into force, _ib._;
defeated by a majority of three, _ib._

Afghanistan, war declared by England on Shere Ali, II. 555;
Lord Lytton’s disagreement with Shere Ali, 556;
success of the British invasion, 567;
the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari, 573;
unpopularity of Lord Lytton’s policy, 574;
capture of Cabul by General Roberts, _ib._;
the affairs of the country in 1880, 598;
Mr. Gladstone’s policy, 599;
defeat of General Burrows, _ib._;
splendid generalship of Sir Frederick Roberts, _ib._;
rescue of Candahar, _ib._;
Lord Beaconsfield’s policy impossible, 610;
dispute in Parliament as to the occupation of Candahar, 615;
controversy between England and Russia about the frontier of, 719

Africa, South, outbreak of the Caffre War, I. 254;
attack on the policy of the English Government in, II. 662;
contention between Liberals and Conservatives regarding, _ib._

Agricultural Holdings Bill, the strong opposition to, II. 659;
its terms, _ib._;
Mr. A. J. Balfour’s amendment, _ib._;
Mr. Clare Sewell Read’s remark on, _ib._;
Mr. Balfour’s amendment struck out on the Report, _ib._;
attempt of the House of Lords to mutilate the Bill, _ib._;
the amendments of the House of Lords rejected by the Commons, _ib._;
the measure passed, _ib._;
Lord Salisbury’s failure to hold his party firm
to the policy of resistance, _ib._

Aix-les-Bains, The Queen’s visit to, II. 719, 740

Akbar Khan, Treachery of, I. 118;
defeated, 121

_Alabama_ Claims, The, II. 342;
settled by arbitration, 390;
discussion on the matter in the House of Commons, 421;
the story of the controversy, 422;
the award of the arbitrators, _ib._;
Lord Chief Justice Cockburn’s opinion, 423

Albany, Duke of, the title conferred on Prince Leopold, II. 626;
a title of evil omen, _ib._;
_see_ also Leopold, Prince

Albert, Prince, his birth and parentage, I. 60;
his admirable disposition, _ib._;
his visit to England, _ib._;
his studies at Bonn, 61;
his suit accepted by the Queen, 62;
letters patent regarding his precedence, 66;
rumours as to his religious views, _ib._;
letter to the Queen in regard to his Protestantism, _ib._;
his arrival in England, 68;
his enthusiastic reception, _ib._;
his marriage, _ib._;
his trying position, 71;
his desire to abolish duelling, 72;
collision with Court functionaries, _ib._;
his reforms in household economy, 74;
domestic life, 75;
appointed Regent, 83;
his study of English law, _ib._;
a letter to his father, 91;
a royal tour, 94;
Lord Melbourne’s opinion of him, 103;
a remark of the Queen on his kindness, _ib._;
his generous reception of Sir Robert Peel, _ib._;
appointed Chairman of a Royal Commission on the Fine Arts, 104, 105;
his accurate knowledge of English, 105;
his first public speech, _ib._;
lays the foundation stone of the London Association, _ib._;
present at a ball in Buckingham Palace, 107;
visit to Scotland, 126;
his interest in English politics, 127;
the proposal to appoint him Commander-in-Chief, 128;
his irreproachable life, _ib._;
his opinion of Sir Robert Peel, 140;
acting as representative of the Queen, 141;
his interest in Fine Art, 142;
receives the degree of D.C.L. from Oxford, 146;
visits Birmingham, 147;
distinction in the hunting-field, _ib._;
his interest in agriculture, 148;
the model works in Windsor Park, _ib._;
death of his father, 158;
visit to Germany, 159;
title of Consort proposed, 185;
visit to the Continent, 194;
attacked by Lord George Bentinck in the Corn Law debate, 226;
proposed assessment of Flemish Farm, 260;
visits the Isle of Wight, 261;
opens the Albert Dock at Liverpool, 262;
nominated Chancellor of Cambridge University, 307;
agrees to take office as Chancellor of Cambridge, 310;
his arguments for an Anglo-German alliance, 322;
appointed President of the society for the improvement
of the working classes, 358;
impressive speech to the working classes, 359, 360;
his revised course of studies carried at Cambridge, 369;
speech to the Royal Dublin Society, 409;
his idea of the International Exhibition, 417;
speech on the International Exhibition, 450;
attacked by the press, 454;
his energy at the International Exhibition, 480;
anxieties in regard to the Exhibition, 520;
accusations against him as sympathising with Russia, 617;
visit to France, 621;
his plan for an Army Reserve at Malta, 623;
his opinion of Austrian policy, _ib._;
efforts to improve the condition of the army, 631;
speech on the Russian War, 639;
present at a Council of War at Windsor, 651;
attacked by the _Times_ for military jobbery, 667;
his scheme for a new military organisation, 694;
opens the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, 739;
receives the title of Prince Consort by letters patent, 743;
his advice to the King of Prussia regarding German unity, II. 90;
his last illness, 92-96;
the widespread grief of the British people at his death, 98;
his character, 104-107;
his funeral, 107-110;
the interment at Frogmore, 146;
his memorandum regarding Turkey, 531

Albert Hall, Royal, laying the foundation stone of, II. 291;
opened by the Queen, 409

Albert Memorial, Scottish National, at Edinburgh,
unveiled by the Queen, II. 503

Albert Victor, Prince of Wales, receives the Order of the Garter, II. 667;
the investiture a private function, _ib._;
a proof of the high favour in which he was held by the Queen, _ib._;
coming of age of, 719

Alberto Azzo, his union with the House of Guelph, I. 4

Aldershot, Visit of the Queen to, II. 265

Alexander II. of Russia declared Emperor, I. 633;
his death, II. 623;
his humane character, _ib._;
the liberation of the serfs accomplished by him, _ib._;
his devotion to the highest interests of Russia, _ib._;
his judicious management of the war with Turkey, 623-4

Alexandra, Princess of Denmark, her entry into London, II. 152;
her marriage to the Prince of Wales, 158

Alexandria, English and French fleets despatched to, II. 642;
riot in the city, _ib._;
the British Consul injured, _ib._;
French and English subjects slain, _ib._;
a stampede of the foreign population, _ib._;
Arabi Pasha strengthens the fortifications, _ib._;
the forts bombarded by the British fleet, _ib._;
the city seized by a fanatical mob, _ib._

Alfred, Prince, his birth, I. 167;
his sponsors at christening, 171;
his successful preparation for the navy, II. 23;
his visit to Cape Town, 69;
attempted assassination by O’Farrel, 316;
his betrothal to the Duchess Marie of Russia, 451;
his marriage, 453

Alice, Princess, Marriage of, to Prince Louis of Hesse, II. 141-2;
her sedulous consolation to her mother, 143;
recipient of the Queen’s confidences, 228;
her death, 509;
the esteem in which she was held by the English people, 560;
her life in Germany, 561

Alliance, The new Holy, between Austria, Russia, and Prussia, II. 59

Allotments Bill passed, II. 738

Alma, The battle of the, I. 607

Alula Ras, leader of the Abyssinians, II. 718

America, the discovery of gold in California, I. 535

Amos, Mr., appointed the Queen’s tutor in Constitutional Government, I. 14

Angra Pequena annexed by Germany, II. 684

Arabi Pasha, the disagreement between the
partners in the Dual Control as to
the course that should be adopted towards him, II. 641;
he becomes the real Minister of War, _ib._;
loaded with decorations, 642;
the rank and title of Pasha conferred upon him, _ib._;
virtually Dictator of Egypt, _ib._;
his policy of “Egypt for the Egyptians,” _ib._;
French and English consuls advise his expulsion, _ib._;
he resigns, _ib._;
a second time Minister of War, _ib._;
ostentatiously strengthens the forts of Alexandria, _ib._;
takes up a position at Tel-el-Kebir after the
bombardment of the Alexandrian forts, _ib._;
English expedition sent against him, _ib._;
defeated by General Wolseley at Kassassin, _ib._;
the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, _ib._;
to the British troops at Cairo, _ib._;
saved from capital punishment by the English Government, _ib._;
exiled to Ceylon, _ib._

Argyle, Duke of, appointed Lord Privy Seal, I. 519;
his success at the India Office, II. 343;
appointed Lord Privy Seal, 594;
resignation on Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, 616

Ascot Race Week, The Queen and, II. 721

Ashanti, Outbreak of war in, II. 461;
capture of Coomassie by Sir Garnet Wolseley, _ib._

Ashbourne’s, Lord, Land Bill, II. 710

Ashley, Lord, _see_ Shaftesbury

Ashley, Mr. Evelyn, his Life of Lord Palmerston, I. 395

Auckland, Lord, his negotiations with Dost Mahomed in Afghanistan, I. 112;
his unfortunate policy, _ib._;
declares war against Dost Mahomed, 114;
created an Earl, _ib._;
reversal of his policy in Afghanistan, 122

Australia, discussion in Parliament, as to its
legislative constitution, I. 439;
the discovery of gold, 496;
the rush to the gold-fields, 535;
effect of the gold discovery on the colony, 538;
results of the gold discovery in England, _ib._;
excitement on account of German annexation of New Guinea, II. 686

Australian Contingent, The, in the Soudan campaign, II. 717

Austria, Absorption by, of the Republic of Cracow, I. 259;
triumph over Italy, 422;
overthrow of Hungarian independence, 423;
General Haynau’s unpopularity in England, 457;
Lord Palmerston’s note on the Haynau incident, 457;
policy during the dispute between Russia and Turkey, 551, 553, 582, 623;
signature of the Protocol, 584;
makes terms with Prussia, 585;
treaty with Turkey, 586;
refuses to join with England against Russia, 639;
concessions made to Lord Cowley regarding Italy, II. 34;
declaration of war against Sardinia, 35;
defeated in the Italian War, 38;
proposal by the Emperor regarding Venetia, 56;
difficulties with Hungary, 79;
the war with Prussia, 280;
expelled from German unity, 281;
policy during the Russo-Turkish War, 530;
rumour as to its opposition to Mr. Gladstone, 596;
Mr. Gladstone’s reply to Austrian criticism, _ib._;
political capital made out of Mr. Gladstone’s
explanatory letter to Count Karolyi, 597

Baden, the institution of a Free Press, of
a National Guard, and of Trial by Jury, I. 346

Baillie, Mr., his motion regarding Ceylon and Guiana, I. 382

Baines, Mr., his proposal regarding the vote for the boroughs, II. 214

Baker Pasha put in command of the Egyptian native police, II. 643;
defeated by the Mahdi at Tokar, 672

Balaclava, The Battle of, I. 611-613;
Campbell’s “thin red line,” 612;
charge of the Heavy Brigade, 613;
charge of the Light Brigade, 614

Balfour, Mr. A. J., one of the founders of the Fourth Party, II. 594;
his obstructionist tactics, 601;
becomes President of the Local Government Board, 708;
appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, 735;
his Coercion Bill and its chief provisions, 735-6

Ballot Bill, Discussion in Parliament as to the conditions of the, II. 395;
passing of the Ballot Act, 423

Balmoral described by the Queen, I. 366;
visited by the Queen, 412, 458, 459, 487,
622, 660, 696; II. 293, 431, 606, 627, 666, 667;
Greville’s description of the Queen’s life at, 415

Balmoral, Countess of, the Queen’s assumed
title during her visit to Italy, II. 580

Bank Charter Act, its favourable effect, I. 182

Bankruptcy Bill, The, carried in Parliament, II. 86;
real progress made with it, 658;
its main object to provide for an independent
examination into all circumstances of insolvency by officials of the Board
of Trade, _ib._;
read a second time, _ib._;
referred to the Grand Committee on Trade, _ib._;
passed by the House of Lords without cavil, _ib._;
Mr. Chamberlain’s ability and tact in conducting it, _ib._

Bankruptcy Clauses of the Irish Land Bill, II. 736

Bannerman, Mr. Campbell-, attacks the Bankruptcy
Clauses of the Irish Land Bill, II. 736

Baring, Mr., his budget, I. 90;
proposed alterations on the Sugar Duties, _ib._

Battenberg, Prince Henry of, II. 718;
made Knight of the Garter, 722;
assumes title of His Royal Highness, _ib._;
question of the legality of this assumption, ib.

Bavuda Desert, The march across the, II. 713

Beaconsfield, Lord, _see_ Disraeli, Mr.

Beales, Mr., his leadership of the Reform League, II. 270

Bean, his attempt on the Queen’s life, I. 110

Beatrice, Princess, Betrothal of, II. 718;
unpopularity of her marriage, _ib._;
annuity to her on her marriage, 720;
marriage of, 722;
welcome in the Highlands after her marriage, 723

Beer Duty instituted by Mr. Gladstone, II. 601

Belfast visited by the Queen and the Prince Consort, I. 410

Belgium, proposed visit of the Queen, I. 126

Belt, Mr., sculptor of the Queen’s monument to
Lord Beaconsfield in Hughenden Church, II. 643

Beniowski, Major, his leadership of the Chartist rising in Wales, I. 329

Benson, Dr., Archbishop of Canterbury, nominate
d by Archbishop Tait as his successor, II. 650

Bentham, Jeremy, his exposure of the needless
severity of the Criminal Code, I. 27

Bentinck, Lord George, attacks Prince Albert
in a speech during a debate about the Corn Laws, I. 226;
his contention against Free Trade, 275;
his Bill for railways in Ireland, 278;
imprudent speech on the European Powers, 301;
his championship of the West
Indies planters, 350;
his death, 371;
his character, _ib._

Beresford, Lord Charles, rescues Sir Charles Wilson, II. 716

Berlin, the rising against the Government, I. 346

Besant, Mr. Walter, his revelations of East London life, II. 668;
impetus to social reform by his novels, _ib._;
his ideal in “All Sorts and Conditions of Men,” _ib._;
the effect of his writings on London society, _ib._;
practically the originator of the People’s Palace in East London, 740

Bessborough, Lord, his support of Wellington on Free Trade, I. 227;
appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 245;
his death, 292

Beyrout bombarded by the European allies, I. 86

Biggar, Mr., his co-operation with Mr. Parnell, II. 488;
development of the policy of obstruction, 499

Bill, Education, introduced in the House of Commons, II. 355, 360;
its terms, 360;
criticism by Mr. Mill and Mr. Fawcett, 361;
passed by both Houses, 362;
adverse criticism by the Dissenters, 457;
Mr. Forster’s compromise to the Dissenters, 458

Birch, Mr., appointed tutor to the of Wales, I. 403

Birmingham, The Queen’s visit to, in 1858, II. 20;
Her Majesty opens Aston Hall and Park, _ib._;
the Queen opens the Law Courts in, 739;
enthusiasm of her reception, _ib._

Bismarck, Herr Von, his policy towards Russia, I. 554;
his mission to the German States, II. 495;
his view regarding the German conditions at
the close of the Franco-German War, 403

Blignières, M. de, resigns his position on the Dual Control, II. 642

Bonaparte, Charles Louis, _see_ Napoleon III.

Boniface, Duke of Tuscany, a supposed ancestor of the Queen, I. 4

Borneo, The work of Sir James Brooke in, I. 187, 188;
its defiance of English authority, 254;
proclamation of Sir J. Cochrane to the natives, _ib._

Boscawen, Col., in tactical command of Sir Herbert
Stewart’s column in the Nile Expedition, II. 714

Boycotting, origin of the term, II. 603

Brackenbury, General, in command of the River Column, II. 717

Bradlaugh, Mr., his first attempt to take an
affirmation on entering Parliament, II. 595;
opposition of the Fourth Party, _ib._;
Mr. Labouchere’s motion in his favour, _ib._;
imprisoned in the Clock Tower, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone’s motion to allow him to affirm at his own risk, _ib._;
his re-election for Northampton, 618;
Tory opposition to his taking the seat, _ib._;
attempt to force his way into the House of Commons, _ib._:
renewed attempt to take the oath, 630;
his second return for Northampton, _ib._;
excluded from the precincts of the House of Parliament, _ib._;
his promise not to press his claim to be sworn
till the Affirmation Bill had been determined, 658;
writes to the Speaker claiming his right to take the oath, _ib._;
Sir Stafford Northcote’s resolution preventing him from taking the oath, _ib._;
his threat to treat the resolution as invalid, _ib._;
Sir S. Northcote’s resolution excluding him from
the precincts of the House of Parliament, _ib._;
his action against the Sergeant-at-Arms, _ib._;
again prevented from taking his seat, 676;
excluded from the House of Commons, _ib._;
takes the oath, 726

Brand, Sir Henry, Speaker of the House of Commons,
elevated to the peerage, II. 676

Bright, Mr., his work with Cobden as leader of
the Anti-Corn Law Movement, I. 88;
his championship of Free Trade, 201;
his powerful eloquence, 202;
his view of the Education Vote, 283;
his opposition to Shaftesbury’s “Ten Hours Bill,” 286;
his opinions on the Irish Question, 378;
his teaching regarding the colonies, 380;
his ineffectual efforts to preserve peace before the Crimean War, 578;
speech against the Russian War, 590;
his attacks on the propertied classes, II. 31;
his view regarding the _Trent_ dispute, 122;
speech at Birmingham on the Irish Question, 302;
speech in the House of Commons on the Irish Question, 334;
his administration at the Board of Trade, 342;
resignation of office at the Board of Trade, 387;
appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 439;
his opposition to Mr. Forster’s Education Bill, 458;
his proposal regarding the Ashanti War, 462;
his speech against the Beaconsfield Government, 583;
speech on the Irish Question, 603;
his withdrawal from the Cabinet because of the bombardment
of the forts at Alexandria, 654;
his denunciation of the Obstructionists, 660;
joins the Liberal Unionists, 729

Broadfoot, Lieut., Murder of, at Cabul, I. 117

Broadhurst, Mr., opposes the vote to Prince Leopold on his marriage, II. 646

Brooke, Sir James, his services in Borneo, I. 187, 188;
his conduct impugned by Cobden, _ib._

Brougham, Lord, his speeches on the revolt in Canada, I. 34;
his quarrel with the Whig leaders, 47;
his remarks on Roman Catholicism and the English Crown, 66;
remark on the Irish famine, 278;
his opposition to the “Ten Hours Bill,” 287;
his attack on the Rebellion Losses Bill, 383;
failure of his attack on Lord Palmerston, 396

Bruce, Mr. Austin (afterwards Lord Aberdare), the
Habitual Criminals Act, II. 339

Buccleuch, the Duke of, the Queen’s Visit to, II. 732

Buckingham, Duke of, appointed President of the Council, II. 257

Buckingham Palace, great ball in 1842, I. 107

Budget Defeat, the Queen’s constitutional point about
a ministerial resignation on a, II. 707

Bulgarian Atrocities, The, II. 506-511

Buller, Charles, his co-operation with Lord Durham in
preparing a system of self-government for Canada, I. 35;
his distinction between colonisation and emigration, 283;
his condemnation of England’s colonial policy, 386

Bunsen, Baroness, description of the meeting of Parliament in 1842, I. 107;
account of a royal party at Buckingham Palace, 304;
description of the Prince Consort’s installation as Chancellor of Cambridge
University, 311

Buol, Count, his suggestion at the Second Vienna Conference, I. 634

Burgoyne, Sir J., his opinion regarding the storming of Sebastopol, I. 609

Burmah, outbreak of war, I. 503;
blockade of Rangoon by the British, 504;
an embassy to the Queen, II. 429;
the conquest by Great Britain, 698

Burmah, Upper, annexed to the Indian Empire, II. 723

Burnaby, Colonel Fred, killed in the battle of Abu Klea, II. 713

Burnes, Sir Alexander, his mission to Cabul, I. 112;
the garbling of his , _ib._;
appointed assistant secretary to Shah Soojah, 113;
massacred at Cabul, 117

Butt, Mr. Isaac, his leadership of the Home Rule Party, II. 426

Cabul, insurrection of the Afghans, I. 117;
entered by the British, 121;
Sir Frederick Roberts master of, II. 574

Caffre War, Outbreak of the, I. 254

Cairns, Lord, appointed Lord Chancellor, II. 304;
his resignation of the leadership of the Tory party, 358;
Lord Chancellor under Disraeli, 465;
his Judicature Bill, 484;
his amendment to Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill of 1884, 677

Cairo, stampede of the foreign population after the riot at Alexandria, II. 642;
capture of the city by General Drury Lowe, 643;
surrender of Arabi Pasha, _ib._;
the Khedive reinstated, _ib._

Cambridge, the Prince Consort’s installation as Chancellor of the University, I. 310-314;
its many pleasant associations with the Queen’s married life, 314;
Prince Albert’s revised course of studies, 369

Cambridge, Duke of, conveys the Queen’s congratulations to the volunteers on
the coming of age of the force, II. 607

Campbell, Sir Colin, his plans at Sebastopol, I. 609;
his consummate skill at Balaclava, 611;
the confidence in his leadership, 671;
his lack of “interest,” 674;
his return to England and proposed resignation, 675;
an interview with the Queen, _ib._;
his work in India, 735;
the relief of Lucknow, 737;
defeat of the rebels at Cawnpore, _ib._;
the final capture of Lucknow, II. 2;
his regulations regarding the control of the Indian army, 26

Campbell, Sir John, his opinion in regard to Chartism, I. 58

Campbell, Lord, appointed Chancellor of the Duchy, I. 245;
a letter in regard to the Russell Ministry, 246;
an account of a Cabinet meeting, 277;
a visit to Windsor, 290;
a letter regarding an interview with the Queen, 291;
an amusing account of a banquet, _ib._;
an account of a royal party at Buckingham Palace, 306;
the Crown Security Bill, 355;
his speech on the position of the Prince Consort, 576;
his opinion on Baron Parke’s life-peerage, 682;
the passing of the Divorce Bill, 713

Campbell-Bannerman, Mr., attacks the Bankruptcy Clauses of the Irish Land Bill, II. 736

Canada, its early discontents, I. 31;
resolutions in Parliament regarding reform, 32;
the serious condition of the Lower Provinces, _ib._;
sympathisers in the United States, _ib._;
seizure of Navy Island, _ib._;
jealousy between the Upper and Lower Provinces, 34;
suppression of the revolt, _ib._;
the Ashburton Treaty, 168;
opposition to Free Trade, _ib._;
evil effects of Peel’s policy, 251;
riot in Montreal, 382;
the Rebellion Losses Bill, 383;
cordial welcome to the Prince of Wales, II. 67;
feeling of uneasiness in England in case of war between Canada and the United
States, 234;
scandal regarding the Canadian Pacific Railway, 459;
rebellion of half-breeds in the North-West of, 723;
the rising put down by Sir F. Middleton, _ib._

Cannes, the Duke of Albany dies at, II. 687;
the Queen’s visit to, 740

Canning, Lord, Viceroy of India, I. 724;
his vigorous policy during the Mutiny, 734;
Tory hostility to his policy, II. 7;
his recall petitioned for, 17;
supported by the Queen, _ib._;
censured by Lord Ellenborough, _ib._;
Lord Ellenborough resigns, 18

Canton, capture by the British, II. 4

Cardigan, Lord, and the charge of the Light Brigade, I. 614

Cardwell, Mr., his economic reforms in the army, II. 340;
his inefficiency as head of the War Department, 363;
his Army Bill 391;
the favourable reception of his Army Bill, 424

Carey, Lieutenant, tried by court-martial regarding the death of the Prince Imperial, II. 578;
restored to his rank by the Duke of Cambridge, _ib._

Carlyle, Mr., his attacks on the governing classes of England, I. 358;
his interview with the Queen, II. 346

Carnarvon, Lord, Secretary for the Colonies, II. 257;
resignation of office, 275;
Secretary for the Colonies under Mr. Disraeli, 465;
his second resignation, 535;
his scheme of Home Rule, 724;
resigns the Viceroyalty of Ireland, 726

Cathcart, Lord, his speech to the Canadian Parliament, I. 250;
the amendment to his speech, _ib._

Cavagnari, Sir Louis, Murder of, at Cabul, II. 573

Cavour, Count, his visit to England, I. 664;
his threats to Napoleon III., II. 34;
his protest against the conquest of the Sicilies, I. 54;
his death, 79

Cawnpore, the massacre of English residents by Nana Sahib, II. 731

Cetewayo, King of the Zulus, ally of England. II. 563;
fights at Isandhiwana, 564

Ceylon, Lord Torrington’s fiscal mistakes, I. 382

Chamberlain, Mr., his adverse criticism of Mr. Forster’s Education Bill, II. 458;
his reception as Mayor of Birmingham of the Prince and Princess of Wales, 478;
his opposition to the continuance of flogging in the army, 569;
his skill as a debater, 571;
his supposed Socialism, 593;
his distinction in Parliament, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone’s objection to his securing a place in the Cabinet, 594;
Whig antagonism to his Cabinet rank, _ib._;
President of the Board of Trade, _ib._;
social campaign against him and the Radical section of the Cabinet, 603;
his Bill enabling Corporations to adopt electric lighting, 635;
introduces a Merchant Shipping Bill, 678;
Lord Randolph Churchill’s accusation against him in regard to the Aston riots, _ib._;
his Socialistic appeals to the electors, 698;
possible
coalition with Lord R. Churchill, _ib._;
the “doctrine of ransom,” _ib._;
abolition of taxation part of his scheme, _ib._;
his “ransom” doctrine and its effect on the country, 724;
his “unauthorised programme,” _ib._;
his scheme of Home Rule, _ib._;
his withdrawal from Mr. Gladstone’s Cabinet, 727;
joins the Liberal Unionists, 729

Chambers, Messrs., their petition against the Paper Duty, I. 391

Charles of Hesse, Death of the Princess, II. 719

Charles of Prussia, Prince, Death of, (the “Red Prince”), II. 721

Charrington, Lieutenant, his mission with Professor Palmer to detach the Bedouins
from the side of Arabi Pasha, II. 642;
murdered at the Wells of Moses, _ib._

Chartists, their hatred of the Queen, I. 38;
their demands, 48;
declaration of the “People’s Charter,” 49;
their meetings proclaimed, 50;
petition to the Government, 58;
riot at Birmingham, _ib._;
the vigour of the movement, _ib._;
their turbulent Socialism, 59;
alarm of the Government, _ib._;
disturbances in 1842, 126;
demonstration on Kennington Common, 327, 331;
a secret society, 328;
in league with foreign revolutionists, 329;
sympathy from the Tories, _ib._;
their political organisation, 330;
the two divisions, _ib._;
their first check, _ib._;
peaceful nature of the movement, 334;
reconstruction of the party by Mr. Ernest Jones, 335;
seizure of conspirators at Bloomsbury, 338;
collapse of the organisation, _ib._;
effect of the rising on Parliament, 354

Chartreuse, the Queen visits the Grande, II. 740

Chelmsford, Lord, Lord Chancellor, II. 257

Childers, Mr., his economic reforms in the navy, II. 340;
his vigorous policy at the Admiralty, 365, 424;
War Secretary, 594;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 654;
his Budget for 1883, 659;
reduces the Income Tax, _ib._;
introduces a Bill to reduce the National Debt, _ib._;
his Budget for 1884, 677;
rejection of his 1885 Budget, 706

Children’s celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee in Hyde Park, II. 747

China, war with England, I. 52;
the opium trade, _ib._;
the peace of Nankin, _ib._;
the treaty in regard to commerce, 53;
disturbances at Canton, 254;
completion of a treaty with England, _ib._;
outbreak of war with England, 705;
hostilities with England, II. 47

Chobham, Experimental military camp at, I. 567

Christian, Mr. Edward, his view in regard to the constitution of the Cabinet
Council, I. 26

Churchill, Lord Randolph, his foundation of the Fourth Party, II. 594;
his obstructionist tactics, 600;
attack on the Government in regard to the Egyptian Question, 636;
co-operation with the Parnellites, 706;
becomes Secretary of State for India, 708;
is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons, 730;
resigns the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, 731

Circular, The, in regard to Fugitive Slaves, II. 489

Clanricarde, Marquis of, his Land Bill for Ireland, II. 286

Clarendon, Lord, a remark on Lord John Russell, I. 239;
his satisfaction with the Queen’s visit to Ireland, 410, 411;
Chancellor of the Queen’s University of Ireland, 415;
his impartial administration in Ireland, 443;
his policy during the Russo-Turkish War difficulty, 578;
his impetuous despatch of the ultimatum to Russia, 582;
his statement regarding the war between England and Russia, 591;
remarks on the Queen and Prince Albert, II. 5, 6;
the Queen’s confidence in his advice, 44;
appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 245;
his death, 366

Closure, The, proposed by the Tories, II. 734

Coal Mines Regulation Bill, The, passed, II. 738

Cobden, Mr., his birth and early career, I. 87;
his work in the repeal of the Corn Laws, _ib._;
co-operation with Mr. Bright in the Anti-Corn Law Movement, 88;
enters Parliament, 98;
attack on Sir Robert Peel, 137;
his aims, 207;
receives a testimonial from Free Traders, 241;
rejection of his first scheme for international arbitration, 391;
his resolutions in favour of a general reduction of expenditure, 446;
his motion for general disarmament among European powers, 475;
his ineffectual efforts to preserve peace during the Russo-Turkish difficulty, 578;
challenges the whole policy of the Government in the Russo-Turkish Question, 587, 591;
his motion against the war with China, 706;
his Commercial Treaty, II. 48;
attack on Palmerston’s foreign policy, 207;
his death, 235;
the leading ideas of the Manchester School, _ib._

Cochrane, Mr., his proposal regarding the Income Tax, I. 327

Cockburn, Sir Alexander, his eloquent speech on the foreign policy of the Russell
Government, I. 435

Codrington, General, his inefficiency at Sebastopol, I. 671

Coercion for Ireland, Mr. Balfour’s permanent, II. 736

Colley, Sir George Pomeroy, Death of, II. 619

Collings, Mr. Jesse, defeats the Tory Government in 1886 on the question of allotments
for labourers, II. 727

Colonisation, attention given to the question, I. 130;
a preliminary expedition to New Zealand, _ib._

Connaught, Duke of, his marriage to the Princess Louise of Prussia, II. 578

Conolly, Captain Arthur, his mission to Persia, I. 123;
his death, 124

Constantine, the Grand Duke, his visit to England, I. 742

Constantinople, English protection of, II. 533

Conyngham, Marquis of, one of the messengers to the Queen announcing the death
of King William IV., I. 1

Cooper, Thomas, his advocacy of Chartist principles, I. 58

Corn Laws, the association for their repeal, I. 87;
Cobden’s advocacy of repeal, _ib._;
the Anti-Corn Law League, 88;
systematic spread of opinion against them, _ib._;
Lord John Russell’s motion, 90, 91;
reference in the Queen’s Speech, 95;
bitter debate in Parliament, 223

Corporation Act, The repeal of the, I. 23

Corrupt Practices Bill read a second time, II. 658;
its stringent penalties, _ib._;
opposed by Tories, Radicals, and Parnellites, _ib._;
passed by both Houses, _ib._

Corry, Mr., First Lord of the Admiralty, II. 275

Corry, Mr. Montagu, _see_ Rowton, Lord

Cottenham, Lord Chancellor, administers the oath to the Queen, I. 19

Cotton, Sir Willoughby, in command in Afghanistan, I. 116

Cotton famine in Lancashire, The, I. 123

Cowan, Lord Mayor, the Queen’s visit at his inauguration, I. 31

Cowell, Lieutenant, tutor to Prince Alfred, I. 692

Cowper, Lord, Irish Viceroy, II. 632

Cranworth, Lord, Lord Chancellor, I. 519;
his bill for altering the punishment of transportation, 535

Crawford, Mr. Sharman, his motion in regard to Ireland, I. 354

Crimean War, the, Origin of, I. 540;
the declaration of war by England, 583;
review of the fleet at Spithead, 584;
Mr. Cobden’s advocacy of peace, 587;
the attitude of Prussia, 593;
Mr. Gladstone’s War Budget, 597;
operations in the Black Sea, 603;
the battle of the Alma, 607;
blunders of the Allies, 609;
the battle of Balaclava, 611;
the charge of the “Six Hundred,” 614;
the battle of Inkermann, 615;
the Austrian proposals, 623;
the Vienna Conference, 634;
death of Lord Raglan, 641;
the Queen decorates returned soldiers, 647;
the assault on the Redan, 671;
fall of Sebastopol, 673;
peace declared, 683

Crimes Act abandoned in 1885 by the Tory party, II. 710

Criminal Appeal, Court of, Bill for establishing, opposed by the Tories, II. 658;
Bill before the Grand Committee on Law, _ib._;
the Bill dropped by the Government, _ib._

Criminal Code Bill read a second time, II. 658 ;
opposition of the Irish Party, _ib._;
obstructed by Lord Randolph Churchill and the Fourth Party, _ib._;
abandoned by Sir Henry James, _ib._;
Sir Henry Drummond-Wolff’s question regarding, _ib._

Criminal Law Consolidation Acts, The, I. 28

_Critic, British_, its articles on the Tractarian Movement, I. 99

Croker, Mr. J. W., his attack on the Anti-Corn Law League, I. 211;
his opposition to the Russian War, 618

Cross, Mr. R. A. (afterwards Viscount Cross), Home Secretary, II. 465;
his Licensing Bill, 470;
his Artisans’ Dwellings Bill, 483;
passes the Prisons Bill, 518;
his opposition to the Bill establishing a Court of Appeal in Criminal Cases, 658

Crown Prince of Germany, _see_ Frederick, Crown Prince

Cumberland, Duke of, the Orange plot for his accession to the throne, I. 37;
popular rejoicing at his departure from England, 38

Cupar-Fife, Seizure of packages of dynamite at, II. 661

Cyprus annexed by the British, I. 550

Dalhousie, Lord, denied a place in the Russell Cabinet, I. 244;
the annexation of Burmah, 506;
his viceregal government in India, 720, 722;
his system of education unpopular, 723

Dalkeith Palace, Visit of the Queen to, II. 732

Darmstadt, The Queen at (1885), II. 719

Darwin, Mr. Charles, his death, II. 649;
his skill as a scientific investigator, _ib._;
his profound influence on the thought of the Victorian Age, _ib._;
the great work of his life, _ib._;
the impetus to science from his doctrine of Evolution, 650

Davis, Thomas Osborne, his connection with the Young Ireland Party, I. 339;
editor of the _Nation_ newspaper, _ib._;
his attack on English ideas, 340

Davitt, Michael, the organisation of the Land League, I. 602;
his arrest, 612

Davy, Sir Humphry, his discoveries in photography, I. 177

Delhi, outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny, I. 730;
recaptured by the British, 734

Demerara, discontent in, 1849, I. 382

Denison, Mr., elected Speaker of the House of Commons, II. 254

Denman, Lord, his opinion on the Hampden ecclesiastical case, I. 300

Denmark, the dispute in regard to the Duchies of Sleswig-Holstein, II. 79;
war with Germany, 187

Dickens, Mr. Charles, his death, II. 379;
his mission as a novelist, _ib._;
his qualities as a writer, _ib._;
the Queen’s admiration of his genius, 381;
invited to Buckingham Palace, 382;
refuses a baronetcy, 383

Derby, Lord (fourteenth Earl), his formation of a Protectionist Ministry, I. 499;
excellent practical work of his Government, 503;
resignation of office, 518;
attack on the Palmerston Government, 681;
support of Lord Canning’s policy in India, II. 7;
asked to form a Cabinet, _ib._;
resignation of his Government, 36;
letter on the Italian Question, 46;
his Cabinet, 257;
resigns the Premiership, 303;
his death, 350;
his character, 351

Derby, Lord (fifteenth Earl), the Fugitive Slave Circular, II. 489;
proposals to Turkey in regard to Bulgaria, 507;
negotiations regarding Turkey, 508;
his policy during the Russo-Turkish War, 529, 530;
his objection to a Congress on the Turkish Question, 540;
his resignation, 542;
his commendable attitude during the Russo-Turkish crisis, 543;
Secretary to the Colonies, 654;
his vacillating policy regarding British territory in Africa, 683;
his mistaken policy in regard to Queensland and New Guinea, 685;
takes possession of territory at Saint Lucia Bay and Pondoland, 686

Dicey, Mr. Edward, urges the policy of establishing a British Protectorate in
Egypt, II. 638, 674

Digna, Osman, defeated by General Graham, II. 718;
in conflict with the Abyssinians, _ib._

Dilke, Sir Charles, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, II. 594;
President of the Local Government Board, 655

Dillon, Mr., his passionate appeals against English government in Ireland, II. 615;
proposes the “Plan of Campaign,” 730;
abortive prosecution of, 735

Disraeli, Mr., his birth and parentage, I. 50;
his novels, _ib._;
his dislike of the Whigs, _ib._;
member for Maidstone, 51;
his personal appearance, _ib._;
his maiden speech, _ib._;
his attack on O’Connell, _ib._;
the nature of his Conservatism, _ib._;
the beginning of his influence, 190;
the pungency of his style, 191;
his opposition to Sir Robert Peel, _ib._;
the “Young England” Party, _ib._;
his speech against Peel on the Corn Laws, 223;
leadership of the Protectionists, 375;
the debate on the state of the nation, 399;
his amendment to the Queen’s Speech in 1850, 424;
his proposal to revise the Poor Law, _ib._;
his advocacy of Imperial Federation for Australia, 439;
his tactics in regard to the motion on salaries, 445;
his motion for the relief of agricultural depression, 465;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 499;
complaints against his leadership in the House of Commons, 500;
his Budget speech in 1852, 502;
his political tactics, 516;
his fatal Budget, _ib._;
his leadership of the Tories at the Crimean crisis, 635, 679, 680;
his attacks on Lord Palmerston’s Italian policy, 696;
coalition with Mr. Gladstone, 700;
attack on the foreign policy of the Government, _ib._;
his support of Lord Canning’s policy in India, II. 7;
his India Bill, 17;
his Reform Bill, 32;
support of Lord Palmerston’s Ministry, 75, 82;
his view in regard to the American Civil War, 119;
attack on Mr. Gladstone’s Budget of 1860, 125;
attack on Palmerston’s diplomacy with Denmark, 204;
moves a vote of censure on Palmerston’s policy with Denmark, 206;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 257;
speech on Reform, 271;
his proposals in regard to Reform, 274;
“educating his party,” 278;
his Budget for 1867, 283;
Premier, 303;
a faulty electoral address, 314;
resigns office, 315;
his speech on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, 331;
his amendment to Mr. Gladstone’s motion on the Irish Church, 332, 334-5;
his criticism of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, 357;
his opposition to Army Purchase, 392;
his effective opposition to Mr. Gladstone, 426;
his attacks on the Gladstone Government, 463;
his majority in 1874, 465;
First Lord of the Treasury, 465;
his chivalrous attitude towards Mr. Gladstone, 467;
disaffection of the High Church party, 472;
the Scottish Church Patronage Bill, 472;
decline of his reputation, 474;
the annexation of the Fiji Islands, 475;
the Merchant Shipping Bill, 485-7;
purchase of the Suez Canal shares, 492;
the Royal Titles Bill, 499;
created Earl of Beaconsfield, 503;
speech on the Bulgarian atrocities, 506;
national protest against Turkish policy, 511, 523, 526;
his dexterity in dealing with the Turkish Question, 539;
his final agreement with Russia in regard to Turkey, 547;
at the Berlin Congress, 549;
the Anglo-Turkish Convention, 550;
the Indian scientific frontier, 556;
his belief in Asiatic Imperialism, 587;
deserted by the _Standard_, 588;
his Manifesto to the country, 590;
his fall from power, _ib._;
his novel of “Endymion,” 608;
his abandonment of the Coercion Act in Ireland, 611;
the failure of his policy in Afghanistan, _ib._;
his error in annexing the Transvaal, _ib._;
his death, 619;
his brilliant career, 620;
the secret of his success, _ib._;
sincerely esteemed by the Queen, _ib._;
his democratic impulses, _ib._;
his skilful management of the House of Commons, _ib._;
his declining years, _ib._;
his mistaken policy on the Eastern Question, 621;
his last words, 622;
his funeral, _ib._;
affectionately mourned by the people, _ib._;
visit of the Queen to his tomb, _ib._;
her Majesty’s monument to his memory in Hughenden Church, 643

Dixie, Lady Florence, the alleged attack on, II. 663;
alarm to the Queen by the story of the attack, _ib._;
John Brown reports on the case to her Majesty, 664

Dodson, Mr., President of the Local Government Board, II. 594;
his Employers’ Liability Bill, 601

Dongola, Evacuation of, by Lord Wolseley, II. 718

Dost Mahomed, his territory, I. 112;
his anxiety for an English alliance, _ib._;
virtual declaration of war against him by the British, 114;
his flight from Cabul, _ib._;
again in arms, 115;
defeat of a British force, _ib._;
surrender to the British Government, _ib._;
set at liberty, 122

Drummond, Mr., his proposal for the reduction of taxation, I. 446

Dublin, visit of the Queen and the Prince Consort, I. 407;
second visit of the Queen, 571;
riotous proceedings in connection with the celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee, 746

Dufferin, Lord, appointed Viceroy of India, II. 696

Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, his connection with the “Young Ireland” Party, I. 339;
his statement of his aims, 340;
his arrest, 342;
brought to trial, 343

Dunraven, Lord, his conciliatory motion on Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill, II. 677

Durham, Lord, his Liberal policy in Canada, I. 34;
his resignation of the Governorship of Canada, _ib._;
recalled in disgrace by the Government, 35;
his system of self-government for Canada, _ib._;
success of his policy, _ib._;
his death, _ib._

Duty, Paper, Mr. Milner Gibson’s motion for repeal of, I. 503;
rejection of his motion, _ib._

Earle, General, Death of, II. 717

East India Company, occupation of Aden by its troops, I. 52;
its opposition to Napier’s command in India, 402;
annexation of the Punjaub, _ib._

Ecclesiastical Titles Bill introduced by Lord John Russell, I. 464;
Mr. Cobden’s remarks on, 465;
opposition of the Peelites to its terms, 466;
the second attempt to introduce it, 470

Edinburgh visited by the Queen and the Prince Consort, I. 458, 487;
review of the volunteers by the Queen, II. 66;
third visit of the Queen and the Prince Consort, 91;
the unveiling of the Scottish National Albert Memorial, 503;
visited by the Queen, 627;
review of the volunteers by the Queen, _ib._;
her Majesty opens the International Exhibition in 1886, 732

Edinburgh, Duke of, _see_ Alfred, Prince

Edison, Mr., the effect of his discovery of the electric light on gas investors, II. 582

Education hardly existing in its popular sense at the Queen’s accession, I. 3;
Lord John Russell’s scheme for national education, 270;
vote on the subject in the House of Commons, 282, 283;
Mr. Lowe’s revised Code, II. 120;
Bill introduced in the House of Commons, 355, 360;
its terms, 360;
criticism of the Bill by Mr. Mill and Mr. Fawcett, 361;
the Bill passed by both Houses, 362;
adverse criticism of the Bill by the Dissenters, 457;
Mr. Forster’s compromise to the Dissenters in regard to the Bill, 458

Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Princess, II. 723

Egypt, vote of credit in Parliament for expedition, II. 635;
the sources of the Egyptian difficulty, 636;
Ismail Pasha’s policy, _ib._;
the national borrowed money, _ib._;
purchase of the Suez Canal shares by England, _ib._;
Mr. Cave’s report on the Khedive’s money difficulties, 638;
Mr. Edward Dicey’s view of a Protectorate, _ib._;
Lord Salisbury’s error in policy, _ib._;
the Goschen-Joubert scheme for consolidating the Egyptian debt, _ib._;
commission by France and England to investigate the resources of the country, _ib._;
Nubar Pasha’s Ministry, 639;
beginning of the Dual Control, _ib._;
arrangement by the Powers to depose Ismail, _ib._;
Tewfik appointed Khedive, _ib._;
inefficiency of the Dual Control, _ib._;
ignominious position of England, _ib._;
the supremacy of the bondholders, _ib._;
restlessness of the natives under the Dual Control, 640;
revolt of Arabi Bey, _ib._;
disagreement between the partners in the Dual Control as to the treatment of Arabi Pasha, 641;
determination of the Assembly of Notables to assert their right to control
the Budget, _ib._;
the right of the Assembly disputed by the French and English controllers, _ib._;
the Chamber of Notables refuses to withdraw from its position, _ib._;
M. de Blignières resigns his post on the Dual Control, 642;
Arabi made Dictator of the country, _ib._;
“Egypt for the Egyptians,” _ib._;
French and English fleets despatched to Alexandria, _ib._;
French and English consuls advise the expulsion of Arabi, _ib._;
a riot in Alexandria, _ib._;
stampede of the foreign population of Alexandria and of Cairo, _ib._;
formation of a Cabinet patronised by Germany and Austria, _ib._;
safety of the Suez Canal assured, 643;
the battles of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir, _ib._;
the Khedive
reinstated in Cairo, _ib._;
occupied by a British army, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone declares the occupation of the country temporary, _ib._;
the cost of the war to England, _ib._;
really under the control of the British Consul-General, _ib._;
England forbids the restoration of the Dual Control, _ib._;
Arabi and the insurgent leaders saved from capital punishment by the English
Government, acting on the instigation of Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, _ib._;
used as a subject for embarrassing the Ministry, 661;
Lord Hartington’s declaration about the recall of the British troops, _ib._;
difficulty arising from the exorbitant tolls levied on ships by the Suez Canal
Company, 662;
Mr. Gladstone’s agreement with M. de Lesseps, _ib._;
intention of the English Government to withdraw the troops, 670;
the attempt to conquer the Soudan, _ib._;
the appearance of the Mahdi, _ib._;
the expedition under Colonel Hicks, _ib._;
Hicks defeated at El Obeid, _ib._;
the Egyptian garrisons in the Soudan, _ib._;
the advice of the British Government in regard to the Soudan, 671;
the delay in the evacuation of Cairo, _ib._;
steps taken to relieve General Gordon, _ib._;
attack by the Conservatives on Mr. Gladstone’s policy, _ib._;
the embarrassing position of England in regard to, 672;
the best policy for England, _ib._;
the decision of the British Government, _ib._;
General Gordon’s mission, _ib._;
his arrival at Cairo, _ib._;
General Gordon appointed Governor-General of the Soudan, _ib._;
Baker Pasha’s death at Tokar, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone admitted to be right in advising the abandonment of the Soudan, 674;
how the situation had been affected by the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, _ib._;
Gordon’s preliminary policy during his mission, 675;
the massacre of the garrison at Sinkat, _ib._;
the battle of El Teb, _ib._;
the battle of Tamanieb, _ib._;
General Graham recalled from Suakim, _ib._;
failure of Gordon’s negotiations with the Mahdi, 676;
the bad financial position of the country, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone’s policy to relieve the debt, _ib._;
the Conference in regard to the country, _ib._;
Lord Northbrook’s mission, _ib._;
England’s freedom of action, _ib._;
vote for military operations by the English Government, _ib._;
the actual difficulties of the country, 682;
Lord Northbrook’s recommendations in regard to the debt, _ib._;
financial proposal of the British Government, _ib._;
prosecution of the Egyptian Government by the Debt Commission, _ib._;
Prince Bismarck’s advice to England regarding, 684;
Mr. Gladstone’s policy, 702;
the plan adopted for rescuing the country from a financial crisis, _ib._;
the diplomatic hostility of France, Russia, and Germany to England’s policy, 703;
the frontier fixed at Wady Halfa, _ib._

Election, General, on the Home Rule Scheme of Mr. Gladstone, II. 729

Electric Telegraph, its progress at the date of the Queen’s accession, I. 3

Elgin, Lord, his policy in Canada, I. 382;
his admirable behaviour during the Canadian crisis in 1849, 383, 384;
his successful diplomacy with Japan, II. 2

Eliot, George, her death, II. 609;
the character of her novels, _ib._;
her works especially enjoyed by the Queen, _ib._;
the popularity of “Adam Bede,” 610

Ellenborough, Lord, his secret despatch to Lord Canning, II. 18;
resigns office, _ib._

Elliot, Captain, his arrest by the Chinese Government, I. 52

El Obeid, Hicks Pasha and his army annihilated at, II. 670

Elphinstone, General, in command in Afghanistan, I. 116

El Teb, Defeat of Osman Digna at, II. 675

“Endymion,” Mr. Disraeli’s novel of, II. 608

England, development of the country since 1837, I. 3;
discontent among the masses, 48, 49;
the state of the country in 1839, 57;
disturbances in 1842, 126;
foreign policy during the difficulties between Russia and Turkey, 550-563;
the war against Russia, 583;
signature of the Protocol, 584;
a day of Fast, 599;
signature of the treaty with Russia, 683;
dispute with the United States, 688;
withdrawal of the legation from Italy, 698;
murmurings against taxation, 699;
war with Persia, 703, 704;
war with China, 705;
difficulties with Egypt, 660;
coolness with Germany, 683;
the rivalry with Germany regarding territory on the Congo, _ib._;
surrender to Germany on questions of colonial policy, 684;
unable to reconcile her interests with those of France, _ib._;
Prince Bismarck’s opposition, _ib._;
Bismarck’s advice regarding Egypt, _ib._;
annexation of territory at Saint Lucia Bay and at Pondoland, 686;
the Reserves called out, 702;
the difficulty of holding Egypt, _ib._;
offers of support from her colonies and from the peoples of India at the Russian
difficulty, 703;
controversy with Russia about the frontier of Afghanistan, 719

Este Guelphs, the name of the Royal Family of Great Britain, I. 5

Exchange, New Coal, founded by the Prince Consort, I. 418

Exhibition, International Industries, Prince Albert’s interest in, I. 449;
banquet of Commissioners at the Mansion House, 450;
attack by the Press on the Commissioners, 454;
completion of the building, 462;
energetic care of Prince Albert, 480,
adverse criticism of the scheme, _ib._;
opened by the Queen, 452;
ball at the Guildhall, 486;
opening of the Exhibition of 1862, II. 135

Explosives Act, the one Bill not obstructed in the session of 1883, 660;
the events that led to its production, _ib._;
the attempt to blow up the Local Board Government Offices, _ib._;
outrage in the Times office, _ib._;
the measure brought in by Sir W. Harcourt, _ib._

Fair Trade Meetings, The, in Trafalgar Square, II. 731

Falkland, Lord, his Governorship of Nova Scotia, I. 251

Faraday, Mr., his researches in electricity, I. 270, 271;
his paper “On New Magnetic Actions,” 271

Farr, Dr., his investigation of the English Poor Law system, I. 362, 363

Fawcett, Mr., Postmaster-General, II. 594;
his Bill establishing a Parcels Post, 635;
his admission of women to the Post Office service, 653

Fenian Society, The, originated, II. 246;
its first name, _ib._;
its founder in Ireland, _ib._;
established in the United States, _ib._;
the funeral of McManus, _ib._

Ferdinand I., his rule in Austria, I. 343;
flight from Vienna, 345

Fielden, Mr. John, his “Ten Hours Bill,” I. 287

Finches, the, Earls of Nottingham, Mansion of, on the site of Kensington Palace, I. 8

Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, II. 655

Fitzwilliam, Earl, incident in the Queen’s early life at his residence, I. 12

Forster, Mr. W. E., his scheme of national education, I. 270;
his Endowed Schools Bill, 339;
introduces his Education Bill, 359;
his Ballot Bill, 395;
his compromise to the Dissenters on the Education Bill, 458;
his hesitancy regarding the War Vote, 538;
Chief Secretary for Ireland, 594;
his policy in Ireland, 601;
his Bill amending the Irish Act of 1870, 602;
his Coercion Bill, 604;
his Protection of Persons and Property Bill, 611;
violent opposition from Irish Members, _ib._;
his Protection Bill, 612;
his suppression of the Land League, 628;
opposition from Radicals and Conservatives to his coercive policy, 631;
failure of his Irish policy, _ib._;
his ineffective administration in Ireland, 632;
influences Parliament to give women a fair share
of the public endowments for secondary education, 653;
his withdrawal from the Cabinet, 654;
his charges against Mr. Parnell, 656

Fortescue, Mr. Chichester (afterwards Lord Carlingford), Secretary for Ireland, II. 245;
support of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, 358;
appointed to the Board of Trade, 387

Fourth Party, The, founded, II. 594;
its members, _ib._;
the reward of its efforts, 708

Fox, Mr. W. J., lecture against Corn Laws, I. 89

France, difficulties with England, I. 166;
dispute with England in regard to Otaheite, 167;
a letter from the Queen, 167;
visit of Louis Philippe to England, 172;
continued unfriendliness with England, 254;
protest of the English Government against the proposed Franco-Spanish marriage
alliance, 258;
bad fruits of the dispute with England, 302;
diplomatic quarrel with England, 428;
the Second Empire, 523;
dispute with Turkey as to Roman Catholics in Jerusalem, 542;
a treaty with Turkey, 543;
zeal of the war party against Russia, 581;
declaration of war against Russia, 583;
occupation of Gallipoli by French troops, _ib._;
signature of the Protocol, 584;
unpopularity of the war with Russia, 640;
collapse of the alliance with England, 675;
difficulties with Germany, II. 51;
angry feeling against England, 52;
an agreement with Italy, 218;
dispute with Prussia regarding Luxembourg, 282;
organisation of the military system, 344;
outbreak of the war with Prussia, 366;
nominal cause of the quarrel, 367;
proclamation of war against Prussia, 368;
Napoleon’s secret treaty regarding Belgium, 369;
battle of Worth, 370;
battle of Gravelotte, _ib._;
capture of Sedan, _ib._;
surrender of the French Emperor, _ib._;
proclamation of a Republic, 371;
cession of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany, _ib._;
unconditional surrender of the French army at Metz, _ib._;
the campaign under Gambetta’s leadership, 372;
M. Thiers appointed President, 406;
the Commission by France and England to investigate the resources of Egypt, 638;
the Dual Control in Egypt, 639;
breaks up the Dual Control, 642;
her fleet withdraws during the bombardment of Alexandria by the British, _ib._;
controversy with England, 667;
insolent behaviour of Admiral Pierre at Tamatave, _ib._;
effect of the criticism of a factious Opposition, _ib._;
the honourable reparation to the British Government, 668;
opposition to English diplomacy in Egypt, 676;
an arrangement with England in regard to Egypt, _ib._;
formally abandons the Dual Control, _ib._

Franchise Bill passed through the House of Commons, 679;
the loyal understanding between Liberals and Conservatives on this matter, _ib._;
passed by the House of Lords, _ib._

“Franchise First,” the cry of a section of the Liberal Party in 1883, 668

Francis, John, attempt on the Queen’s life, I. 110

Fraudulent Trusts Bill passed in Parliament, I. 715

Frederick, Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick III.,
of Germany, his betrothal to the Princess Victoria, I. 662;
his marriage, 740, 750-752;
his splendid appearance in the Jubilee procession, II. 742

Frederick the Wise, his relationship to the Queen, I. 5;
his Protestantism, _ib._;
his kindness to Luther, _ib._

Free Trade, concessions by the Melbourne Ministry, I. 94;
its rejection by Sir Robert Peel, 98;
its advances since 1841, 201;
bazaar in Covent Garden, 202;
effect of the potato disease on Ireland, _ib._;
enthusiasm of the nation in its favour, 216;
Sir Robert Peel declares himself in its favour, 238;
its operation in Ireland, 273, 274;
disastrous effect in Ireland, 275;
development of Mr. Cobden’s plan, 387;
the strong feeling in its favour, 506

Frere, Sir Bartle, accompanies the Prince of Wales in his tour through India, II. 493;
his project of conquest in South Africa, 563

Freycinet, M. de, his policy of non-intervention in regard to Arabi Pasha, 641

Frost, John, his armed attack on the magistrates of Newport, I. 59;
his transportation, _ib._

Fugitive Slave Circular, The, II. 489

Gakdul, Occupation of, II. 713

Gambetta, his vigorous administration of the French Republic, II. 372;
his vain attempts to induce England to join France in coercing Arabi Pasha
and the Egyptian National Party, 641;
his death, 650;
endeared to the masses by his patriotism and unselfish devotion, _ib._

Gardner, Mr. R., his sketch of industrial England, I. 282

Garfield, President, his assassination, II. 627;
the Queen’s letter of sympathy to Mrs. Garfield, _ib._;
his heroic career, _ib._

Garibaldi, his conquest of the Sicilies, II. 54, 55;
refuses a reward for his services, 56;
his second campaign of liberation, 128;
ovations in London, 194;
his departure from England, 198;
his death, 650

General Election on the Home Rule scheme of Mr. Gladstone, II. 729

George III., his determination to have an actual voice in the appointment of
his Ministers, I. 26

George V., ex-King of Hanover, Death of, II. 558

Germany, the movement in favour of national unity, I. 343;
the Emperor Frederick’s aim, 346;
opposition of the Powers to its proposed unity, 422;
dispute with Denmark as to Sleswig-Holstein, 457;
her astute conduct at the Russo-Turkish difficulty, 582;
Bismarck’s work for the unity of the empire, II. 129;
the popular movement in favour of unity, 279;
an agreement between Russia and Italy, _ib._;
rapid progress of its consolidation, 281;
the Congress at Berlin, 549;
irritated by the foreign and colonial policy of England, 683;
the cause of the coolness with England, _ib._;
International Conference at Berlin to determine about the control of the Congo, _ib._;
appeal of the settlement at Angra Pequena for protection, _ib._;
annexation of Angra Pequena, 684;
expedition to seize the Cameroons, _ib._;
alarm of Egyptian bondholders in, 685;
occupation of part of New Guinea, 686

Germany, Crown Prince of (afterwards Emperor Frederick III.), _see_ Frederick
Crown Prince

Gibraltar, Deportation of Zebehr Pasha to, II. 711

Gibson, Mr., his opposition to the Court of Appeal in Criminal Cases Bill, II. 658

Giffard, Sir Hardinge, his opposition to the Bill establishing a Court of Appeal
in Criminal Cases, II. 658

Gill, Captain, R.E., his mission with Professor Palmer to detach the Bedouins
from the side of Arabi Pasha, II. 642;
murdered at the Wells of Moses, _ib._

Gladstone, Mr., member for Newark, I. 50;
his office under Sir Robert Peel, _ib._;
his early Conservatism, _ib._;
resigns on the Maynooth Grant, 183;
Secretary for the Colonies under Peel, 211;
his support of the scheme of Home Rule for the Colonies, 386;
support of Mr. Disraeli on the Poor Law, 425;
his proposal regarding the Australian colonies, 440;
letters on the State prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government, 475;
speech on Mr. Disraeli’s Budget, 518;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 519;
his first Budget, 531;
his Budget for 1854, 596-598;
resigns office, 630;
his finance policy during the Crimean War, 643;
coalition with Mr. Disraeli, 700;
proposed reduction of the Income Tax, _ib._;
attack on the Budget, 702;
his opposition to Disraeli’s Reform Bill, II. 32;
his anti-Austrian policy, 43;
explanation of the Commercial Treaty with France, 48;
remarks on the Fortification Scheme, 63;
repeal of the Paper Duty, 82;
attack on the Budget of 1862, 123;
his Budget for 1863, 171;
his mastery of finance, 212;
his Budget for 1864, _ib._;
his proposal to extend the franchise to the working classes, 215;
his Budget for 1865, 236;
leader of the House of Commons, 245;
the Russell-Gladstone Reform Bill, 255, 256;
his Budget for 1866, 259;
speech on the Irish Church Question, 286;
resolutions in favour of the disendowment of the Irish Church, 307;
Premier, 315;
his motion to disendow the Irish Church, 330;
his Land Bill for Ireland, 357;
effective opposition from the Tories, 426;
his Irish University Bill, 432;
defeat of his Ministry, 435;
return to power, 436;
the elections of 1874, 463;
resignation of office, 465;
withdrawal from the leadership of the Liberal Party, 467;
his pamphlets on “Vaticanism,” 475;
his agitation against Turkey, 503, 506;
speech on the Turkish Question, 527;
his Edinburgh speech on finance, 582;
favourable opinion in England in regard to his Irish Land Act, 587;
his great popularity in 1880, 590;
his successful campaign in Scotland and the North of England, 591;
efforts to prevent him from becoming Prime Minister, 592;
entrusted with the power to form a Cabinet, _ib._;
Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 594;
his Budget for 1881, 615;
his Irish Land Bill, 616;
success of his government in Egypt after the fall of the Dual Control, 643;
declares the occupation of Egypt to be temporary, _ib._;
his agreement with M. de Lesseps in regard to the Suez Canal, 662;
brings the controversy with France to a close, 668;
an address to the tenants at Hawarden, 671;
recommends the production of jam as an industry, _ib._;
his abandonment of the Soudan admitted to be right by the Opposition, 674;
the adverse view of his Soudan policy, _ib._;
his Reform Bill of 1884, 677;
his campaign in Midlothian, 678;
introduces the Franchise Bill, 679;
the difficulties connected with the Reform Bill, 696;
the great changes to be effected by his Reform Bill, 702;
the Seats Bill, 699-702;
his patriotic speech against Russia, 703;
his compromise with Russia, _ib._;
renews certain provisions of the Irish Crimes Act, 704;
increase of expenditure under his Government, _ib._;
defeated on an amendment of Sir M. Hicks-Beach, 706;
resignation of (1885), 707;
offered an earldom, 708;
the Midlothian Programme, 724;
his Cabinet of 1886, 727;
loses the support of the Whigs, _ib._;
his Home Rule scheme, 727-8;
his Land Purchase (Ireland) Bill, 728;
the objections which were taken to his Home Rule proposals, _ib._;
his Home Rule Bill rejected, 729;
he appeals to the country on the subject, _ib._

Glasgow visited by the Queen and the Prince Consort, I. 411;
arrest of dynamitards, 661;
the sinking of the _Daphne_, 666;
the Queen’s sympathy and subscription to the survivors of the _Daphne_ disaster, _ib._

Gleichen, Count, II. 723

Goodwin, General, capture of Martaban, I. 505;
capture of Rangoon, _ib._

Gordon, General, steps taken to relieve him in Khartoum, II. 671;
his mission to the Soudan, 672;
his arrival at Cairo, _ib._;
appointed Governor-General of the Soudan, _ib._;
his double commission, _ib._;
part of his policy adversely criticised by the Conservatives, 675;
denounced for sanctioning slavery, _ib._;
the factiousness of the Opposition, _ib._;
a sortie from Khartoum, _ib._;
surrounded by treason, _ib._;
entreats the Government to send help, _ib._;
failure of his negotiations with the Mahdi, 676;
publication of his protests against the desertion of Khartoum, _ib._;
instructed to go to the Soudan, 711;
recommends the appointment of Zebehr Pasha as ruler of the Soudan, _ib._;
at Khartoum, _ib._;
his advice as to the evacuation of the town, 712;
his plan for withdrawing the troops and the _employés_, _ib._;
how he would have checked the Mahdi, _ib._;
his position at Khartoum growing very critical, _ib._;
death of, 715;
his defence of Khartoum, 716;
character of, 717

Gordon, Lord Advocate, his Scottish Church Patronage Bill, II. 472

Gordon, Miss, the Queen’s letter to, II. 717

Gorham, Rev. W., his case in the lay courts, I. 447

Gorst, Mr., one of the Fourth Party, II. 594;
his obstructionist tactics, 601

Gortschakoff, Prince, his reply to Lord Salisbury’s Circular Letter, II. 546;
at the Berlin Congress, 549;
death of, 651

Goschen, Mr., becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer, II. 731;
his Budget of 1887, 738

Gough, Lord, the disaster at Chillianwalla, I. 399;
movement for his recall, 400

Gough, Sir Hugh, his victory at Gwalior, I. 150;
his campaign against the Sikhs, 234;
the battle of Sobraon, 235

Goulburn, Mr., Chancellor of the Exchequer, I. 97;
threatened assassination, 138;
the Irish Coercion Bill, 230

Graham, General, his army at Suakim, II. 675;
defeats Osman Digna at El Teb, _ib._;
the battle of Tamanieb, _ib._;
at Suakim, 717

Graham, Sir James, Home Secretary, I. 97;
his views in regard to the Factories Act, 140;
masterly speech on the Navigation Laws, 374;
his reduction of the Admiralty expenditure, 390;
refuses to join the Russell Cabinet, 478;
his resolution on Free Trade, 515;
First Lord of the Admiralty, 519;
resigns office, 630

Grants, Royal, Committee to “inquire into and consider,” promised, II. 720;
the promise repudiated by the Tory Party, _ib._

Granville, Lord, President of the Council, I. 519;
his unpopular colonial policy, 342, 366;
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, 366;
his advice regarding the Premiership in 1880, 592;
Foreign Secretary, 594;
his efforts to get Turkey to fulfil her obligations, 598

Gravelotte, Battle of, II. 370

Gray, Mr. E. Dwyer, starts a relief fund for distress in Ireland, II. 586

Greece, the case of Mr. Finlay, I. 426;
Italian intrigues in regard to the throne, II. 128;
overthrow of King Otho, _ib._;
cession of the Ionian Islands by England to Greece, _ib._;
Turkey’s failure to fulfil her obligations, 598;
the justice of her claims admitted by the Powers, 610

Greville, Mr., description of the Queen’s coronation, I. 44;
the Queen’s affairs in 1847, 291;
political matters in 1849, 395;
the Queen’s life at Balmoral, 415;
Kossuth’s visit to England, 490

Grey, General, his death, II. 378;
his serious loss to the Queen as private secretary, 379;
his proposed Life of the Prince Consort, 481

Grey, Lord, his opposition to Lord John Russell, I. 206;
continued differences with Lord John Russell, 244;
enters the Whig Cabinet, _ib._;
Secretary for the Colonies, 386;
his proposal to make the Cape of Good Hope a convict settlement, 402;
his protest against the Russian War, 590

Grey, Sir George, Home Secretary, I. 245;
suggestion regarding the Established Church in Ireland, 354;
the Crown Government Security Bill, 355;
his proposal on the Irish Question, 375;
Secretary for the Colonies, 626

Gubat, The British camp at, II. 715

Guelph, Este, the name of the Royal Family of Great Britain, I. 5

Guelph, House of, Representatives of the, in the eleventh century, I. 4

Guizot, M., mission to London regarding Egypt, I. 86;
his diplomacy in regard to the proposed marriage alliance between France and
Spain, 255;
injury to his prestige, 256;
his pretext for the Franco-Spanish alliance, 257;
his friendship with Metternich, 302

Habeas Corpus Act, suspension during the Irish crisis, I. 342;
proposed suspension in Ireland in 1848, 353

Halifax, Lord, Chancellor of the Exchequer, I. 245;
his defects as a politician, 288, 289;
his financial statement for 1847, 290

Hamburg spirit, The sale of, II. 738

Hampden, Dr., his election to the See of Hereford, I. 299;
his supposed heterodoxy, _ib._;
confirmation of his appointment by the Queen, 300

Harcourt, Sir William Vernon, Solicitor-General, II. 439;
his sarcastic assaults on the Tory Government, 583;
Home Secretary, 594;
his Hares and Rabbits Bill, 601;
his Bill for reforming the government of London, 678

Hardinge, Lord, his plan for a new army organisation, 694;
his death, 695

Hardy, Mr. Gathorne (afterwards Lord Cranbrook), President of the Poor Law Board, I. 257;
Home Secretary, 304;
War Secretary, 465;
his Regimental Exchanges Bill, 483

Harrison, Colonel, blamed in connection with the death of the Prince Imperial, II. 578

Hartington, Marquis of, Secretary for Ireland, II. 387;
leader of the Liberal Party, 482;
his motion on the Army Discipline Bill, 571;
his advice regarding the Premiership in 1880, 592;
in favour of Mr. Chamberlain receiving a place in the Cabinet, 594;
Secretary for India, _ib._;
his exposure of the tactics of the obstructionists, 601;
his leadership of the Liberal Party, 603;
Secretary for War, 654;
his pledge that the Attorney-General would bring in an Affirmation Bill, 658;
damages the prestige of the Government by his declaration about the withdrawal
of the British troops from Egypt, _ib._;
his mistake as to Gordon’s position in Egypt, 676;
becomes leader of the Liberal Unionists, 729

Havelock, Sir Henry, his relief of Lucknow, II. 735

Hayward, Mr. Abraham, his account of English policy towards Turkey, II. 524;
letters from Mr. Gladstone regarding the Premiership in 1880, 592

Health Exhibition at South Kensington, The, II. 694

Helena, Princess, her birth, I. 262;
her marriage to Prince Christian, II. 262

Hennessey, Mr. Pope, his wish to revive Nationalist ideas in Ireland, II. 239

Henry of Battenberg, Prince, II. 718;
made Knight of the Garter, 722;
assumes the designation of “His Royal Highness,” _ib._;
question of the legality of the assumption of the title, _ib._

Herat attacked by the Persians, I. 113;
defended by Eldred Pottinger, _ib._

Herbert, Mr. Sidney, refuses a place in the Russell Cabinet, I. 244;
his view of the Income Tax, 471;
War Secretary, 519;
resigns office, 630

Herries, Mr., his attack on the Russell Cabinet and on the Cobdenites, I. 390;
his proposal for a fixed duty on corn, 391;
President of the Board of Control, 499

Herschel, Sir Farrer (afterwards Lord Herschel), Solicitor-General, II. 594

Hertford, Marquis of, his death, II. 686;
an ideal Lord Chamberlain, _ib._;
his interesting stories regarding Court life, _ib._;
an incident in the life of Prince Albert, _ib._

Hesse, Grand Duke of, his morganatic marriage with the Countess de Kalomine, II. 719

Hesse, Princess Charles of, Death of, II. 719

Hewett, Admiral, his command at Suakim, II. 675

Hewitt, Mr., Mayor of New York, striking speech on the Queen’s Jubilee, II. 747

Hicks-Beach, Sir M., defeats Mr. Gladstone’s Government, II. 706;
is appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, 730;
resigns office, 735

Hicks Pasha and his army defeated at El Obeid, II. 670

Hill, Rowland, his parentage, 78;
Secretary to the South Australian Commission, _ib._;
his pamphlet on the Postal System, _ib._;
his plan for a Penny Postage, _ib._;
opposed by Lord Lichfield and by the Rev. Sydney Smith, 79;
supported by Mr. Warburton and Mr. Wallace in the House of Commons, _ib._;
Act of Parliament passed in favour of his plan, 80

Hohenlohe, Prince, account of vagabondage in Germany, I. 346

Hohenlohe-Langenberg, Prince Victor, II. 723

Holkar, Maharajah, at Windsor, II. 740

Holloway College for Women opened, II. 732

Holyoake, Mr. G. J., first employs the name of “Jingoes,” II. 530

Home Rule, its rise in Ireland, II. 426;
Mr. Parnell’s leadership, _ib._;
Mr. Parnell and other Irish members suspended, _ib._;
the struggle regarding Coercion, 614;
Mr. Parnell and the Land Act, 628;
Mr. Parnell and others imprisoned, _ib._;
Mr. Forster and Mr. Parnell, 632;
Mr. Parnell charged with conniving at murder, 656;
Mr. Forster’s attack on the agitators, _ib._;
warm admiration of Mr. Parnell in Ireland, _ib._;
Mr. Chamberlain’s scheme of, 724;
Earl Russell’s, _ib._;
Lord Carnarvon’s, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone’s, 727-8;
Mr. Gladstone’s Bill defeated, 728

Hong-Kong ceded to England, I. 53

Hook, Dean, his pamphlet on national education, I. 270

Horsman, Mr., his motion on the proposed reduction of official salaries, I. 446

Houghton, Lord, his motion in regard to “Essays and Reviews,” II. 215

Howick, Lord, his motion in regard to depression in manufacturing industry, I. 137

Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, messenger to the Queen announcing the death
of King William IV., I. 1

Hudson, Mr. George, his leadership in railway enterprise, I. 201;
his supposed advice regarding railways in Ireland, 278;
the railway craze in England, 279

Humboldt, Baron von, his unfavourable opinion of Prince Albert, I. 197

Hume, Mr. Joseph, his discovery of an Orange plot, I. 37;
the proposed provision for Prince Albert, 67;
his attack on the Portuguese policy of the Russell Government, 302;
the Parliamentary Reform Association, 338;
attack on the Russell Government Budget, 352;
his proposal for the extension of the franchise, 356, 426, 502;
his support of the Manchester School, 356;
demands the doing away with the Excise, 390;
his motion for Parliamentary Reform, 391;
his effort to limit the period of the Income Tax, 471

Hungary, its independence recognised, II. 282

Hunt, Leigh, verses to the Queen, I. 132

Huskisson, Mr., M.P., accidentally killed at the opening of the Liverpool Railway, I. 47

Hutchinson, Mr., his Bill for protecting newspaper reports of lawful meetings, II. 618

Hutt, Mr., his proposal to withdraw British war-ships from suppressing the West
African slave trade, I. 438

Hyde Park, the riot in 1867, II. 270;
Children’s celebration in, of the Queen’s Jubilee, 747

Iddesleigh, Lord, _see_ Northcote, Sir Stafford

Ilbert Bill, the great strife over its terms, II. 662;
an explosion of race-hatred regarding it in India, _ib._

Imperial Federation League founded, II. 731

Imperial Institute, The, originated, II. 739;
laying the foundation stone of, 748

Income Tax, The, imposed by Sir Robert Peel, I. 133;
popular demonstration against its increase, 327;
Lord John Russell’s proposal, 351;
its continuance by Sir Charles Wood, 471;
proposed extension by Mr. Disraeli, 517;
Mr. Gladstone’s arrangement, 531;
Mr. Gladstone’s experiments, 598, 700; II. 237, 463, 601

Indemnity, Bill of, Application to Parliament for, II. 2

India, the Sikh outbreak, I. 399;
the India Government Bill, 530;
introduction of the India Bill by Sir Charles Wood, 533;
proposed change in the management of the country’s affairs, 534;
revolt of the Bengal army, 719;
probable cause of the great Mutiny, 720;
the misgovernment of Oudh, 721-723;
the difficulty as to the position of the royal family of Delhi, 724;
dissatisfaction of the Sepoys with English rule, 725;
popular beliefs regarding the downfall of British power, 727;
Mutiny of the Sepoys, 728;
suppression of the Mutiny, II. 2-4;
failure of Lord Derby’s policy, 15;
Disraeli’s India Bill, 18;
cordial reception of Disraeli’s Bill in India, 25;
a Proclamation by the Queen, _ib._;
the Queen’s new regulations regarding the Indian army, 26;
the Order of the Star of India, 40, 91;
the Criminal Procedure Amendment Bill, 662;
Lord Lytton’s rule as to the vacancies in the India Civil Service, _ib._;
an explosion of race-hatred, _ib._;
Jubilee celebrations in, 739

Indian and Colonial Exhibition opened, II. 731

Indian contingent, The, in the Soudan campaign, II. 717

Indies, West, distress in 1848, I. 350;
Lord John Russell’s policy, 351

Inkermann, The battle of, I. 615

“Invincibles,” The, II. 632

Ionian Islands, Cession of, to Greece, II. 128

Ireland, O’Connell’s agitation, 151-158;
meetings at Tara and Clontarf, 155;
O’Connell’s trial, 156;
beneficial measures passed, 158;
the potato disease, 202;
opening of Irish ports to foreign importation, 203;
Dublin memorialising the Queen, 216;
defeat of Peel’s Ministry on the Irish Question, 228;
prolongation of the Arms Act, 248;
the Great Famine, 272;
failure of industries, 273;
one safeguard in the English markets, 274;
fall of prices, _ib._;
decrease of small holdings, _ib._;
Free Trade a disaster, 275;
terrible state of the country, _ib._;
gravity of the distress under-estimated by the Government, _ib._;
Lord John Russell’s plans, 278;
Lord George Bentinck’s scheme for railways, 279;
the terrors of emigration, 285;
outrages and commercial panic, 295;
Coercion Bill, 297;
revolting crimes, _ib._;
hostility of the priesthood to the Government, 298;
the Queen’s Colleges denounced by the Sacred Congregation, _ib._;
the nature of the “Young Ireland” movement, 339;
the leaders of the “Young Ireland” Party, _ib._;
first collision of the national party with the authorities, 342;
truculent attitude of the “Young Ireland” leaders, _ib._;
distrust of the peasantry, _ib._;
effects of the revolution, 343;
increased distress, 370, 372;
Parliamentary Bill against seditious clubs, 353;
the Encumbered Estates Act, 354;
the Crown Security Bill, 355;
proposed grant from the Imperial Exchequer, 375;
pitiful condition of the country, _ib._;
pressure of the Poor Law on the Irish gentry, 378;
signs of improved feeling towards the English Government, 406;
visit of the Queen and the Prince Consort, 406, 407;
loyal manifestations by the people, 407-410;
good results of the royal visit, 410;
opening of the Queen’s Colleges, 414;
the Irish Franchise Bill, 442;
the Queen’s policy, 443;
a time of tranquillity, 498;
second visit of the Queen, 571;
Exhibition of Irish Industries, _ib._;
outbreak of the Fenian Conspiracy in 1865, II. 245;
the rise of the Phœnix Society, 246;
the Revolutionary Brotherhood in America, _ib._;
the _Irish People_ established, _ib._;
arrest of the Fenian leaders, 247;
the Fenian organisation in New York, _ib._;
suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, 259;
Lord Naas’s Land Bill, 286;
the Church Question, _ib._;
the spread of Fenianism, 287;
Irish riot at Manchester, _ib._;
attack on Clerkenwell Prison, 288;
the Church Question in the House of Commons, 307-311, 327;
Mr. Gladstone’s motion upon the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, 330-338;
O’Donovan Rossa returned to Parliament, 353;
disaffection of the Orangemen, _ib._;
a Land Bill introduced in the House of Commons, 355;
rise of the Home Rule Party, 426;
Mr. Gladstone’s University Bill, 432-435;
the elections of 1874, 464;
relaxation of Coercion Acts, 488;
the Intermediate Education Bill, 554;
abolition of the Queen’s University and substitution of the Royal University, 571;
second reading of the Irish Relief Bill, 586;
Major Nolan’s Seeds Bill, 586;
solid vote against the Tories in 1880, 591;
Mr. Forster Chief Secretary, 594;
its embarrassing condition in 1880, 601;
the Home Rule Party, _ib._;
Mr. Parnell’s leadership and Mr. Gladstone’s policy, _ib._;
Mr. Forster’s Bill amending the Act of 1870, 602;
rejection of Mr. Forster’s Bill by the House of Lords, _ib._;
organisation of the Land League, _ib._;
increase of evictions, 603;
influence of the Land League, _ib._;
the system of boycotting, _ib._;
increase of outrages, _ib._;
the Queen’s anxieties regarding the state of the country, 608;
condemnation of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish policy in Parliament, 610;
Lord Beaconsfield’s speech against Mr. Gladstone’s policy, _ib._;
a serious crisis, 611;
Mr. Forster’s Protection of Persons and Property Bill, 612;
Mr. Parnell and other Irish Members suspended, _ib._;
the struggle in Parliament regarding Coercion, 614;
Mr. Dillon’s passionate agitation against the Gladstone Government in Ireland, 615;
Mr. Gladstone’s Land Bill, 616;
new rise of Fenianism, 626;
Mr. Parnell’s policy in regard to the Land Act, 628;
Mr. Parnell and others imprisoned in Kilmainham, _ib._;
a “No Rent” Manifesto by the Land Leaguers, _ib._;
suppression of the Land League, _ib._;
success of the Land Act in Ulster, _ib._;
the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke, 631;
Radical and Conservative opposition to Mr. Forster’s coercive policy, _ib._;
failure of Mr. Forster’s policy, _ib._;
Tory bid for the Irish Vote, _ib._;
Tory scheme for buying out the Irish landlords, _ib._;
intrigue to remove Mr. Forster from the post of Chief Secretary, _ib._;
release of Mr. Parnell and other leaders, 632;
Mr. Forster’s view of Mr. Parnell’s proposal, _ib._;
the Society of “Invincibles,” _ib._;
Mr. Forster’s ineffective administration, _ib._;
a new Coercion Bill, 633;
the terms of the new Coercion Bill, 634;
the Arrears Bill introduced, _ib._;
the prominent topic in the debate on the address of 1883, 655;
arrest of the “Invincibles,” _ib._;
Carey betrays the “Invincible” conspiracy, _ib._;
the object of the “Invincibles,” _ib._;
the removal of obnoxious Irish officials, _ib._;
funds received from America, _ib._;
Mrs. Frank Byrne alleged by Carey to have been the bearer
of the murderers’ knives from America, _ib._;
open agitation substituted by secret societies, _ib._;
failure of the conspirators to waylay Mr. Forster, _ib._;
the cause of the attack on Lord Frederick Cavendish, _ib._;
the baseness of Carey, 656;
five of the “Invincibles” hanged, _ib._;
the death of Carey, _ib._;
Mr. Gorst’s amendment that no more concessions be made by the Government to
the agitators, _ib._;
attacks on Mr. Parnell, _ib._;
Mr. Parnell charged with conniving at murder, _ib._;
Mr. Forster’s attack on the agitators, _ib._;
warm admiration of Mr. Parnell’s conduct in, _ib._;
the national testimonial to him, _ib._;
the Prince and Princess of Wales’s visit to, 719;
the Land Purchase Bill of Mr. Gladstone, 728.
_See_ also Dillon, Mr.; Home Rule; Parnell, Mr.

Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood of America, The, II. 246

Isandhlwana, The disaster at, II. 564

Ismail Pasha, visit to England, II. 347

Italy, the revolution of 1848, I. 347;
flight of the Pope, _ib._;
success of Mazzini, 422;
misgovernment in 1856, 698;
convention with France, II. 218;
Florence made the capital, _ib._;
annexation of Rome, 376;
opposed to the cession of French territory to Germany, 402;
adhesion to the Austro-German alliance, 651;
the Triple League of Peace, _ib._

Jamaica, complications with England, I. 54;
the imprudence of Lord Sligo, _ib._;
plan to suspend its constitution for five years, _ib._;
virtual defeat of the Ministry’s proposal, _ib._;
the second Bill in regard to, 56;
the negro insurrection in 1865, II. 247;
extenuating report by the Commissioners, 259

James, Sir Henry, Attorney-General II. 594

Japan, treaty with England, II. 4;
an embassy to the Queen, 429

Jellalabad, Defence of, by Sir Robert Sale, I. 121;
relieved by the British, _ib._

Jephson, Mr., a letter on the state of Ireland, I. 274

Jews, The Bill for removing disability of, for municipal offices, I. 183;
their disability to enter Parliament removed, II. 18

Jingoes, The, so named by Mr. Holyoake, II. 530;
their war song, II. 529

Jingoism, a new political term, II. 530

John, King, of Abyssinia, sends envoys to the Queen, II. 695

Jubilee, the Queen’s, The year of the, II. 733;
the Jubilee Ode, 739;
the celebrations of, in India, _ib._;
in Mandalay, _ib._;
preparations for it in Britain, _ib._;
Colonial addresses of felicitation presented at Windsor, 740;
the Indian princes at Windsor, _ib._;
the street decorations in London on Jubilee Day, _ib._;
the royal procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey, 741;
the procession of princes, 742;
the scene in Westminster Abbey, _ib._;
the guests in the Abbey, 742-3;
the processions in the Abbey, 743;
the Thanksgiving Service, 744;
the scene in the Abbey after the ceremony, 745-6;
the illuminations in London, 746;
the celebrations in England and the North of Ireland, in Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cork, _ib._;
the honours bestowed on the occasion, _ib._;
observances in the Colonies and New York, 747;
the children’s celebration in Hyde Park, _ib._;
the royal banquet in Buckingham Palace, 748;
the Queen’s letter to her people, _ib._;
her Majesty’s garden-party, _ib._;
review of metropolitan volunteers, _ib._

Jubilees, The previous, of English history, II. 741

Kalomine divorce suit, The, II. 719

Kars, The heroic defence of, by General Williams, I. 673

Kassala, siege of, II. 718

Kassassin, The battle of, II. 643

Keane, Sir John, in command in Afghanistan, I. 114;
created a Baron, _ib._;
return to England, 116

Kelso visited by the Queen, II. 295

Kensington, the Royal Albert Hall founded by the Queen, II. 291

Kensington Palace, scene of the Queen’s infancy, I. 9;
its early history, _ib._;
its brilliant Court in the eighteenth century, 10;
the sovereigns who died in it, _ib._;
its disfavour with George III., _ib._;
its furniture, _ib._

Kent, Duchess of, the addresses of condolence from Parliament at her husband’s death, I. 8;
her care for the education of the Princess Victoria, 10;
additional grant to her income, 13;
her stay in the Isle of Wight, 15;
her reply to the Vice-Chancellor’s speech at Oxford, _ib._;
her income fixed at £30,000, 28;
her position to the Queen, 30;
her death, II. 80

Kent, Duke of, his marriage, I. 4;
his support of popular Government, 6;
his personal appearance, _ib._;
his character, _ib._;
his strictness as a disciplinarian, _ib._;
the liberality of his political views, _ib._;
his residence abroad, _ib._;
his return to England, 7;
his reconciliation with the Prince-Regent, _ib._;
his residence at Claremont, _ib._;
at Sidmouth, _ib._;
his illness and death, _ib._

Kertch, The Allied expedition against, I. 640;
evacuated by the Russians, _ib._

Khartoum, steps taken for General Gordon’s relief, II. 671;
Gordon protests against being deserted, 676;
isolated and surrounded by the Mahdi’s troops, _ib._;
the British Nile expedition to, 679;
siege of, closely pressed, 712;
fall of, 715;
Sir Charles Wilson arrives at, _ib._;
defence of, by General Gordon, 716

Kilmainham Treaty, The, II. 632

Kimberley, Lord, Secretary for India, II. 654;
his despatch to Sir Hercules Robinson regarding British jurisdiction in South
Africa, 683

King, Mr. Locke, his proposal to equalise the town and county franchise, I. 465;
rejection of his motion, 502;
second attempt to procure the extension of the franchise, II. 214

Kinglake, Mr., his account of the preparations for the Russian War, I. 604, 606

Kirbekan, The battle of, II. 717

Komatsu, Prince and Princess, of Japan, Visit of, to the Queen, II. 732

Korniloff, his bravery at Sebastopol, I. 610

Korti, The British camp at, II. 712;
the Black Watch at, _ib._

Kosheh, Battle of, II. 718

Kossuth, Louis, his address to the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, I. 344;
his flight to Turkey, 423;
his arrival in England, 479

Kutch Behar, The Maharajah and Maharanee of, at Windsor, II. 740

Labouchere, Mr., Chief Secretary for Ireland, I. 245.

Labouchere, Mr. Henry, opposes the grant to Prince Leopold, 646;
opposes the annuity to Princess Beatrice, 720

Lancashire, the sufferings during the Cotton Famine, II. 146;
revival of the cotton trade, 183;
expenditure during the Cotton Famine, 185

Land Bill (Ireland) of 1887, II. 736;
the Bankruptcy Clauses of, _ib._

Lansdowne, Lord, Lord Privy Seal, I. 245

Lawrence, John (afterwards Lord Lawrence), his prompt action at the Indian Mutiny, I. 732;
his policy with the Sikhs, 734

Lawson’s, Mr. Edward, proposal of the children’s celebration of the Jubilee, II. 747

Layard, Mr. (afterwards Sir A. H.), his hostility to Russia, I. 590;
his dispute with Turkey regarding the seizure of an English missionary’s Mussulman
assistant, II. 583;
granted an indefinite leave of absence, 594

Leeds, the Liberal leaders press a measure of Parliamentary reform on the country, II. 668;
Liberal Conference at, adopts Mr. Gladstone’s principle of Home Rule, II. 730

Leicester, Seizure of packages of dynamite at, II. 661

Lennox, Lady Augusta, II. 723

Leopold, King of Belgium, his marriage to the Princess Charlotte, I. 6;
his high character and abilities, _ib._;
his election as King of the Belgians, 14;
the Queen’s confidence in his advice, _ib._;
visit to England, 46;
his desire for the Queen’s marriage to Prince Albert, 60;
a letter from the Queen, 103, 106;
second visit to England, 262;
his death, II. 251;
his character, _ib._

Leopold, Prince, a serious illness, II. 316;
popular admiration of his character, 626;
his marriage, 628;
a threat to murder him, 645;
accident at Mentone, 646;
granted £25,000 a year on his marriage, _ib._;
married to the Princess Hélène of Waldeck-Pyrmont, 647;
the imposing ceremony at his marriage, _ib._;
his death, 687;
his funeral, 689;
his amiable personality, _ib._;
Prof. Tyndall’s high estimate of his ability, 690;
his eager interest in politics, _ib._;
his wish to become Governor of Victoria, _ib._;
the Queen’s opposition to his becoming Governor of Victoria, _ib._;
his gifts as an orator, _ib._;
his presentiment of early death, _ib._;
his loss felt by rich and poor, 691;
his favourite residence, _ib._

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, a letter on Disraeli’s Budget, 519;
remarks regarding the political situation in 1854, 576;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 630;
his first Budget, 644;
remarks on the collapse of the French alliance, 676, 678;
his Budget for 1856, 690;
his Budget for 1857, 701;
his death, II. 171;
the Queen’s estimate of his character, 172

Liberal Unionist Party formed, II. 729

Lincoln, Abraham, elected President of the United States, II. 114;
his proclamation regarding the abolition of slavery, 134

Lincoln, Lord, refuses a place in the Russell Cabinet, I. 244;
his address to the Queen on colonisation, 283;
address to the Crown on the Colonial Question, 387

Liston, Mr., and the use of ether as an anæsthetic, I. 271

Liverpool, visit of the Queen and the Prince Consort, I. 487;
condemnation of dynamitards at, 661;
visit of the Queen to the International Exhibition at, in 1886, 732

Livingstone, Dr., found by Stanley, II. 427;
the Queen’s interest in the explorer, _ib._

Lloyd, Bishop, his influence on the Tractarians, I. 98

Lloyd, Lieut. W., presents one of the Mahdi’s flags to her Majesty, II. 687

London, a Chartist meeting on Kennington Common, I. 327;
Chartist meetings at Clerkenwell and Stepney Greens, 336;
the riots in 1855, 644;
Bill to improve the government of, II. 671;
riots in the West End of, 731

London, Bishop of, the Ecclesiastical Appeal Bill, I. 446

Lonsdale, Earl of, Lord Privy Seal, I. 499

Lorne, Marquis of, the Queen consents to his marriage with the Princess Louise, II. 378;
appearance at the ceremony, 407;
accident to, in the royal procession on Jubilee Day, 742

Louis Philippe, his visit to England, I. 172;
his cordial reception by the people, _ib._;
honours from the Queen, _ib._

Louise, Princess, her marriage, II. 407-8

Lowe, Mr. Robert, his Revised Education Code, II. 120;
attacked by Lord R. Cecil in regard to reports of inspectors of schools, 218;
his demand for national unsectarian education, 302;
his first Budget, 338;
his second Budget, 363;
opens the Civil Service to competition, _ib._;
his Budget for 1871, 397;
the scandal in regard to the Zanzibar mail contract, 438;
Home Secretary, 439;
his popularity in 1874, 458;
created Lord Sherbrooke, 594

Lucan, Lord, and the Charge of the Light Brigade, I. 614

Lucknow, outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny, I. 730;
relief by Havelock, 735;
second relief, 737

Lyell, Sir Charles, account of a visit to Balmoral, I. 367

Lyndhurst, Lord, Lord High Chancellor, I. 97;
Bill for the removal of the Jews’ disabilities, 183;
his violent speeches against Russia, 600, 602;
attack on Prussia and Austria, 634;
his defects as a debater on foreign, affairs, _ib._

Lytton, Lord, Viceroy of India, II. 494;
his warlike policy in Afghanistan, 555;
dispute with Shere Ali, 556;
resigns office, 594;
contemptuous speech against Mr. Gladstone, 598;
his “Prosperity Budget,” _ib._;
his rule on the vacancies in the India Civil Service, 662

Maamtrasna murders to be re-considered, II. 710

Macaulay, Lord, his sarcasm on the Maynooth affair, I. 183;
his account of Lord John Russell’s failure to form a Cabinet, 206;
appointed Postmaster-General, 245;
his opposition to the Education Vote, 283;
elected M.P. for Edinburgh, 586

Macdonald, Mr., his administration of supplies in the Crimea, I. 624

Maclean, Roderick, his supposed attempt to assassinate the Queen, II. 644

Macleod, Dr. Norman, his ministrations to the Queen at Balmoral, II. 139, 230;
account of the Queen’s life at Balmoral, 296;
his death, 428;
his character, _ib._;
letter from the Queen on his death, 429

Macmahon, Marshal, surrounded at Sedan by the German army, II. 370

Macnaghten, Sir William, appointed Secretary to Shah Soojah, I. 114;
created a baronet for his services in Afghanistan, _ib._;
appointed Governor of Bengal, 116

Madagascar, re-action against England, I. 190

Magee, Dr., speech on the Irish Church Question, II. 334

Mahdi, the, How General Gordon would have checked, II. 712;
death of, 718

Mahmoud Samy, nominal Minister of War in Egypt, II. 641

Maidstone, Mr. Disraeli member for, I. 51

Maiwand, The battle of, II. 599

Majuba Hill, Battle of, II. 619

Malakoff, Capture of the, by the French, I. 671

Malmesbury, Earl of, Foreign Secretary, I. 499;
account of the Queen’s life at Balmoral, 522;
remarks on the understanding between the Earl of Aberdeen and the Czar, 546

Malt Tax, Proposed repeal of the, II. 236;
Mr. Gladstone declines to reduce it, 237;
abolished by Mr. Gladstone, 601

Manchester, opening of the Art-Treasures Exhibition by Prince Albert, I. 739;
popularity of the Art-Treasures Exhibition, 746;
visit of the Queen, _ib._

Manchester School, The, its attack on Sir James Brooke in regard to Borneo, I. 474

Mancini, Signor, his disclosure to the Italian Senate of the adhesion of Italy
to the Austro-German alliance, II. 651

Mandalay, Jubilee celebrations in, II. 739

Manners, Lord John, President of the Board of Works, II. 257;
Postmaster-General, 465;
his amendment to Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill of 1884, II. 677

Margarine Bill, The, passed, II. 738

Marlborough, Duchess of, starts a relief fund to avert distress in Ireland, II. 586

Marlborough, Duke of, Colonial Secretary, II. 275;
Lord Beaconsfield’s Manifesto to (1880), 90

Married Women’s Property Act comes into force, II. 652;
the benefit conferred by the Act, 654

Marriott, Mr., his amendment to Mr. Goschen’s Closure scheme, II. 630;
rejection of his Closure amendment, _ib._;
counsel for Ismail Pasha in his claims to the Domain lands, 683

Martaban, Capture of by General Goodwin, I. 505

Martin, Sir Theodore, his Life of the Prince Consort, I. 238, 448, 545; II. 75, 480, 481;
his Life of Lord Lyndhurst, I. 239, 242

Match Tax, Proposed levy of, by Mr. Lowe, II. 397

Matthews, Mr. Henry, is appointed Home Secretary, II. 730

Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, created Emperor of Mexico, I. 743;
his death, _ib._

Maynooth, the Parliamentary grant, I. 183;
Lord Macaulay’s criticism of the affair, _ib._

Mayo, Lord, his government of India, II. 343;
his death, 427;
success of his Afghan policy, _ib._

Mazzini, Joseph, his petition in regard to the detention of his letters in England, I. 164

Medical Acts Amendment Bill, II. 678

Meerut, outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny, I. 730

Melbourne, Lord, his character, I. 23, 95, 370;
his moderate principles, 23;
his appointment to the Premiership, _ib._;
his instruction of the Queen in the theory and working of the British Constitution, _ib._;
the probable ill effects of his teaching, 24;
the personal regard of the Queen, 28;
his view of the revolt in Canada, 34;
Lord Durham’s suggestions carried out in regard to Canada, 35;
popular distrust of his authority, 36;
virtual defeat of his Ministry, 54;
a second Jamaica Bill, 56;
the Penny Postage Act, 80;
Act regarding chimney-sweeps, _ib._;
growing unpopularity of his Ministry, 89;
prognostications of his fall, 91;
defeat of his Ministry, _ib._;
a statement regarding Protection, 94;
resignation of office, 95;
his last years, 96;
his death, _ib._;
his position in English history, 97;
his opinion of Prince Albert, 103;
the Queen’s regret at his death, 370

Menschikoff, Prince, his mission to Constantinople, I. 550;
his proposed Note of Agreement with Turkey, _ib._;
his position at the Alma, 607;
his generalship, _ib._;
his blunders at the Alma, 608, 609;
his tactics at Balaclava, 611;
his blunders at Inkermann, 615

Metamneh, Gordon’s steamers at, II. 712

Metternich, Prince, remark on the Franco-Spanish marriage alliance, I. 258;
his influence over Frederick I. of Austria, 343;
his resignation, 344

Metz, Surrender of the French army in, II. 371

Mexico, English policy in regard to, I. 127;
the French Emperor’s plan for a monarchy, 127, 163;
the Emperor Maximilian crowned, 218;
the Emperor Maximilian shot by order of the Mexican Republic, 283

Middleton, Sir Frederick, puts down the rebellion of half-breeds
in the North-West of Canada, II. 723

Midlothian Programme (1885), The, II. 724

Mill, Mr. John Stuart, elected M.P. for Westminster, II. 243;
speech on the National Debt, 258;
rejected by Westminster, 315;
his Bill for supplying smoking carriages to railway trains, _ib._;
his opposition to Mr. Forster’s Education Bill, 360;
remark on the position of women in England, 652

Milner, Mr. Gibson, representative of the Free Trade Party, I. 244

Mitchell, John, his violent teaching in the “Young Ireland” Party, I. 342;
editor of _United Ireland_, _ib._;
arrested and condemned to transportation, _ib._

Molesworth, Sir William, his opposition to the Education Vote, I. 283;
his proposal that the Colonies should be made autonomous, 474;
Chief Commissioner of Works, 519

Montpensier, Duc de, his marriage to the Spanish Infanta, I. 255

Morgan, Mr. Osborne, passes the Married Women’s Property Act, II. 653

Morley, Mr. John, his Life of Cobden, I. 216, 223;
is appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, II. 727

Morris, Mr. Lewis, Jubilee Ode by, II. 750

Morse, Professor, his discoveries in electricity, I. 175

Muncaster, Lord, presents the Duke of Wellington’s banner
to King William IV. on the anniversary of Waterloo, I. 3

Mundella, Mr., his Bill for consolidating the Factory Acts, II. 474;
Vice-President of the Council, 594

Mutiny, Indian, _see_ India

Naas, Lord, Secretary for Ireland, II. 257;
his Land Bill for Ireland, 286
_See_ also Mayo, Lord

Napier, Sir Charles, in command of the Baltic fleet against Russia, I. 583;
his blockade of the Gulf of Finland, 584;
his success against Russia in the last expedition, 602, 603

Napier, Sir Charles James, his defeat of the insurgents at Hyderabad, I. 150

Napoleon I., Removal of the body of, from St. Helena to Paris, I. 86

Napoleon III. elected President of the French Republic, I. 421;
his restoration of the Empire, 491;
his struggle with Parliament, 491, 492;
the vote in his favour, 494;
his installation as Emperor, 523;
the Czar’s slight, 526;
his marriage, 528;
visit to the Queen, 648-654;
invested with the Order of the Garter, 651;
private visit to the Queen, 717, 718;
his death, II. 444

Napoleon, Prince Louis, his murder by the Zulus, II. 575;
indignation among the French Bonapartists at his death, 578

National League (Ireland), The, proclaimed, II. 737

Navigation Laws, Proposed repeal of the, I. 374

Navy, Introduction of steam into the, I. 389

Nesselrode, Count, his assurances to the English Government
of the peaceful policy of Russia before the Crimean War, I. 551;
his attitude during the Russo-Turkish difficulties, 579, 580, 595

Neufchâtel, the dispute with Prussia, I. 696

New Britain and the German annexations in the Pacific, II. 686

Newcastle, Duke of, Colonial Secretary, I. 519;
his alleged incompetence in office, 616;
Secretary of State for War, 626;
his efforts to improve the condition of the army, 631;
remarks on the elections, 1857, 709;
goes with the Prince of Wales on a visit to America, II. 67-69

New Guinea, the Queensland Government and annexation of, II. 685;
southern portion of, annexed by Lord Derby, 686;
German annexation, _ib._

New Ireland and the German annexations in the Pacific, II. 686

Newman, Rev. J. H. (afterwards Cardinal), his entry into the Roman Catholic Church, I. 99-101;
“Tract No. 90,” 101;
his resignation as Vicar of St. Mary’s at Oxford, _ib._;
his early intentions, _ib._;
effect of his withdrawal on the Tractarian Movement, 102

Newport (Mon.), Lord Salisbury’s address at, II. 726

Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, his error in regard to Turkey, I. 579;
his obstinacy, _ib._;
his death, 633

Nightingale, Miss, her labours in the Crimea, I. 624;
rewarded by the Queen for her heroic conduct in the Crimea, 692

Nile Expedition to relieve General Gordon, II. 712-4

Nile, Stewart’s night march to the, II. 714

Nolan, Major, his Seed Bill for Ireland, II. 586

Northbrook, Lord, his opposition to the purchase system in the army, II. 393;
resignation as Viceroy of India, 494;
First Lord of the Admiralty, 594;
his Egyptian mission adversely criticised by the Conservatives, 682;
his recommendations in regard to Egypt discredit the Gladstone Government, _ib._;
his promise to make important additions to the navy, 702;
and the Admiralty accounts, 710

Northcote, Sir Stafford, President of the Board of Trade, II. 257;
Secretary for India, 275;
speech on the Irish Church Question, 332;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 465;
his tame policy as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 470;
his Budget for 1875, 487;
his Budget for 1876, 502;
his leadership of the House of Commons, 515;
his denunciation of the terms of peace between Turkey and Russia, 536;
his Budget for 1878, 552;
his Budget for 1879, 571;
his Budget for 1880, _ib._;
opposition from the Fourth Party, 595;
his motions in regard to Mr. Bradlaugh, 630;
his prudent policy distasteful to his followers, 636;
his resolution prohibiting Mr. Bradlaugh from taking the oath, 658;
Mr. Bradlaugh’s threat to treat this decision as invalid, _ib._;
his resolution excluding Mr. Bradlaugh from the House of Commons, _ib._;
his unwillingness to countenance obstructive tactics, _ib._;
Lord Randolph Churchill’s bitter attacks on his leadership, _ib._;
his hand forced to obstructive tactics, _ib._;
speeches in North Wales and Ulster, 668;
moves a vote of censure on the Government for their vacillating policy, 673;
blames the Government for not helping Hicks Pasha, 674;
prevents Mr. Bradlaugh from taking his seat, 676;
created Lord Iddesleigh, 708;
sudden death of, 734

Oatley, George, presented with the Albert Medal by the Queen, I. 607

Obeid, El, Defeat of Hicks Pasha and his army at, II. 67

O’Brien, William Smith, the rise of the Nationalist Party in Ireland, I. 327;
his leadership of the “Young Ireland” Party, 341;
collapse of his authority, 343;
transported to Van Diemen’s Land, _ib._;
his death, _ib._

O’Connell, Daniel, remarks in regard to the Queen’s popularity with the Irish, I. 38;
suggestion of the “People’s Charter,” 49;
early patron of Mr. Disraeli, 51;
his denunciation of Sir Robert Peel, 56;
the agitation in Ireland, 151;
his popularity with the Irish people, _ib._;
his aims, _ib._;
the secret of his success, 52;
the nature of his invective, _ib._;
his puzzling methods, 154;
death of, 158

O’Connor, Feargus, his denunciation of Sir Robert Peel, I. 56;
an agitator by profession, 58;
his parentage, _ib._;
his leadership of the Chartists, 327;
at the meeting on Kennington Common, 331;
his petition in favour of six points of the Charter, 354;
arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms, 355

Odoacer, the Queen’s conjectural relationship to, I. 45

Odessa bombarded by the British fleet, I. 603

Orleans, Duke of, his death, I. 126

Osborne, Mr. Bernal, his motion on Portuguese affairs, I. 302;
his proposal in regard to Ireland, 354;
speech on the Austro-Hungarian Question, 399

Osman Digna defeated by General Graham, II. 718;
in conflict with the Abyssinians, _ib._

Otho, King, driven from the throne of Greece, II. 128

Oudh, difficulties as to its government, I. 721;
its annexation by the East India Company, 722;
outbreak of the Sepoy Mutiny, 729;
Canning’s successful diplomacy, 734

Outram, Sir J., General, his victories over the Persians, I. 704;
his opinion regarding the government of Oudh, 721;
the annexation of Oudh, 722

Overland Route, its inauguration, I. 190

Oxford University, the Tractarian Movement, I. 98;
censure of Newman’s tract, 101;
Oxford University Bill passed by the Aberdeen Cabinet, 619;
proposed abolition of religious tests, II. 397

Pakington, Sir John, Colonial Secretary, I. 499;
First Lord of the Admiralty, II. 257;
Secretary for War, 275

Palmer, Professor, his mission to detach the Bedouins from the side of Arabi
Pasha, II. 642;
murdered at the Wells of Moses, _ib._

Palmer, Sir Roundell (afterwards Lord Selborne), his speech on the Irish Church
Question, II. 334

Palmerston, Lady, her influence in Whig society, II. 351

Palmerston, Lord, his speech on the sugar duties, I. 94;
his condemnation of the Ashburton Treaty, 169, 170;
Foreign Secretary, 245;
antipathy of Louis Philippe, 258;
difficulties with the Church of Rome, 298;
deficiencies in his foreign policy, 320;
his view regarding an Anglo-German alliance, 322;
complaints against his policy by Louis Philippe, 326;
his rash interference with Spain, 347;
popular indignation against him, 345;
vote of censure in Parliament, 349;
an Ordnance Department scandal, 394;
annoyance to the Queen by his Austrian policy, 395;
the reckless character of his policy, 398;
difficulties with Greece, 427;
the Queen expresses her displeasure with his policy, 478;
discussion in Parliament as to his foreign policy, 430, 431;
a speech on the Greek dispute, 435;
dissatisfaction of the Queen with his administration at the Foreign Office, 437;
the Queen’s memorandum in regard to his foreign policy, 454, 455;
his plea to the Prince Consort, 455;
his cordial reception of Kossuth, 479;
his resignation as Foreign Secretary, 495;
he assails the Militia Bill, 499;
Home Secretary, 519;
resigns office, 565;
his return to the Cabinet, 566;
his zeal for war with Russia, 572;
a foolish speech at the Reform Club, 583;
his public-spirited behaviour at the Crimean crisis, 628;
his policy as Prime Minister, 638;
failure of the French alliance, 675;
his popularity at the Crimean War, 688;
the failure of his home policy, 690;
his victory at the elections, 708;
increase of confidence from the Queen, 715;
his false estimate of the Indian Mutiny, 747;
his waning popularity, II. 7;
his Bill to alter the Law of Conspiracy, 8;
vote of censure passed against him in Parliament, 37;
his anti-Austrian policy, 43;
his plan for the settlement of the Italian Question, 46;
the continued recklessness of his policy, 47;
his Fortification Scheme, 62;
distaste of the Radicals to his policy, 74;
mutilation of the Afghanistan Blue Book, 82;
his attack on Prussia, 83;
his sympathy with Poland, 160;
conflict with the Queen on the Danish Question, 166;
censured by the House of Lords, 167;
his policy at the Danish War, 191;
his diplomacy after the failure of the Sleswig-Holstein Conference, 193;
speech on the Irish Question, 233;
his death, 243;
the character of his statesmanship, 244;
his able management of the Commons, _ib._

Panmure, Lord, his ridiculous despatch to General Simpson, I. 669

Papal Aggression Movement, the Pope’s Brief, I. 460;
indiscreet statements of Roman Catholic dignitaries, _ib._;
Dr. Ullathorne’s explanation, _ib._

Paris, the Conference in regard to the Russian War, I. 698;
the result of the Conference, 716;
the Congress of 1858, 719

Parker, Admiral, his blockade of the Piræus, I. 427

Parnell, Mr. Charles Stewart, enters Parliament, II. 488;
develops a policy of obstruction, 499;
his obstruction of the Prisons Bill, 515;
his skill in debate, 516;
his support of Radical members, 520;
his opposition to flogging in the army, 568;
the Attorney-General’s indictment against him, 603;
his policy in regard to the Land Act, 628;
Mr. Gladstone’s speech against his policy, _ib._;
imprisoned in Kilmainham, _ib._;
alliance of his Party with the Tories, 697;
additions to his followers, 698;
master of Ireland by the elections of 1885, _ib._;
his Relief Bill is rejected, 730

“Parnellism and Crime,” II. 735

Parnellite alliance with the Tories, Success of, II. 706;
manifesto in support of the Tories, 726

Patents Bill, real progress made with it, II. 658

Paxton, Mr., his design for the International Exhibition building, I. 462

Peabody, Mr. George, his gift to the poor of London, II. 135;
his second gift, 323;
his statue unveiled by the Prince of Wales, 347

Pease, Edward, opening of the passenger line between Birmingham and London, I. 47

Peel, General, Secretary for War, II. 257

Peel, Mr. Arthur, chosen Speaker of the House of Commons, II. 676

Peel, Mr. F., his Bill to deal with clergy reserves in Canada, I. 534

Peel, Sir Robert, his financial statement for 1845, I. 182;
the establishment of the Queen’s Colleges in Ireland, _ib._;
decline in his popularity, 190;
his support of the Queen, 191;
receives the distinction of the Order of the Garter, 192;
his able management of his party, 193;
his hesitation in regard to Free Trade, 203;
resigns office, 204;
re-accepts Premiership, _ib._;
repeals the Corn Laws, 226;
praised by the Queen, 227;
fall of his Ministry in the Commons, 228;
resigns the Premiership, 238;
a letter from the Queen, 239;
his wise resolution, 241;
his independent attitude, 243;
his Bank Restriction Act, 279;
his opposition to the Education vote, 283;
assailed by High Church Tories, _ib._;
his Bank Act assailed, 295;
attack on his Free Trade policy, 373;
his support of the Russell Ministry, 375;
his clear perception of the Irish difficulty, 378;
triumph of his fiscal policy, 399;
his last speech in Parliament, 435;
his death, 447;
his character, 447, 448

Pegu, Capture of, by the British, I. 506

Pélssier, Canrobert’s successor in the Crimea, I. 640;
his irresolution as a leader, 673

Pennefather, General, his command at Inkermann, I. 615

People’s Palace, the, in the East End of London, Opening of, II. 740

Perth, inauguration of a statue to the Prince Consort by the Queen, I. 227

Peterborough, Bishop of, his opinion on the Irish Universities Bill, II. 434

Philippe, Louis, his intrigue for the Franco-Spanish marriage alliance, I. 254;
his disreputable motives, 256;
his antipathy to Lord Palmerston, 258;
loss of reputation, 259;
estrangement of the Queen, _ib._;
abdicates the throne, 325;
his flight to England, _ib._;
generous reception by the Queen, 326;
his death, 458

Phœnix Park Murders, The, II. 632

Phœnix Society, The, II. 246

Pierre, Admiral, at Tamatave, II. 667

“Plan of Campaign,” The, II. 730

Plimsoll, Mr., and the shipknackers, II. 485;
creates a scene in the House, 486;
reprimand and apology, _ib._

Playfair, Dr. Lyon, Postmaster-General, II. 439

Poland, rebellion in the country, II. 159;
the policy of Russia, 162;
Russian Imperial Ukase in favour of the peasantry, 218

Police Superannuation Bill, II. 678

Pondoland, British Protectorate established in, II. 686

Poor Law considered unnecessarily harsh, I. 48

Portsmouth, the laying of the submarine telegraph cable, I. 271

Portugal, discussion of its affairs in the British Parliament, I. 302

Postal system, its crudeness in 1837 compared with the present time, I. 3

Pottinger, Eldred, his defence of Herat, I. 113

Prison Ministers Bill, Introduction of the, II. 173

Pritchard, Mr., thrown into prison by the French at Otaheite, I. 167

Prome, Occupation of, by the British, I. 506

Protection, Agitation in regard to, at Manchester, I. 216;
Lord Stanley’s advocacy, 227;
the policy of its advocates in 1850, 423, 424;
a demand for retrenchment, 445;
views represented in the Queen’s Speech, 507;
success of arguments against Free Trade, 536

Prussia, the revolution of 1848, I. 346;
restoration of monarchical authority, 422;
signature of the Protocol, 584;
view regarding war with Russia, 592;
letter from the King to Queen Victoria, 593;
continuance of an adverse policy to England, 622;
dispute with Switzerland, 696;
the war with Austria, II. 280

Prussia, King of, sponsor to the Prince of Wales, I. 106;
at a meeting of Parliament, 107

_Punch_, a cartoon of Russell and Peel, I. 239

Punjaub, its annexation by the East India Company, I. 402

Queensland Government and the annexation of New Guinea, II. 685

Queen Victoria, _see_ Victoria, Queen

Ragheb Pasha at the head of the Egyptian Cabinet, II. 642

Raglan, Lord, his doubts about the success of invading the Crimea, I. 606;
his generalship at the Alma, 607;
disagreement with St. Arnaud, 608;
his demands for reinforcements, 623;
the silence of his despatches regarding the sufferings of the army, _ib._;
censured in Parliament, 632;
his death, 641;
his character, 642, 643

Raikes, Mr., his opinion of Louis Philippe, I. 143

Raikes, Mr. H. C., reduces the perpetual penalties on voters
in corrupt boroughs, II. 699

Railway, Opening of the London and Birmingham, I. 47

Rangoon, Capture of, by General Goodwin, I. 505

“Ransom,” Mr. Chamberlain’s doctrine of, II. 724

Redan, The British assault on the, I. 670, 671

Reform Bill, Good effect of the, on the middle class, I. 23;
Mr. Gladstone’s, II. 671, 699

Ricardo, Mr., his proposal in regard to the difficulties of Free Trade in the
Colonies, I. 382

Richmond, Duke of, President of the Board of Trade, II. 275;
leader of the Tory Party, 358;
Lord President of the Council, 465

Riel, Louis, President of the “Republic of the North-West,” II. 384;
hanged for treason, 723

Riots, The, in the West End of London, II. 731

Ripon, Lord, denounced in regard to the Ilbert Bill in India, II. 662

Roberts, General, his brilliant generalship against Ayoub Khan, II. 599;
his support of the Ilbert Bill, 662

Roberts, Mr., his Act for closing public-houses during Sundays in Wales, II. 618

Roberts, Mr., his clever transport of artillery at Varna, I. 607

Roebuck, Mr., his Bill for the better government of the colonies, I. 385;
his support of Mr. Gladstone, _ib._;
defeat of his colonial measure, _ib._;
proposes a vote of confidence in the Russell Government, 435;
his motion regarding the mismanagement of the Russian War, 617, 626;
his Committee of Investigation, 630;
his motion in favour of recognition of the American Confederates by England, II. 176

Roman Catholic disabilities, Removal of, I. 23

Romilly, Sir Samuel, his proposal regarding the Criminal Code, I. 27

Rorke’s Drift, The defence of, II. 564

Rossa, O’Donovan, his real name, II. 246;
becomes a convert to Fenianism, _ib._;
elected Member of Parliament, 353

Rothschild, Baron, his return for the City of London, I. 298;
Jews and the Parliamentary Oath, 299

Round Table Conference, The, II. 735

Rowton, Lord, consulted by the Queen on the political situation, II. 695

Royal Grants, Promise of Committee to “inquire into and consider,” II. 720;
promise repudiated by the Tory Party, _ib._

Royal Titles Bill, The, II. 499

Russell, Lord John, his Act in regard to capital punishment, I. 28;
his measure for re-uniting Upper and Lower Canada, 35;
censured as Home Secretary, 39;
his attitude towards the Chartists, 48;
his vexation at the reduced pension to Prince Albert, 67;
his proposed duty on corn, 90;
withdrawal of the motion, 91;
dissolution of Parliament, _ib._;
his opinion on Free Trade, 94;
his re-election for the City of London, 95;
his conversion to Free Trade, 203;
asked to form a Cabinet, 204;
the reason of his failure to form a Cabinet, 206;
distrusted by Cobden, 207;
his letter regarding the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, 450;
the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, 464;
introduces the Militia Bill, 498;
resignation as Prime Minister, 499;
fall from the leadership of the Liberal Party, 501;
his eulogium on the Duke of Wellington, 512;
Foreign Secretary, 519;
his scheme for a national system of public instruction, 530;
the main point of his Education Scheme, 534;
his scheme for reforming Parliament, 564;
his speech on the Prince Consort’s position, 576;
his unscrupulous policy before the Russian War, 591;
his speech against Russia, 602;
resigns office, 617;
his interference with the Aberdeen Cabinet arrangements, 626;
resigns office, _ib._;
the Queen’s objection to his policy, 627;
Colonial Secretary, 630;
his humiliating position after the Second Vienna Conference, 634;
resigns office, _ib._;
his Bill to remove the Parliamentary disability of the Jews, 711;
his amendment to Disraeli’s Reform Bill, II. 32;
conflict of opinion with the Queen, 41;
his Anti-Austrian policy, 43;
his proposal regarding the reduction of the franchise, 51;
raised to the peerage, 85;
his diplomacy in regard to Sleswig-Holstein, 199, 203;
appointed Premier 245;
an address to the Queen on the Irish Church Question, 287;
his scheme of Home Rule, 724

Russell, Mr. T. W., denounces the Bankruptcy Clauses of the Irish Land Bill, II. 736

Russia, Visit of Nicholas, Emperor of, to England, I. 160;
described by the Queen, _ib._;
his opinion of the English Court, _ib._;
his life in England, 161;
his jealousy of France, 162;
memorandum regarding Turkey, 162, 163;
his departure from London, 163;
his unpopularity with the English people, _ib._;
diplomatic quarrel with England, 427, 428;
aggressive designs, 540;
geographical conditions, 541;
ultimatum to Turkey regarding the Greek Church, 550;
the points of contention with Turkey, 555;
probable offensiveness of Menschikoff’s Note to Turkey, 557;
the criminal blunder at Sinope, 578;
recall of the English ambassador, _ib._;
rejection of the proposal of the Powers, 579;
defeat by the Turks at Silistria, 582;
war declared by England, 583;
the battle of the Alma, 607;
the battle of Balaclava, 611;
the battle of Inkermann, 615;
death of the Czar, 633;
proposals at the Second Vienna Conference, 634;
ready assent to terms of peace at the Crimean War, 678;
signing of the treaty with England, 683;
attempts to separate France and England, 696;
diplomacy in regard to Poland, II. 162;
Imperial Ukase in favour of the Polish peasantry, 218;
annexation of Circassia, _ib._;
proposal regarding the Black Sea, 375;
outbreak of war with Turkey, 526;
the understanding between the Russian and Turkish Governments during
the Russo-Turkish War, 528;
English despatch to prevent the Russian occupation of Constantinople, 541;
menacing India, 542;
secret agreement with England regarding Turkey, 547;
at the Berlin Congress, 549;
the assassination of Alexander II., 623;
dispute with England regarding the Afghan boundary, 703;
advance of troops on the Indian frontier, _ib._;
occupation of Pendjeh, _ib._;
controversy with England about the Afghan frontier, 719

Saint Lucia Bay, British Protectorate established at, II. 686

Sale, Sir Robert, repulsed by Dost Mahomed, I. 115;
his march to Jelalabad, 118;
his defence of Jelalabad, 121;
his death at Ferozeshah, 234

Salisbury, Marquis of, his remark regarding Russian aggression in
European Turkey, I. 555;
his opposition to Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, II. 359;
Secretary for India, 465;
his success at the India Office, 474;
his visit to Constantinople, 570;
his interview with Bismarck, _ib._;
Foreign Secretary, 546;
his Circular to the Powers, _ib._;
his secret agreement with Russia regarding Turkey, 547;
at the Berlin Congress, 549;
his policy in Afghanistan, 556;
an error in his Egyptian policy, 638;
article in the _Quarterly Review_ bewailing Mr. Gladstone’s disintegration
of English Society, 668;
article in the _National Review_ advocating the better housing of the poor, _ib._;
blames the Government for not assisting Hicks Pasha, 674;
censure of Mr. Gladstone’s Soudan policy, _ib._;
his resistance to the Reform Bill of 1884, 697;
in office (1885), 707;
singular pledge exacted of Mr. Gladstone, _ib._;
his address at Newport, 726;
in power (midsummer, 1886), 730;
his theory about a Land Purchase Bill for Ireland, _ib._

Sandon, Lord, his Endowed Schools Bill, II. 474, 499

Sandwich Islands offered to Britain, I. 188;
Houses of Parliament established, _ib._

Saxe-Weimar, Princess Edward of, II. 723

Schouvaloff, his secret treaty with Lord Salisbury, II. 547

Science, its marked progress since Queen Victoria’s accession, I. 175;
the electric telegraph, _ib._;
the first telegraph line in England, _ib._;
the beginnings of photography, 176;
the discoveries of Wedgwood, _ib._;
the discoveries of Davy, Daguerre, and Talbot, 177;
practical applications of the telescope, _ib._;
the Thames Tunnel, _ib._;
Arctic discovery, 178;
voyages of Franklin and others, _ib._

Scinde, Annexation of, by Britain, I. 150

Scotland, conflicting views as to the character of a Church, I. 102;
Act of Parliament in regard to Presbyteries, _ib._;
decree of the General Assembly, _ib._;
the Strathbogie case, _ib._;
Dr. Chalmers and Reform, 103;
the beginning of the Free Church, _ib._;
visit of the Queen and Prince Albert, 126;
the Queen’s impression of the country and people, 127;
passing of the Education Bill, II. 591;
the great Liberal victories of 1880, _ib._;
proposed legislation by the Gladstone Government, 671;
the Universities Bill, 678;
the Sanitary Bill, 710

Seats Bill passed in the House of Commons, II. 699;
its complex character, 699-701

Sebastopol at the mercy of the Allies, I. 608;
Todleben’s genius and activity, 610;
the beginning of the bombardment, 640;
capture of the Malakoff, 671;
abandoned by the Russians, 672

Secularism, its rise in England, I. 270;
Mr. Holyoake’s views, _ib._

Sedan, Surrender of the French Emperor at, II. 370

Selborne, Lord, Lord Chancellor, II. 594.

“Senior Service,” The, II. 748

Sepoys, their dissatisfaction with British rule in India, I. 725, 726

Servants’ Provident and Benevolent Society, Founding of the, by Prince Albert, I. 363

Seymour, Admiral Sir Beauchamp (afterwards Lord Alcester), his warning to Arabi
regarding the fortifications of Alexandria, II. 642;
bombards Alexandria, _ib._;
takes possession of the town of Alexandria, _ib._;
receives a peerage in return for his services in Egypt, _ib._

Shaftesbury, Lord, his Commission of Inquiry on Mines and Collieries I. 139;
the Mines and Collieries Act, _ib._;
his Factories Act, _ib._;
the “Ten Hours Bill,” 286;
his undaunted courage, _ib._;
his withdrawal from Parliament, _ib._;
his speech against Russia, 587;
address to the Queen, asking her not to take the title of Empress, 502

Shah of Persia, The, visit to England, II. 446;
his reception, 447;
banquet in the Guildhall, 449;
his departure from London, 450;
the political element in his mission, _ib._

Shah Soojah supported by the British for the throne of Afghanistan, I. 112;
his proposed rule, 114;
his unpopularity with the Afghans, 115;
his energy and integrity, 118;
his assassination, 121

Shaw-Lefevre, Mr., Secretary to the Admiralty, I. 594

Sheffield, the disastrous flood in 1864, I. 226;
outrages by artisans, 289

Siam, Envoys from, received by the Queen, II. 667

Sibthorp, Colonel, his motion as to Prince Albert’s pension, I. 67

Sikhs, the rebellion of 1849, I. 399;
the siege of Multan, _ib._

Simpson, Dr. Young, his discovery of chloroform, I. 307

Simpson, General, his appointment to the command in the Crimea, I. 669;
his inefficiency, 671, 674

Sing, Maharajah Sir Pertab, at Windsor, II. 740

Sinkat, Massacre of the garrison of, II. 675

Sinope, The massacre of, I. 562

Slave trade, Speech on the, by Prince Albert, I. 105;
convention on the matter between England and France, 188

Sliding scale, Peel’s support of a, I. 98;
its introduction, 134

“Slumming,” II. 670

Smith, Mr. W. H., becomes First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House
of Commons, II. 734

Smith, Sir Harry, defeat of the Sikhs at Aliwal, I. 235

Sobraon, Battle of, I. 235

Solomon, Alderman, disqualified as a Jew from taking his seat in Parliament, I. 476

Soudan, Campaigns in the, II. 712-18;
evacuation of, by the British, 718

Southey, his interview with the Princess Victoria, I. 15

Spain, the revolution of 1848, I. 347;
rising in Madrid, _ib._;
dethronement of Queen Isabella, II. 323;
accession of King Amadeus, 376

Spencer, Lord, Lord President of the Council, II. 594;
Irish Viceroy, 632, 634;
his policy thrown over by the Tories, 710;
adopts Mr. Gladstone’s measure of Home Rule, 727

Spithead, Great naval review at, I. 569, 570

Stamp Duties, Discussion in Parliament on the, I. 444

Stanley, Dean, his death, II. 626;
his character, _ib._;
his biography of Dr. Arnold, _ib._;
his conciliatory influence on the Anglican Church, _ib._;
his intimate relations to the Royal Family, _ib._

Stanley, Lady Augusta, her admirable character, II. 511

Stanley, Lord, Secretary for the Colonies, I. 97;
resigns office, 207;
leader of the Protectionists, 227;
his attack on the Portuguese policy of the Russell Government, I. 352;
his discovery of an Ordnance Department scandal, 393;
proposes a vote of censure on the Russell Government, 431;
failure of his attempt to form a Cabinet, 466.
_See_ also Derby, Earl of

Stanley, Mr., his discoveries on the Congo, 683

Stansfeld, Mr., his Public Health Bill, II. 423

St. Arnaud, Marshal, his plan for the battle of the Alma, I. 607;
his death, 609

Stephenson, General, Repulse of the Arabs by, II. 718

Stephenson, George, opening of the passenger line between
Birmingham and London, I. 47

Stewart, Colonel, murdered by Arabs, II. 681

Stewart, Sir Donald, his support of the Ilbert Bill, II. 663

Stewart, Sir Herbert, at Korti, II. 712;
at Abu Klea, 713;
mortally wounded, 714

St. Leonards, Lord, Lord Chancellor, I. 499

Stockmar, Baron, his opinion as to the changes in the Prince Consort, I. 267;
his advice regarding the Russo-Turkish difficulty, 575

Stoddart, Colonel, his mission to Persia, I. 123;
his death, 124

Storey, Mr., his opposition to the vote to Prince Leopold on his marriage, II. 646

Stratford de Redcliffe, Lord, English ambassador at Constantinople, II. 549;
the nature of his negotiations, 550

Strutt, Mr. James, the Princess Victoria’s visit to his cotton mills at Belper, I. 15;
his son created a peer in 1856, _ib._

Stuart-Wortley, Mr., his Bill to legalise marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, I. 392

Sturge, Mr. Joseph, his leadership of the Chartists, I. 330;
his aims, _ib._

Suakim-Berber Railway, The, II. 718

Suez Canal, Purchase of the Khedive’s shares in, by the English Government, II. 492;
exorbitant tolls levied by the Company on the shipping trade, 662;
Mr. Gladstone’s agreement with M. de Lesseps, _ib._;
Mr. Gladstone’s agreement abandoned, _ib._

Sugar Duties, Lord John Russell’s proposal regarding the, I. 246

Sullivan, Mr. A. M., his description of Ireland during the famine, I. 275

Sullivan, Mr. T. D., his song of “God Save Ireland,” II. 288

Sunday reunions in London society, II. 732

Tait, Archbishop, his election to the See of Canterbury, II. 321, 322;
his Public Worship Regulation Bill, 471;
death of, 650

Tamanieb, The battle of, II. 675

Tay, Disaster on the railway bridge of the, II. 582

Tea Duty, Mr. Gladstone’s reduction of the, II., 238

Tel-el-Kebir, The battle of, II. 643

Tennyson, Alfred (Lord), his ode at the opening of the Great Exhibition, II. 135;
declines offer of baronetcy by Mr. Disraeli, 482

Test Act, Repeal of the, I. 23

Thanksgiving Day for recovery of Prince of Wales, II. 415;
the service of, on Jubilee Day, 744

Theebaw, King of Burmah, deposed, II. 723

Thom, Mr. John Nicholls, his religious mania, I. 39;
his murder of a constable, _ib._;
his death, _ib._

Thompson, General Perronet, his “Catechism of the Corn Laws,” I. 83

Thorburn, Mr., his portrait of Prince Albert, I. 159

“Three Acres and a Cow,” II. 726

_Times_, its opinion on the Corn Laws, I. 205;
its attack on the proposed marriage between the
Princess Royal and Prince Frederick of Prussia, II. 663;
its attacks on the Parnellites, 735

Todleben, Colonel, his great ability, I. 610;
his splendid defence of Sebastopol, _ib._

Tokar, Fall of, II. 675

Tractarian Movement, The, 98;
its principles, _ib._;
its leaders, 99;
the “Tracts for the Times,” _ib._;
opposition to its tenets, _ib._;
the term “Anglican,” _ib._;
its effect on the younger clergy, _ib._;
the spirit of revivalism, _ib._;
the apparent cogency of its arguments, 100;
its creditable qualities, 101;
letter by the Archbishop of Canterbury, 178;
Puseyite practices, 179

Trades Unions, their incentives to crime, I. 59

_Trafalgar_, Launch of the warship, at Woolwich, I. 94

Trafalgar Square, Fair Trade meetings in, II. 731;
the riots at, _ib._

Tramways, Act enabling Irish Local Authorities to construct, II. 659

Transvaal, British occupation of the, II. 563;
misrepresentations regarding the Boer wish for annexation, 599;
Mr. Gladstone’s speeches in favour of Boer independence, _ib._;
outbreak of rebellion, _ib._;
proclamation of a Republic, _ib._;
defeat of British troops at Bronkhorst Spruit, _ib._;
futile attempt of British troops to quell the rising, _ib._;
a war of re-conquest by England, 610;
defeat of Sir George Colley, 619;
defeat of the British at Majuba Hill, _ib._;
a Republic under British Protectorate, _ib._

Trevelyan, Mr. (afterwards Sir George Otto), his motion for abolition of purchase
in the army, II. 387;
Irish Secretary, 634;
suppresses “Orange” and “Green” demonstrations in Ireland, 668;
resignation of, 727;
returns to the Gladstonian party, 735

Turkey, the quarrel with Russia, I. 540;
determination to strike a blow at Montenegro, 542;
the quarrel of the monks at Jerusalem, 544;
refuses to agree to the Vienna Note, 552;
the points of contention with Russia, 555;
Turkish modifications of the Vienna Note, 556;
suspected “shuffling” from the conditions of the Treaty of Kainardji, 557;
declares war against Russia, 559;
fleet destroyed by the Russians, 562;
defeats the Russians at Silistria, 582;
treaty with Austria, 586;
the terms of peace with Russia after the Crimean War, 685-687;
mutiny in Bosnia and Herzegovina, II. 494;
the Andrassy Note, 495;
advantages secured by the policy of England, 496;
the Bulgarian atrocities, 504-503;
Lord Beaconsfield’s policy during the Russian difficulty, 511, 523, 526;
the war against Russia, 526;
English neutrality during the war, 527;
the fall of Plevna, 528;
the Anglo-Turkish Convention, 550;
refusal of concessions to Montenegro and Greece, 597;
the British fleet sent to Ragusa, 598

Ulundi, The battle of, II. 566

United States, controversy with England in regard to Oregon, I. 231;
a treaty with England ratified, 232;
the struggle on the Slave Question, II. 111;
decision of the Supreme Court regarding negroes, 114;
the contention between North and South, _ib._;
secession of the Southern States, _ib._;
outbreak of the Civil War, 115;
English sympathy with the North, _ib._;
the battle of Bull’s Run, 116;
seizure of the English steamer Trent by the Federals, _ib._;
settlement of the Trent dispute, 119;
progress of the war, 131;
the fight between the _Merrimac_ and the _Monitor_, _ib._;
the battle of Fredericksburg, 133;
embittered relations between England and America, _ib._;
efforts in England in behalf of the South, 176;
capture of Vicksburg, 177;
continuance of the war, 178;
cruisers built in English dockyards, 211;
Grant’s leadership, 219;
Sherman’s success, 222;
complete defeat of the Confederates, 238;
assassination of Lincoln, 239;
the negotiations regarding the Alabama claims, 342;
celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee in, 747

Upper Burmah annexed to the Indian Empire, II. 723

Utrecht, Treaty of, its stipulations as to the French and Spanish crowns, I. 256

Van Buren, President of the United States, Proclamation of,
regarding the rebellion, I. 33

Varna, The camp of the Allies at, I. 603;
a Council of War, _ib._

Veto Law in the Church of Scotland, I. 102

Victor Emmanuel, his agreement with the French Emperor, II. 29

Victoria, Queen, birth and parentage of her Majesty, I. 4;
her illustrious descent, _ib._;
christened at Kensington Palace, 7;
a previous monarch of her name in Britain, _ib._;
her sponsors, _ib._;
her early surroundings, 10;
her education, _ib._;
grounded in languages, music, &c., _ib._;
her general education entrusted to the Duchess of Northumberland, _ib._;
her affability, 11;
influenced by Wilberforce, _ib._;
her charity and kindness, _ib._;
her appearance in public, _ib._;
false reports regarding her health, _ib._;
anecdotes regarding her studies, 11, 12;
the Regency Bill, 14;
her progress in her studies, _ib._;
her fondness for music, _ib._;
juvenile ball in her honour by Queen Adelaide, _ib._;
additional income of £10,000 granted her by Parliament, 15;
stay in the Isle of Wight, _ib._;
visit to the Belper Mills in Derbyshire, _ib._;
visit to Oxford, _ib._;
visit to Southampton, 18;
her confirmation at St. James’s, _ib._;
an instance of her benevolence, _ib._;
her coming of age, _ib._;
her first Council, 19;
her address on the King’s death, _ib._;
proclaimed Queen, 22;
the period of her accession fortunate, _ib._;
instructed in the theory and working of the British Constitution by Lord Melbourne, 23;
residence at Buckingham Palace, 27;
addresses to the Houses of Parliament, _ib._;
her income fixed at £385,000, 30;
her business precision, _ib._;
her popularity at the beginning of her reign, 35;
foolish imputations against her, 36;
Chartist and other opponents, 38;
her generous disposition, 39;
coronation, 42, 43;
a letter to Sir R. Peel, 55;
affianced to Prince Albert, 62;
informing the Privy Council of her marriage, 63;
domestic life, 75;
fired at by Edward Oxford, 82;
birth of the Princess Royal, 83;
a royal tour, 94;
speech to Parliament, 95;
her dislike to the Tractarian Movement, 102;
birth of the Prince of Wales, 106;
attempts on her life, 110;
visit to Scotland, 126;
her impressions, 127;
departure from Edinburgh, _ib._;
letter to the Lord Advocate, _ib._;
birth of the Princess Alice, 132;
meeting with Louis Philippe, 143;
visit to Belgium, 146;
visit of the Emperor Nicholas of Russia, 159;
birth of Prince Alfred, 167;
visit to Scotland, 171;
residence at Blair Athole, _ib._;
visit of Louis Philippe, 172;
founding of the Royal Exchange, 174;
the purchase of Osborne, 179;
visit to the Continent, 195;
enthusiastic reception in Germany, 197, 198;
second visit to Louis Philippe, 198;
her admirable behaviour at the Corn Law crisis, 211;
her sympathy during the agricultural distress, 218, 219;
the Speech from the Throne in 1846, 220;
her Parliamentary instinct, 226;
letter on Peel’s resignation, 239;
anecdote of her kindness, 248;
anxiety about our foreign policy, 254;
visit to the Isle of Wight, 261;
reception of Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, _ib._;
birth of the Princess Helena, _ib._;
a letter in regard to the Prince Consort, 262;
yachting cruise in the Channel, 263;
a visit to Cornwall, 266;
visits from German friends, 267;
visit to Hatfield, 268;
her account of the installation of Prince Albert as Chancellor of Cambridge
University, 314;
visit to Scotland, 318, 320;
anxieties in 1848, 357;
birth of the Princess Louise, 364;
visit to Balmoral, 366, 367;
her plan for her children’s education, 403;
shot at by Hamilton, 406;
visit to Ireland, 409;
her Irish policy, 443;
birth of the Duke of Connaught, 452;
assaulted by Lieutenant Pate, _ib._;
birth of Prince Leopold, 567;
review of the fleet at Spithead, 584;
a letter to the King of Prussia regarding the war with Russia, 594;
her anxiety concerning the soldiers in the Crimea, 645;
decorates Crimean soldiers at Chatham Hospital, 646;
visit to France, 656-660;
visit to Aldershot, 692;
reviews the fleet, 693;
reviews the troops at Aldershot, 695;
birth of the Princess Beatrice, 738;
confers the title of Prince Consort on Prince Albert, 743;
visit to Birmingham, II. 19;
visit to the Emperor and Empress of the French at Cherbourg, 21;
visit to the Prince and Princess of Prussia, 23;
visit to Leeds, 25;
project for founding the Order of the Star of India, 40;
reviews the volunteers at Hyde Park, 64;
visit to Germany, 70;
second visit to Ireland, 87, 89;
death of the Prince Consort, 92-96;
letter on the Hartley coal-pit disaster, 138;
her deep sorrow, 143;
visit to Germany, 144;
an address from the ballast-heavers, 179;
visit to Belgium, 180;
her policy at the Danish War, 191;
first appearance in public after the Prince Consort’s death, 227;
visit to Germany, 249;
opens the Blackfriars Bridge and Holborn Viaduct, 353;
opens the hall of the London University, 377;
a garden party at Windsor, 383;
opening of the Royal Albert Hall, 409;
opening of St. Thomas’s Hospital, 410;
illness, 411;
her opposition to French decorations in England, 443;
opens the Victoria Park, 445;
visit from the Czar, 478;
the Royal Titles Bill, 499;
unveils the Scottish National Memorial at Edinburgh, 503;
proclaimed Empress of India at Delhi, 512;
her supposed pro-Turkish sympathies, 531;
visit to Hughenden, 532;
visit to Italy, 579;
cordial reception in Paris, _ib._;
visited at Baveno by Prince Amadeus of Italy, 580;
received by the King and Queen of Italy at Monza, _ib._;
visit from the Emperor of Germany at Windsor, _ib._;
Canning’s policy in India, _ib._;
visit to her relatives in Germany, 604;
arrival at Darmstadt, 606;
visit from the Crown Prince and Princess of Germany, 626;
continuation of her “Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” 686;
the tone of her “Journal” reminiscences, 687;
illness, _ib._;
visit to Germany, 692;
present at the marriage of Princess Victoria of Hesse, _ib._;
visit to Balmoral, 694;
troubled as to the issue of the political crisis arising out of the Reform
Bill, 695;
confers the Order of the Garter on Prince George of Wales, _ib._;
her pressure on the Duke of Richmond to accept a compromise
on Mr. Gladstone’s Reform Bill, 697;
her letter to Miss Gordon, 717;
holiday at Aix-les-Bains, 719;
visit to Darmstadt (1885), _ib._;
her objections to Ascot Race Week, 721;
visits the Indian and Colonial Exhibition, 731;
opens the Holloway College for Women, 732;
opens the International Exhibitions at Liverpool and Edinburgh, _ib._;
attends the Garden Party at Marlborough House, _ib._;
visits the Duke of Buccleuch, _ib._;
fixes date for celebrating her Jubilee, 733;
opens the Law Courts in Birmingham, 739;
her holiday at Cannes and Aix-les-Bains, 740;
visits the Grande Chartreuse, _ib._;
opens the People’s Palace, _ib._;
visits the “Wild West” Show, _ib._;
her Jubilee procession to Westminster Abbey, 741;
after the Jubilee service in the Abbey, 743;
reviews the seamen of the fleet, _ib._;
attends the children’s celebration of the Jubilee in Hyde Park, 747;
gives a Jubilee Banquet in Buckingham Palace, 748;
her letter to her people on the Jubilee, _ib._;
gives a Garden Party in connection with the Jubilee, _ib._;
reviews the metropolitan volunteers, _ib._;
the progress which she has seen during her reign, 751

Victoria, Lord Normanby’s resignation of the Governorship of, II. 690;
Prince Leopold’s wish to become Governor, _ib._;
the Queen opposes Prince Leopold’s proposed Governorship, _ib._

Wady Halfa, The British at, II. 718

Waghorn, Lieutenant, his inauguration of the Overland Route, I. 190

Wakley, Mr., his remarks in regard to Sir Robert Peel, I. 238

Wales, Prince of, his birth, I. 106;
title bestowed by letters patent, _ib._;
other titles by right, _ib._;
his sponsors, _ib._;
his first public appearance in a pageant of State, 418;
his stay at Königswinter, 746;
his stay at Richmond Park, II. 19;
a letter from the Queen on his reaching his eighteenth year, 26;
tour in Canada, 66;
his warm reception in the United States, 67;
visit to Germany, 90;
his tour in the East, 136-138;
his marriage to the Princess Alexandra, 144;
takes his seat in the House of Lords, 147;
birth of Prince Albert Victor, 223;
birth of Prince George Frederick, 249;
his illness, 411;
the excitement in London regarding his illness, 412;
his relapse, _ib._;
the probability of a Regency, _ib._;
all the members of the Royal Family summoned to Sandringham, _ib._;
fall in the Money Market securities on account of his serious illness, _ib._;
his rally on the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death, 413;
addresses of sympathy from Republican societies, _ib._;
his convalescence, _ib._;
a letter from the Queen to the Home Secretary, 414;
Thanksgiving Day, 415;
his popular discharge of royal duties, 442;
his financial embarrassments, 476;
State visit to India, 493;
Mr. Bright’s support of the grant for the State pageant to India, 494;
the argument that his visit might benefit the natives of India, _ib._;
visit to Germany, 606;
visit of, and Princess, to Ireland, 719

Wales, The “Rebecca” disturbances in, I. 138;
removal of the grievances, 139

Walewski, his letter to the British Government regarding the shelter of French
refugees, II. 10;
Palmerston’s impolitic reply, _ib._;
spirited protest by Lord Malmesbury, 14

Walpole, Horace, an anecdote of George III.’s coronation, I. 46

Walpole, Mr., S., his remarks on the Crimean War, I. 687;
Secretary for Home Affairs, II. 257

Ward Hunt, Mr., Chancellor of the Exchequer, II. 304;
his Budget for 1868, 312;
First Lord of the Admiralty, 465

Washington, meeting of a Commission regarding points at
issue between England
and America, II. 390

Waterloo Banquet, The Duke of Wellington’s proposal to dispense with the, I. 3

Wellington, Duke of, his proposal to dispense with the Waterloo Banquet, I. 3;
advises the formation of a Cabinet by Sir Robert Peel, 54;
his advice regarding the address to the Queen after her marriage, 66;
leader of the House of Lords, 97;
visit of the Queen and Prince Albert to Strathfieldsaye, 180;
his sympathy with Peel on Free Trade, 211;
his loyalty to the Queen, 212;
his attitude to the Russell Ministry, 242;
letter to Lord John Russell, _ib._;
his suppression of undue corporal punishment in the army, 248;
his anxiety about the defences of the country, 303;
letter to Sir John Burgoyne, _ib._;
the Queen’s courtesies, _ib._;
his defeat of the Chartist rising, 330, 335;
proposal to instal the Prince Consort his successor as
Commander-in-Chief, 451;
his opposition to the Militia Bill, 499;
his death, 508;
tributes to his memory, 509;
universally mourned, 510;
his lying in state, _ib._;
his funeral, 511;
his character, 513, 514

Westbury, Lord Chancellor, his action in favour of the
Fraudulent Trusts Bill, I. 715;
his statement in regard to the synodical condemnation of
“Essays and Reviews,” 215;
charged with corrupt practices, 242;
resigns office, 243

Westminster Abbey, Scene in, at the Jubilee Service, II. 746

Whewell, Dr., his invitation to Prince Albert to become
a candidate for the Chancellorship of Cambridge, I. 307;
his meeting with the Queen, 315

“White Terror,” The, at Calcutta, II. 7

Wilberforce, Dr. Samuel, his opposition to the Sugar Duties, I. 246, 247;
his account of Prince Albert’s installation as Chancellor
of Cambridge University, 314;
his reply to Lord Chancellor Westbury on “Essays and Reviews,” II. 217

William, German Emperor, his visit to England, I. 70;
his early campaigns, _ib._;
crowned King of Prussia, II. 91

Wilson, Sir Charles, in command of Sir H. Stewart’s column, II. 714;
his operations between Metamneh and Khartoum, 715;
arrives at Khartoum, _ib._;
his steamers fired on by the Arabs, _ib._;
wrecked in the Nile, 716;
rescued by Lord Charles Beresford, _ib._

Windham, Colonel, his bravery at the storming of the Redan, I. 671

Wiseman, Cardinal, his pastoral regarding Roman Catholicism in England, I. 450

Wolff, Sir Henry Drummond-, one of the founders of the Fourth-party, II. 594;
his obstructionist tactics, 601;
his mission to Egypt, II. 708

Wolseley, Sir Garnet, commands the British expedition to Ashanti, II. 461;
enters Coomassie in triumph, _ib._;
efforts to re-establish order in Zululand, 566;
commands the expedition against the Egyptians under Arabi, 642;
celerity of his movements, 643;
the battles of Kassassin and Tel-el-Kebir, _ib._;
created Lord Wolseley, _ib._;
arrives at Korti, 712;
leaves Dongola, 718

Wolverhampton, statue to the Prince Consort inaugurated by the Queen, II. 267;
the enthusiastic reception of the Queen, _ib._

Wood, Sir C., First Lord of the Admiralty, I. 630

Wordsworth, his ode on the installation of the Prince Consort
as Chancellor of Cambridge University, I. 310

Wyse, Mr., British envoy at Paris, I. 427

Yeh, Commissioner, Capture of, in Canton, II. 5

“Young Ireland” Party, its objects, I. 339;
the leaders of, _ib._

Zebehr Pasha named by Gordon as ruler of the Soudan, II. 711;
deportation of, to Gibraltar, _ib._

Zulu War, The, II. 563;
defeat of the British, 564;
the battle of Rorke’s Drift, _ib._;
battle of Ulundi, 566

PRINTED BY CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Nothing did more to sap and undermine the popularity of the
Government than an evasive statement of Mr. Cardwell’s as to the arms
in store. On the vote for increasing the army by 20,000 men on the
1st of August, 1870, Sir John Hay asked what was the use of voting
the money when the Government “had not 20,000 breechloaders ready for
service for the army, the militia, and volunteers.” Mr. Cardwell, in
reply, said he had 300,000 rifles “in store,” and left the House of
Commons when it rose, under the impression that the weapons were ready
for use as surplus weapons on any emergency. Of these, however, it
was subsequently admitted by Mr. Cardwell in an interview with Lord
Elcho that 100,000 were needed to meet existing demands, and that a
considerable number of the rest were in Canada.

[2] There were also many whose objection to the grant to the Princess
was based on the delusion that the Queen, by living in retirement, had
accumulated savings out of which she could well afford to dower her
daughter.

[3] A Royal warrant fixed the legal price of commissions. But they were
sold in defiance of the law at prices far above the legal ones, and
these were called “over-regulation prices.”

[4] It might be said that promotion could still be kept going on in
the regiment itself. Officers need not have then been transferred for
promotion. But in that case rich officers might have bribed their
seniors to retire. Or, the subalterns might have made up a purse by
subscription to induce one of their seniors to retire and let them each
get a step upwards.

[5] It may be mentioned that this course was suggested as a possible
one in the debate by Lord Derby.

[6] The alternative courses of a creation of new Peers, and a
dissolution, it should be noted, also involved an exercise of the Royal
Prerogative--a fact forgotten by those who denounced Mr. Gladstone as a
“tyrant” for coercing the Peers by the use of Prerogative.

[7] According to Addison, the House of Commons as far back as 1708
began to discuss the Ballot. After 1832 it became a popular cry with
the Radicals, and in the first Session of the Reformed Parliament Mr.
Grote brought in a Ballot Bill which was rejected by a majority of
211 to 106. Year after year Mr. Grote was beaten in his attempt to
carry his measure. To him succeeded Mr. Henry Berkeley, who every year
brought forward a resolution in favour of secret voting, and in 1851
even carried it by a majority of 37 against the opposition of Lord John
Russell and the Whig Government. The odious corruption and scandalous
scenes of violence which were associated with open voting at elections
gradually made Lord John and Mr. Gladstone converts to Mr. Berkeley’s
views. In 1868 the revelations of Lord Hartington’s Committee as to the
manner of conducting elections convinced the country that the Ballot
must be adopted. In 1869 another Committee on Electoral Practices
reported in favour of it.

[8] Philosophical Radicals, like Mr. Mill, disliked the Ballot because
they feared that one influence would always operate on the ignorant
elector’s mind, even in the secrecy of the polling booth--that of the
priest who had threatened him with “the pains of Hell” as a punishment
for voting on the wrong side.

[9] Mr. Disraeli, it is fair to say, had endeavoured to save the time
of the House by suggesting that there should be no debate on the Second
Reading--the discussion of the principle of the measure to be taken
on the next stage--the motion that the Speaker leave the Chair. This
arrangement was agreed to by the Government, but it provoked a mutiny
in the Conservative ranks, or rather in the section of the Party
represented by Mr. Beresford Hope, Mr. Newdegate, and Mr. G. Bentinck,
the first-named of whom jeered at Mr. Disraeli’s late Administration as
a “disorganised hypocrisy.”

[10] Mr. Gladstone and the Government supported the first, but opposed
the latter of these proposals, greatly to the annoyance of the
Radicals, who saw in it the most effective check to bribery that could
be devised.

[11] Large numbers of Liberal Peers did not even attend the debate or
the division.

[12] Previous to this Act the Unions were so far without the law, that
they could not even prosecute their office-bearers for stealing their
funds.

[13] This was given by Sir James Hannen in the case of a man called
Purchon, a member of the Glassbottlers’ Union of Yorkshire. Three
members of the Union, professing to believe certain disgraceful charges
against Purchon, procured his expulsion from that body. Then his
employers dismissed him because they were threatened with a strike
if he remained in their service. Purchon sued the three Unionists
who got him expelled from his Union for conspiring to deprive him
of employment. Mr. Justice Hannen ruled that there was an undue
interference with the rights of labour, and £300 damages were awarded
by the jury. The case of Purchon _v._ Hartley proved that though the
Unions had got rid of a limited term of imprisonment for coercion, they
were now punishable by unlimited damages.

[14] Mr. Goschen based his case on the fact that Local Government was
a chaos of areas, rating, and authorities. He proposed (1), that each
parish should have an elected chairman who, aided but not controlled
by it, should be the rating authority; (2), that county rates should
be levied by a financial board, half being elected by justices and
half by parish chairmen; (3), that a new department of State or Local
Government Board should be created to supervise local finance and
administration; (4), that rates should be split between occupier and
owner, and levied on all exempted property, such as Crown property,
charitable property, moneys, and game; (5), that the house duty
(£1,200,000 a year) should be surrendered to the local ratepayers.

[15] His estimated expenditure was £72,308,000, and his estimated
revenue £69,595,000 on the existing basis of taxation, and without any
new duties.

[16] There was to be a halfpenny stamp on boxes of wooden matches, and
a penny stamp on boxes of wax matches or fusees. It was expected that
these duties would yield £550,000 the first year. Mr. Lowe invented
a motto for the stamp--_ex luce lucellum_ (“out of light a little
profit”)--a classical pun, which, however, did not reconcile the people
to his proposals.

[17] Mr. Lowe desirous of not putting more than 1¼d. in the £ on the
income-tax, proposed to calculate it at 10s. 8d. per cent. This novel
method of calculating the tax, which was not necessary when the round
sum of 2d. in the £ was adopted, was unpopular because it was puzzling.

[18] Letters and Journals of W. Stanley Jevons, p. 252.

[19] The British Commissioners were Earl de Grey, whose services on the
Commission were rewarded by his elevation to the Marquisate of Ripon,
Sir Stafford Northcote, Mr. Montagu Bernard, and two distinguished
Canadians.

[20] One arbitrator was to be chosen by the Queen and one by the
President of the United States. The three others were to be nominated
by the King of Italy, the President of the Swiss Republic, and the
Emperor of Brazil.

[21] Lord Russell, however, took a personal rather than a Party view of
the question. He could not forget that he was individually responsible
for the occurrences and acrimonious despatches that had embittered
Americans against England.

[22] “Not an inch of our territory, and not a stone of our fortresses.”

[23] Bismarck’s personal opinion of the terms of peace was that Germany
asked too much or took too little. She should have either left France
her territory, thereby depriving her of an incitement to revenge,
or she should have broken and crushed her so utterly, that she must
have been paralysed for a century. As it was, in spite of the heavy
war-indemnity which Germany exacted, France in fifteen years recovered
herself sufficiently to render her antagonism formidable, and as a
standing inducement to a war of revenge, she had ever before her eyes
the hope of recovering Alsace, Lorraine, and her lost fortresses.

[24] Bismarck would have let the French keep Metz for a milliard more
of war-indemnity. Then with this money he would have built a fortress
to mask it somewhere about Falkenberg, or towards Saarbrücken. “I do
not like,” he said one day at dinner during the peace negotiations, “so
many Frenchmen being in our house against their will.”--Lowe’s Life of
Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 631.

[25] The terms of peace proposed by Germany to France were an indemnity
of six milliards of francs (£240,000,000), the cession of all Alsace,
including Strasburg and Belfort, a third of Lorraine including Metz.
The German Emperor, however, reduced the fine to five milliards. Von
Bismarck induced the German generals to let France keep Belfort, in
consideration of the French submitting to the triumphal march of the
German troops through Paris as far as the Arc de Triomphe.

[26] The _Agincourt_, an ironclad of 6,000 tons, was run aground on the
Pearl Rock, off Gibraltar, on the 2nd of July. The accident occurred in
broad daylight. The court-martial blamed the captain, staff commander,
and one of the lieutenants, but public opinion condemned Vice-Admiral
Wellesley, whose signals had, it was said, caused the disaster. Mr.
Goschen and the Lords of the Admiralty decided that the Admiral was to
blame for ordering an unsafe course to be steered, and compelled him to
strike his flag. The _Megæra_ was a transport ship which had been sent
to sea with her bottom honeycombed with rotten plates. On the 19th of
June the captain had to beach her to save her crew. Yet the Admiralty
officials had reported her quite seaworthy when her bottom was, as one
of her officers said, “as full of holes as an old tea-kettle.”

[27] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had been reorganised
so as to constitute a competent Court of Appellate Jurisdiction for
India and the Colonies. A certain number of judges was appointed to
it, but the Act laid it down that it was necessary for a man to be
a judge before he got one of these appointments. In November, 1871,
Mr. Gladstone was desirous of promoting Sir Robert Collier, then
Attorney-General. The Lord Chancellor accordingly made Sir Robert a
Puisne Judge so as to give him a technical qualification, and then
immediately appointed him to the Judicial Committee. It is only right
to say that personally and professionally Sir Robert Collier was well
qualified for the post.

[28] These were Mr. Peter Taylor, Professor Fawcett, and Sir Charles
Dilke. The vote for it was 352, but half of the House was absent from
the division which Mr. Taylor challenged. Mr. Taylor declared that the
people were getting tired of the Monarchy. Sir Robert Peel suggested
that if more money were granted to the Royal Family, it ought to go
to the Prince of Wales, who was doing most of the Queen’s ceremonial
duties. He had also the bad taste to sneer at the Queen’s alleged
parsimony, and insinuated that she saved for her private purse the
money voted to defray her State expenses.

[29] Some of the comments of the Press on the wedding were instructive.
The Times said: “To-day a ray of sunshine will gladden every habitation
in this island, and force its way even where uninvited. A daughter of
the people, in the truest sense of that word, is to be married to one
of ourselves. The mother is ours, the daughter is ours.” _Vanity Fair_,
a “Society” journal, considered that it was “an additional claim of the
dynasty on our loyalty that means should have been found to enable us
to keep so charming a Princess in the country.” The _Daily Telegraph_,
in describing the history of the marriage, said: “The old dragon
Tradition was routed by a young sorcerer called Love, who laughs at
precedents as heartily as at locksmiths, and has an equal contempt for
etiquette and armour _cap-à-pie_.”

[30] “When the time came for putting on the ring, the bride took off
her glove, which, with the bouquet, the Queen offered to take. The
Princess, however, evidently did not observe the gracious attention,
and handed them to Lady Florence Lennox, who let them drop. May this
be an omen that flowers may strew the ground wherever the Princess’s
future life may lead her!”--(_Standard_, 22nd March, 1871.)

[31] It may be worth while to note the precedents for marriage between
English Princesses and subjects:--Princess Elizabeth, daughter of James
I., and widow of the King of Bohemia, was supposed to have privately
married Lord Craven. Princess Mary, sister of Henry VIII., married
Charles Brandon, who was sent to escort her from France, when her
husband Louis XII. died. Three of the daughters of Edward IV. married
the heads of the families of Howard, Courtenay, and Welles; but though
Henry VI. recognised these alliances, he did not quite recognise the
title of Edward IV. Of the House of Hanover, William Henry, Duke of
Gloucester, in 1766 married the widow of Earl Waldegrave, who was the
illegitimate daughter of Sir Robert Walpole, a match which infuriated
King George III. Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, in 1771 married
Lady Anne Luttrell, daughter of Earl Carhampton, and widow of Mr.
Charles Horton, of Catton Hall, Derbyshire. The Royal Marriage Act was
passed in 1772, after which time there have been some Royal marriages
with subjects in spite of the law: (1), The Duke of Sussex married
first Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the Earl of Dunmore. After she
died, his Royal Highness married his second wife, Lady Cecilia Letitia
Buggin, daughter of Arthur, Earl of Arran, and afterwards Duchess
of Inverness. (2), George IV., while Prince of Wales, married Mrs.
FitzHerbert. (3), The present Duke of Cambridge married some years ago
Mrs. FitzGeorge.

[32] This gave rise to a curious incident. A clerk by mistake had given
the Minister the message meant for the Lords. When Mr. Gladstone read
out the words “Her Majesty relies on the attachment of the House of
Peers to concur,” the House buzzed with excitement, and the Tories
wrathfully whispered to each other that some new insult had been
devised by Mr. Gladstone for the Hereditary Chamber. Mr. Gladstone had
to explain how the mistake had been made, before tranquillity could be
restored.

[33] Mr. Bruce’s management of this affair did much to bring the
Government into contempt. When the promoters of the meeting defied
him he withdrew his prohibition. On being questioned in the House of
Commons on the subject, he explained that when he issued it he thought
that the meeting was called to petition Parliament, and no meeting can
legally be held within a mile of Parliament for that purpose. But, he
added, having found that the meeting was merely going to discuss the
grant he considered it to be a legal one, and therefore withdrew his
prohibition.

[34] Hodder’s Life of Lord Shaftesbury, Vol. III., p. 303.

[35] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 394.

[36] _Daily Telegraph_, 28th February, 1872.

[37] The boy was said to be a nephew of Feargus O’Connor, and was a
clerk in an oil-shop in the Borough. He had tried to reach the Queen’s
carriage on Thanksgiving Day, but the density of the crowd prevented
him. O’Connor, curiously enough, was not a Fenian or a Catholic, but
a Protestant youth who had turned crazy by reading “penny dreadfuls.”
In April he was tried and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and
twenty strokes with the birch. The Queen, who had long been desirous
of bestowing medals for long and faithful domestic service in her
employment, found in the attack by O’Connor an opportunity for carrying
out her idea. Her personal attendants were Highland gillies from her
Aberdeenshire estates. They had been most active in protecting her
when she was menaced by O’Connor, and on John Brown, who had been more
prominent than the others, her Majesty conferred this gold medal and an
annuity of £25. Brown had been the Prince Consort’s favourite gillie,
and, though his rough Northern manners were somewhat unprepossessing,
his personal courage, stolid fidelity, shrewd judgment, and blunt
honesty of speech, had rendered him a great favourite in the Queen’s
family.

[38] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. III., p. 393.

[39] England was admittedly not responsible for the escape of this
vessel. But the Tribunal held that because a British Colony reinforced
her crew at Melbourne after she carried the Confederate flag,
responsibility accrued.

[40] The first Election under the Ballot was at Pontefract, when Mr.
Childers was returned against Lord Pollington by a vote of 658 to
578--the registered Electors being 1,960. The Election was conducted
with unusual order, and there was no bribery or intimidation, and less
violence and drunkenness than usual.

[41] This Bill was, of course, much less drastic than the one which Mr.
Bruce withdrew in 1871. It reduced the hours of sale, strengthened the
hands of the authorities as regards supervision and the granting of new
licences, but as a sop to the Liquor Trade it gave the well-conducted
publican a kind of tenant-right by practically securing to him a
renewal of his licence.

[42] Had an Admiral with good administrative ability been appointed
Permanent Secretary to the department instead of Mr. Lushington, the
collapse of Mr. Childers’ scheme, when he was invalided, might have
been averted.

[43] Sir Massey Lopes desired that the cost of administering justice,
and the Lunacy and Police Acts--then charged on the rates--should be
thrown on the Consolidated Fund, _i.e._, transferred from the ratepayer
to the tax-payer. The county members on both sides objected to the
whole system of rating which fell not on personal, but real property,
and which threw on rates the cost of doing work which was done not
merely for the locality, but for the community at large. The Ministry
maintained that it was impossible to give effect to Sir Massey Lopes’
ideas till the whole question of Local Government and Rating was taken
up and settled on a sound basis.

[44] The limit of abatement was also raised from incomes of £200 to
£300, and the abatement itself from £60 to £80. The duty on coffee
and chicory was reduced, and shops and warehouses were exempted from
house-tax.

[45] This was founded on the 19th of May, 1870, in the Bilton Hotel,
Sackville Street, Dublin. The chief Conservatives present were Mr.
Purdon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), Mr. Kinahan (Ex-High Sheriff of Dublin),
Major Knox (proprietor of the _Irish Times_), and Captain (afterwards
Colonel) King-Harman. Mr. Butt moved the chief resolution, which was
unanimously carried, affirming that “The true remedy for the evils of
Ireland is the establishment of an Irish Parliament with full control
over our domestic affairs.”

[46] Lord Russell in this letter, says:--“It appears to me that if
Ireland were to be allowed to elect a Representative Assembly for each
of its four Provinces of Leinster, Ulster, Munster, and Connaught, and
if Scotland in a similar manner were to be divided into Lowlands and
Highlands, having for each Province a Representative Assembly, the
local wants of Ireland and Scotland might be better provided for than
they are at present.” There was reason to suppose that the Birmingham
School of Radicals in 1886 had almost summoned up courage to adopt the
Home Rule scheme which the veteran Whig statesman propounded in 1872.

[47] Burma, As it Was, As it Is, and As it Will Be. By J. George Scott
(“Shway Yoe”). London: Redway, 1886-7. P. 34.

[48] The British representative at Mandalay, besides complaining of
perpetual encroachments on the Arakan frontier, declared that he was
not allowed to see the King of Burma unless he took off his shoes and
sat before him on the floor in his stockings.

[49] See a letter written by Mr. Hayward to Mr. Gladstone, in the
correspondence of Mr. Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 252.

[50] What their motive was for this act has not yet been clearly
stated. It was said at the time that they thought by opposing it to
induce the Protestants to let it pass. Their opposition, however, as
explained by themselves, was (1), The Bill did not endow a Catholic
University. The Tories had promised to do so in 1866, and therefore the
Catholics might profitably wait till Mr. Disraeli returned to power.
(2), The Bill, by endowing Professorships of academical subjects--not
including History and Philosophy--was really one for founding a new
“Godless college.” (3), Other students than those trained in affiliated
colleges--scholars educated by private study, in fact--were admitted
to degrees. (4), As the constitution of the new University stood, the
Catholics would have to wait for many years ere they could command even
a large minority in the new University constituency.

[51] They were Mr. Fawcett, Mr. Horsman, who had approved of the Bill
at first, Mr. Bouverie, Mr. McCullagh Torrens, Mr. Aytoun, Mr. Akroyd,
Mr. Foster, Mr. Auberon Herbert, and Mr. Whalley.

[52] These clauses do not seem to have been essential to the main
object in view, which was to give the Catholics a chance of getting
University degrees of high status, and a fair share of the University
endowments of the nation. The new “Godless” chairs were not needed if
the Catholics did not want them, for the Protestants could always get
their instruction in Trinity College.

[53] Sir William Stirling Maxwell was a representative of the most
popular phase of Toryism, and in a special sense reflected the mind of
his party in hankering after Lord Derby as a leader. Writing to Mr.
Hayward in September, 1872, he says of Lord Derby:--“I know no man
whose daily talk reflects more constantly the good sense and fairness
of his speeches. It is some consolation to those who still believe that
Conservatism may have some backbone left to have a prospective leader
with so much ballast in his character.” The Conservatives did not trust
Mr. Disraeli’s Conservatism even in 1873, just because they suspected
it lacked backbone and ballast.

[54] Mr. Gladstone combined this office with that of the Premiership.
Sir Robert Walpole, Lord North, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Canning, and Sir Robert
Peel had each held the two offices simultaneously.

[55] For example, in 1873 the Public Accounts showed a Postal
expenditure of £5,000,000; but then, on the other side of the ledger,
the nation was credited with £5,000,000 of receipts earned by the
Post-office. The Tory financial critics could not be got to see that
the only right way of comparing the real expenditure of a Government
at any two selected dates is to deduct from the gross sum moneys which
come in aid of outlay, and which are yet not taxes, and then compare
the results.

[56] Mr. Disraeli’s Government need not be blamed too harshly
for letting the Army alone. Till the fall of the Second Empire
Parliament would probably not have voted the money or passed the
measures necessary to put an end to the chaotic confusion and Crimean
inefficiency of the military system under which orators used to declare
“British troops had ever marched to victory.” But Mr. Corry, Mr.
Disraeli’s First Lord of the Admiralty, had no such excuse for his
neglect to build first-class ironclads. Even the Manchester Radicals
would have voted him the money for that purpose had he been courageous
enough to confess what was the truth, namely, that when he took office
the British Navy was behind the age, and as a fighting force pitiably
weak and obsolete. Another costly blunder was committed by Mr. Corry.
He had not firmness enough to silence clamorous claims for commissions.
Hence he over-officered the Navy, till it almost seemed at one time as
if he meant to man his line-of-battle ships with his redundant admirals
and his superfluous captains.

[57] This was due, however, not so much to the action of the Government
as to the falling-in of terminable annuities, which reduced the charges
for the National Debt.

[58] Of course the Queen cannot prevent a man from receiving a
Foreign decoration, and he can wear it in Society without incurring
prosecution, just as he might, if vulgar enough, wear a masonic star
of the cheeseplate order of architecture on his breast. But he cannot
wear it at Court, and the grievance of the British snob is that the
Queen’s objection to his accepting a Foreign Order prevents Foreign
Governments--except semi-barbarous ones--from bestowing it on him.
Queen Elizabeth said that “she did not like her dogs to wear any
collar but her own.” It is not so generally known that the Queen’s
grandfather, George III., whose metaphors were usually of a more
pastoral character than those of the great Tudor Princess, expressed
the same feeling when he said that he “liked his sheep to wear his own
mark.”

[59] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 308.

[60] If, for example, the Prince of Wales and his children died,
the Duke of Edinburgh would have succeeded him. The succession to
the English throne, unlike that to most European Sovereignties, is
governed by the same law which regulates the succession to all Scottish
dignities and most of the very ancient English baronies, namely,
descent is to heirs general, male or female; but then all males must
be exhausted ere the right of the females accrues. Thus the Duke stood
before his elder sisters and their families in the line of succession.

[61] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 317 and 318.

[62] This was the letter to “My dear Grey,” in which Mr. Disraeli
accused the Ministry of a policy of “blundering and plundering.” As
they were in power solely because he had refused office, the attack of
course recoiled on his own party.

[63] A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol.
II., p. 254.

[64] It was unjustly said that Mr. Gladstone offered to abolish the
Income Tax as an electoral bribe. The fact was that he was under a
recorded pledge to Parliament to take off the Income Tax when the
finances admitted of its repeal. That was the condition on which he had
been allowed to impose it when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in
1853. As the vast majority of the electors were not Income Tax payers,
the proposal could not possibly be an effective electoral bribe.

[65] Another difficulty for the Independent Elector was that of seeing
how Mr. Gladstone could abolish the Income Tax. Mr. Disraeli, who soon
began to repent his haste in trying to outbid Mr. Gladstone on this
point, suggested that difficulty in a speech at Newton Pagnell. He did
not withdraw from his declaration that he desired to get rid of the
Income Tax. But, he said, “If Mr. Gladstone asks me ‘are you prepared
to repeal the Income Tax by means of imposing other taxes?’ I am bound
to say it is not a policy I should recommend.” Mr. Gladstone never
divulged his plan. It is, however, obvious that he could have easily
got rid of the worst features of the Income Tax by readjusting the
House Duty. A House Duty, Mr. Mill said, is the fairest of all direct
taxes, and a man’s house-rent is--with certain exceptions--a sure guide
to his means and substance. If, for example, Mr. Gladstone had put 1s.
6d. in the £ on all houses above £10 rental, or if he had graduated
the duties from 4d. to 3s. in the £ on rentals of from £10 to over
£300, he could have supplied the place of the Income Tax which yielded
£4,875,000. The difference would have been this--that a man with £200
of income, presumably paying £25 a year for his house, would--less 9d.
of existing house duty--have paid at the 1s. 6d. rate 18s. 9d. a year
of “a means and substance” tax on his rent, instead of the £2 10s. he
then paid in Income Tax. The relief of local rates might have been
obtained by handing over the old House Tax or a portion of it to the
local authorities.

[66] Mr. Clare Sewell Read was made Secretary to the Local Government
Board, of which Mr. Sclater-Booth was made President. Sir M.
Hicks-Beach became Irish Secretary. Sir H. Selwin Ibbetson was
Under-Secretary at the Home Office. Mr. R. Bourke was Under-Secretary
for Foreign Affairs. Lord Sandon was Vice-President of the Council,
Lord George Hamilton was Under-Secretary for India, Sir C. Adderley
President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Algernon Egerton Secretary to the
Admiralty, and Lord Henry Lennox Chief Commissioner of Works.

[67] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 258.

[68] It was supposed that Mr. Disraeli would prevent the inevitable
grammatical blunder from creeping into the Queen’s Speech. But it crept
in here, greatly to the delight of the pedants. They pointed out that
it was wrong to speak of “the recent Act of Parliament affecting the
_relationship_ of master and servant.” The word cannot be used, they
argued, instead of _relation_, to denote a relative position which is
temporary or official.

[69] To those who had the advantage of taking no personal interest in
these transactions, Mr. Gladstone’s statement reads like the apology
of a Minister who was “riding for a fall.” He was admittedly pledged
to the House of Commons since 1853, to abolish the Income Tax when he
had a sufficient surplus. Instead of redeeming his pledge in 1874 to
the House, he took it to an electorate that had no existence in 1853,
and who, even if they had been competent to the task, could not have
given a fair decision on such a point in the turmoil of elections
which seemed purposely hurried through in a few days. Mr. Gladstone,
moreover, never defended his proposal at length. Had he really desired
to carry it, he would have submitted it to Parliament--for the House of
Lords, whose hostility he affected to dread, could not constitutionally
have meddled with it--and then if, after exhaustive discussion in
the Commons it had been defeated, he could have appealed to a nation
sufficiently instructed by that discussion to pronounce a rational
opinion on the question. As it was, the matter hardly entered into the
election controversies of 1874 at all.

[70] “We find,” said Mr. Hardy, “the stores so full and efficient that
we can dispense with the payment of £100,000 on this head.” As to arms,
he remarked that “in a few weeks the whole of the infantry will, I
hope, have the Martini-Henry rifle. By to-morrow there will be 140,000
Martini-Henry rifles in store, and during the year there will be a
further number of 40,000 provided.” After dilating on the abundance
of ammunition in stock and the sufficiency of the Reserves, Mr. Hardy
said of the Volunteers that the original number of them was 199,000,
“far, however, from efficient men,” whereas the number in 1874, though
only 153,000, consisted of thoroughly efficient men, who were “far
more worth having than what formerly existed.” The fortifications,
he said, were of “the most efficient character.” He even praised the
Intelligence Department, the formation of which had been a favourite
subject of denunciation by the Tory “Colonels.”

[71] The most curious result of this reform was the increase which took
place in pauper lunacy. Sir Stafford Northcote, in fact, offered Boards
of Guardians the strongest temptation to get their senile paupers
quartered on the State as pauper lunatics. All that was necessary for
that purpose was a certificate from a pliable medical officer.

[72] The hours against which the publicans had agitated were twelve
in London, and in other places any hour between five and seven in
the morning, till any hour between ten and twelve at night, as the
magistrates might decide.

[73] Mr. Cross held that the extension of the hours from twelve to
half-past twelve at night was not a real extension. Under the former
rule the publican had “grace” given him to clear his bar. Under Mr.
Cross’s Bill closing was imperative at half-past twelve. Then Mr. Cross
put a stop to certain public-houses being kept open to one in the
morning, which Mr. Bruce had allowed, and the fixing of the hours at
ten and eleven, in very many cases, led to further restrictions.

[74] Life of Norman Macleod, D.D., Vol. II., p. 325.

[75] _Times_, October 1, 1874.

[76] Prince Arthur was the first of his line who took as his superior
dignity a title from Ireland. Several Princes and Princesses of England
bore Irish titles, _e.g._, the Queen herself is Countess of Clare, but
they were secondary ones, and denominated inferior dignities.

[77] Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 321.

[78] _Times_, May 11, 1874.

[79] _Spectator_, May 23, 1874.

[80] Mr. Carlyle refused the offer, though he had accepted the Prussian
Order of Merit.

[81] England Under Lord Beaconsfield, by P. W. Clayden, p. 120.

[82] Mr. Disraeli was blamed for ungenerous discourtesy to Lord
Hartington on his first appearance as Opposition Leader. But there
was a good justification for the Premier’s contemptuous reply. Lord
Hartington’s taunts were foolishly factious, because he had, in a
speech at Lewes (21st of January), already defended the Tory Government
for not attempting to undo Liberal work, which was, as he put it,
“irrevocable.”

[83] The Bill had these defects: (1), It was permissive and not
compulsory. (2), It forced local authorities to compensate owners of
insanitary dwellings doomed to destruction. The worse the rookeries
the higher the rents, and the more extravagant the compensation, so
that the Bill put a premium on the creation of rookeries. (3), It
enacted that workmen’s houses must be rebuilt on the cleared land.
This rendered it impossible to sell the sites at prices covering the
cost of clearing them, so that local authorities had (_a_) to keep the
land on hand in the hope of getting their price, during which time the
displaced inhabitants were pushed into adjoining neighbourhoods already
overcrowded; or (_b_) after five years to sell the sites by auction at
a loss. On the 4th of July, 1879, the Metropolitan Board of Works sold
some of their sites to the Peabody Trustees at a loss of £600,000 to
the ratepayers of London.

[84] This Act deprived the Peers of their Appellate Jurisdiction.

[85] Hansard, Vol. CCXXIII., p. 1458.

[86] See Hansard, Vol. CCXXVIII., p. 1488. Mr. Heywood got £3,000
compensation.

[87] He complained that the Government had gone to Messrs. Rothschild
for the purchase-money instead of to their regular financial agents,
and paid them a commission equal to 15 per cent. a year on the advance.
He declared that the Khedive would probably fail to pay his 5 per
cent. on the purchase-money, and that England, in any dispute as a
shareholder, would have to sue and be sued in a French court. As
trustee for the nation the Government ought, he said, to insist on low
tariffs. As a shareholder it must, however, insist on high dividends.
The purchase, he held, would give England no real influence at the
Board of Direction.

[88] Mr. Gladstone once cited the Channel as “the silver streak,”
which was the best defence of England against the Continent, and a
justification for a Foreign Policy of isolation.

[89] When a Bill was approaching one of the stages at half-past twelve,
Mr. Biggar or Mr. Parnell would get up and speak so as to protract
debate till the hour came when opposed business must be postponed.

[90] The Parnell Movement, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P. Popular Edition, p.
157.

[91] See Hodder’s Life of Lord Shaftesbury, Vol. III., pp. 367, 371.

[92] Hansard, Vol. CCXXX., p. 1182.

[93] See Macgahan’s Letters and Consul-General Schuyler’s Report to the
United States Minister at Constantinople, cited in the Appendix, pp. 22
_et seqq._

[94] It was not possible that the Czar could have seen a telegraphic
summary of Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall speech when he spoke to the
nobles at Moscow.

[95] 160,000 men, and 648 guns.

[96] Sir S. Northcote spoke at Bristol on the 13th of November, and Mr.
Cross at Birmingham a week later.

[97] It was at this time that Tory partisans and Ministerial organs,
in order to encourage the Turks to resistance, began to denounce Lord
Salisbury as a traitor.

[98] A fashionable skating-rink did poor business in 1876 if it did not
return a profit of 300 per cent., and a good patent for a rinking-skate
was worth at least £150,000 to a popular inventor.

[99] See Parliamentary Papers, Turkey (1877), No. 78.

[100] Even in 1877 some of the Tory squires were practising the
old stupid method of obstruction, _e.g._, Mr. Orr Ewing and Sir
William Anstruther put down 250 Amendments to the Scotch Roads and
Bridges Bill--most of which, when not frivolous, were unpopular and
reactionary. Such obstruction was, of course, easy to deal with.

[101] On the 26th of March the House got one of its earliest lessons in
the new art of scientific obstruction. Mr. Parnell had, owing to the
popular lines on which some of his amendments were drawn up, got about
eighteen members at this time to act with him. But even they deserted
him when, at one in the morning, Mr. Biggar moved to “report progress.”
The division showed--Ayes, 10, Noes, 138. Mr. Biggar and his friends
then kept up a series of see-saw motions--for adjournment and reporting
progress, till at three in the morning Mr. Cross succumbed, and having
struck his flag, assented to the rising of the House. Then Mr. Biggar
and his friends pathetically wailed over the scandalous manner in
which the House had had two hours of its valuable time wasted by the
Home Secretary, whose surrender was cited as a justification of their
opposition.

[102] This was fifteen minutes earlier than the hour at which it rose
in the Debate on the Address in 1783. See Clayden’s England Under Lord
Beaconsfield, p. 302.

[103] This was a popular move, for it was generally felt that Ireland
not only had too many Judges, but that they were extravagantly overpaid.

[104] Mr. F. H. O’Donnell actually put down seventy-five amendments to
it.

[105] The motion was moved by Sir George Campbell.

[106] It was never known what Sir Stafford Northcote meant to do. But
it was supposed he would, with the support of Lord Hartington, move the
expulsion of the “obstructives.”

[107] The Estimates for the past year had been closely realised. For
the coming year (1877-78) the revenue was taken at £78,794,000, and the
expenditure at £79,020,000.

[108] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 343.

[109] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIX.

[110] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 357.

[111] Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., pp. 206, 273.

[112] See a letter from Mr. Hayward to Mr. Sheridan, dated 3rd
November, 1876. Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., p. 271.

[113] See Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., pp. 266 and 268.

[114] Mr. Carlyle presumably got his information from the highest
German authorities.

[115] Carlyle’s Life in London, by T. A. Froude, Vol. III., p. 441.

[116] Consols fell three-eighths.

[117] Mr. George Jacob Holyoake was the first to characterise these
patriots as “Jingoes,” deriving the epithet from their own anthem. See
his letter in the _Daily News_, March 13, 1878.

[118] These were (1), Bulgarian autonomy north of the Balkans; (2),
guarantees of good government for the other Turkish provinces; (3),
cession of Batoum, and retrocession of Bessarabia to Russia.

[119] Nobody gave a more vivid picture of the divided state of the
nation at this time than Mr. Trevelyan, who had been one of the most
active of those who forced Mr. Gladstone to withdraw his Resolutions.
Speaking at Galashiels on the 10th of December he said, the desire to
fight “is almost universal amongst idlers, and gossips, fashionable
aspirants, and the habitual frequenters of the London burlesques and
music-halls. The determination to keep at peace is almost universal
among the great mass of the population which produces the wealth of
this country, and which makes us respected and powerful among nations.
My experience is that the division is not, as is generally described,
one of class, but of personal habits and character. If you meet a
man who does an honest stroke of work on every week-day, whether he
be manufacturer, or artisan, or tradesman, or barrister, it is ten
to one that he wishes his country to leave this quarrel to be fought
out by those whom it concerns. If you meet a man who amuses himself
for fifteen hours out of the twenty-four, and sleeps the rest, it
is ninety-nine to one but he thinks we should send an ultimatum to
Russia as soon as she crosses the Balkans, and that he regards Lord
Beaconsfield as a second Chatham, who is robbed of his opportunities
by his more timid colleagues.” It ought to be said that the Liberals
had also their “idlers” and sentimental crochet-mongers, who were
eager to join Russia in fighting the “anti-human” Turk, and who had
the advantage of Mr. Gladstone’s personal leadership. Of course the
partisans of Lord Beaconsfield vied with the partisans of Mr. Gladstone
in pouring forth contempt on the English people, for their sordid
determination to tie the restless and mischief-making hands of these
two enterprising politicians.

[120] One finds in the advertising columns of the _Era_, strangely
enough, a side-light on the Eastern policy of the Court at this period.
A Mr. Charles Williams, who advertised himself as singing “the greatest
war song on record” at four music-halls, added to his advertisement the
following letter:--“Lieutenant-General Sir T. M. Biddulph has received
the Queen’s commands to thank Mr. Charles Williams for the appropriate
verses contained in his letter of the 18th inst., and her Majesty fully
appreciates his motives.” One of the verses ran thus:--

“Bruin thinks we’ve been asleep; but a watch we’ve had to keep,
Knowing well the value of his word;
Look with many a skilful lie how they’ve blinded every eye,
Till the Lion’s grand impatience now is heard;
For every British heart would burn to take a part
To fling the Russian lies back in their face;
And to teach them, as of old, that Briton’s hearts are bold,
And would die to save our country from disgrace.”

--_Vide Era_, February 20, 1878. The song was sung at the Metropolitan
Music Hall, in connection with a ballet called “Cross and Crescent
War.” When the Royal letter was pointed out to Count Schouvaloff, that
easy-tempered diplomatist merely shrugged his shoulders. It may be
mentioned incidentally that a study of the popular songs cf the period
reflects faithfully the shifting moods of the London mob during the
Eastern Controversy.

[121] Turkey III. (1878), No. 1.

[122] Russia in July had pledged herself not to meddle with the
Suez Canal, or with Egypt, or to menace the Persian Gulf. As to
the Dardanelles, the position of the Straits “should,” said Prince
Gortschakoff, “be settled by a common agreement upon equitable or
efficiently guaranteed bases.” Constantinople, in his opinion, “could
not be allowed to belong to any of the European Powers;” and on the
20th of July the Czar further enforced this pledge by telling Colonel
Wellesley that he would not occupy Constantinople merely for military
_prestige_, but only if events forced him to do so.--_See_ Russia II.
(1877), No. 2; and Turkey III. (1878), No. 2.

[123] Hansard, Vol. CCXXXVII., p. 31.

[124] Sir Stafford Northcote gave another reason. Mr. Layard, on the
24th, telegraphed that the question of the Bosphorus was to be settled
between the Czar and a Congress. Next morning, the 25th, it was found
that by a blunder the clerk had written “Congress” instead of “Sultan.”
It was on this account, said Sir S. Northcote, that the orders to the
Fleet were withdrawn. In other words, when on the 24th the Government
believed--if by this time they really believed any of Mr. Layard’s
telegrams--that the question of the Bosphorus was to be settled in
accordance with Russia’s pledges to England, the Fleet was sent to
Constantinople. But when they found this to be a mistake, and that the
Czar was going to settle the question in defiance of his pledges to
England, the Fleet was ordered back to Besika Bay!

[125] His place at the Colonial Office was filled by Sir M.
Hicks-Beach, Mr. James Lowther becoming Irish Secretary.

[126] Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone were, however, among those who voted
against the Grant.

[127] See Sir Stafford Northcote’s statement in the House of Commons,
_Times_, 29th April, 1878.

[128] It is, however, but fair to Lord Derby to say that though all the
Tory speakers and writers assumed this to be his object, his obstinacy
might be due to another and more honourable motive. He probably
persuaded himself that the refusal of Russia implied that she meant to
object to the discussion of Articles that in the opinion of the Powers
affected their interests as well as hers.

[129] Mr. Charles Greville dwells on one of these ebullitions of
patrician rowdyism with much anger. (_See_ Memoirs, Part III.). At
the same time, it is but fair to say that the Peelites had given the
Tories just provocation. Lord Aberdeen had led the Tory leaders to
believe that, whenever they abandoned Protection, they (the Peelites)
would return to the Tory fold, and reunite the Conservative Party.
Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli did abandon Protection, incurring great
obloquy from their followers. But the Peelites declined to fulfil
their part of the implied bargain, and, having got all they wanted out
of the Protectionists--a recantation of their principles--not only
refused to join them, but attacked them with the Whigs. Mr. Gladstone
was supposed to have inspired what Lord Hardwicke, in a letter to Mr.
Croker, denounced as a “disgraceful” manœuvre due to “personal pique
and hatred.”--_See_ Croker Papers; also an article in the _Observer_,
Feb. 13, 1887, p. 3.

[130] It ought to be said that Lord Derby’s ablest apologist, Mr. T.
Wemyss Reid, in an article in _Macmillan’s Magazine_ for June, 1879,
advanced a fair defence for his hesitancy to work zealously with the
European Powers. Mr. Reid asserts, and in a manner which commands
respectful attention, that Lord Derby knew that as far back as 1873
Russia, Germany, and Austria had entered into a secret agreement to
upset the _status quo_ in Turkey. No historian can presume to pass a
final judgment on Lord Derby’s career at the Foreign Office without
carefully studying this remarkable article. It explains much that is
otherwise inexplicable in Lord Derby’s policy, and had it been an
official _communiqué_ it would have been almost conclusive.

[131] Lord Salisbury said, in reply to Lord Grey, in the House of
Lords, that the statements in the _Globe_ were “wholly unauthentic.”
Lord Grey said he could not have believed it to be true that Lord
Salisbury had agreed to the retrocession of Bessarabia. “It appeared,”
he said, “to be too monstrous to be believed that her Majesty’s
Government could have made such a stipulation as was agreed to”--an
observation which Lord Salisbury ratified by his silence.--Hansard,
Vol. CCXL., p. 1061.

[132] The words of Bismarck’s Circular were:--“While addressing this
invitation to the ---- Government, the Government of his Majesty [the
German Emperor] supposes that the ---- Government, in accepting the
invitation, consents to allow free discussion of the contents of the
Treaty of San Stefano in their totality, and that it is ready to take
part in it.” It is curious to notice how persistently Russia refused
to yield even verbally, and after signing the Secret Agreement, to the
English demand. As the Vienna correspondent of the _Times_ said, “the
formula of invitation is a compromise. While doing full justice to the
full demand of England for free discussion of the Treaty of San Stefano
in its totality, it contrives to spare the susceptibilities of Russia.
Germany steps in and supposes that none of the Governments invited will
object to a free discussion. In issuing invitations on this hypothesis,
Germany gives a moral guarantee that it will be so; and Russia, who has
hitherto objected to such a course, is not distinctly asked to withdraw
this opposition, but only gives her consent, like the other Powers,
to a Congress convoked by Germany for the purpose.”--_Times_ Vienna
Correspondent, 4th June, 1878. The effect of this formula was to make
Prince Bismarck absolute master of the Congress after acceptance of
his invitation. He alone had given a guarantee that the Treaty should
be fully discussed. He alone was therefore entitled at every stage to
define what he meant by the phrase, “in its totality.”

[133] Sir M. Hicks-Beach, on the 12th of June, gave his Party and the
country further assurances on this head in a speech at Cheltenham, in
which he said that the main points in Lord Salisbury’s Circular of
the 1st of April would be adhered to by the British representatives
at the Congress. This statement, of course, recoiled on him in the
most damaging manner when, on the 14th, it was found that what the
Ministerialists considered to be main points had been bargained away to
Russia in Lord Salisbury’s Secret Agreement of the 30th of May.

[134] Lord Houghton, as a supporter of the Ministerial Foreign Policy,
said:--“Even if the surrender which we are required to make according
to this document is one to which the country would give its consent,
it would have been better that the fact should have appeared at the
Congress than that it should have been made known by this paper [the
_Globe_]. It now stands before the world that England did not go into
the Congress with free hands, but before going into it had made a
contract, and had, in the main, abandoned some of the most important
points which I and other Members of the House considered it was the
duty of this country to insist upon.”--Hansard, Vol. CCXL., p. 1569 _et
seq._

[135] The proceedings against Mr. Marvin were withdrawn. He pleaded
that copying on paper did not amount to theft, and his legal advisers
threatened a cross-examination of the Foreign Office officials (whose
laxity of administration was obvious), which determined the Government
to retreat.

[136] Afghan Correspondence I., pp. 242, 243.

[137] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 375.

[138] The death of the child here alluded to was that of her little son
Fritz, who accidentally fell from one of the palace windows on the 29th
of May, 1873.

[139] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and
Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 385.

[140] Dr. Sell, a good clergyman of Darmstadt, who was entrusted with
her papers and her correspondence with the Queen, and who knew the
Princess well during the greater part of her Darmstadt life.

[141] _See_ South African Correspondence (C 2220), pp. 136-320.

[142] _Nineteenth Century_, March, 1879.

[143] Sir M. Hicks-Beach censured Frere for not sending his _ultimatum_
home for approval before delivering it. In fact, Frere’s claim was
virtually that a Colonial Governor had the right to declare war without
consulting the Crown or Parliament. The majority that supported the
Government in the Lords was 61. In the Commons Sir C. Dilke’s motion
was defeated by a majority of 60.

[144] Mr. Parnell was not formally elected leader. After Mr. Butt’s
retirement, in 1878, the Irish party elected, not a leader, but a
Sessional Chairman. The office was filled by Mr. Shaw during 1879.

[145] Hansard, Vol. CCXLVII, p. 53.

[146] It must be mentioned that Lord Hartington had in a previous
speech haughtily repudiated all responsibility for the action of
Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Hopwood, and other Radicals who had now allied
themselves with the Parnellites.

[147] These warnings were published at Lahore from Persian newswriters
in Cabul. They showed that even as far back as the 16th of August the
Ameer had implored Cavagnari not to ride about the streets, as he ran
the risk of being murdered. At this time Lord Lytton was assuring
the Government, on the authority of messages which he alleged he had
received from Cavagnari, that all was going on well in Cabul.

[148] Colonel Osborn, in an article in the _Contemporary Review_ for
October, 1879, estimated that a British army 40,000 strong would be
needed to occupy Afghanistan.

[149] His “settlement” of Zululand organised the country into thirteen
provincial governments, a British Resident controlling them all.
Native rights, laws, and customs were to be respected, and Europeans
prohibited from emigrating into native territory.

[150] This is clear from the censure passed by the Duke of Cambridge
on Colonel Harrison, Assistant Quartermaster-General. The Duke blamed
Harrison for not impressing on the Prince “the duty of deferring to
the military orders of the officer who accompanied him.” Of course,
if Carey had been in command, there would have been no need to have
impressed on the Prince (who had graduated in the military school at
Woolwich) the necessity for obeying the orders of Carey, who would, in
that case, have been his superior officer.

[151] The gap torn out of the bridge--the whole length of which was
10,612 feet--measured 3,300 feet. Of the eighty-five spans, the first
twenty-seven from the Fife coast were left intact. Then came thirteen
of which only the stonework remained, everything else being swept away.
This left forty-five spans on the northern side standing. The bridge
had been tested and certified as safe by Government inspectors. An
inquiry was ordered into the disaster, which showed that the bridge
was, in the words of Mr. Rothery, one of the Court of Inquiry, “badly
designed, badly constructed, and badly maintained.” For the mishap the
engineer--Sir Thomas Bouch--was held “mainly to blame.” The bridge,
which from a distance looked like a long plank set up on pipe-shanks,
cost £500,000. It was opened on the 30th of May, 1878.

[152] There were seventy-five adults, and from ten to fifteen children.
The bodies were nearly all washed away by the tide.

[153] Dr. Köller, a Church of England clergyman, employed by the Church
Missionary Society in Constantinople, had engaged Ahmed Tewfik, a
Mohammedan schoolmaster, to help him to translate the Scriptures into
Turkish. Ahmed and the MSS. were seized, and the former adjudged worthy
of death by the Sheik-ul-Islam. For three months Sir Henry Layard had
vainly demanded his release, and the dismissal of the Minister of
Police, Hafiz Pasha, from his post.

[154] Hafiz was one of the savages, whose share in the Bulgarian
atrocities was so patent, that Lord Derby had demanded his punishment.
The answer to this demand by the Turks was the appointment of Hafiz as
Minister of Police at Constantinople, where he and Sir Henry Layard
suddenly fell out.

[155] He had given the Lord-Lieutenancy of a county to Colonel
King-Harman.

[156] Loans to Baronial Sessions for improvement works were virtually
loans to the landlords.

[157] Nobody knew better than Lord Beaconsfield, from his experiences
of 1846, that the potato is the barometer of Famine in Ireland, and
it is impossible to suppose that he would have been satisfied with
Mr. Lowther’s Bill if he had looked into the facts. For these all
pointed to a dreadful failure of the potato crop. In 1876 its value
was £12,464,382. In 1878 it was only £7,579,512. In 1879 it fell to
£3,341,028. In England a crisis like this would have compelled the
Government to take strong measures of relief, and yet in England such
a state of affairs is always eased by the landlords abating or wiping
out rent. But the distress in Ireland was aggravated because the worse
it grew the fiercer became the demand of the landlords for rent.
“Evictions,” writes Mr. J. Huntley McCarthy, “had increased from 463
families in 1877 to 980 in 1878, to 1,238 in 1879; and they were still
on the increase, as was shown at the end of 1880, when it was found
that 2,110 families were evicted.” Moreover, the Irish peasantry paid
part of their rent out of wages earned as migratory labourers during
part of the year in England and Scotland. But English and Scottish
farmers were themselves cutting down their labour bills, and the loss
to the Irish on migratory labour alone in 1877 was £250,000 (Hancock).
See Healy’s “Why is there a Land Question?” pp. 71, 72; O’Connor’s
“Parnell Movement,” pp. 166-7. J. H. McCarthy’s “England under
Gladstone,” p. 103.

[158] The new Rule was to the effect that a Member “named” by the
Speaker or Chairman for obstruction might be suspended for the rest of
the sitting on a motion voted without debate; and if he repeated the
offence three times, he might be suspended for an indefinite period
till pardoned by the House.

[159] These were Barnstaple, Liverpool, and Southwark. At Barnstaple
the Liberal (Lord Lymington) increased the Liberal majority by 60
votes. But Sir R. Carden increased the Tory minority by 99. In
Liverpool Mr. Whitley was returned by a majority of 2,221, though
Lord Ramsay, the losing candidate, polled 3,000 more votes than the
winning candidate had ever polled before. Southwark (vacated by the
death of Mr. Locke, a strong Radical) was carried by Mr. Edward Clarke,
a strong Conservative, by a large majority. Lord Beaconsfield’s
calculations were here faulty. The verdict of Barnstaple, being a
corrupt constituency, went for nothing on either side. In Liverpool
the Tories maintained their ascendency, but not at all with the
proportionate majority they obtained in 1874. Southwark was dominated
by the publican vote, and the Liberal candidate (Mr. Dunn) was not
only a bad speaker, but especially hateful to the working-class,
because he had, by insisting on standing at a former election, ruined
the candidature of Mr. Odger, and, by splitting the Liberal vote, had
handed over the second seat in Southwark to Colonel Beresford, the
Conservative candidate. The bye-elections to which Lord Beaconsfield
trusted afforded no true guidance as to the drift of opinion.

[160] Mr. Cross created a Water Trust, partly representative and partly
nominated, for taking over the business of the water companies. He
had in the previous Session promised Mr. Fawcett that he would not
give the companies a “fancy” price for their property. He now proposed
to hand over a Three and a Half per Cent. Stock to the companies as
compensation for their property. The actual value of that property was
about £19,000,000; but the _Standard_ and the critics of the scheme
complained that Mr. Cross gave the companies £30,000,000 compensation.
Water shares rose 75 per cent. when Mr. Cross’s Bill was produced.

[161] The contest in Midlothian excited the keenest interest. When the
poll had been counted it was found that Mr. Gladstone had obtained
the seat by a majority of 211 votes, the figures being Gladstone
1,579, Dalkeith 1,368. As soon as the result became known the utmost
enthusiasm was aroused throughout the country. In Edinburgh the
excitement was intense and Mr. Gladstone had to address the shouting
crowd, under a fall of snow, from the balcony of Lord Rosebery’s House
in George Street.

[162] Mr. Hayward’s Letters, Vol. II., p. 307.

[163] Mr. Hayward’s Letters, Vol. II., p. 308.

[164] Hansard, Vol. CCLIII., p. 1663.

[165] The origin of the term was as follows:--Captain Boycott, an
agent of Lord Earne, and a farmer at Lough Mask, had served notices of
eviction on the Earne tenantry. Suddenly he found himself “marooned,”
as it were, on his farm. Nobody would work for him, speak to him, do
business with him, or even supply him at any price with the necessaries
of life. Police guards watched over him and his family whilst they did
their own farm and household work. At last some of the Orange lodges
in the North sent down a gang of armed labourers to help him out of
his difficulties. These were called “Emergency men.” Subsequently the
dispute between Lord Earne and his tenants was arranged, and all of a
sudden Captain Boycott found that the leper’s ban had been removed from
his household, and he himself treated as if he had been all his life
the most popular person in the neighbourhood.

[166] The Rifle regiments were not supplied with colours, because in
the old days they were supposed to fight in more extended order than
the Infantry of the Line. Now there is no difference in this respect
between the rifleman and the linesman. Of the cavalry, only the heavy
dragoons carried colours, but they always left them at home when they
went to war.

[167] The Rifle Brigade was originally formed out of detachments from
fourteen different line regiments, and was long known as “Manningham’s
Sharpshooters.” From 1800 to 1802 it was known as the Rifle Corps.
Down to 1816 it got the name of the “Old 95th,” after which year till
now it has been called the Rifle Brigade. The Prince Consort was its
colonel, and in his portraits he is often seen wearing its sombre green
heavily-braided uniform. Hence it got the title of the Prince Consort’s
Own Rifle Brigade. The Prince of Wales became its Colonel-in-Chief till
he was appointed Colonel of the Household Cavalry. He was succeeded by
the Duke of Connaught, who began his meritorious though modest career
as a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion.

[168] Mr. C. D. Boyd was shot by a gang of men with blackened faces
whilst driving on the 8th of August from New Ross to Shanlough. He
was the son of the agent to Mr. Tottenham, and there was reason to
suppose that it was his father (who was with him) who was aimed at.
Lord Mountmorres was waylaid near Clonbur and shot on the 25th of
September. He had only fifteen tenants, had evicted only two of them,
and his household was boycotted. He lived among the people, and was
fairly popular with them, so that his murder is to this day somewhat of
a mystery.

[169] This antiquated form of silencing a Member had not been heard of
for two centuries, till Mr. Gladstone had himself revived it in the
previous Session, for the purpose of silencing Mr. O’Donnell when he
attempted to make a personal attack on M. Challemel-Lacour, who had
come to England as the Ambassador of France.

[170] _See_ Hansard, Vol. CCLVIII., p. 68 _et seq._

[171] The Parnell Movement, by T. P. O’Connor, M.P., Chapter XI.

[172] Colley’s friends allege that Kruger’s letter of reply to him was
delayed so long that he thought he might usefully expedite matters by
attacking.

[173] It was said that the late Mrs. Brydges-Williams, an eccentric
Cornish lady of Jewish extraction, had left Mr. Disraeli a legacy on
condition that she should be buried with him, and on this condition
the legacy was accepted. Perhaps the executors were afraid that claims
might be made on them if the condition were violated.

[174] Speech at Kettering, _Times_, 5th May, 1881.

[175] Her Majesty sent two wreaths to be placed on the bier. One was
composed of primroses, and carried the inscription: “His favourite
flowers, from Osborne, a tribute of affection from Queen Victoria.” The
other was made up of bay-leaves and everlasting flowers, and bore these
words in golden letters: “A mark of true affection, friendship, and
respect from the Queen.”

[176] After Lord Beaconsfield’s death the Tory Party fell under the
“Dual Control” of Lord Salisbury who led it in the House of Lords, and
Sir Stafford Northcote who led it in the House of Commons, when Lord
Randolph Churchill let him.

[177] Mr. (afterwards Sir) Edward Clarke, Q.C. and Tory
Solicitor-General, though he approved of widening summary jurisdiction,
objected to the Bill because it made the Irish Viceroy a despot. Mr.
Ritchie (afterwards President of the Local Government Board in Lord
Salisbury’s Administration) declined to support the Bill because he
had no confidence in the Government. Sir J. D. Hay complained of the
excessive power placed in the hands of the Irish Viceroy. But Sir
Stafford Northcote interfered, and, generously exerting his authority
on behalf of the Ministry, silenced the factious Tories, who were
apparently desirous of embarrassing the Government by obstructing the
Bill. Public opinion was not in a state to tolerate obstructive tactics
at the time.

[178] This loan was raised to wipe out the floating debt then amounting
to £28,000,000. But the money-brokers who floated it imposed such
usurious conditions, that they never really paid Ismail more than
£20,740,077, of which they made him take £9,000,000 in bonds of the
floating debt which the loan was raised to pay off. These they held
themselves, having bought them at 65 per cent. They made the Khedive,
however, take over the £9,000,000 worth which they thrust on him as
part of the loan at 93 per cent.--See Mr. Stephen Cave’s Report on the
Financial Condition of Egypt, and McCoan’s Egypt as It Is (Cassell and
Co.), Appendix 9, p. 396.

[179] This land belonging to the Khedive’s personal estate is referred
to in the report as Daira land.

[180] A search expedition under Colonel (afterwards Sir Charles)
Warren, R.E., brought back their remains, which were buried in St.
Paul’s Cathedral, close by the tomb of Nelson. See Life of Edward Henry
Palmer, by Walter Besant. London: John Murray, 1883, pp. 296-329.

[181] The vote was for an addition of £10,000 a year to the Prince’s
income, which was already £15,000, and a separate income of £6,000 a
year to the Princess during her widowhood.

[182] These intrigues grew so dangerous that in 1879 Prince Bismarck
concluded a Secret Treaty with Austria, which bound each Power to
defend the other if attacked by Russia, or if Russia gave aid to any
other Power which was attacking them. Though Prince Bismarck, as he
said in his speech in the Reichstag (6th of February, 1887) really
acted at the Berlin Congress as the fourth plenipotentiary of Russia,
the Russian War Party were of opinion that he ought to have done
more for them. Their attacks on Germany in the Press were incessant.
Russians of rank like Gortschakoff and Skobeleff, notoriously carried
on intrigues with France for an alliance against Germany. Indeed,
Russian troops began to mass themselves on the German frontier in
1882. Curiously enough, of the four men who could have done most
to thwart Prince Bismarck’s League of Peace with Austria--only one
(Garibaldi) died in circumstances free from suspicion of foul play.
Garibaldi’s death rendered it easier to bring Italy into Prince
Bismarck’s anti-French combination. These four men it is curious to
note passed away most opportunely for Prince Bismarck. Garibaldi died
in June, Skobeleff on the 7th of July, Gambetta in December, 1882, and
Gortschakoff on the 11th of March, 1883. Germany breathed freely after
the death of Gambetta, who, said Prince Bismarck once, worked on the
nerves of Europe “like a man who beats a drum in a sick room.”

[183] The history of this compact is as follows:--After the Treaty of
Berlin was signed Lord Salisbury bought off the opposition of France to
the occupation of Cyprus, first by promising not to oppose an extension
of her influence in Tunis, and secondly, by paving the way for her
sharing with England the control of Egypt. Prince Bismarck also left
on M. Waddington’s mind the impression that Germany was indifferent
to the fate of Tunis, knowing well that French interference there
must brew bad blood between France and Italy. In the spring of 1881
the French discovered that the mysterious “Kroumirs” were menacing
their Algerian frontier. To punish them they invaded Tunis, and though
they never discovered any “Kroumirs,” they compensated themselves for
their disappointment by forcing the Bey to sign the Bardo Treaty.
It converted Tunis into a French dependency. Italy remonstrated
in vain against this violation of the guaranteed integrity of the
Ottoman Empire, and finally sought for safety against further French
encroachments on her interests, in an alliance with the German Powers.
M. Gambetta’s aggressive policy caused King Humbert, on the advice of
Prince Bismarck, to visit the Emperor of Austria at Vienna, in the
autumn of 1881. Prince Bismarck was ostentatious in expressing his
friendliness to Italy, and exchanged effusive compliments with Signor
Mancini. (_See_ Mancini’s Speech in the Italian Senate of December,
1881.) In October, 1882, Count Kalnoky declared that King Humbert’s
pilgrimage of conciliation to the Hofburg had identified Italian and
Austro-German interests, and Signor Mancini announced the existence
of the Triple League on the 11th of April, 1883. On the 17th of
March, 1885, Mancini, when questioned as to his Red Sea policy, told
the Senate that in all his negotiations with England he had made it
“clear that Italy could enter into no engagement which was contrary to
the agreements concluded with the two Empires.” Through negotiations
carried on by the German Crown Prince, Spain was next drawn into the
net of the Triple League, and France utterly isolated.

[184] Though writers like De Tocqueville have laid it down that the
civilisation and development of a State can be always measured by the
social status and independence of its women and the equality of the
sexes before the law, one curious exception may be noted. From various
reasons, the northern kingdom of Scotland has for many centuries
remained appreciably rougher in manners and less polished and refined
in culture than England. The women of Scotland, too, like those of
Germany, have always been compelled to render their families harder
domestic service than English women, who, during the greater part of
the Victorian period, led lives of comparative ease and luxury in most
respectable households. Yet it is strange that in Scotland the law has
always been jealous in guarding the rights of women. For example, it
secured to a woman a third of her husband’s property after his death,
so that he could not disinherit her by will. It enabled her, through a
simple and cheap legal process, to protect her earnings from seizure by
her husband. It was at pains to preserve to women in the direct line
of succession their right to baronies and peerages after the males in
that line were exhausted. The divorce law, too, did not, like that of
England, recognise any inequality in the position of the sexes. The
effect of the improved legal status of women in Scotland was curious.
Though living in a ruder society, and under the pressure of harder
conditions of life than their more luxurious and polished English
sisters, they seem in all ages to have enjoyed by custom a position of
authority in the family, scarcely even yet conceded to their sex in
England. Arduous household service was, however, the price they had to
pay for their privileges. It may also be added that whilst in England,
till very recently, parents were more particular about the education of
their sons than their daughters, such a distinction between the sexes
was rarely made in Scotland at any time in its history.

[185] The occasion was a banquet given to him in the Town Hall in
celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his connection with
Birmingham. Mr. Bright said:--“And, what is worse, at this moment,
as you see--you do not so much see it here as it is seen in the
House--they [the Conservatives] are found in alliance with an Irish
rebel party (loud and long-continued cheers), the main portion of
whose funds, for the purposes of agitation, comes directly from the
avowed enemies of England, and whose oath of allegiance is broken by
association with its enemies. Now, these are the men of whom I spoke,
who are disregarding the wishes of the majority of the constituencies,
and who, as far as possible, make it impossible to do any work for
the country by debates and divisions in the House of Commons. I hope
the constituencies will mark some of the men of this party, and that
they will not permit Parliament to be dishonoured and Government
enfeebled by Members who claim to be, but are not, Conservative and
Constitutional. Our freedom is no longer subverted or threatened by
the Crown or by a privileged aristocracy. Is the time come--I quote
the words from history--is the time come to which the ancestor of Lord
Salisbury referred three hundred years ago, when he said that ‘England
could only be ruined by Parliament’?”

[186] It enacted that to cause an explosion not leading to loss of
life was a felony punishable by penal servitude for life. The attempt
was punishable with twenty years’ imprisonment. To be found in the
possession of dynamite, failing proof that it was held for a lawful
purpose, entailed fourteen years’ imprisonment.

[187] For an account of this sect, see a curious article in _The
Spectator_, 17th March, 1883.

[188] Brown, it was said in 1883, had left a diary for publication.
This was not quite true, for immediately after his death all his papers
were impounded by Sir Henry Ponsonby on behalf of the Queen.

[189] The Hon. Mrs. Stonor died on the 14th of April in London, from
the effects of a carriage accident. She was a daughter of Sir Robert
Peel, and was married to the third son of Lord Camoys. Few ladies of
the Court stood higher in the favour of the Queen, and she had been
lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales since the formation of her
household in 1863.

[190] When England advised Egypt to abandon the Soudan, the Khedive’s
Ministry under Cherif Pasha refused to take the advice. The defeat
of Hicks Pasha caused England to substitute insistance for advice,
and when the Egyptian Government was told it must abandon the
Soudan, Cherif Pasha resigned. Here was an excellent opportunity
for establishing a Protectorate; and it is not generally known that
Sir Evelyn Baring strongly recommended the appointment of English
Ministers for a period of five years. He was overruled, and Nubar
Pasha was made Cherif’s successor. See Mr. Edward Dicey’s convincing
plea for a Protectorate, in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March, 1884.
In passing it may be well to warn the reader that he cannot form any
correct conception of Anglo-Egyptian relations till he has mastered Mr.
Dicey’s numerous papers on the subject, notably his “England and Egypt”
(Chapman and Hall, 1881). The central idea of Mr. Dicey’s policy is
that the true interest of England in the Eastern Question lies in the
Valley of the Nile, not in the Bosphorus; and that the Isthmus of Suez
forms the key-stone of her position as an Imperial Power.

[191] His expenditure he estimated at £85,292,000, and his revenue at
£85,555,000.

[192] The alternative courses were (1), calling in the aid of Turkish
troops; (2), the employment of Zebehr Pasha; (3), the opening up of
communications between Suakim and Berber after Graham’s victories on
the Red Sea littoral; (4), the evacuation of Khartoum in accordance
with a scheme whereby Gordon’s colleague, Colonel Stewart, was to take
the fugitives down to Berber, while Gordon and a picked body of troops
were to retreat up the White Nile in steamers to the Equator.

[193] These persons were in most cases rather incompetent. They
were not boatmen or _voyageurs_ at all, but clerks, shopmen, and
land-lubbers from the Canadian towns, who had palmed themselves off on
Lord Wolseley and his subordinates as experienced Canadian _voyageurs_.

[194] This was not the only case in which Lord Northbrook had
discredited the Administration. It was notorious that Mr. W. H. Smith
had shockingly neglected naval ship-building when, in 1880, he handed
the Navy over to Lord Northbrook. Lord Northbrook had worked hard to
make up arrears, and he had built new ships as fast as he could to
enable the British Navy to rank with that of France. But his best
efforts to correct Mr. Smith’s negligence failed, and yet in July,
1885, he expressed himself quite satisfied with the Navy. When he was
absent in Egypt a violent agitation, demonstrating the feebleness and
insufficiency of the Navy, was raised in the Press. Ere the autumn
Session ended he admitted that £5,000,000 above the ordinary estimates
would be needed to strengthen the Fleet in swift cruisers and torpedo
boats.

[195] Loans already secured on these were to merge in the Preference
Debt along with bonds for Alexandria indemnities. The interest on it
was not to change, but that on the Unified Debt into which Daira Loans
were to merge, was to be reduced to 3½ per cent.

[196] When Ismail abdicated under the pressure of France and England
it was not made clear that he abandoned all his rights as a private
landowner in Egypt. Theoretically the Khedive could not, according
to Oriental usage, own any land in his dominions save as head of the
State, in which capacity he owned all land. Hence, when he ceased
to be Khedive, his private domains reverted to his successor. Hence
Lord Granville always rejected Ismail’s claim. But in 1888 Lord
Salisbury, through the agency of Mr. Marriott, Judge Advocate-General,
commuted all Ismail Pasha’s claims for a lump sum, calculated on the
allowances he was bound to make his family, and which he himself might
fairly demand to support his position as ex-Khedive. Lord Salisbury’s
object was to prevent these claims from being ever made the basis of
operations for diplomacy hostile to England.

[197] The dates are curious:--

17 June, 1884.--Invitations to Egyptian Conference issued.
“ “ Lord Derby promises to stop the action of the Cape
Government in reference to Angra Pequena.
19 “ Lord Granville assures Count Münster that he accedes
to Bismarck’s wishes on the Fiji dispute.
22 “ Lord Granville tells Count Herbert Bismarck that the
Cabinet, on the 21st inst., resolved to recognise
the German Protectorate over Angra Pequena.
28 “ Meeting of the Conference in London.

[198] Speech in House of Lords, February 26th, 1885.

[199] Speech in the Reichstag, March 2nd, 1885.

[200] More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands. From
1862 to 1882. Smith, Elder & Co., 1884.

[201] _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1884.

[202] The Claremont Estate was bought by the Crown in 1816. It was
granted to the lamented Princess Charlotte and her husband, Prince
Leopold--the Queen’s uncle--with benefit of survivorship. It was a
place full of gloomy associations, but Prince Leopold kept it up pretty
well till 1848, on the £60,000 a year which he had from the nation.
In 1848 the exiled Orleans family occupied it, and were prodigal in
spending money in improving the grounds and gardens, which were almost
as productive as those of Frogmore. On the death of King Leopold of
Belgium, Claremont reverted to the Crown, and Lord John Russell and
Mr. Gladstone passed an Act granting it to the Queen for life. In 1881
Sir Henry Ponsonby, as trustee for the Queen, bought the reversionary
interest of it for her from the State for £70,000, and since then
it has been her private property, like Osborne and Balmoral. That
Claremont is the property of the nation is a strange delusion fondly
cherished by many critics of Royalty.

[203] Prince Leopold lived chiefly at Boyton Manor from the summer of
1875 till the autumn of 1879, when the Queen insisted on his going to
Claremont. It was at Boyton that he was so dangerously ill in 1877
that Sir William Jenner telegraphed for the Queen to come to what was
supposed to be his deathbed. After that her Majesty always objected to
his staying in Wiltshire.

[204] The borough franchises of England and Wales were the old £20
clear annual value qualification of 1832, and the householder and
lodger franchises established in 1867. To these the new Reform Act
of 1885 added the “service franchise,” giving a vote to any man who
inhabits any dwelling-house by virtue of any office, service, or
employment. Caretakers, bailiffs, gamekeepers, officers of public
establishments, shepherds, &c., were admitted under this qualification.
It was further provided that every citizen of full age, and not subject
to legal incapacity, who has occupied a house for a year and paid
his rates, can have his name registered as a voter for the district,
whether it be called county or borough, in which he resides. The
property franchises in the counties were in the main left untouched,
but provision was made to check multiplication of faggot votes--_i.e._,
votes of non-resident occupiers on sham qualifications. But four-fifths
of the 5,000,000 electors enfranchised by the Bill were really
qualified as simple householders in town and county.

[205] There were 56 two-member constituencies wholly disfranchised,
and 31 which lost a member apiece. But by Mr. Gladstone’s Bill in
1885, there were 160 seats set free for redistribution, 6 that were in
abeyance were revived, and to meet the claim of Scotland for increased
representation, 12 new seats, despite the opposition of the extreme
Tories like Sir J. D. Hay, were added to the House.

[206] Of this £11,000,000, it must be said £4,500,000 were to pay for
Egyptian expeditions and £6,500,000 for “special preparations.”

[207] M. Lessar, the Central Asian geographer, was now in attendance at
the Russian Embassy as an expert.

[208] See Speeches of Lord Randolph Churchill (Authorised Edition),
edited by Henry W. Lucy (George Routledge and Sons: London, 1885, p.
220).

[209] As a matter of fact it was weaker than it should have been,
but this was due to the neglect of shipbuilding by Mr. W. H. Smith,
whose favourite policy was to make old ships do for new ones by
patching their boilers. Lord Northbrook had pushed on shipbuilding,
and made up leeway so that in first-class ironclads the country was
more than a match for France. But much had still to be done in other
directions--_e.g._, in providing vessels for scouting, and for torpedo
warfare. The armament of the Navy was also obsolete, in fact, when Mr.
Smith handed the Navy over to Lord Northbrook, there was not a single
big breech-loading gun mounted in the Fleet.

[210] Whilst the anti-Coercionists in the Cabinet (Sir Charles Dilke,
Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre) were struggling with the
Coercionists, the subterranean arrangements between the Tories and
Parnellites were also publicly ratified in a speech delivered by Lord
Randolph Churchill at the St. Stephen’s Club, in which, amidst ringing
cheers, he condemned the renewal of Coercion. Signs of disorder in
Ireland, he argued, had passed away, and such being the case Government
was bound by “the highest considerations of public policy and
Constitutional doctrine to return to and rely on the ordinary law. They
were all the more strongly bound at that time because they had just
enfranchised the Irish people, and declared them capable citizens fit
to take part in the government of the Empire.”--The Parnell Movement,
by T. P. O’Connor, Chap. XIII.

[211] After he wound up the debate, and during this exciting scene, Mr.
Gladstone had been quietly writing his nightly report to the Queen of
the proceedings of the House, on a sheet of note-paper which he held
on his knee as a desk. Lord Randolph Churchill vainly endeavoured to
rouse his attention by putting up his hand to his mouth as if it were a
speaking-trumpet, and shouting through it mocking taunts of triumph at
the Premier.

[212] H. W. Lucy’s Diary of Two Parliaments, Vol. II., p. 478. (London:
Cassell & Co.)

[213] The controversy between Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone was
conducted through memoranda addressed to the Queen dated the 17th,
18th, 20th, and 21st of June. For the text, see Parliamentary Report of
the _Times_, 25th of June, 1885.

[214] The offer, it is odd to notice, was almost an unprecedented
mark of Royal favour. The elevation of Mr. Disraeli to an earldom was
effected in the middle, not at the end of his service as Premier,
and in the moment of his triumph, not of his defeat. It is, however,
worth noting that at the end of his first Administration Mr. Disraeli
accepted a viscountess’s coronet for his wife. Lord John Russell
was not Premier in 1859 when he became Earl Russell; in fact, his
acceptance of the Foreign Office under Palmerston was supposed finally
to put him in the background. Grenville, Liverpool, Wellington,
Goderich, Grey, Melbourne, Derby, and Aberdeen were all Peers before
they became Premiers. When Addington’s Ministry resigned early in
the century, the Premier, it is true, became Lord Sidmouth. Yet it
was not an earldom but only a viscountcy--a rank often conferred on
ex-Ministers who have not been Premiers--that was given to him. Pitt
was not actually First Lord of the Treasury--though no doubt he was the
moving spirit in the Cabinet--when he became Earl of Chatham. In fact,
for the Queen’s offer there was no precedent later than 1742, when
Walpole--the Minister to whom her House owe their crown--was created
Earl of Orford when he resigned.

[215] Mr. Gibson had been elevated to the Lord Chancellorship of
Ireland under this title.

[216] “Lord Northbrook,” wrote the Times, “chose to regard the
criticisms on this blundering way of keeping accounts as a personal
attack on himself, and rested his defence, with more temper than
lucidity, on the propriety of the expenditure incurred, which no one
had thought of challenging.”

[217] The Journals of Major-General C. G. Gordon, C.B., at Khartoum,
printed from the original MS. Introduction and Notes by A. Egmont Hake.
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885, p. 56.)

[218] On this point see an entry in Gordon’s Journal under date the
6th of October, 1884. It was not till the 17th of May, 1884, that Lord
Granville wrote enjoining Gordon to adopt “measures for his own removal
_and for that of the Egyptians at Khartoum_ by whatever route he may
consider best.” But it was now too late to attempt the evacuation of
Khartoum save in co-operation with a relief force.

[219] Metamneh is 176 miles from Korti, but only 90 miles from Berber,
and 98 from Khartoum, from which latter places the Mahdi brought up all
the troops he could spare.

[220] “A cavalryman is taught never to be still, and that a square
_can_ be broken. How can you expect him in a moment to forget all
his training, stand like a rock, and believe no one can get inside
a square?... The sailors were pressed back with the cavalry, and
lost heavily; they get very excited, and would storm a work or do
anything of that kind well; but they are trained to fight in ships,
and you cannot expect them to stand shoulder to shoulder like
grenadiers.”--From Korti to Khartoum, by Sir Charles Wilson, K.C.B.,
K.C.M.G., D.C.L., F.R.S., R.E., late Deputy Adjutant-General, Nile
Expedition. Edinburgh (Blackwood), 1885, p. 36.

[221] Sir Charles Wilson strives hard to defend Lord Wolseley and Sir
Herbert Stewart. He says that Stewart could not march straight across
the Desert for lack of transport, though he admits that an additional
thousand camels, which could have been easily got in November, would
have saved the situation. Why were they not got? Moreover, the blunder
of Lord Wolseley and Sir Herbert Stewart is inexcusable, because they
acted in defiance of Gordon’s last message. “Come,” said he, “by way of
Metamneh or Berber; only by these two roads. Do this _without letting
rumours of your approach spread abroad_.” Stewart’s first occupation of
Gakdul, thirteen days before the Desert column was ready to move, was
simply a gratuitous warning to the Mahdi of the English advance.

[222] This is sometimes called Gubat, and sometimes Abu Kru.

[223] Gordon’s diaries show that even on the 28th of November, 1884,
when his men held Omdurman and the North Fort, Wilson could not have
passed the junction of the Blue and White Nile without a strong land
force to co-operate with his steamers. On the 28th of January, 1885,
however, these positions were in the Mahdi’s hands, and Wilson had no
land force.

[224] Lord Charles Beresford was too ill to proceed up the Nile with
Wilson, and, as he was the only naval officer available, it was prudent
to leave him at Gubat. Had our position there been attacked, he would
perhaps have been able to assist in its defence with Gordon’s steamers.

[225] _See_ an analysis of General Gordon’s Journals by the present
writer in the _Observer_ for the 28th of June, 1885. For criticism of
Wilson’s Expedition, _see_ article, said to be by Sir E. Hamley, in
_Blackwood_ for June, 1885.

[226] _See_ The Letters of General C. G. Gordon. (London: Macmillan,
1888.)

[227] Gordon’s death evoked from the Colonies in America and Australia
profuse and generous offers of military aid. The only one accepted was
that which was made by New South Wales.

[228] When Mr. Gladstone fell from power, and Lord Salisbury’s
Government took office in 1887, this promise was renewed. But in 1888
it was repudiated by Mr. W. H. Smith, the First Lord of the Treasury.

[229] The children of the Prince of Wales will probably be provided
for by the State. The children of the Duke of Edinburgh, owing to the
wealth of their parents, need no provision. The Duchess of Connaught
inherited a large fortune from her father, the “Red Prince.” The
Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne, if she were to have a family,
could provide for them as members of the House of Argyll.

[230] The German Crown Prince and the Grand Duke of Hesse received the
Order on marrying daughters of the Queen. But the Marquis of Lorne got
the Order of the Thistle in similar circumstances.

[231] Continental diplomatists and publicists held that the
notification in the _Gazette_ was absolutely illegal, because it was
a violation of an international agreement as to the assumption of
this title arrived at by the Great Powers at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818.
This agreement, which was signed by the Duke of Wellington as the
representative of England, is embodied in the “Protocol Séparé Séance
du 11 Oct., 1818, entre les cinq Puissances,” and it arose out of their
refusal to permit the Elector of Hesse to assume the title of king.
The Powers declared that the title Royal Highness used by the sons of
kings, might be also used by grand dukes and their heirs-presumptive,
but by no one of lower rank in sovereign circles. Prince Henry was
neither a grand duke nor an heir-presumptive to a grand duke.

[232] When Prince Victor married the sister of the Marquis of Hertford,
she was created Countess Gleichen, a title which the Prince also
assumed, the marriage being on the Continent regarded as “morganatic.”
It was held that the Queen’s order raising the lady to her husband’s
royal rank was void and illegal outside the English Court, like the
similar order with reference to the Countess Dornburg.

[233] This intrigue was initiated by Mr. Justin McCarthy, who had
long enjoyed Lord Carnarvon’s personal friendship. Before finally
selling the Irish vote, Mr. Parnell had a personal interview with Lord
Carnarvon, at which the bargain was struck. Lord Carnarvon has denied
various accounts of this interview, but he has never denied that as
Viceroy of Ireland, he told Mr. Parnell that Irish industries must be
stimulated, and that he would give the new Irish Government power to
levy Protective Duties. As taxation and representation go together,
this concession implies that the Irish Government was to be vested with
fiscal powers, which could only be exercised in co-operation with and
under responsibility to an Irish Parliament.

[234] The doctrine of ransom in the counties took the form of a vague
and ambiguous pledge to give every labourer who wanted an allotment
“three acres and a cow,” by purchase-money advanced from the rates.

[235] For a definite statement of Lord Carnarvon’s policy as Mr.
Parnell understood it, _see_ Mr. Parnell’s speech on the Home Rule
Bill. _Times_, June 8, 1886.

[236] The case for the Government, however, was strengthened and made
more conclusive as the debate went on.

[237] As successor of the old abbots, the Dean of Westminster, in the
Abbey, takes precedence of all ecclesiastics except the Archbishop of
Canterbury.

[238] When the children got to the Park Mr. Lawson, like a practical
man, put them in good humour by feeding them. They were taken in squads
to tents, and each child got a bag with a meat pie, a piece of cake, a
bun, and an orange; also a plated medallion portrait of the Queen. A
Jubilee mug of Doulton ware was also given to each boy and girl, and
during the day lemonade, ginger beer, and milk were to be had for the
asking.

[239] Lord Tennyson’s health did not admit of his officiating as
Laureate on this occasion, and Mr. Browning has always declared himself
unable to produce ceremonial odes to order.

[240] History of England, Vol. V., p. 537.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; vol. 4 of 4" ***

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