Chapter XIX: The Conservative Reaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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