Chapter XX: Discontented Dependencies

Reaction in England in 1849--Attacks in Parliament on the Queen’s
Speech--Gagging Parliament--The Last Dying Struggle of the
Protectionists--Repeal of the Navigation Laws--The Tory Attack on
the Bishops--Protectionist Plans for Reducing Local
Taxation--Coercion for Ireland--Peel’s Generosity to the Whigs
Explained--Irish Mendicity and English Grants in Aid--A Policy of
Pauperism and Doles--Small Minds in a Great Crisis--Peel’s
Comprehensive Plan for Relieving Ireland--The Break-down of the
Poor Law--The Queen and the Irish Landlords--Prince Albert’s
Project for Reforming the Irish Poor Rate--Scandals at the Colonial
Office--Ceylon--Demerara and Canada--The Loyal Rebels of
Canada--Riots in Montreal--Attacks on Lord Elgin--An Examination
and Defence of his Policy--The Test of Results--“Be Just and Fear
Not.”

When Parliament met on the 2nd of February, 1849, the condition of England may be described as negatively good. It was not prosperous. It was not prostrate. The commercial and manufacturing interests were rallying, but had not yet recovered from the blows of panic in 1847 and revolution in 1848. The small investors were uneasy about the management of the great railway enterprises which had absorbed their savings. The landed gentry were in a state of feverish apprehension as to the effect of Sir Robert Peel’s fiscal policy, which would come into full operation in 1849. Ireland was still a distressful country--the Poor Law having inflicted a severe blow on Property, without at the same time relieving Pauperism. More legislation, it was felt, was needed to succour the starving Irish, and the sullen discontent of the people, which followed the suppressed rebellion, irritated Englishmen and put the House of Commons in the worst possible temper for initiating remedial

legislation for Ireland. But the Party of Violence in England and Scotland was effectually crushed, and though some sympathy was felt for its misguided leaders, yet everybody rejoiced that the cause of Social Order had triumphed in 1848, and that 1849 found England profoundly tranquil.

The Queen’s Speech referred to the disturbances on the Continent, and to the steps which the British Government, in conjunction with France, had taken to produce a permanent settlement of affairs in Sicily. It touched on the recrudescence of rebellion in the Punjab, suggested a modification in the Navigation Laws, congratulated the country on escaping the shock of revolution, and on signs of returning prosperity. It pointed to an amendment of the Irish Poor Law, and closed with a proud allusion to the devotion of the English people in maintaining the great institutions of their country “during a period of commercial difficulty, deficient production of food, and political revolution.”

Naturally the country Party attacked those portions of the Speech which implied approval of Sir Robert Peel’s Free Trade policy. In both Houses the arguments were that the Government exaggerated the prosperity of the country, that their foreign policy had left them without allies, that the outlook

abroad in Ireland and in India was troublous, and did not justify the large reductions in the estimates which were foreshadowed. The Irish Party in the House of Commons scoffed at the Royal allusions to Ireland, and contended that the insurrection which had been suppressed was a sham one, “got up,” said Mr. Grattan, “to put down Repeal.” Radicals like Mr. Hume attacked the Colonial policy of the Government, and clamoured for the removal of Lord Grey from the Colonial Office, because of certain arbitrary proceedings which he had sanctioned in British Guiana and Ceylon. It was felt that the real object of the Opposition was to inveigle Parliament into giving a hostile vote against Free Trade and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, one paragraph in the Amendment to the Address affirming that the worst Protectionist predictions had been verified. It was also admitted that the policy of the Government had been right in its aim, which was to keep the country out of war, and that this had been attained, in spite of Lord Palmerston’s turbulent methods of diplomacy. The Amendment to the Address was rejected only by a majority of two in the House of Lords, but in the House of Commons Mr. Disraeli was fain to withdraw it. On the 3rd of February, when the Address to the Crown was adopted, Lord John Russell proposed and carried certain Resolutions for facilitating the despatch of public business--to wit, that Bills be read a first time without debate, that when a Bill in Committee was ordered by the House to be taken up again on a particular day, then when that day came the Speaker should leave the Chair without putting any question, and let the House go into Committee without delay; that the amendments on a Bill, reported from Committee of the whole House, should be received without debate. Mr. Milner Gibson vainly endeavoured to induce the House to add another resolution limiting speakers to one hour each, with an exception in favour of Members introducing Bills and Ministers of the Crown replying to attacks. Lord John Russell gave some faint signs of sympathising with this restriction on Parliamentary garrulity, and Mr. Cobden supported the proposal vehemently. But Sir Robert Peel carried the House against it, and Mr. Gibson’s motion was accordingly lost by a vote of 96 to 64.

In the Session of 1848 Ministers were unable to apply their Free Trade policy to the Shipping Trade, owing to Protectionist obstruction. On the 14th of February, 1849, they, however, proposed to repeal the Navigation Laws, which restricted “the free carriage of goods by sea to and from the United Kingdom and the British Possessions abroad.” Power, however, was reserved to the Queen to re-enact the restrictive laws against countries that adopted a commercial policy hostile to British interests. The monopoly of the coasting trade, however, was not completely abandoned. The President of the Board of Trade, Mr. Labouchere, did not venture to propose that foreign ships might trade from port to port as freely as our own. All he said was, that a foreign ship sailing from a British port might in the course of her voyage to foreign parts touch at and trade freely in British ports _en route_. The Resolution was carried, and a Bill founded on it was brought in on the 9th of March, when it was vigorously opposed by Mr. Herries. The case of the monopolists was sadly damaged by Mr. Gladstone, who showed that with every relaxation of restrictions the English Shipping Trade had increased. The fact was, however, that the question was felt to be no longer arguable. The Navigation Laws were meant to protect the monopoly of English shipowners. Having stripped every other class of Protection, it was absurd to obstruct the perfect working of Free Trade by maintaining Protection for the benefit of the shipowners alone. Moreover, it was necessary to establish a free shipping trade in Canada, to compensate her for the loss of the protective duty on corn. Mr. Labouchere ultimately struck out the clauses relating to the coasting trade for purely fiscal reasons, and a masterly speech from Sir James Graham, on the 23rd of October, carried the third reading of the measure, which crowned the edifice of Free Trade. In the House of Lords the narrow majorities in favour of the Government rendered the last dying struggle of the Protectionists rather exciting. They declared that the Bishops carried the Bill, and the Earl of Winchelsea warned the Prelates that if they voted on secular questions in such a fashion they would be allowed to send only “a chosen few to the Upper House, who would be permitted to speak and vote solely on religious questions. Though the Protectionists were defeated, they were not daunted. Organised under the active and restless leadership of Mr. Disraeli, they harassed the Government at every point. But their grand attack was made on the 8th of March, when Mr. Disraeli brought forward a resolution proposing to throw a portion of local burdens on the Imperial taxation of the country. This proposal he defended as a fair compensation to the agricultural interest for the loss of Protective duties on Corn. Finance was never Mr. Disraeli’s strong point, and, as Mr. Hume observed, it was not easy to see how the farmers would profit by an arrangement, which, by Mr. Disraeli’s own showing, would impose on them an additional income-tax of £6,000,000. Moreover, it was only too obvious that if any relief were granted to the farmers, it would be speedily appropriated by the landlords in the shape of increased rent.

Ireland was quiet, but sullen and disaffected. Though there was no open rebellion in the country, the secret organisation of revolt still existed, and the Home Secretary felt that it would be necessary to renew the Bill suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. Sir George Grey brought forward a motion to this effect on the 6th of February, defending the proposal on the ground that it was purely a precautionary one, and that Lord Clarendon, who thought it necessary, could be trusted to use his powers with discretion. The weakness of the Government lay in their opposition to the Coercion Bill of 1846. Then they turned out Sir Robert Peel by refusing to vote for Coercion unaccompanied by remedial measures. “Where,” asked the Peelites, sneeringly, “are the remedial measures which should accompany this Whig Bill?” Nevertheless, Peel generously supported the Ministry, ostensibly or the ground that Ireland must not be made the battle-ground of Party, really because he was determined, at all costs, to maintain in power a Ministry that would give his fiscal policy a fair trial, as against a Protectionist Ministry, whose primary aim would be to wreck it.

Yet a remedial measure had been introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the 7th of February, in a proposal to grant from the Imperial Exchequer £50,000 to thirty distressed Irish Poor Law Unions, of which twenty-one were utterly bankrupt. Most pitiful was the picture which Sir Charles Wood drew of Ireland in moving the grant. The potato crop had again failed. Pauperism had again increased. Ireland was being depopulated, not so much by an emigration, as by an exodus. The landlords were sinking under the poor rates, and their estates, deserted by tenants who ran away without paying rent whenever they disposed of their crops,[120] were in many

places lying waste and desolate. Mr. Hume protested against the never-ending system of grants in aid, but the Government carried their vote in its original form.

On the 1st of March Lord John Russell brought forward another Irish scheme. The Report of the Committee on the Irish Poor Law recommended that each Union should, by a sixpenny rate, raise a general fund for the relief of the poor in Ireland, which should be banked in the name of the Irish Paymaster of the Civil Service, and held at the disposal of Parliament. Lord John moved that the House go into Committee on this proposal on the 1st of March. A project to impose a new national tax on Ireland for

local purposes, without imposing the same in England, was an eccentric one to come from statesmen who regarded the Union as a reality, and not a sham. Logically it was unjust to tax the industry of Ulster in order to provide local grants in aid for Ireland, while the industry of the United Kingdom generally escaped taxation. The proposal was obstructed in various ways, the Ministerial defence being that Imperial taxation fell more lightly on Ireland than on England and Scotland. Money must be found for the relief of Irish pauperism somehow, and if not by this plan, then by an extension of the Income Tax to Ireland, which would be still less popular. The Peelites even were not at one, Lord Lincoln advocating the extension of the Income Tax to Ireland, and Peel himself supporting the rate-in-aid scheme, not because he liked it, but because he believed that after what had been done for her, Ireland ought to make some special exertion to help herself, which would also have the effect of inducing England to co-operate with her in pushing on regenerative measures. Mr. Bright defended the grant-in-aid scheme, declaring, however, that the incurable evils of Ireland were traceable to her misgovernment by her landlords. But it is quite clear that Peel was the only politician on either side of the House who at this crisis had the penetration to see that the ills of Ireland were too desperate to be remedied by a pettifogging system of English doles and grants in aid. He stood alone in seeing that nothing less than a reform going to the root of Irish rural economy, would be of the slightest use, and in his speech he suggested that the best remedy would be to increase facilities for the transfer of land. From his ambiguous language one gathers that he had in contemplation some scheme by which the State should buy up the poverty-stricken tracts and plant them with solvent colonists, the plantations being managed by a Government Commission. As for the people, those who were not needed as labourers might be induced by the Commission to emigrate. Had he combined this project for one to give Ireland tenant-right, and had he persuaded Parliament to accept his ideas, there would probably have been no “Irish problem” to perplex us in the jubilee year of the Queen’s reign. After wearisome debates the proposal of the Ministry was carried in both Houses, Government having made an advance of £100,000 to the impecunious Unions in anticipation of the Bill passing the Lords.

The next Irish measure was Sir John Romilly’s Encumbered Estates Bill, introduced on the 26th of April. The Bill of the preceding Session had failed to work because its machinery--that is, the Court of Chancery--was too cumbrous. Romilly’s idea was to substitute for the Court a Commission, which should conduct the business of land transfer unfettered by the clumsy procedure or the heavy fees of Chancery. His speech was a masterpiece of exposition, and Mr. Bright expressed the prevailing opinion when he said he accepted the Bill as the harbinger of better legislation for Ireland. It passed both Houses without serious opposition.

It has been said that the sudden pressure of the Poor Law on the mortgaged estates of Ireland nearly ruined the Irish gentry. The Queen and Prince Albert were deeply distressed by painful accounts of the sufferings of this class which reached them. The Prince, indeed, drew up a memorandum for Sir George Grey, pointing out very sensibly the injustice of the existing law. A good landlord spent his substance in improving his estate, and in finding or making work for his labourers. A bad landlord kept his money in his pocket, and when his labourers, unable to earn wages, began to starve, he threw them on the rates. But both landlords paid the same poor rate, so that the good landlord not only taxed himself through his improvements to keep his own workmen from idleness, but was taxed through the Union, to support the unemployed workmen of the bad and non-improving landlord. The idea of the Queen and her husband was that the pressure of the rate should be eased on good landlords who made sacrifices to keep their labourers in work and wages. Sir George Grey submitted the project to the Cabinet, and then told Prince Albert that it would have to be abandoned, for nobody could embody it in a practical Bill. This did not show that the idea was bad, but merely that Whig constructive statesmanship at that time was feeble, not to say incompetent. But the glaring fact remained that the application of the Elizabethan Poor Law to Ireland was bringing ruin to the rich, and doing but little to fend off starvation from the poor. Property was simply unable to support the mass of pauperism that was suddenly cast on it for maintenance. Some modifications in the law must be proposed, if the whole system--upheld as it was solely by grants in aid from England--was not to break down completely. Lord John Russell accordingly proposed, on the 26th of April, a Bill to limit the liability of Irish land for poor rates, by fixing a maximum beyond which the rate could not be increased. The proposal was carried in the Commons, but in the House of Lords the maximum rate clause was struck out. This was an infringement of the privileges of the Lower House, for the Peers have no right to alter a Bill sent up by the Commons fixing rates or taxes. Yet it was almost impossible for the Peers to handle any Poor Law Bill without trenching on this privilege, and hence it was proposed that the House of Commons should formally waive its privileges in regard to this Bill in order to let it be set down for reconsideration.[121] Precedents existed in favour of this course, but Sir James Graham very cogently observed that it was bad public policy to be perpetually adding to precedents, waiving the absolute and exclusive right of the Commons to control fiscal legislation, and he ingeniously suggested another way out of the difficulty. This was to throw the Bill out in the meantime, and re-introduce it afresh with the Lords’ Amendments embodied in it. The suggestion was negatived, and the Bill reconsidered, the Lords’ Amendments being for the most part adopted. The failure of the Government to provide a guarantee for meeting any deficit that might exist after a maximum rate had been levied, had proved fatal to the maximum rate clause.

On the 4th of May Ireland again came before the country as the incorrigible mendicant of Parliament. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, having prefaced his proposals with the usual commonplace that “the present desideratum in Ireland was employment,” moved that further advances should be made under the Land Improvement Act to enable employers to provide work for the people. In addition to what still remained to be disbursed by former advances, Sir C. Wood proposed that £300,000 be granted, thus bringing the total available subsidy to £1,252,000. Besides this sum, he proposed to advance £200,000 for the further development of arterial drainage. A feeble protest was made against this fresh development of an eleemosynary policy. The system of permitting Government loans to be jobbed away by the Department of Public Works in Ireland had, it was said, caused a large proportion of the money voted to be absorbed in extravagant official estimates.

But all objections were over-ruled, and Sir C. Wood’s proposal was accepted in the long-run.

Next to Ireland, the burning question of the Session was that of Colonial policy. Most Englishmen were profoundly ignorant about their Colonies. A strong school of politicians, headed by Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, and after them by Professor Goldwin Smith, taught that the best thing that could be done with a Colony was to get rid of it, as a costly encumbrance, so that Englishmen who were not ignorant were somewhat indifferent about Colonial policy. The result was naturally that the Colonial Office was free to blunder in its Administration without running any great risk of detection or punishment--and it had made affluent use of this privilege. Suddenly, in 1849, England became keenly interested in her distant possessions. Debates on emigration, and the demand for financial retrenchment, had alike stimulated

this interest, and it began to dawn upon the House of Commons that a bad Colonial policy might mean bad Budgets. The first sign of this feeling was given by Mr. Bailie, who in February brought forward a motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the Governments of Ceylon and Guiana. His attack was general as well as particular. In brief, he declared that the Colonial Office oppressed the Colonies and wasted their revenues in extravagant expenditure, and he urged that the time had come for Colonial autonomy. Lord Torrington’s fiscal eccentricities had driven Ceylon to rebellion, which had been suppressed with shocking barbarity. The Colonial Office--in other words, Lord Grey--by opposing financial reforms in Demerara, had rendered it discontented. A feeble Amendment, moved by Mr. Ricardo, extending the scope of the proposed investigation into the means by which the Colonies might best meet the difficulties of the transition from Protection to Free Trade, was all the opposition Mr. Bailie encountered. The attempt to defend the financial maladministration of the Colonies by declaring that it was a corollary of Free Trade failed, and Mr. Bailie’s Committee was appointed. Just before Parliament was prorogued, Mr. Hume drew the attention of the House to the evidence it had then accumulated as to Guiana, and moved that the expenditure of the Colony be reduced, and some measure of autonomy granted to it. The fault with the administration of Demerara was this:--for ten years it had been carried on extravagantly in direct opposition to the views of the elected representatives of the Colonists, who were for a policy of financial retrenchment. The motion was negatived, but the debate on it did good. It is perhaps right to say that the agitation for retrenchment in these Colonies was considerably stimulated by the abolition of Protection. Free Trade cut down the profits of the planters. They in turn angrily demanded that the salaries of Colonial officials should also be docked.

Early in May the Queen was grievously annoyed to learn that the turbulent Canadians were again threatening to rebel. Parliament, therefore, soon found itself discussing a Canadian question.

After the rebellion in Canada, which ended in 1838, a Bill was passed giving compensation to loyal sufferers in Upper Canada. A similar measure was demanded for Lower Canada--the French province--which had been the seat of the insurrection. As it was argued that much, if not most, of the compensation would find its way into rebel hands, the claim was resisted by “the British Party” in the province. But in 1848 the Ministry--a Tory, or “British” Ministry--was ejected. The Governor-General (Lord Elgin) then formed another Cabinet out of the “French Party,” who, of course, brought in and passed an Indemnity Bill for the Lower Province. When Lord Elgin went to the House of Assembly, in Montreal, on the 25th of April, 1849, to give this Bill his sanction, the “British” mob rose in its wrath, and stoned him as he was leaving the building. They then set fire to the House of Assembly itself, and burned it to the ground in a frenzy of loyalty to British interests. Troops were promptly called out, and the disaffected accordingly adopted the less violent course of petitioning the Queen to recall Lord Elgin and veto the obnoxious Bill. The “British Party” gradually cooled down, but throughout the year they remained very sulky, vainly endeavouring to persuade themselves to secede to the United States. The condition of the Colony was, in truth, not such as to stimulate its loyalty. It had lost the benefit which it had enjoyed from privileged access to a protected English market. Its finances were disordered. Its stagnation and decay were in startling contrast to the prosperity and progress of the New England States of the American Republic. The form of its provincial Government was cumbrous, inciting to political feuds; and then--worst of all--in the mother country, Manchester Radicals persistently incited the Canadians to secede, by promulgating the doctrine that British Colonies not only benefited by independence, but were, whilst in the dependent state, a source of trouble and expense to the English taxpayer.

The whole question came before the House of Commons more than once. On the 14th of June the Rebellion Losses Bill was fiercely attacked by Mr. Gladstone in the House of Commons as a measure for rewarding rebels. Some years afterwards Mr. Gladstone made a kind of apology for his onslaught; but even then he quite misunderstood the true meaning and bearing of Lord Elgin’s policy.[122] Mr. Herries moved an Address calling on the Queen to veto the Bill. For two nights it was attacked; but Sir Robert Peel’s intervention routed the opposition, for he pointed out that the measure could not possibly give compensation, as Mr. Gladstone alleged, to any one who was shown to be a rebel, and that it was only, as Lord Elgin said, the logical sequence of other measures of the sort, which had been passed without opposition. His strongest point, however, was that to reject the Bill would be taken as an insult to the Colony, and an encroachment on its right of self-government. Mr. Herries lost his motion by a majority of 141. In the House of Lords, however, the attack was renewed by Lord Brougham, and but for the timely aid of three proxies the Government would have been beaten by him. The curious thing to note is the calmative influence of this firm, and resolute attitude of the Government and Parliament on the Colony. The Tory Party in Canada up till then had strained every effort, Lord Elgin writes in one of his letters, to drive him to a _coup d’état_. They had breathed nothing but rebellion and slaughter for months. The moment Parliament gently snubbed them, however, they were quieted as if by magic, and their organs began to write articles declaiming against the practice of abusing the French, with whom, in the long-run, the Tory or English Party were bound to live in amity.

During this crisis nothing could be worthier of the occasion than the courage, the coolness, the dignity, and resolute forbearance of Lord Elgin. As he says in one of his letters, he stood literally alone. He was accused of cowardice because he did not quench the revolt in blood; and even Lord John Russell and Lord Grey, though they defended him, thought the logic of the case was against him. He was, they argued, either right or wrong. If the latter, he ought to be recalled; if the former, he ought to avenge by force of arms the insult offered to the Queen in his person. But Elgin’s policy was justified by the result. This was that 700,000 rebellious French subjects of the Queen were reconciled to her Government, not because they were bribed by compensation grants, for no actual rebel got any, but because they had a striking proof given to them that to “be just and fear not” was the keynote of the British Governor-General’s policy and administration.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Diaries of a Lady of Quality, by Miss Frances Williams Wynn. 1864.

[2] Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of William IV. and Victoria, by the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. 1861.

[3] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Right Hon. the Earl of Malmesbury. 1884.

[4] McGilchrist’s Life of Queen Victoria. 1868.

[5] History of England, Vol. I., chap. 2.

[6] The Greville Memoirs: Second Part (1885), relating to the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852.

[7] Recollections of Society in France and England, by Lady Clementina Davies. 1872.

[8] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[9] Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I.

[10] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I.

[11] The Early Days of his Royal Highness the Prince Consort; compiled, under the direction of her Majesty, by Lieut.-General the Hon. C. Grey. 1867.

[12] Letter to Baron Stockmar, May, 1841.

[13] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[14] Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands.

[15] Early Years of the Prince Consort.

[16] Harriet Martineau’s History of England during the Thirty Years’ Peace.

[17] Sir Theodore Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I.

[18] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Vol. I., p. 134: Vol. II., pp. 396 and 482.

[19] Thoughts on the Present Discontents.

[20] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I., p. 315.

[21] _Examiner_, 27th December, 1845.

[22] The Croker Papers. The Correspondence and Diaries of the late Right Honourable John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S., Secretary to the Admiralty from 1809 to 1830. Edited by Louis J. Jennings, Vol. III., p. 67.

[23] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Earl of Malmesbury, G.C.B., Vol. I., pp. 166 and 167.

[24] A Sketch of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel, by Sir Lawrence Peel, p. 283.

[25] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, by M. Guizot, p. 251.

[26] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, edited by Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope, and the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell, Vol. II.

[27] Sir Robert Peel: An Historical Sketch, by Henry, Lord Dalling, 1874.

[28] Irish History for English Readers, p. 133.

[29] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XIV.

[30] _Gardener’s Chronicle_, September, 1845.

[31] Endymion, Vol. II., p. 190 (Tauchnitz Edition).

[32] Prentice’s History of the League, Vol. II., p. 415.

[33] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XIV.

[34] _Examiner_, 17th January, 1846.

[35] See _Times_ Report, 7th of January, 1846.

[36] Hansard.

[37] Life and Letters of Samuel Wilberforce, D.D., by R. G. Wilberforce, Vol. I.

[38] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Note by the Queen, Vol. I., p. 322.

[39] Leading article, _Daily Chronicle_, 9th April, 1886.

[40] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by the Right Hon. the Earl of Malmesbury, Vol. I. p. 171.

[41] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. II., p. 312.

[42] Campbell’s Lives of the Chancellors.

[43] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, edited by Philip, Earl Stanhope, and the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell.

[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Vol. I., p. 328.

[45] Martin’s Life of Lord Lyndhurst, Vol. II., p. 409.

[46] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, edited by Lord Stanhope and the Right Hon. Edward Cardwell. Murray: 1875. Vol. II., p. 298.

[47] Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, _ut supra_.

[48] Sir Robert Peel’s Memorandum to the Duke of Wellington on the Position of the Cabinet, June 21. Memoirs of Sir Robert Peel, Vol. II., p. 288.

[49] Memoirs of Sir R. Peel, Vol. II., p. 246.

[50] Life of Lord Lyndhurst, by Sir Theodore Martin, K.C.B., p. 418.

[51] The Physiology of the Peel Party. Edinburgh: 1846. _Privately printed._

[52] Lord Grey’s objections were not overcome, as a matter of fact, till Lord John Russell pledged himself to exercise vigilant personal control over Lord Palmerston’s Foreign Policy.

[53] Life of Lord Campbell, by the Hon. Mrs. Hardcastle, Vol. II., p. 201.

[54] See Mill’s Principles of Political Economy, Book V., Chap. XI., § 14.

[55] Memoirs, Vol. VIII.

[56] In the _Edinburgh Review_, Vol. LXXXV., there is an article on the seizure of Cracow, which, though not written by Prince Albert, one might almost say was dictated by him.

[57] C. C. Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. II., p. 421.

[58] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XVII.

[59] Stockmar’s Memorabilia.

[60] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[61] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[62] Stockmar’s Memorabilia.

[63] Life and Letters of Baroness Bunsen, by A. J. C. Hare, Vol. II., p. 92.

[64] Experimental Researches in Electricity, by Michael Faraday, Esq., D.C.L., F.R.S., &c. From the Philosophical Transactions, Part I. for 1846.

[65] _Times_, 13th January, 1886.

[66] Progress and Poverty, Chap. II.

[67] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 215.

[68] Hansard’s Debates, 19th January, 1847.

[69] _Times_, City Article, 10th January, 1846.

[70] Return in Appendix D to the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on Commercial Distress. 1848. P. Paper, No. 395.

[71] Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on Commercial Distress. Minutes of Evidence. 1848: Q. 4861-4876.

[72] _Edinburgh Review_, 1848.

[73] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 218.

[74] C. C. Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. II., p. 85.

[75] Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 41.

[76] Life of Lord Palmerston, by the Hon. E. Ashley, Vol. II., p. 46.

[77] It was so obscure that Dr. Wilberforce says, playfully, in one of his letters to his brother:--“N.B.--Could we not pass a vote that Hampden should always preach in Hebrew?”--Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. I., p. 93.

[78] Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. II., p. 115.

[79] Bulwer’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. III., p 388.

[80] A strong Memorandum by Lord Palmerston on the National Defences, December, 1846, is given _in extenso_ in Lord Dalling’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. III., p. 390.

[81] Vol. II., p. 220.

[82] Life and Letters of Baroness Bunsen, Vol. II., p. 8.

[83] Life of Bishop Wilberforce, Vol. I., p. 398.

[84] It is supposed to be the special prerogative of Trinity to receive Royal visitors to Cambridge.

[85] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. X.

[86] Whewell’s Memoirs.

[87] Life of Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 226.

[88] Memoirs of an Ex Minister, Vol. I., p. 208.

[89] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXIV.

[90] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 548.

[91] _Le Moniteur_, 28th January, 1847.

[92] Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior, edited by M. P. Simpson, Vol. I., p. 37.

[93] For much interesting information on Chartism, the reader who desires to study the subject further may profitably refer to Forty Years’ Recollections, by Thomas Frost; Frost’s Secret Societies of the European Revolution; Urquhart’s _Diplomatic Review_; Molesworth’s History of England; Memoirs and Correspondence of Thomas Slingsby Duncombe; Gammage’s Narrative of the Chartist Movement; and Sybil, or the Two Nations, by Lord Beaconsfield.

[94] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, by Lord Malmesbury, Vol. I., p. 224.

[95] Life and Letters of John, Lord Campbell, by the Hon. Mrs. Hardcastle.

[96] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister.

[97] Letter to Mrs. Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle: A History of his Life in London, by J. A. Froude, Vol. I., p. 434.

[98] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[99] Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, p. 217.

[100] Morley’s Life of Cobden.

[101] This was a favourite idea with the Duke. He attributed our Afghan disasters to our failure to keep open our communications.

[102] Forty Years’ Recollections, by Thomas Frost, p. 161.

[103] Young Ireland: a Fragment of Irish History, by Sir C. Gavan Duffy (Cassell & Company).

[104] Young Ireland. _Fortnightly Review_, December, 1880.

[105] “It is a peculiarity of Irish rebellion that it counts so much on the co-operation of women, who are to be nothing less than unsexed for its purposes. “Women are to squirt vitriol, and women are to put on hoops--not hoops on their own persons, but hoops on the persons of her Majesty’s soldiers, hoops wrapped round with turpentine, steeped in tow and fired.... The _Felon_ newspaper has run its short course. An apter name should be chosen for the next organ of the Mitchel doctrines. The _Fiend_ should be the title.”--_Examiner._

[106] New Ireland, Sixth Edition, p. 91.

[107] Prince Bismarck: An Historical Biography, by Charles Lowe, M.A., Vol. I., p. 63.

[108] Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p. 169.

[109] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria.

[110] Sybil, or the Two Nations, by the Earl of Beaconsfield, Book V., Chap. I.

[111] It is interesting to record that Lord Brougham, in the House of Lords on the 21st of July, 1848, read a letter in which the writer said that Mr. O’Connell had, in conversation, suggested, three weeks before Sir R. Peel’s Coercion Act was passed, that a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act would be preferable, as it “would cure and not irritate.” Mr. O’Connell further stated that he would support Peel in pursuing that policy, provided the Minister would pledge himself to introduce the measures of relief and justice to Ireland which he had so often promised.

[112] Thomas Carlyle, by J. A. Froude, Vol. I., p. 248.

[113] Letter to the Registrar-General on Health Insurance, by William Farr, Esq. Appendix to the Registrar-General’s Report for 1849.

[114] Prince Consort’s Speeches.

[115] Leaves from her Majesty’s Journal, 8th of September, 1848.

[116] Lyell was knighted during this visit to Balmoral.

[117] H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.

[118] Professor Anderson’s entertainment is evidently referred to here.

[119] The “ladle” in which the offertory is collected in Scottish parish churches is passed round each pew by an “elder” of the Kirk.

[120] In the Life of the Prince Consort, by Sir T. Martin, there is a record of a curious conversation the Prince and Lord Clarendon, giving a graphic description of rural Ireland at this time.

[121] This was done, as a matter of fact, on three previous occasions--the Irish Municipal Bill (1834), and the Irish Poor Law Bills of 1838 and 1847.

[122] Memoir of James, eighth Earl of Elgin, edited by Theodore Walrond, with a Preface by A. P. Stanley, Chap. IV., pp. 70 _et seq._