Chapter XV: Fall of the Second Empire (2)

During 1870 the Queen emerged from her seclusion on the 11th of May to open the splendid hall and offices of the University of London in Burlington Gardens. The ceremonial was conducted with a pomp and dignity worthy of the occasion. The senate and graduates wore their academic costume, Mr. Lowe being the only dignitary who appeared in any other garb. He, however, had donned for the occasion the official robes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a sumptuous garment for which it was whispered he had been so extravagant as to pay £130. The Queen was accompanied by the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Louise, and a brilliant train of distinguished persons. The Chancellor (Lord Granville) read an address to the Queen. Her Majesty handed him a reply, and having declared the building open the silver bugles blew a blast of joy. When the Queen retired, Lord Granville, in distributing the prizes, referred felicitously to Queen Elizabeth’s visits to Oxford and Cambridge--those visits during which she is described as “questioning and answering and scolding not only in Latin but also in Greek.”

In the autumn of the year the Queen in Council gave her consent to the marriage of the Princess Louise and the Marquess of Lorne, the eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. When it became known that the Queen had violated the exclusive traditions of the House of Brunswick, and reverted to old precedents set by the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, who all contracted marriages with subjects, society was greatly excited. The marriage was regarded as a triumph of aristocratic and democratic ideas over the monarchical principle--that is to say, of the triumph of the two ideas that have ever been most popular in England. The Queen with great tact had consciously or unconsciously responded to the instinctive feeling that had silently grown among her people. They had always disliked, though they had never dared to repeal, the Royal Marriage Act. It was felt to be a sacrifice to expediency--and it was passed mainly because Englishmen did not desire to see Mrs. FitzHerbert crowned as Queen of England. The Act bound all the descendants of George III. who wished to marry to obtain the written consent of the Sovereign,[338] and it was felt that as Princes and Princesses were very apt to form _mésalliances_, it would be difficult to maintain the _prestige_ of the monarchy, save under some such restrictions as the Act imposed.[339] But when the Royal Family increased and multiplied, so that the Princess Louise only stood twentieth in the line of succession to the Queen, it was time to relax the usage. No State interest could, in such a case, be practically endangered, by permitting a daughter of England to indulge her personal preferences in the selection of a husband.

The death of General Grey in the spring of the year was deeply felt by the Queen. The Princess Louis in one of her letters to her mother says, “Lady Car (Barrington) wrote to me how very grateful Mrs. Grey was to you for your great kindness and consideration. In trouble no one can have a more true and sympathising friend than my beloved mamma always is. How many hearts has she not gained by this, and how many a poor sufferer’s burdens has she not lightened!” General Grey’s services as Private Secretary to the Sovereign, indeed, were such as to render his death a matter of serious political interest. At this time the Queen exercised a personal supervision over every department of State, more especially over the Foreign Office, War Office, Admiralty, and Poor Law Board. On all matters of importance connected with the administration of these offices it was her custom to send to the Government of the day her own views, and such notes of precedents and of the opinions of former Ministers, as her carefully-kept series of State commonplace books supplied. It was the duty of General Grey to take the rough drafts of memoranda as they came from the Queen’s hand, and give them the form of State papers. In fact, he did the work which the Prince Consort had been in the habit of doing, and his position was really that of a supernumerary Minister in attendance at Court, but without a seat in the Cabinet, and without any responsibility to Parliament. After General Grey’s death it was suggested that a new Cabinet office should be created, to be held by a Minister who should have no other duty than that of residing in personal attendance on the Queen, and acting as her Private Secretary. The suggestion was happily not pressed, because it would obviously have led to Constitutional difficulties. The new Minister must have become either the Queen’s clerk, in which case he would have been an encumbrance to the Cabinet, or he must have become a real Minister of State confidentially representing the Sovereign, in which case he would have become its master. Colonel Ponsonby was therefore selected to succeed General Grey, and the revival of Government by favourites, which was the bane of the early years of George III.’s reign, was prevented.

The death of Charles Dickens on the 9th of June robbed England of a great humourist, whose genius was consecrated not only to the delight, but to the service of the English people. It was his mission to soften the harsh contrasts of society, and quicken the consciences, and touch the hearts of the governing classes, to whose apathy and ignorance of life among the poor he traced most “of the oppression that is done under the sun.” Whether Dickens will survive as an English classic has been doubted. But no doubt exists as to the qualities which gave him an unique position among men of letters in the Victorian period. His sense of humour was singularly keen and delicate. His faculty of observation exceeded that ever given to mortal man; in fact, what he saw, he saw so vividly that by his descriptive method he could print it on his reader’s mind with photographic fidelity. His power of characterisation, it is true, was limited, but that was because his characterisation was invariably idiosyncratic. It was always an isolated phase of a character that impressed him--a single trait to which he gave corporeal reality. On the other hand,

there was no limit to his power of producing fresh illustrations of this phase or trait under an infinite variety of circumstances and conditions. If he rang the changes on one theme, his capacity for producing variations on the original air with unfailing freshness, and seductive spontaneity, imparted some semblance of the roundness and many-sidedness of Nature even to the oddest of his oddities. But his sense of colour was faulty, and his passion for melodramatic effect, and his habit of harping too much on one string of feeling, gave to his pathos, a false note of theatrical sentimentality. None of his

readers in England, it may fairly be said, was a more consistent and devoted admirer of the genius of Dickens than the Queen. Next to Scott and George Eliot, Dickens was her favourite novelist. It had been her desire in the early days of her married life to make his acquaintance personally, but the touch of false pride which marred Dickens’s character, and rendered him morbidly sensitive as to “patronage,” prevented their meeting. In 1857, the Queen had been compelled to refuse her name for the dramatic performance of the _Frozen Deep_, given for the benefit of Douglas Jerrold,[340] but she offered to allow Dickens and his company of players to select a room in the Palace and perform the play there before her and the Court. Dickens begged leave to decline the offer, as he could not feel easy about the social position of his daughters at a Court under such circumstances. He suggested that the Queen might come to the Gallery of Illustrations a week before the subscription night, with her own friends, and witness a private performance of the play. “This,” writes Dickens, “with the good sense that seems to accompany her good nature on all occasions, she resolved within a few hours to do.” So delighted was the Queen with the performance that she sent round a kind message to Dickens asking him to come and see her and receive her thanks personally. “I replied,” says Dickens, in his account of the affair, “that I was in my farce dress, and must beg to be excused. Whereupon she sent again, saying that the dress ‘would not be so ridiculous as that,’ and repeating the request. I sent my duty in reply, but again hoped her Majesty would have the kindness to excuse myself presenting myself in a costume and appearance that was not my own. I was mighty glad to think, when I awoke this morning, that I had carried the point.” This incident occurred in 1857.

In 1858 the Queen made another attempt to bring the great novelist to Court. “I was put into a state of much perplexity on Sunday” (30th March, 1858), writes Dickens. “I don’t know who had spoken to my informant, but it seems that the Queen is bent upon hearing the ‘Carol’ read, and has expressed her desire to bring it about without offence, and hesitating about the manner of it, in consequence of my having begged to be excused from going to her when she sent for me after the _Frozen Deep_. I parried the thing as well as I could, but being asked to be prepared with a considerate and obliging answer, as it was known the request would be preferred, I said, ‘Well, I supposed Colonel Phipps would speak to me about it, and, if it were he who did so, I should assure him of my desire to meet any wish of her Majesty, and should express my hope that she would indulge me by making one of some audience or other, for I thought an audience necessary to the effect.’ Thus it stands, but it bothers me.” This difficulty could not be got over, though the Queen, by buying a copy of the “Carol,” embellished with the author’s autograph, at the sale of Thackeray’s library, testified to her interest in the two great humourists of the Victorian age.[341] Indeed, it was not till 1870, shortly before Dickens’s death, that the novelist met the Queen. He had brought from his American tour a great many large photographs of the battle-fields of the Civil War. Having taken a deep interest in that struggle, and having followed its details closely, her Majesty, who heard of the photographs through Mr. Arthur Helps (Clerk of the Privy Council), expressed a desire to see them. Dickens, on hearing of this from Mr. Helps, at once sent the photographs to Buckingham Palace, and then received a message from the Queen inviting him to see her, that she might thank him in person. “The Queen’s kindness,” says Mr. Forster, “left a strong impression on Dickens. Upon her Majesty expressing regret not to have heard his readings, Dickens intimated that they had become now a thing of the past, while he acknowledged gratefully her Majesty’s compliment in regard to them. She spoke to him of the impression made upon her by his acting in the _Frozen Deep_, and, on his stating, in reply to her inquiry, that the little play had not been very successful on the public stage, said this did not surprise her, since it no longer had the advantage of his performance in it. Then arose some mention of some alleged discourtesy shown to Prince Arthur in New York, and he begged her Majesty not to confound the true Americans of that city with the Fenian portion of its Irish population, on which she made the quiet comment that she was sure the people about the Prince had made too much of the story. He related to her the story of President Lincoln’s dream the night before his murder. She asked him to give her his writings, and could she have them that afternoon? but he begged to be allowed to send a bound copy. Her Majesty then took from a table her own book on the Highlands, with an autograph inscription to ‘Charles Dickens,’ and saying that the ‘humblest of writers’ would be ashamed to offer it to ‘one of the greatest,’ but that Mr. Helps, being asked to give it, had remarked that it would be valued most from herself, closed the interview by placing it in his hands.” Though Dickens refused a baronetcy, which the Queen would have gladly conferred on him, he was persuaded to go to Court. In March, 1870, he writes to a friend:--“As my Sovereign desires that I should attend the next levee, don’t faint with amazement if you see my name in that unwonted connection. I have scrupulously kept myself free for the 2nd of April, in case you should be accessible.” His name is among those who attended the levee, and his daughter’s name appears among those who were at the Drawing Room that followed. “I never saw Mr. Dickens more agreeable,” says Lady Houghton in a letter to Mr. Forster, “than at a dinner at our house about a fortnight before his death, when he met the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales, at the special desire of the latter.”[342]

The chief social function of the season of 1870 was the Garden Party at Windsor, which took place on the 25th of June. Great preparations were made for the event. A series of tastefully arranged tents had been erected on the lawn under the East Terrace, and in the grounds of the Home Park towards Frogmore, and the State Apartments of the Castle were also thrown open for the reception of guests, who were conveyed from the station by forty carriages. They began to arrive about four o’clock, and the Prince and Princess of Wales and other members of the Royal Family came on the scene later on. The street and road to the Castle were kept by a large body of the Metropolitan Police; a guard of honour of the Scots Fusilier Guards was posted in the quadrangle of the Castle, and the Yeomen of the Royal Body Guard were on duty inside. The Queen, who looked well and cheerful, received her visitors in a tent near the wall of the East Terrace, and was surrounded by members of her family, and attended by the Lord Chamberlain, the Duchess of Sutherland, and the Marchioness of Ely. The London Glee and Madrigal Union and her Majesty’s private band supplied the music that delighted the gay and brilliant crowd of promenaders, who did not break up and return to town till about seven o’clock in the evening. It had been expected that the Queen would be able to attend and open the Thames Embankment early in July, and her appearance at the Garden Party at Windsor strengthened popular anticipations. Unfortunately, when the time came round, her Majesty felt herself unable to endure the strain of the public ceremony, and the consequence was that, when it was performed on her behalf by the Prince of Wales (13th July), at least a thousand seats were vacant for which tickets had been issued.

Ere the year ended the rebellion in the Red River Settlement, or the “Revolt of the Winnipegers,” as the Americans called them, was quelled. The history of the rising was as follows:--The Hudson’s Bay Company had enjoyed powers of proprietorship and exclusive trade in the vast region extending from the American frontier to the Frozen Ocean. Early in the century Lord Selkirk had established in the extreme south of this region, and close to the American line, a colony of mixed blood, descended from French, Canadian, English, and Scottish parents, servants of the Company. They squatted on a strip of fertile land on the Red River, which flows from Minnesota into Lake Winnipeg. These people increased to the number of 10,000, and they inhabited, perhaps, the most secluded spot ever reached by European colonists, in the centre of the North American Continent. They had been ruled by the Company under a “Governor of Assiniboia,” and a Recorder. In 1869 the Company agreed to sell all their territorial and sovereign rights in Rupert’s Land to Canada for £300,000. This cession included the Red River Settlement. The “Winnipegers” however, objected to be transferred to what they called a “foreign power,” and they split into two parties--the Canadians, almost all half-breeds, speaking French and professing the Catholic religion, and who rose in rebellion, and a minority of English and Scots who remained loyal. The rebels refused to admit into the district Mr. Macdougal, who was sent by Canada as Governor. A leading agitator, Louis Riel, was proclaimed (in February) “President of the Republic of the North-West,” and the insurgents appealed to the United States for protection. A contingent under command of Colonel Wolseley was despatched to suppress the insurrection. The expedition reached Fort Garry, the headquarters of Riel and his rebel followers, on the 23rd of August. They were welcomed by the loyal party, and found that Riel himself had disappeared, with a considerable amount of plunder, into the neighbouring American territory. The British force was admirably handled, and did not lose a single man, despite the enormous difficulties of its march over a rough and broken country. For from its point of disembarkation in Lake Superior, it had to travel through 600 miles of an unknown wilderness of water, rocks, and forests, where no supplies were obtainable. The whole expense was under £100,000, of which one quarter only was to be paid by England. Order was re-established on the Red River at the end of 1870, and, as the “province of Manitoba,” it was added to Canada.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] In 1847 the rate of discount had risen to 8 per cent., and the bullion in the Bank had fallen to £8,313,000. On the 9th of November, 1857, the rate of discount rose to 10 per cent., and yet gold still flowed out till it sank to £7,171,000. The Bank was authorised to increase its issue by £21,000,000.

[2] Campbell’s army consisted of 25,000 men, 16,000 being European troops, the largest number ever brought together in India up to that time.

[3] Sir H. Rose’s losses were 38 killed, and 215 wounded. The starving women and children were, however, spared, and, indeed, fed by the English soldiers, out of their own rations. The massacre of the garrison was an act of vengeance for the treacherous butchery of the English in Jhansi, who, on the 4th of June, 1857, had surrendered, on the assurance that their lives would be spared by the implacable Ranee. She, however, ordered them to be killed, as at Cawnpore.

[4] The Nankin Treaty of 1842 was confirmed. Ambassadors and diplomatic agents were by the new Treaty to be appointed at St. James’s and Pekin, and the British Minister was to be received at Pekin without being called on to perform any humiliating ceremony. Disrespect to the British Minister was to be a punishable offence, and Consuls in open ports were to be respected. Chinese Christians were to be protected, and not persecuted by the Government, and British subjects were to have a right of travelling in China under passports. Newchwang, Tang-chow, Taiwan, Chan-chow, and Kiung-chow were to be, with the ports, opened by the Treaty of Nankin free to British subjects. British subjects were permitted to employ Chinamen in any lawful capacity, and British ships were to trade on the Yang-Tsze river. All questions of right between British subjects were to be decided by British authorities, but Chinese criminals were to be punished by the Chinese tribunals. Other clauses stipulated for a war indemnity to England, for full privileges of protection to British subjects, and for tariff and customs dues on goods carried by British ships. After the Treaty was concluded, the Chinese Emperor evaded his obligation to ratify it, till compelled to do so by force in 1860.

[5] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 125, 126.

[6] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 133, 134.

[7] Palmerston in defeating Mr. Locke King’s motion for leave to bring in a Reform Bill committed a fatal error. The Cabinet originally meant to support the scheme, but to insist on raising Mr. King’s £10 county franchise to £20--which would probably have settled the Reform question for ten or fifteen years. As it was, by opposing the measure, and referring Reform to a Cabinet Committee, they disgusted a powerful body of their own supporters, who felt that the Whigs meant to shelve Reform altogether.

[8] Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll.

[9] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 155.

[10] Mr. Henley, one of the ablest members of the Tory Party, strenuously opposed his leaders on this question, and supported the vote of thanks to Lord Canning.

[11] It is more than probable that had the Tories been in office Napoleon III. would never have dreamt of pressing them, as he pressed Palmerston, to alter the law of Conspiracy so as to harass political refugees in England. In 1853 he sounded Lord Malmesbury on the subject, who told him, with manly firmness and frankness, that “Every country had its own subject on which no cession could be made. The Holy Places in the East was that of Russia, the refugees was ours, and it was useless to torment us about an impossibility, for no English Minister could alter the law at present.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 392.

[12] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, entry under date 21st February.

[13] See Letter of Prince Consort to Stockmar, Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIII.

[14] Her Majesty’s sanction strengthened the hands of the unconstitutional sections of the Radical and Tory Parties, who have of late years connived at the progressive usurpation of the functions of the Executive by the House of Commons, thereby laying the basis for “Home Rule” agitations in discontented Ireland, and in “neglected” Wales and Scotland. In the attempt to combine executive with legislative functions the House of Commons has virtually broken down.

[15] The Cabinet consisted of Lord Derby, Premier; Lord Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor; Lord Salisbury, President of the Council; Lord Hardwicke, Lord Privy Seal; Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Mr. Walpole, Home Secretary; Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary; Sir John Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty; General Peel, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Henley, President of the Board of Trade; Lord John Manners, First Commissioner of Works; Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control; and Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons.

[16] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 98. Soon afterwards, however, arrangements were made which enabled Sir E. B. Lytton to take the Colonial Office, Lord Derby going to the India Office.

[17] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 99.

[18] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 214. The evidence of Mr. Greville in this instance is that of an unwilling witness. He still affected, like most independent political thinkers in 1858, to treat a Derby-Disraeli Cabinet as a burlesque Ministry. For example, he never condescended to attend as Clerk of the Privy Council after Lord Derby took office, but allowed his deputy to do duty. When this was pointed out to Lord Derby, he only laughed, and said “he had not observed his (Greville’s) absence, as he never knew whether it was John or Thomas who answered the bell.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 153.

[19] Moreover, there was just a chance that Ministers might be beaten, which would necessarily have brought back Lord John Russell, a prospect to which Whigs like Lord Clarendon looked forward with horror, because he would come back with a Reform Bill. See a private letter from Lord Malmesbury to Lord Cowley in The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 100.

[20] See The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 101, 106, 151, and 152, for evidence bearing on this grave charge against Palmerston and Persigny.

[21] The Peelite leaders sneered at the appointment. Mr. Greville calls Pélissier “a military ruffian, as ignorant of diplomacy as of astronomy.”--Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 181. The Palmerstonians objected to him because his ignorance of diplomacy rendered it difficult for them to intrigue with him for the purpose of embarrassing the Government of their own country.

[22] A few days after the formation of the Derby-Disraeli Ministry, De Persigny told Clarendon that the Tory Government “had prepared for themselves an _héritage de rupture_ by the concurrence of their Party in the vote that had driven Lord Palmerston from power.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV. “The first time I met him (Persigny) at the Foreign Office,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “he literally raved, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword (he was in Court dress), and shouting ‘_C’est la guerre! c’est la guerre!_’ during which scene I sat perfectly silent and unmoved, till he was blown, which is the best way of meeting such explosions from foreigners.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 106.

[23] The _Cagliari_ was a Sardinian ship fitted out to carry a revolutionary expedition to stir up Calabria. She was seized by the Neapolitan Government, and her two English engineers, Messrs. Watts and Park, were imprisoned.

[24] Mr. Greville hints that the Radicals were subsequently angry at Lord John Russell for helping Mr. Disraeli out of his difficulty with the India Bill. On this point he seems to have been misinformed. See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[25] The phrase was one used by Pélissier to the Prince Consort. See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV.

[26] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 428; Holmes’ History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 454; Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 118.

[27] The Talookdars of Oudh were not freeholders, but Crown vassals--in some cases hereditary--who really farmed the Crown rents as middlemen between the cultivators and the State. As a matter of abstract right, Canning’s proclamation, declaring the soil of Oudh to be the sole property of the British Government, could not be impugned. Nor could its policy as regards rebel Talookdars be disputed. Still, it is but fair to say that Outram thought the original draft too sweeping, and that it might prejudice many claims which it would be prudent to recognise. Canning allowed Outram to soften the Proclamation, and it was so discreetly acted on by Outram and his successor, Mr. Robert Montgomery, that the powerful local aristocracy of Oudh were speedily pacified. There was, therefore, just a grain of truth in Ellenborough’s objections to the original draft.

[28] A Resolution of this sort, however, was valid only for the current Session. Hence it had to be renewed every Session a Jew came to be sworn. In 1860 a new Act substituted a standing order for a Resolution, so that Jews could be sworn without any preliminary proceedings. Even this last relic of bigotry was swept away by the Act 29 & 30 Vict., c. 19, which deleted the words “on the true faith of a Christian” from the Parliamentary Oath. See Sir Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, Sixth Edition, pp. 189-192.

[29] In May they were induced to shake hands at Mr. Ellice’s (“Bear” Ellice) house. But Lord Malmesbury says that when the incident was discussed at Lady Palmerston’s, Lady William Russell observed, “They have shaken hands, and embraced, and hate each other more than ever.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 120.

[30] After much diplomatic squabbling, a Conference settled the point on the 10th of August, by establishing the same institutions in both Principalities, both with separate Ministries and Parliaments. The first thing the Provinces did was to vote their own union under Prince Couza--a mortification for England, against the probable occurrence of which her careless diplomatists had not stipulated.

[31] Her Majesty was not the only one of the guests who had been shaken. “An absurd occurrence,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “took place when Sir John Pakington, as First Lord of the Admiralty, landed Lord Hardwicke and Admiral Dundas in his barge. As he steered her, he kept time with the men as he would if he had been rowing on the Thames, bending his body backwards and forwards, and as he approached the pier, not having given the order ‘Way enough,’ the boat with her whole force struck the mole, and the two admirals and the whole crew fell sprawling on their backs. The rage of the two former, after recovering themselves, was vented with uncontrolled expressions on the unfortunate First Lord, amidst the laughter of the spectators, who were standing on the pier.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. Vol II., pp. 129, 130.

[32] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVII.

[33] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[34] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[35] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 213.

[36] This important secret pact was not unknown to the British Government. It came into Mr. Kinglake’s possession, and at Lord Palmerston’s request he gave a copy of it privately to Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, who represented the Foreign Office in the House of Commons. The text was revealed by Lord Malmesbury. The Princess Clothilde made a grim joke upon her loveless and ill-fated marriage--“Quand on a vendu l’enfant, on peut bien vendre le berceau.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 220, 221, 223.

[37] The intrigue between Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III. at Compiègne, in November, gave great and justifiable offence to the Tory Ministry, and was regarded with disapproval by the country.

[38] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 236.

[39] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[40] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 155.

[41] See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[42] Votes were given to persons who had £10 a year in Bank Stock or the Funds, or a deposit of £60 in a Savings Bank, or a pension from the State of £20 a year, and to University graduates, members of the learned professions, and certain schoolmasters.

[43] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCII.

[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCIII.

[45] Lord Palmerston’s organs in the Press were, during this controversy, virtually official organs of the French Emperor, and were embarrassing ministers with factious opposition. Lord Malmesbury, writing in his Diary on the 21st of February, observes, “Lady Tankerville says that Lady Palmerston told her that the attack upon the Foreign Policy of our Government, for which her husband had given notice to-morrow, was made in compliance with the Emperor’s wish!”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 158.

[46] Lord Malmesbury warned Prussia that England could not approve of her going to war with France, and would give her no assistance in protecting the German coast against an attack by a French or a Franco-Russian fleet.--See Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, pp. 204, 205.

[47] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 184.

[48] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 160.

[49] The surrender of Lombardy and the Duchies to Sardinia was one.

[50] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 200, 201.

[51] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II.

[52] The Queen apparently did not know that, owing to the use which Napoleon had made of Palmerston’s indiscreet approval of Persigny’s proposals, the Emperor of Austria was under the impression that we had been willing to act as extortioners. On the 12th of July, a day before the Queen wrote her letter to Lord John Russell, the Austrian Emperor wrote to Napoleon III., thanking him for informing him that England supported Persigny’s terms. Lord John Russell, in a despatch (July 27), found it necessary to undeceive the Austrian Government on this point.

[53] It was raised from 5d. to 9d.

[54] Palmerston contended in the end of August that these plans came within the decision of the Cabinet not to meddle with the Italian question till after the Treaty of Zurich had been signed. The Queen held that they did not, and on a Cabinet meeting being hastily summoned to settle the point, the decision went for the view of the Queen.

[55] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 270.

[56] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 174.

[57] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 213.

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

[59] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXVI.

[60] The National Budget, by Alexander Johnstone Wilson. London: Macmillan: 1882, p. 90.

[61] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 216. Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[62] In a letter to Mr. Bright he says, “To form a fair judgment of this reckless levity and utter want of dignity and decency on the part of the Prime Minister, just turn to the volumes of the life of the first Lord Auckland, who was sent by Pitt to negotiate the Commercial Treaty with France in 1786. I have not seen the book, but I can tell you what you will not find in its pages. You will not read that in the midst of those negotiations Pitt rose in the House, and declared that he apprehended danger of a sudden and unprovoked attack on our shores by the French king; that (whilst history told us we had 84,000 men voted for our Navy to the 31,000 in France, and whilst we had 150,000 riflemen assembled for drill) he, Mr. Pitt, pursued the eccentric course of proposing that the nation should spend £10,000,000 on fortifications, and that he accompanied this with speeches in the House in which he imputed treacherous and unprovoked designs upon us on the part of the monarch with whom his own Plenipotentiary was then negotiating a Treaty of Commerce in Paris. On the contrary, you will find Pitt consistently defending, in all its breadth and moral bearings, his peaceful policy, and it is the most enduring title to fame that he left in all his public career.”--Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[63] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVIII.

[64] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 190.

[65] Count Vitzthum illustrates the relations between the Republican conspirators and the Italian Court by the following anecdote:--One day an English gentleman visited Cavour, who was surprised to find he knew a great deal about the intrigues of Victor Emmanuel’s Government. He exclaimed, “How is it that you, a stranger, are acquainted with secrets which I thought were only known to _one_ man besides the King and myself--namely, the Republican exile, Mazzini?”--St. Petersburg and London in the years 1852-1864. Reminiscences of Count Charles Frederick Vitzthum von Eckstaedt, late Saxon Minister at the Court of St. James’s: Longmans and Co. (1887).

[66] Count Vitzthum hints that the mysterious collapse of the Royalist armies in the Sicilies was due to foul play. He says of Garibaldi, “His jugglery, thanks to the inaction of Europe and the melancholy condition of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, met with unexpected success. One example will suffice. A few weeks after Garibaldi’s entry into Naples, a former Neapolitan General was arrested at Paris. He had, without knowing it, paid out some forged banknotes. The examination showed he had received them from Garibaldi as a bribe. People knew after this how the latter bought his victories.” Vitzthum seems to have disliked Garibaldi, and his opinion on the matter is not conclusive. One would like to have better evidence than the confession of an utterer of forged notes that he got them from Garibaldi. Even if the story be true, it only points to what was one justification for the Sicilian insurrection--the complete demoralisation of the servants of the State.

[67] Cavour’s invasion of the Papal States was inevitable, though the pretext was flimsy. His subtle justification will be found in his masterly despatch of the 12th of October, reviewing the affairs of Italy, in which he dwelt on the advantage of substituting for the discredited dynasties, an Italian Kingdom that would “rob revolutionary passions of a theatre where previously most insane enterprises had chances, if not of success, at least of exciting the sympathies of all generously-minded men.” In a word, his case was that Sardinian intervention could alone prevent the national movement from degenerating into sheer anarchy. Fear, lest Garibaldi might be induced by Mazzini’s partisans, who had surrounded him, to set up a Republic, led the European Courts to condone by passive acquiescence a despatch which postulated the inherent right of a people to depose an hereditary monarch. France withdrew her Minister from Turin by way of formally discountenancing the invasion, which, however, had been secretly arranged at an interview between Napoleon and Cavour at Chambéry. England alone avowed her approval of Cavour’s policy, in a despatch which Lord John Russell sent to Sir J. Hudson on the 27th of October, but of which he kept the Queen and his colleagues in ignorance. The feeling of the country being with Lord John, the Queen and Lord Palmerston did not find it expedient to resent the affront. The truth is, that Lord John had previously written a despatch (31st August) menacing Sardinia if she attacked Austria in Venetia, and admitting the right of Austria to hold Venetia, which had enraged the Radicals. So by way of conciliating them he wrote the despatch of the 17th of October, recanting the absolutist doctrines he had promulgated in August. But personally, Lord John was notoriously a partisan of the national movement in Italy. “Sir J. Hudson,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “told me that Lord John virtually encouraged the King (Victor Emmanuel) to invade Naples, by asking his _aide-de-camp_ at Richmond whether the King was not _afraid_. This was quite enough to send Victor Emmanuel _anywhere_.”--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 237.

[68] See the Queen’s letter to Lord Palmerston (3rd June) quoted in Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CII.

[69] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 263.

[70] Another part of Napoleon’s scheme at Baden was to suggest the partition of Turkey by way of compensating Austria for the loss of Venetia, an old idea of Talleyrand’s. Russia, however, objected to the Danubian provinces of Turkey being given to Austria, so the proposal was not made. The whole scheme would have thus been--the annexation of Rhenish territory to France, of the northern German States to Prussia, of the Danubian provinces to Austria, and of Venetia to Italy.

[71] This letter (which was published) was written without the knowledge of the French Ministry. It was prompted by certain suspicions which had been expressed as to the Emperor’s good faith in interfering again in the Eastern Question. In June Europe was shocked to learn that the Druses, who were Moslems, had massacred thousands of the Christian Maronites in the Lebanon. The Turks had abetted these atrocities, their defence being that the Maronites were meditating a rebellion. On the 9th of July Moslem fanatics, aided by Turkish troops, also butchered the people in the Christian quarter of Damascus--3,500 males being slaughtered. The Consulates of France, Austria, Russia, Holland, Belgium, and Greece were sacked, their inmates finding a refuge in the house of Abd-el-Kader. Fuad Pasha, the Imperial Ottoman Commissioner, punished the guilty parties, but the French Emperor also insisted on sending out troops to keep order in the country. This proposal was jealously regarded by England, but it was agreed to after much negotiation--France furnishing 6,000 men, and the other Powers as many more up to 6,000 as might be necessary, six months being fixed as the term of the occupation. The Emperor resented our suspicions as to his motives in occupying Syria, and in his celebrated letter to Persigny defends their disinterestedness.

[72] “It is high time,” wrote the Prince Consort to the Prince Regent of Prussia. “It seems to me one of his chief difficulties consists in the fundamental difference between his and the people’s way of looking at things. He proposes to make concessions as acts of grace; they, on the other hand, ask to have a legal _status_, and institutions not dependent on the good-or ill-will of the Sovereign. They had most of them Documentary Rights, as they were called, in the Middle Ages, and as the Revolution of 1848 had overthrown everything, the Emperor was wrong, when it had been put down, not to return to a state of things based on law and right, instead of, as it were, legitimising the Revolution by proclaiming himself as its heir.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIV. Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 264, contains a curious letter of Prince Bismarck’s on this interview, showing how utterly misinformed he was as to its purport.

[73] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.

[74] _The English Historical Review_, No. 6, April, 1887, pp. 296-298.

[75] _The English Historical Review_, No. 6, April 1887, p. 297.

[76] Mr. John Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[77] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 230-231.

[78] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 230.

[79] This great inventor and armourer had been offered £10,000 a year for life by Napoleon III. if he would go to France and manufacture his new cannon exclusively for the French. The offer was refused from patriotic motives, which was perhaps the reason why the British Government never could be got to behave as fairly to Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Whitworth’s guns as to those produced by the engineers in the employment of Mr. (afterwards Sir W.) Armstrong at Elswick.

[80] The growth of the Volunteer Force was striking. The army sneered at it, and in December, 1859, it was in a sickly condition. In March, 1860, to the surprise and delight of the Queen it had grown to be 70,000 strong, and at a levee she held for volunteer officers, 2,500 were presented to her. Before the end of the summer the force had increased to 180,000 men, and at the close of the year it had grown to be 200,000, and this, too, in spite of the fact that the recruits had to make their first acquaintance with military duties in a spring and summer notable for stormy and inclement weather.

[81] Canada had fitted out a regiment of infantry for the war.

[82] William IV. was pressed hard by his illegitimate son, the Earl of Munster, to make him Governor-General of Australasia. He always refused, for dynastic reasons--alleging that it was not prudent to create princely viceroys.

[83] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVIII.

[84] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, _ibid._

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

[86] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.

[87] The war arose out of an attempt on the part of China to evade the ratification of the Treaty. The Taku forts were captured by the French and English allied forces, on the 21st of August, 1860. On the 21st of September, Consul Parkes, Captains Anderson and Brabazon, Messrs. De Norman, _attaché_ of the Hon. F. Bruce, Mr. Loch, Lord Elgin’s secretary, and Mr. Bowlby, _Times_ correspondent, were sent to the Chinese camp, on the invitation of the Chinese, under a flag of truce, to arrange for Lord Elgin’s journey to Pekin, where peace was to be made. Anderson, Brabazon, De Norman, Bowlby, and ten troopers were treacherously murdered. Parkes and Loch were cast into prison, and treated with odious brutality. That very day General Sir Hope Grant crushed the forces of the Chinese General, Sang-Ko-lin-sin. On the 6th of October the French looted the Summer Palace at Pekin, and on the 18th the English burnt it. The city itself surrendered on the 12th. Heavy indemnities, besides the ratification of the Treaty, were extorted from the Chinese.

[88] It is a curious fact that Dr. A. B. Granville had diagnosed the symptoms of the Czar’s hereditary malady--congestion of the brain--in 1853, and he warned Lord Palmerston that his Majesty would die in two years--a prophecy which came true. Had Nicholas therefore been handled gently, but firmly, by an accomplished diplomatist loyally carrying out Aberdeen’s temporising and cautious policy, and had steps been taken to prevent the Turks and Napoleon from irritating the autocrat at every turn in events, peace could have been maintained. See on this subject Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. I., pp. 30, 40.

[89] The phrase, which was a catchword in club-land, and which gave great offence to our American kinsfolk, was attributed, it is to be hoped erroneously, to the Marquis of Hartington.

[90] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 205.

[91] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, _ibid._

[92] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 227.

[93] St. Petersburg and London: Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, late Saxon Minister at the Court of St. James’s, Vol. II., p. 113 (Longmans), 1887.

[94] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIX.

[95] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol II., p. 249.

[96] Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 113.

[97] A passage in Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences explains the Prince Consort’s allusion. “Among the elder ladies who in those days exercised some influence over Government circles,” writes Count Vitzthum, “was the widow of the former British Ambassador in Berlin, Lady William Russell. She was a clever, experienced lady, an admirable mother to her sons, the present Duke of Bedford, and Lord Ampthill, who died lately as Ambassador at Berlin. Her house was the constant resort of visitors, who liked to chat with her, even if they did not come, like her brother-in-law, Lord John Russell, to consult her on politics. As a Roman Catholic she was no admirer of Cavour or Garibaldi, and used to laugh at the Italian sympathies of her brother-in-law and Lord Palmerston, whom she called the ‘old Italian masters.’”--St. Petersburg and London: 1852-1864: Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, Vol. II., p. 214.

[98] Others, like the Prince Napoleon, promulgated the theory that in pursuance of the Imperial policy of tearing up the treaties of 1815 it would be desirable to conciliate Italy. She would be a second-rate naval power, and the second-rate naval powers would naturally consolidate round France, who could thus overmaster even England on the seas. Such views, though officially disavowed by the Emperor, increased the distrust between England and France.

[99] Mr. Gladstone disapproved of this threat. It is, indeed, very hard to say how much truth there was in the rumours then afloat as to the cession of Sardinia. Vitzthum writes, “hitherto he (Napoleon) had only talked of giving that island to the Pope as an equivalent for the States of the Church. It was with this view that Pietri, the well known _entrepreneur du suffrage universel_ in Savoy, had been busy in that island, and had sent private reports to Napoleon during his visit to the baths at Vichy.”--Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 157.

[100] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 140.

[101] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 145.

[102] Sir George Cornewall Lewis succeeded Lord Herbert at the War Department. Sir George Grey went to the Home Office, and was succeeded by Mr. Cardwell as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir R. Peel succeeded Mr. Cardwell as Irish Secretary. Lord Campbell’s death elevated Sir R. Bethell to the Lord Chancellorship.

[103] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 211.

[104] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIII.

[105] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIV.

[106] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXIV.

[107] The rule originated with Queen Elizabeth, who said she objected to her dogs wearing anybody else’s collars. Lord Clarendon himself, as Foreign Minister, had prohibited English servants of the Crown from accepting Foreign Orders. Lord Clarendon at the Coronation of the Czar Alexander, the Duke of Northumberland at the Coronation of Charles X., and Lord Beauvale at that of the Emperor Ferdinand, had to refuse Foreign Orders. The Duke of Devonshire was allowed to accept one from the Czar Nicholas at his Coronation, on the ground that, like many distinguished Englishmen, he was a personal friend of his Imperial Majesty.

[108] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXVI.

[109] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CXVI.

[110] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 182.

[111] A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Vol. II., p. 65.

[112] This, says Lord Clarendon in a letter to Mr. Hayward, was “charmingly characteristic;” but he adds, thinking of the effect on the mind of the Queen, “they” (the green gloves and blue studs) “will not have been unobserved, _or_ set down to the credit side of his account.”--Mr. Hayward’s Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 72.

[113] Malmesbury Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 266.

[114] The Hayward Correspondence, Vol. II., p. 67.

[115] Malmesbury Memoirs, Vol. II., p. 267.

[116] The faithful Coburger, Löhlein, was the only member of the Royal household who seems to have given advice that would have saved the Prince’s life had it been acted on.

[117] It is only fair to say that Lord Palmerston was the first to make these representations. For his views on the Prince’s illness and the Queen’s doctors, see his letter to Lord Shaftesbury, of 11th December.--Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder. Vol. III., p. 130.

[118] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., pp. 178-185.

[119] Edmund Burke, by Augustine Birrell. _Contemporary Review_, July, 1866, p. 41.

[120] The Life and Labours of Albany Fonblanque, by Edward Barrington Fonblanque, p. 247.

[121] Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland. Biographical Sketch and Letters. London: John Murray, 1884, p. 360.

[122] See Memorandum by the Grand Duchess of Baden quoted in Alice Grand Duchess of Hesse. Biographical Sketch and Letters, pp. 18-19.

[123] The allusion here to the “revival” of Wilberforce’s old affection may seem curious. The Bishop of Oxford enjoyed more influence and favour at Court than ever fell to the lot of any ecclesiastic in our time. He was one of the extremely small group of prominent public men--Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Clarendon, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis--who enjoyed the Prince’s close personal friendship. But suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Prince Consort dropped him, and in one of his letters to Miss Noel the Bishop gives utterance to his sorrow over his fall at Court. Knowing Lord Aberdeen’s intimacy with the Prince, he begged his son, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, to induce his father to intercede for him. The incident curiously illustrates the Prince Consort’s character. When Lord Aberdeen opened the subject with his customary tact and delicacy, the Prince detected his object at once, and stopped him by observing, “He (the Bishop) does everything for some object. He has a motive for all his conduct.” Lord Aberdeen replied, “Yes, sir, but when a bad motive?” which, however, did not lead the Prince to continue the discussion. Again Lord Aberdeen seized an opportunity of serving the Bishop, and this time the Prince Consort frankly said he had occasion to doubt the Bishop’s sincerity--a suspicion that invariably forfeited the Prince’s confidence. Being pressed by Aberdeen still further, the Prince said that in early life he detected Wilberforce intriguing for the preceptorship of the Prince of Wales. Nor was that all. In a discussion with the Prince on a certain miracle about which he had preached, the Bishop had unduly modified his views to suit those of the Prince. It is only fair to Wilberforce to say that, in a letter to the Hon. Arthur Gordon, he denies the assertion about the preceptorship, but admits there was some colour in the other part of the Prince’s case. “The swine sermon,” writes Wilberforce, “was preached in days when he (the Prince Consort) was most friendly, long before I was Dean or Bishop; the conversation followed, and a long one it was. He did not say how entirely he disbelieved in spirits of evil, but raised all possible objections, which I combated; and the only thing like ‘convenient’ averment I said was that it was far best to believe in a devil who suggested evil to us; for that otherwise we were driven to make every man his own devil; and I thought that this view rather touched him.” It did touch him, but not in the way intended. See Life of Wilberforce, by his son, Reginald G. Wilberforce, Vol. II., p. 226. For reference to the Prince’s funeral, see Vol. III., pp. 41-45.

[124] It gave Federal Commissioners power, without judge or jury, to return fugitive slaves to justice; prohibited State Courts from testing, on writ of _habeas corpus_, the rights of the person who claimed the slave in a Free State.

[125] The minority of the Judges seem to have taken a less pedantic view, and one more in accordance with the policy of the Republic, which had always been one of compromise with regard to slavery. They held that it was not by Federal but State law that a negro was made property. They contended that neither the laws of nature nor of nations, nor the Constitution of the United States, recognised him as property, so that the rights of owners over this species of property must logically be limited to the Territory where, by municipal law, it was recognised as property.--See The Constitutional History of the United States, by Simon Stern, of the New York Bar (Cassell and Co.), p. 190.