Chapter XXVIII: THE REIGN OF VICTORIA (continued) (2)

The concession made by Mr. Disraeli was not accepted without a protest on the part of some of his own followers, and a still louder protest on the part of the consistent anti-reformers, Lord Cranborne and Mr. Lowe. Lord Cranborne insisted upon at least an adjournment, that the House might not vote blindfold; and Mr. Lowe spent the three days' recess in preparing a new philippic. Both sides of the House came in for their share of reproof from this impartial censor; both alike, he said, were weary of the subject of Reform, and willing to adopt any solution of the question; both were afraid of a dissolution; both alike were miserably anxious not to give offence to the classes about to be enfranchised. He declared that no great number of members really and honestly either desired or approved the change about to be made. Which party in the House, save and except a few of the extreme Liberals below the gangway, really wanted household suffrage and the enfranchisement of the new voters? The question had changed since last year. "The question now is not--what is the opinion of the _élite_ of the working classes? but--what is the opinion of the unskilled labour class? For instance, in the borough which I represent you will, I rather think, give us some Wiltshire labourers with 8s. a week wages. Will any gentleman favour me with a précis of the politics of these men?" It was like 1866 over again; but Mr. Lowe was powerless to change the intentions of the House. The amendment was adopted without a division on May 20th, though Mr. Disraeli attempted, a short time afterwards, to tone it down and practically to replace what it had abolished, by making it optional to continue the compounding system. The attempt, doubtless suggested to him by some timid follower, was unsuccessful; and the law came to be that "no owner of a dwelling in a parish, either wholly or partially within a borough, is to be henceforth rated to the poor rate instead of the occupier." In this way the vexed question of "personal rating" was solved, and household suffrage in its simple form was established in the boroughs.

With regard to the county franchise, the history of the Bill was not so full of incident. The original proposal of Government had been to give the franchise to "rated occupiers of premises of any tenure within the county of the rateable value of fifteen pounds and upwards;" the words "any tenure" referring to the various modes--freehold, copyhold, leasehold, annual tenancy, etc.--on which premises may be held. There were also various "fancy franchises" proposed in the counties as in the boroughs, but these were very soon withdrawn. The substantial proposal of Government was modified in various ways. On Mr. Colvile's motion, the franchise was extended to copyhold tenants of premises of the value of £5 per annum--that is, to such persons as, without being freeholders, were practically the owners of their dwellings; and very soon afterwards Government acceded to the proposal of Mr. Hussey Vivian to extend the franchise to "leaseholders under sixty years' leases of lands worth £5 a year." Finally Mr. Locke King proposed to substitute £10 for £15 as the figure down to which county occupiers were to have a vote; and though he did not press his motion, he obtained from Government the concession of reducing the figure from £15 to £12.

The part of the Bill that related to the redistribution of seats was very roughly handled during the early stages of the Bill, and the treatment it received in committee was equally severe. But when all was done, there still remained much that failed to satisfy the reforming party in the country. Government proposed to deal with thirty new seats--namely, with the seven provided for them by the total disfranchisement of Lancaster, Reigate, Great Yarmouth, and Totnes, and the twenty-three from the same number of small boroughs which were to lose one of their two members. This number was soon enlarged. On May 31st Mr. Laing, member for the Wick Boroughs, moved that "no borough which had a smaller population than 10,000 at the census of 1861 shall return more than one member to Parliament." This motion, which gave thirty-eight seats to the House in place of twenty-three, was carried by a great majority (306 to 179), though the Chancellor of the Exchequer opposed it. There, however, the House paused in the process of disfranchisement. Mr. Serjeant Gaselee's motion to extend the principle of Mr. Laing's amendment, by wholly depriving towns of less than 5,000 inhabitants of their member, was not carried.

Mr. Disraeli's treatment of the delicate task of redistribution was this. He proposed to give twenty-five seats to the counties, two new members being given to each of the following: Cheshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire, Essex, West Kent, North Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Somersetshire, Staffordshire, East Surrey, and the West Riding of Yorkshire, and one new seat being given to South Lancashire. A member apiece was to be given to thirteen large manufacturing or commercial towns, till now unrepresented: Barnsley, Burnley, Dewsbury, Darlington, Gravesend, Hartlepool, Keighley, Luton, Middlesborough, St. Helens, Stalybridge, Stockton, and Wednesbury. Chelsea and Hackney were to be constituted boroughs, each with two members. Salford and Merthyr Tydvil were each to return two instead of one. The Universities of London and Durham were to combine to return one member.

This scheme enfranchised a certain number of new towns, and its county redistribution in some cases gave a more direct voice to the industrial population; but it left the great manufacturing towns of Birmingham, Manchester, and the rest exactly where they were, and it retained what was thought to be too much power in the hands of the small boroughs. Mr. Disraeli, however, declined the proposal of Mr. Laing to give a third member to the six great manufacturing and commercial towns--Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Bristol; and again he opposed Mr. Hadfield's and Mr. Berkeley's proposals in favour of Sheffield and Bristol. And when he assented to Mr. Horsfall's motion to give a third member to Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham, it was only on condition that the members given to them should be taken away from some of the other towns which Government admitted to have claims for increased representation.

The remaining time during which the Bill was in committee was occupied with a discussion of the complicated question of boundaries. It was necessary, in order to give completeness to the Bill, to examine the boundaries of existing boroughs and counties, as well as to determine those of the new boroughs created by the Bill. For this purpose, after much debating on minute points connected with the rights conferred by different kinds of ownership in boroughs and counties, a Parliamentary Commission was appointed "to inquire into the boundaries of all the boroughs of England and Wales, with a view to ascertain whether the boundaries were to be enlarged;" to investigate also the local conditions of the new boroughs, and to ascertain what alterations should be made in the divisions of counties. The report of the Boundary Commissioners was to be laid before Parliament, and, till its adoption, provisional regulations were made on the points in question. At last, at the end of a long and weary Session, the moment arrived--the "supreme and solemn moment," as Mr. Beresford Hope described it--when the Reform Bill was to be read a third time. It was the evening of the 15th of July. Mr. Disraeli's success was at hand. But, first of all, although no more divisions were to be faced, and although the passing of the Bill was certain, Government knew they were not to escape a whipping from exasperated enemies and candid friends. In the presence of a crowded House Lord Cranborne rose to deliver his soul. From the day when he had resigned office, and refused to work with Mr. Disraeli, the rooted antipathy between the late Secretary for India and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been growing in strength. In incisive language, and with the slow measured action to which his tall figure so readily lent itself, he deliberately charged the Tory leaders with a betrayal of their trust. He ridiculed the idea of the Bill being called "a Conservative triumph." "The real parent of the Bill, as we are about to pass it," he said, "is not the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Mr. Disraeli], but the member for South Lancashire [Mr. Gladstone]." The Bill that had been offered to the House in March was wholly unlike the Bill that was now waiting its final approval. The "checks and counterpoises," of which Mr. Disraeli had spoken so confidently, were gone. Mr. Gladstone had demanded ten alterations in the Bill, and had carried nine of them--the lodger franchise, the abolition of the compound householder, the provision against traffic in votes, the abolition of the "taxing franchise," the omission of the dual vote, enlarged redistribution of seats, reduced county franchise, the omission of voting papers, of the educational and of the savings bank franchises. "If the omission of these clauses, and the adoption of the principles of Mr. Bright, be a triumph, then the Conservative party has never in the whole course of its history won a triumph so signal as this." Then, in words of profound seriousness, he went on: "I desire to protest, in the most earnest language which I am capable of using, against the political morality on which the manœuvres of this year have been based. If you borrow your political ethics from the ethics of the political adventurer, you may depend upon it the whole of your representative institutions will crumble beneath your feet.... Even if I deemed this measure to be most advantageous, I still should deeply regret that the position of the Executive should have been so degraded as it has been in the present Session. I should deeply regret to find that the House of Commons has applauded a policy of legerdemain; and I should, above all things, regret that this great gift to the people--if gift you think it--should have been purchased at the cost of a political betrayal which has no parallel in our Parliamentary annals."

This, from a seceding Conservative, from one who, even in opposition, retained the confidence of the Conservative back benches, was severe; and no less severe was the language of Mr. Lowe, who spoke immediately after. If Lord Cranborne was bitter because he, and genuine Conservatives with him, had been sacrificed to keep, as he said, "political adventurers" in office, Mr. Lowe was furious because he had succeeded in turning out the Liberal Government in 1866 only to make way for a more revolutionary Tory Government in 1867. "Was it to be conceived," he said, "that right honourable gentlemen, who had given no indications of the extreme facility of changing their opinions and lending themselves to the art of treachery, would, for the sake of keeping a few of them in office for a short time and giving some small patronage to half a dozen lawyers, have been prepared to sacrifice all the principles, all the convictions, all the traditions of their lives; while others were prepared to turn round upon their order and the institutions of their country, merely for the purpose of sitting behind these right honourable gentlemen, and hearing, with the knowledge that it is all true, language such as that the noble lord [Cranborne] has used to-night?" However, Mr. Lowe had, in the midst of his wrath, what may be called "lucid intervals" of foresight and practical reflection upon the consequences of the Bill. Every one admitted that it was to pass; every one admitted that its effect would be striking and immediate. What, then, ought to be the attitude of Parliament and public opinion? Clearly, to soften "the blow which had been levelled at our ancient institutions" as much as possible. "We must," said Mr. Lowe, in an afterwards famous epigram--"we must persuade our masters to learn their letters."

Several other speeches followed, none of them very complimentary to Government, and Mr. Disraeli was not happy in his attempt to answer them. He had to perform the impossible task of showing that the Conservative party had in this measure acted in a purely Conservative spirit, and in a manner consistent with previous professions. Instead of taking up the tenable ground that the Conservative party had seen good cause, on an examination of figures and facts, to change their old opinions, he boldly asserted that the old opinions remained unchanged and were embodied in this Bill. With a noble audacity he declared that even in 1859--the year when Lord Derby's first Reform Bill was projected--"the Cabinet was unanimous ... that if we attempted to reduce the borough qualification which then existed, we must have recourse to household suffrage;" an assertion which it is sufficient to say was flatly contradicted soon afterwards by Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords. But neither questionable paradoxes on Mr. Disraeli's part, nor fierce invective on Mr. Lowe's, had any influence on the success of the Bill. When the Speaker put the momentous words from the chair, "That this Bill do now pass," only one obstinate voice cried "No;" and a shout of "Aye," audible far beyond the limits of the House, gave Mr. Disraeli the happy assurance that his Bill had passed the Commons.

The Bill had passed the Commons, but it was not yet law. Indeed, when Lord Derby rose to move the second reading of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords on July 22nd--exactly a week after it had left the Commons--he found his own party by no means so manageable as Mr. Disraeli had found them in the Lower House. The debate was long and the speeches were able, and though in the end the second reading passed without a division, yet the speeches were very nearly unanimous in disapproving of the measure. Lord Cairns, indeed, approved the Bill warmly, and made no secret of his hopes from "the _residuum_." "We know that on most subjects there is a considerable difference of opinion between what are called the higher artisan class and those below them," said he; that is, we know that there is a gulf fixed between the bricklayer and the bricklayer's labourer. Lord Cairns appealed, in the name of the Conservatives, from the bricklayer to the bricklayer's labourer. This, he said, was the distinction between the Bill of 1866 and the present Bill: the line of £7 rental would let in the "higher artisan class" only--a class presumed to be hostile to Conservatism; and household rating suffrage would let in the "class below them"--a class easily manageable at election times. This dangerous argument was, however, not generally supported in the House. Lord Shaftesbury said: "To proceed as is done by this Bill, to lift by the sudden jerk of an Act of Parliament the whole residuum of society up to the level of the honest, thrifty working-man, is, I believe, distasteful to the working-men themselves. I am sure it dishonours the suffrage." This was in the debate raised by Lord Grey's amendment, which was to the effect that "the Representation of the People Bill does not appear to the House to be calculated, in its present shape, to effect a permanent settlement of this important question, or to promote the future good government of the country." Lord Grey, however, did not mean to oppose the second reading, but only to show to the Commons what the Lords considered to be weak points in their Bill, and in the end, finding that the common opinion of the House accepted the Bill as inevitable, he withdrew his amendment--not, however, before Lord Carnarvon, one of the seceding Ministers, had spoken in words that almost echoed the furious charges of Lord Cranborne and Mr. Lowe in the other House. Speaking of Mr. Disraeli's assertion, to which we have already referred, that household suffrage had been the secret doctrine of the Conservatives ever since 1859, he gave it the most emphatic contradiction.

(_From the Portrait by Frank Holl, R.A. By Permission of the Corporation of Birmingham._)]

In the end four important amendments were proposed by the Lords, who showed a very different attitude from that which their fathers had shown in 1832. There was throughout the whole of the speeches of the peers a note of sadness and dissatisfaction; but none thought seriously of rejecting the Bill altogether. And the amendments, important in themselves, did not touch the household suffrage, which was the bugbear of the Bill, and did not even attempt to restore the compound householder for the purpose of robbing household suffrage of its sting. The important amendments were:--(1) To raise the qualification for lodgers to £15, instead of £10--proposed by Lord Cairns; (2) To restore £10, instead of £5, as the copyhold qualification in counties--proposed by Lord Harrowby; (3) To secure a representation of minorities in the "three-cornered constituencies"--proposed by Lord Cairns; (4) To allow the employment of voting papers at elections--proposed by the Marquis of Salisbury. Of these, the first was passed by a majority of 121 to 89; the second by a majority of 119 to 56. Both these decisions were, however, finally reversed by the Commons by large majorities; nor was the amendment allowing the use of voting papers any more successful. The Lords, with a good grace, submitted to correction, and the Bill remained, in these respects, the same as it had been when it originally passed the House of Commons.

With regard to Lord Cairns's more successful amendment relating to the rights of minorities, a little more may be said. It was not a new idea; the claims of minorities to a voice in affairs had long been felt to be a serious question by political theorists, especially Mr. Mill and Mr. Thomas Hare; and Mr. Lowe had attempted, earlier in the Session, to get those claims recognised in the Bill by the introduction of some clauses resembling those of Lord Cairns. Lord Cairns proposed, "That at a contested election for any county or borough, no person shall vote for more than two candidates"--adding, a short time afterwards, that in elections for the City of London, where four members are returned, no one should vote for more than three candidates. This amendment, the object of which was to enable the minority in the boroughs of Manchester, Liverpool, and Birmingham, in the City of London, and in certain counties, to "lump" their votes on one candidate, and so secure his return, was carried by a large majority--142 to 91. When the amendment came down to the Commons, after the amended Bill had been read a third time in the House of Lords, it was warmly debated. Mr. Lowe's previous motion, to allow any elector to have as many votes as there were vacant seats, and to give all his votes to one candidate if he chose, had been rejected by a majority of 141; but now the opinion of many members had changed. The debate was carried on quite independently of the ordinary party divisions; instead, the division seemed to be between those who wished in all cases to follow the outlines of English political precedent, and those who believed that those precedents were sometimes clumsy and inconvenient. For once, the House enjoyed the unusual sight of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, and Mr. Bright all taking one side on a contested question; the principal supporters of the other side being Mr. Mill and Mr. Lowe. Strange to say, the accustomed leaders of the House failed to carry their views into effect. The amendment was passed by a majority of 253 to 204.

It is enough to add that, on the Report being presented to the Lords, that House agreed to the corrections of the House of Commons, and was content to have carried one of its four amendments. On August 15th, 1867, the Royal Assent was given to the "Representation of the People Act;" and for a time at least the Reform question was settled.

Lord Derby ushered the Bill out of the House on the third reading with words that immediately became famous: "No doubt we are making a great experiment, and taking a leap in the dark." That, indeed, was the feeling of many of the Conservatives, and even of many of the moderate Liberals; and few of the cartoons of _Punch_ have been more effective than that which, illustrating the Prime Minister's words, represented him as a steeple-chaser, charging with shut eyes at a fence of portentous thickness, beyond which lay an unknown country. But another of _Punch's_ cartoons gave the honour of the Bill to its real author, though there were long afterwards those who asserted, in agreement with Mr. Bright, that it was "Lord Derby's Bill." On the walls of the Royal Academy had hung in that year's exhibition a wonderful picture by a new artist--Mr. Poynter's "Israel in Egypt." It showed the mighty form of the Sphinx, the mysterious Egyptian monster that still remains half buried in sand in the Theban Desert, dragged upon a car to its place by a thousand toiling Israelitish slaves. The spectator, as he gazed upon the picture, could almost hear the crack of the slavedriver's whip, and the groan of the miserable wretch who fell under the wheels; the crowd of bending forms seemed alive, the car seemed moving. This was the picture that _Punch_ parodied. To a place in the Temple of Success and Fame a car was moving, dragged by straining multitudes; the multitudes bore the well-known likeness of the members of the English House of Commons, and the figure on the car wore the mysterious, Sphinx-like, Oriental features of Mr. Disraeli! "Israel in Egypt" became "Disraeli in Triumph;" the slaves bending beneath the weight, and torn by the merciless lash of necessity, were her Majesty's Ministers and the blind, dazed, unwilling, but yet obedient members of the Conservative party.

Parliamentary Reform occupied nearly all the time of the House of Commons during the first of the two Sessions of 1867; but still on the "off days" there were several important discussions and some important legislation. The Reform Bill only applied to England and Wales, and in the unquiet state of Ireland Government did not propose to make any alterations in the electoral law of that country. To Scotland they wished to apply a measure very similar to the English one--only differing from it, in fact, so far as the exigencies of Scottish law required. Household suffrage in its simple form in the boroughs, in the counties a reduction of the qualification like that effected in England, and a moderate redistribution of seats were the main features of the Government measure. It was not, however, carried during this year from want of time.

Although Ireland had not assumed that prominence in the debates of Parliament which she held afterwards, there were "Irish debates" in plenty; and political prophets saw clearly that Ireland was to be the immediate question for the Reformed Parliament to grapple with. First came the proposal of Lord Naas, unfortunately rendered necessary, for the continued suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant explained that he had hoped to be able to dispense with these extraordinary powers, but that fresh signs of activity had appeared among the disaffected population. When the mysterious "invasion" of Chester happened (an event to be immediately described), a simultaneous attempt at a rising was made at Cahirciveen, in the county of Kerry; and symptoms of revolt made themselves apparent in some of the large towns. He, therefore, with great regret, asked for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act for three months longer; and the gravity of the emergency was shown by the fact that the seconder of the motion was Sir John Grey. The suspension was allowed by the House, and also by the House of Lords; but it was with considerable alarm that, three months later, the country heard that Government had found it necessary to apply again to Parliament for a further suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. The Queen's Speech at the beginning of the Session had "trusted that Parliament might be enabled to dispense with the continuance of any exceptional legislation" for Ireland, and yet the continuance was twice asked for. This was generally felt to be an instance of a want of foresight on the part of the Ministry; though Lord Naas announced that the disturbances in Ireland were caused by the resolutions adopted at a Fenian meeting held at New York in January, when an attempt at insurrection was decreed. The debate that took place on Lord Naas making his second proposal called forth a great deal of that fund of contradictory opinion on Irish questions which was so richly exhibited in the debates of two years later. The request of Government was, however, granted without difficulty. Bills tending to the prevention of discontent, as well as to its cure, were also discussed during the Session, but they only served to show what was afterwards proved by Mr. Gladstone's Ministry, namely, that the question of Irish remedies was far too complicated, far too debateable, to be disposed of in a casual debate or two thrown in amidst a busy Session. No motions of private members, such as was that of Sir Colman O'Loghlen, no Ministerial afterthoughts, like the Bill of Lord Naas for "promoting the improvement of land by tenants," could solve the Land Question; and the House showed its sense of this by allowing these measures to drop after short discussions. In the same way with the Irish Church Question. Sir John Gray brought it forward on the 7th of May, in the thick of the Reform campaign, and, of course, his motion--"That the House would on a future day resolve itself into a committee to consider the temporalities and privileges of the Established Church of Ireland"--had no chance of success at such a time. It drew, however, from Mr. Gladstone another of those emphatic statements of disapproval of the existing Establishment which, begun in 1865, had cost him his seat for Oxford University, and which ended in 1869, when he carried Disestablishment. In the House of Lords, Lord Russell moved for a Royal Commission to inquire into the revenues of the Established Church of Ireland, and his motion was agreed to. The investigations made by the Commissioners appointed in consequence of this motion formed the basis of the action of the Liberal Government two years later.

Other subjects that occupied the attention of Parliament during the year were, besides various points of foreign policy, Church Rates, Religious Tests in the Universities, Religious Disabilities in various offices in Ireland, Increase of the Episcopate, National Education, the Factory Acts and their possible extension, the Agricultural Gangs, and the Right of Meeting in the London Parks. In the second and extraordinary Session of Parliament, which was called together in the autumn to vote supplies for the Abyssinian expedition, a few other matters were brought forward; but the principal concern of that short Session was the subject that had called the House together. That, however, is a matter that may fairly be left until we come to speak of the year 1868, when the whole story of the causes, circumstances, and results of the expedition will be told. On the other questions we have mentioned little actual legislation was achieved, but the tendency of future legislation was foreshadowed.

The Oaths and Offices Bill had for its object the removal of the restriction that prevents a Roman Catholic from being Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and of various small disabilities, relics of the old penal laws, which Roman Catholics still suffered in Ireland. The Bill was passed after some discussion. Mr. Coleridge's Bill for abolishing religious tests required from members of Oxford University in taking certain degrees and in being elected to certain offices, was not so fortunate. The House of Lords rejected it after it had been passed by the Commons--and passed in an extended form, applying to Cambridge as well as to Oxford. The Lords seem to have thought that their concessions on the subject of Reform were as much as could be expected from them in one Session. Nor did they accept with any unanimity Lord Lyttelton's Bill for extending the Episcopate; and the Bill had to be withdrawn. National Education was approached, but no more, in a Bill brought in by Mr. Bruce, a prominent member of the Opposition. Mr. Bruce based his Bill upon many of the same statistics that afterwards lent strength to Mr. Forster's advocacy of a similar proposal--as, for instance, where he showed that in the diocese of London, containing 361,000 children who ought to be at school, only 182,000 (almost exactly one half) were actually at school. The Bill was in some points singularly like Mr. Forster's Bill of 1870, and in many points unlike it; it showed the same favour to the local system, and proposed the appointment of "school committees" with the functions, or nearly the functions, of the school boards afterwards established; and it showed the same regard for religious education. It was not proposed with any intention of being carried into law; it was only an instance of the common Parliamentary device of inviting a Government to declare itself, and of showing to the Opposition, in case of an unsatisfactory Government answer, what the tactics of their own leaders would be if they were to be restored to power. Other measures especially affecting the wage-earning classes that were carried into law were measures for extending the operation of the Factory Acts to certain occupations not included in them, and thus increasing the protection afforded to women and children in the great towns; and also strong legislative restrictions upon what is known as the "gang system." This last, which prevailed especially in the eastern counties, was the system by which children of both sexes were gathered together in gangs by a contractor, or "ganger," and let out to the farmers to work in the fields at weeding or sowing. It is obvious that a system of this kind was full of danger, both to the physical and moral well-being of the children. Too often the contractors were hard men, whose one object was to make as much money as possible out of their gangs; and for this they would overwork the children's bodies and leave them morally uncared for. An Act was passed applying the same principles to the agricultural gangs as had been applied to the factories, and asserting the right of Parliament to protect the children and limit the powers of the gang-masters. It laid down hours beyond which it was unlawful for the children to work, and imposed other restrictions on the employment of girls. It worked well even at first; and later, when supplemented by the Elementary Education Act of 1870, it put it still more out of the power of parents to sell their children's whole time, to give them up body and soul, to the weary drudgery of farm labour.

The time of Parliament was further occupied with discussions on the Right of Meeting in the Metropolitan Parks. The way in which, in 1866, the populace and Mr. Beales took this question into their own hands and marched into Hyde Park across the ruins of the railings has already been recorded; and it has been said how keenly Mr. Secretary Walpole felt the distress of the situation. Again in this year the Reform League was active. The conduct of Government with regard to Reform had not, at least early in the Session, pleased the ardent Reformers; they distrusted Mr. Disraeli's obscure eloquence, they thought the "system of checks and counterpoises" was far too clever to be satisfactory. Accordingly, it was resolved by the leaders of the League to hold another meeting in the Park, on the 6th of May. But on the 1st of May a proclamation appeared whereby all persons were warned and admonished to abstain from attending, aiding, or taking part in any such meeting, or from entering the Park with a view to attend, aid, or take part in any such meeting. This was an instance of the "spirit of conciliation and compromise" English statesmen are so fond of, which succeeds so poorly in times of high excitement. Government intended to leave the Park gates open, and not to attempt to disperse the meeting by force, and yet it "admonished" people not to attend. Of course, the proclamation excited much discussion in Parliament; and Mr. Bright made an energetic statement of his belief that the parks were "public places," and an energetic protest against the proposal to swear in special constables--a measure which, he said, always tends to promote class hostility, and to create breaches between the divisions of the people. With this declaration of "the Tribune" to back them, the Reform League carried out its plan in the face of the Government admonition. Seventy thousand persons formed the audience of the speakers in the Park; a hundred thousand more, drawn partly by real interest in Reform, and partly by curiosity, filled the approaches and the open spaces; and "the Ring" was filled with the carriages of rich people, who had come to look on. There was absolutely no disturbance. The O'Donoghue, Mr. Beales, Colonel Dickson, Mr. Odger, Mr. Lucraft, and other well-known Reformers made speeches, and the meeting quietly dispersed at dusk, with no occasion for the 5,000 police and the soldiers who were in readiness close by to come in and restore order. But Government felt that they had received a check. Mr. Walpole resigned, "in consequence of the onerous duties imposed upon him," and his place was filled by a man of less susceptibility and more energy--Mr. Gathorne Hardy. He made many attempts during the remainder of the Session to pass a Government Bill abolishing the right of public meeting in the parks, but without success. The Reform Bill occupied too exclusively the time of the House; and it was felt that there was a certain invidiousness in passing a measure that would seem to be directly aimed at the prominent Reformers at the very time when their demand for Reform was being granted. Immediately after the passing of the Representation of the People Act, Parliament was prorogued; but before the year was over it was convoked again for an extraordinary Session, to be described when we come to speak of the Abyssinian War.

The first occurrences outside Parliament that demand our attention are those connected with the Fenian outbreak, which this year were marked by a rare audacity, and occasioned great alarm in the public mind and severe retributive measures. We have already said that in February a rising took place in the county of Kerry. In December a martello tower near Cork was attacked, and the arms were carried away; and in several places gunsmiths' shops were broken into and robbed of their contents. But the alarm caused by these outbreaks on Irish soil was as nothing compared with that caused by certain outbreaks of Fenianism in England. The first of these was a supposed attempt to take Chester Castle and make off with the arms and ammunition contained in it.

Chester Castle is a mediæval fortress, and in 1867 it was used as a garrison for a small number of troops, and a storehouse for arms. As was afterwards discovered, a meeting had been held in New York early in the year, in which it had been decided to attempt a rising in Ireland; and a band of fifty men was sent over in detachments to the United Kingdom to organise the rising. A central "Directory" of fifteen members was understood to be established in London, and branch directories were placed in many of the great towns. In obedience to orders from these authorities, a movement was made upon Chester on February 11th. The Castle contained at the time 9,000 stand of Enfield rifles, 4,000 swords, 900,000 rounds of ammunition, and some arms belonging to the militia; and the only guard consisted of a handful of men belonging to the 54th Regiment. During the night of the 10th information was given to the Chester authorities by the Liverpool police that an ex-officer in the American service--himself a Fenian--had come to them, and made known the Fenian design, which was to assemble in large numbers in Chester the next day, seize the Castle, carry off the arms, break the telegraph wires, and tear up the rails on the railway, and themselves escape, viâ Holyhead, to Ireland with their booty. Very early in the morning the information began to be verified, and large numbers of young men, apparently of the artisan or labouring class, kept arriving by every train from Manchester, Liverpool, Stalybridge, Preston, and other manufacturing towns. Meanwhile, the civil and military authorities of Chester were actively employed; telegrams were passing between them and the Assistant Adjutant-General at Manchester, and Government and the Commander-in-Chief were also kept informed. Early in the morning the volunteers were called out; and Mr. Walpole having telegraphed instructions that they ought not to be employed as soldiers in putting down a riot, but that they might as individuals assist the authorities, and even, if necessary, use their arms, they were sworn in as special constables. Still the invaders kept massing in the town. For some reason, though their errand was very well known, they were not arrested in detachments in the places from which they started, but were allowed to come to Chester unimpeded. By five o'clock the strangers amounted to 1,500 in number, and yet the only force at the disposal of the authorities was a company of soldiers of the 54th, some of the county constabulary, and the volunteers as special constables. Yet, by extraordinary good fortune, this most inadequate force was not put to the test of fighting. The Fenians, seeing that some preparations had been made for their reception, suspected that others might have been secretly made. So no attack was made upon the Castle, although, between six and seven o'clock, when all the invading force was present, and the great reinforcements had not arrived for the defence, there were abundant opportunities, and good hopes of success. During the evening a public meeting of the "friends of order" was held, and 500 special constables were sworn in--a poor defence against thrice their number of desperate men armed with revolvers. But the special constables patrolled the town throughout the night, and by the morning it was found that the Fenians had melted away. They had walked off in small batches to Warrington and the other large towns in the neighbourhood. After they had gone some relics of their visit were found, in the shape of two haversacks containing privately-made ball-cartridges, and there were other indications that they were prepared to fight. During the morning of the 12th a battalion of 500 Foot Guards arrived from London--too late to have prevented the attack, supposing the Fenians had made it when they had so fair a chance; but not too late to relieve the anxious minds of the inhabitants of Chester from the alarm and terror of the past day. It is enough to add that sixty-seven "suspicious characters," all of them probably members of the invading force, were arrested at Dublin, on the morning of the 12th, as they landed from the Holyhead steamer. Nothing very conclusive was found upon them to illustrate the history of the Chester _fiasco;_ but the authorities, acting on the powers conferred by the Act that suspended the Habeas Corpus, kept them in safe custody in Richmond Bridewell. Finally some of the ringleaders, among whom was Michael Davitt, were condemned to terms of imprisonment.

For some months after this Fenianism lay comparatively inactive, and the public alarm had time to subside. But in September England was again unpleasantly reminded of it by an event that took place at Manchester, and which, in the audacity of its design and the desperate manner of its execution, was sufficiently startling. The Manchester police, about the 10th of the month, arrested two men who were behaving in a suspicious manner at dead of night, and on each of them was found a loaded revolver. From communications held with the Irish police, it was discovered that these men were Fenians of considerable military rank in the brotherhood--Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasey. They were remanded at the police-court on their arrest; and on the 18th, after their second examination, they were to be removed in the ordinary police-van to the city gaol. As they were about to enter the van, the police saw two more suspicious-looking men loitering about, and a constable seized one of them, who attempted to stab him. This caused the police to handcuff Kelly and Deasey, and they then entered the van. Seven policemen rode outside and four more followed in a cab; but none of these were armed except with the usual policeman's staff. The van drove off along its accustomed route, over Ardwick Green and along the Hyde Road, in the outskirts of Manchester. There is a railway-bridge that crosses this road; and the van approached this bridge about four o'clock. As it did so, a tall fair-haired young man ran out in front of it into the road, and presenting a revolver at the driver summoned him to stop. A large body of men made their appearance at the same moment; and then fired several shots at the driver and the other policemen on the roof, shot the horses one after another, hurled a stone that brought the driver from his seat, and clambered up to the roof of the van to be in readiness to break it open if the door could not be forced. The small body of unarmed constables made a brave defence of the door; but axe and crowbar were being vigorously employed, and forty or fifty men armed with revolvers were carrying on the attack and firing without mercy. A crowd began to gather, but the Fenian revolvers kept them back for the most part. Two of the constables, Bromley and Trueman, were wounded; a civilian named Sprossen was shot in the ankle. Still the door resisted; a hole had been made in the roof, and stones had been let fall on the head of Sergeant Brett; he had been summoned to give up the keys, but he steadily refused. Then a panel of the door gave way, and one of the assailants, the tall young man who had led the attack, and who was afterwards identified as William O'Meara Allen, presented his revolver at the wounded policeman with a fresh demand for the keys. When this was refused, he fired at the lock of the door and blew it open. Again he demanded the keys--for the cells of the van were each of them locked--and again was refused. Then he fired point blank at the head of Brett, who fell mortally wounded, the bullet having passed straight through the skull. The keys were now secured, the doors unlocked, the two prisoners released. As a witness at the trial swore, Allen said to one of them, "Arrah, Kelly, I'll die for you before I'll deliver you up!" Then Kelly and Deasey made off, Allen threatening to shoot any one who followed. The Fenians then dispersed, running across the fields or into the town; and all of them escaped for the time with the exception of four, including Allen, who were run down. Brett died very soon after receiving the shot.

It may be imagined that so bold a rescue created consternation in the minds not only of the inhabitants of Manchester, but of all English people. It was the most reckless act the Fenians had as yet attempted; and the uncompromising use of force, while it horrified people, showed them once for all what a dangerous thing the Fenian conspiracy was. The seriousness of the occasion was such that Government issued a special commission for the trial of the prisoners, who, with the four who were captured just after the rescue, numbered twenty-nine. The judges were Justices Blackburn and Mellor, and before them twenty-six of the men who had been arrested were arraigned, in different detachments, on counts extending from the charge of wilful murder to the charge of riot and assault. There is no need to state the facts of the trial at length; when the law had once been laid down, the case became one simply of identification. The Attorney-General, Sir John Karslake, held the Crown brief, and explained the law--namely, that if men conspired and combined to effect a rescue, prepared to use force if they were opposed, and if from their action during the rescue death resulted, that amounted to the crime of murder. The prisoners Allen, Larkin, Gould, Maguire, and Shore were all identified by numerous witnesses as having led the attack on the van; and many witnesses swore to Allen's having fired the fatal shot. They were all found guilty, and, though each of them denied having actually committed the murder, they were sentenced to death. To Maguire, however, who was convicted in spite of very clear evidence of an _alibi_, the Home Office sent a pardon; and Shore's punishment was commuted, because he had not been armed with a revolver, but had only thrown stones. But with the others the law took its course. Great efforts were made to obtain a reprieve, and much energy was displayed by a section of the press in showing that the crime for which they were to suffer was political, and was not murder. But it was of no avail; the Ministry then in power was not likely to take that view, nor even to recognise the proposition that no political offences are capital. On November 23rd Allen, Larkin, and Gould were executed at Manchester, in the presence of enormous crowds of people. Their memory was consecrated by "processions" of their countrymen, held on December 1st--a Sunday--in Manchester, and in Dublin, Limerick, and other Irish towns. The Irish populace persisted in regarding the three men as martyrs, and Mr. T. D. Sullivan commemorated the deed in the popular ditty, "God save Ireland."

Whatever ultimate effect the execution had, it did not prevent certain desperate sympathisers from outdoing in nefarious audacity the executed men. It was known that the feelings of a large class of Irishmen were embittered by the execution; but it was not suspected that within a very short time a deed would be perpetrated in London that would throw the Manchester rescue into the shade. Such a deed was, however, done; and, once for all, it implanted in the minds of all classes of English people a feeling of intense hatred towards Fenianism.

Two men, named Burke and Casey, had been arrested in London on a charge of being Fenians; they were imprisoned, under a remand, in the Clerkenwell House of Detention. This prison had an exercising-ground within its walls, and at a fixed hour in the afternoon the prisoners were exercised there. The wall of the exercising-ground ran along Corporation Lane; it was about twenty-five feet in height and two feet in thickness, becoming slightly thinner towards the top. The partisans of the Fenian prisoners determined to blow down this wall during exercise-time, to give them a chance of escaping in the confusion. Accordingly, about a quarter to four on the afternoon of December 13th, a man came along the lane wheeling a truck, on which was a barrel covered with a white cloth. This truck he left opposite the wall, disappeared for a moment, and returned with a long squib, which he fixed in the barrel. He then coolly borrowed a light from some boys who were playing about close by, applied it to the squib, and ran off. In a few seconds a horrible explosion took place, sounding like the discharge of a park of artillery, and sending a shock through all that district of London. The prison wall tottered and fell. The houses opposite were shaken to their foundations, and several of them, after rocking for a moment, came crashing down. The screams and groans of wounded people mingled with the noise of falling rafters, and the clouds of dust that rose from the ruins, choking the light of such lamps as stood the shock, added to the horror of the scene. When search could be made, it was found that at least forty people, many of them women and children, were seriously hurt; one was dead already, and three died soon afterwards in the hospital. The others, with their various degrees of injury, were taken care of at St. Bartholomew's and at the Free Hospital, Gray's Inn Road, until their recovery. It may be added that Burke and Casey did not escape, the governor of the prison having, for that day, changed their hour of exercise, so that when the explosion came they were safely in their cells. Thus the attempt of the miscreants to release the prisoners was completely frustrated. The excitement caused by this outrage was such as cannot be described. Crowds of people thronged the scene of the explosion, and 500 police and a body of soldiers were necessary to keep order. Rumours of all kinds found their way about London--that the Bank of England was blown up and sacked; that the Tower of London was destroyed; that the explosion was but the first of a series of plotted outrages meant to avenge the "Manchester martyrs." These ideas, however, subsided when the facts came to be known. Nevertheless Mr. Gladstone afterwards declared that the Fenian outrages, by fixing public attention upon deeply-rooted Irish grievances, had brought the Disestablishment of the Irish Church "within the region of practical politics."

It was in this year that society was startled by certain revelations of the proceedings of trades unions which were made before a commission sitting at Sheffield. A number of mysterious outrages had taken place periodically in that town; and a Royal Commission, which had been appointed to investigate the nature and working of trades unions, determined to probe to the bottom the supposed connection between these acts and the unions. Accordingly it delegated its functions to three barristers, of whom Mr. Overend, Q.C., was chairman, and sent them down to Sheffield to inquire into the matter. A special Act of Parliament was passed, allowing these gentlemen to give "certificates of indemnity" to any witness who should confess to any illegal acts, for it was known that without such certificates the questions of the commissioners would never be answered. The result of the inquiry was to discover facts that thrilled all England. A kind of _vehmgericht_, or secret tribunal, seemed to have been set up, which passed sentence of death, and had its sentences executed; which punished offenders against its secret laws by acts the perpetrators of which could never be brought before their country's justice; and which deprived obnoxious workmen of the means of life, setting the rules of the trade in the place of law.