Chapter VI

1849-1851.

Prince Albert's Industry--His proposal for a Great
Exhibition--Adoption of the Scheme--Competing Designs--Mr.
Paxton's selected--Erection of the Crystal Palace--Colonel
Sibthorp denounces the Scheme--Papal Titles in Great
Britain--Popular Indignation--The Ecclesiastical Titles
Bill--Defeat of Ministers on the Question of the
Franchise--Difficulty in finding a Successor to Russell--He
resumes Office--Opening of the Great Exhibition--Its success and
close.

[Sidenote: Prince Albert's Industry.]

Reference has been made already to the wise restraint which Prince Albert imposed upon himself in respect to politics and legislation; but those would greatly misinterpret the motives and impulses of that active intellect who should attribute this reserve either to apathy or constitutional indolence. Prince Albert did not admit that, because he was withheld by recent developments of representative government from personal interference in legislation and diplomacy, it was the less incumbent upon him, as Consort of the Head of the State, to make himself thoroughly informed on all the leading political questions of the day, as well as on the special work of the public departments. Added to this was the active part he took in schemes of social and commercial improvement, and in scientific and artistic progress. An early riser at all times, it was his custom, summer and winter, to dispose of a couple of hours' work before breakfast, and it is no figure of speech to say that few of the Queen's subjects can have been more constantly or more laboriously employed than her husband. The Prince had lived down any popular prejudice which he had to encounter in the early years of his married life; people had come to understand and appreciate his abilities and disposition, and the time had come when his genius and industry were to bear remarkable fruit.

THE FIRST STEAM LIFEBOAT, "DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND."

Built in 1890; is propelled by a turbine, driven by powerful steam engines, and is capable of being steered by means of the jets of water from the turbine, even if the rudder is disabled. She is 50 feet long, 14 feet 4 inches extreme breadth, 3 feet 6 inches deep, and is built of steel in fifteen watertight compartments. She is stationed at New Brighton, Cheshire; a similar boat is at Harwich; and a third is now being built.]

[Sidenote: His Proposal for a Great Exhibition.]

[Sidenote: Adoption of the Scheme.]

Prince Albert was President of the Society of Arts, a body which, dating from the middle of the eighteenth century, had, from time to time, offered prizes for specimens of British textile, ceramic, and other manufactures; but the project of holding a competitive Exhibition on an international scale originated with the Prince himself. In the course of July 1849 he had laid his proposals before some of the members of the Society, and means were at once adopted to arouse the interest of manufacturers at home, abroad, and in the colonies, and to open negotiations with foreign governments. The idea caught on at once; the States of Europe were at peace, and nothing could more surely tend to obliterate the recollection of recent disturbances than to join in friendly rivalry in the arts of peace. A Royal Commission was appointed to carry out the preparations, and the scheme was formally inaugurated on March 21, 1850, at a banquet given by the Lord Mayor to the Chief Magistrates of all the towns in the United Kingdom, to which Prince Albert and the foreign Ambassadors were also invited.

A. Master. B. Purser. C. Clerk. D. Midshipman. E. Rear-Admiral.
F. Petty Officer. G. Boatswain. H. Carpenter. J. Seaman.

UNIFORMS OF THE BRITISH NAVY, 1837.

In the early part of the reign there was no regulation dress for seamen, and even in the case of officers the regulations were not enforced as they are now.]

[Sidenote: Competing Designs.]

[Sidenote: Mr. Paxton's selected.]

[Sidenote: Erection of the Crystal Palace.]

Somerset House had been placed at the disposal of the Commissioners for the purposes of the Exhibition, but the fervour with which all nations embraced the idea soon made it manifest that no permanent edifice could contain more than a small fraction of the exhibits. There was no time to be lost--the 1st of May 1851 had been fixed for the opening ceremony. The difficulty was not the cost, for a guarantee fund of £200,000 had been speedily subscribed; but the designs and specifications had to be submitted, the materials prepared, and the erection completed, all within the space of nine months. A site in Hyde Park was chosen, and the Commissioners set to work to examine no fewer than 245 designs and specifications sent in by architects all over the world. They had almost decided in favour of a design by a French architect, when a certain Mr. Joseph Paxton--not a professional architect, but superintendent of the Duke of Devonshire's gardens at Chatsworth--produced a scheme so original and simple that it was adopted at once in preference to all others. It was an enormous conservatory of glass and iron--1,848 feet long, 408 feet broad, and 66 feet high--with transepts constructed so as to contain some of the elms still growing in Hyde Park. The decision of the Commissioners was not arrived at till July 26: not a single casting or piece of material had been prepared yet; but the contractors, Messrs. Fox, Henderson & Co., undertook to deliver the building ready for painting and fitting on December 31. The ground lying between Albert Gate and Knightsbridge Barracks on the east and west, between Rotten Row and St. George's Place on the north and south, was handed over to them on July 30; the first column was raised on September 26, and on the stipulated day Messrs. Fox and Henderson handed over the structure of the Crystal Palace, as it was called, to the Commissioners. Though the great fabric vanished with the leaves of a single summer, yet this achievement of the contractors deserves record among the most famous exploits of industrial enterprise, affording, as it did, a practical illustration of the dominant object of the Great Exhibition, as Prince Albert had defined it in his speech at the Mansion House; namely, "To give us a true test and living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived ... a new starting point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions."

A. Seaman (Full Dress).
B. First Class Petty Officer, White (Summer) Full Dress.
C. Chief Petty Officer.
D. Seaman (Landing Order).
E. Admiral.
F. Captain.
G. Midshipman.
H. Lieutenant.
J. Boatswain.

UNIFORMS OF THE BRITISH NAVY, 1897.]

[Sidenote: Colonel Sibthorp denounces the Scheme.]

[Sidenote: Papal Titles in Great Britain.]

[Sidenote: Popular Indignation.]

There were _frondeurs_, of course, as there always are in the projection of any scheme involving novelty; and the _Times_ lent its sonorous voice to swell the clamour raised against the desecration of Hyde Park by the introduction of a commercial speculation. It may appear to some that the British retain to this day some traces of insular prejudice against foreigners, but such a feeling was far more prevalent in 1850 than one is apt to realise now. It found fitting expression in the House of Commons from the lips of Colonel Sibthorp, who declared that "when Free Trade had left nothing else wanting to complete the ruin of the Empire, the devil had suggested the idea of the Great Exhibition, so that the foreigners who had first robbed us of our trade might now be enabled to rob us of our honour."[D] The circumstances of the moment secured the gallant Colonel more sympathy than his grotesque speech and exaggerated fears would otherwise have won for him. The Protestant spirit of England had taken alarm at a Papal bull re-establishing in Great Britain a hierarchy of bishops deriving titles from the sees to which they were appointed. This might have seemed a higher compliment to Great Britain than the arrangement under which the Roman Catholic bishops, which had existed ever since the Reformation, held their appointments, under fictitious titles in _partibus infidelium_. But a good deal had occurred in recent years to arouse Protestant jealousy of Papal aggression. The Tractarian movement had resulted in the secession of Newman, Manning, and other conspicuous clergy and laymen to the Church of Rome; people both in London and Rome had begun to prognosticate a general secession from the Church of England, and there was something peculiarly startling in the appointment at this juncture of Cardinal Wiseman as Archbishop of Westminster. Most Englishmen greatly preferred that the Pope should continue to regard and call them "infidels," than that he should be permitted to bring them under his immediate patronage in this formal and ostentatious manner; and the feeling of irritation was intensified by Wiseman's pastoral letter to the English people on October 7, 1850, in which the new Archbishop announced that "your beloved country has received a place among the fair churches which, normally constituted, form the splendid aggregate of Catholic communion." Either the Protestant Reformation, for which Great Britain had paid so heavy a price, was a precious reality, in which case, so it appeared to most Englishmen, this was an insolent and significant aggression by the Court of Rome, or it was an obsolete blunder, and Rome was going to forgive it and resume her spiritual sway over our people.

THE BOY WHO CHALKED UP "NO POPERY," AND THEN RAN AWAY.

Lord John Russell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill of February was materially modified and made much less stringent before it was reintroduced in March.]

[Sidenote: The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.]

The Prime Minister lost no time in showing how the affair presented itself to his mind. Within less than a month he had proclaimed that the Pope's action was "a pretension of supremacy over the realm of England, and a claim to sole and undivided sway, which is inconsistent with the Queen's supremacy, with the rights of our bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual independence of the nation as asserted even in Roman Catholic times"; and he vindicated the sincerity of these expressions by introducing, immediately after the meeting of Parliament in February 1851, a Bill to prevent the assumption by Roman Catholics of titles taken from any place within the United Kingdom.

It was a hazardous measure to steer through the Imperial Parliament. Outside popular passion was aflame; effigies of the Pope and Wiseman, sixteen feet high, had been dragged through the streets of London on the Fifth of November instead of the usual Guy Faux. On the other hand, both the Radicals and the Irish Catholics in the House might be counted on to offer fiercest opposition to the Bill. Ministers themselves dreaded enacting anything that savoured of religious intolerance, and the Queen herself has left on record her feelings about the subject.

"I would never have consented," she wrote to the Duchess of Gloucester, "to anything which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sincerely Protestant as I have always been, and always shall be, and indignant as I am at those who call themselves Protestants while they are, in fact, quite the contrary, I much regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit exhibited by many people at the public meetings. I cannot bear to hear the violent abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so painful and so cruel towards the many good and innocent Roman Catholics. However, we must hope and trust this excitement will soon cease, and that the wholesome effect of it upon our own Church will be lasting."

THOMAS CARLYLE, 1795-1881.

The son of a stonemason; born at Ecclefechan, Dumfries, and educated at Edinburgh University. His essays and historical writings, set forth in virile and rugged English, have had a very great influence on literature and on popular thought, both in England and America. "Sartor Resartus" appeared in 1833-4; the "French Revolution" in 1837; "Cromwell's Letters and Speeches" in 1847; "Frederick the Great" in 1858-65.]

No wiser words have ever been written or spoken by a monarch. It was both necessary and desirable to give effect to the national repugnance to spiritual interference; but it was imperative that spiritual freedom should be left absolutely unfettered. The progress of the measure through the House of Commons was like that of Samson's foxes through the Philistines' corn; it kindled every slumbering sentiment of acrimony and hatred. The Radicals, through Mr. Roebuck, exclaimed against it as "one of the meanest, pettiest, and most futile measures that ever disgraced even bigotry itself." The Irish employed all their inexhaustible resources in resistance; nor was their opposition modified in the least degree by the Government agreeing to exclude Ireland from the Bill. Nevertheless, after four nights' debate on the motion for leave to introduce the Bill, the division list showed a majority of 332 in favour of it.

THE FIRST OF MAY, 1851.

The Duke of Wellington presenting a casket to his godson, Prince Arthur (Duke of Connaught). The Prince Consort holds a plan of the Great Exhibition, which is seen in the distance.]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Ministers on the Question of the Franchise.]

[Sidenote: Lord Russell Resumes.]

But just as Peel fell on the morrow of his great victory on the Corn Laws, so within a week of the division on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill Russell encountered defeat in resisting a motion to extend the Franchise. He resigned office: the Queen sent for Lord Stanley, who recommended that an attempt should be made by Russell to form a coalition Cabinet with the help of the party of the late Robert Peel. But the recent debate had raised implacable bitterness between the Peelites and the Whigs. Next, Lord Aberdeen refused to attempt the formation of a Ministry, on the ground that no Ministry could stand which would not undertake to deal with Papal aggression, which he was determined not to do. Lord Stanley then reluctantly tried his hand and failed. The situation was more embarrassing than any that had arisen since 1812, when the Lords Wellesley, Moira, Grey, and Grenville had successively failed to form a Cabinet. The deadlock brought about a touching incident. Her Majesty resolved to ask the advice of her well-tried servant, the Duke of Wellington, then in his eighty-third year. He gave it in terms as concise as one of his own general orders: "That the party still filling the offices, till Her Majesty's pleasure shall be declared, is the one best calculated to carry on the Government at the present moment." On March 3, therefore, Lord John Russell, on Her Majesty's invitation, returned to office. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill was resumed, but the more stringent clauses were withdrawn, and in the form in which it finally received the Royal Assent it did no more than declare the illegality of the English titles assumed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.[E]

THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851.

The Queen, Prince Consort, Duchess of Kent, and the Royal Children on the Dais; members of the Ministry on the left; Foreign Ambassadors on the right.]

[Sidenote: Opening of the Great Exhibition.]

While this agitation and these debates were in progress, it may be believed that many people were far from hospitably disposed towards the crowds of foreigners which the Great Exhibition was designed to draw to London. But all hostile criticism was reduced, first to whispers, by the marvellous success of the structure itself, and then to silence, by the splendour of the opening ceremony and of the display within the building. It is the poet's gift to store the essence of events in very small phials, and Thackeray's _May Day Ode_ vividly reflects the feelings of the nation on that far-off spring morning:

"But yesterday a naked sod,
The dandies sneered from Rotten Row,
And cantered o'er it to and fro;
And see, 'tis done!
As though 'twere by a wizard's rod,
A blazing arch of lucid glass
Leaps like a fountain from the grass
To meet the sun!"

A generation has sprung up since that day, satiated with marvels and surprised by no achievement of hand and brain. But no such visible, tangible accomplishment in the arts of peace had ever been manifested up to that time; if Prince Albert's idea had been one of startling novelty, the celerity of its realisation was still more startling.

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE CONSORT.

From the Portrait painted in 1859.]

"God bless my dearest Albert!" wrote the Queen with no feigned emotion, "God bless my dearest country, which has shown itself so great to-day! One felt so grateful to the great God, who seemed to pervade all and bless all."

More than mere womanly emotion, this, in presence of an exciting scene. The May Day poet put on it the same interpretation:

"Swell, organ, swell your trumpet blast!
March, Queen and Royal pageant, march
By splendid aisle and springing arch
Of this fair Hall!
And see! above the fabric vast
God's boundless heaven is bending blue,
God's peaceful sun is beaming through,
And shining over all."

One note of discord, and one only, was heard; rather, one note necessary to make the complete harmony was silent. It would have fulfilled the international character of the Exhibition and emphasised it as an echo of the message of peace on earth and goodwill towards men had the Corps Diplomatique availed themselves of Prince Albert's invitation to present an address to the Queen. But, strangely as it may sound at the present day, most of the great Continental rulers held severely aloof from the whole project of the Exhibition. They were apprehensive of the effect which contact with English institutions, so dangerously liberal, might have on their own subjects, and the foreign Ambassadors agreed, by a majority of three, to decline to present an address.

[Sidenote: Its Success and Close.]

The success of the opening ceremony attended the Exhibition to its close on October 15. Between six and seven millions of persons visited it, and the surplus funds accruing to the Commissioners, amounting to upwards of £200,000, were afterwards applied, on Prince Albert's suggestion, to the purchase of the South Kensington estate, now occupied by various institutions for the encouragement of Science and Art.

As inaugurating an era of universal peace, which its most enthusiastic supporters expected it to do, the Great Exhibition of 1851 proved a failure; but as a means of diffusing among the people of Great Britain views about foreigners more enlightened than those they entertained before, as an impetus to commerce and manufacture and a stimulus to artistic production, the "Crystal Palace" has fully fulfilled the most sanguine anticipation.

THE WHITE STAR LINE R.M.S. "TEUTONIC" AS AN ARMED CRUISER AT THE NAVAL REVIEW, August 4, 1889.

Addressing the members of the Institute of Naval Architects on March 30, 1887, upon the "Merchant Service and the Royal Navy," Sir N. Barnaby, late Director of Naval Construction, referred to the arrangements which had then recently been completed between the Admiralty and the White Star and other Companies for the retention of their steamers for war purposes, and pointed out that "this seed, for which we have to thank Mr. Ismay, was planted at the Admiralty nine years ago; ... the outcome of proposals made by Mr. Ismay as far back as 1878," when he urged upon the attention of the Admiralty that a fast mail or passenger steamer might be as efficient a factor in a naval war as an ordinary war cruiser, and offered to make an agreement to hold at the disposal of the Admiralty, upon terms then specified, certain ships for the purposes of the State in time of war.]

BUCKINGHAM PALACE.

Buckingham Palace occupies the site of old Buckingham House, which was altered and enlarged to fit it for a Royal Residence by John Nash in the reigns of George IV. and William IV. It was altered again in 1837 for Queen Victoria, and the east front (that shown in the Illustration) added in 1850, when the Marble Arch was removed from the front of the Palace to its present site at the north east corner of Hyde Park. The lake in the foreground is the ornamental water in St. James's Park.]