Chapter XXIII: Fall of Lord Beaconsfield

General Gloom--Fall of the Tay Bridge--Liberal Onslaught on
the Government--The Mussulman Schoolmaster and the Anglican
Missionary--The Queen’s Speech--The Irish Relief Bill--A Dying
Parliament--Mr. Cross’s Water Bill--“Coming in on Beer and Going
out on Water”--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget--Lord Beaconsfield’s
Manifesto--The General Election--Defeat of the Tories--Incidents
of the Struggle--Mr. Gladstone Prime Minister--The Fourth
Party--Mr. Bradlaugh and the Oath--Mr. Gladstone and the Emperor
of Austria--The Naval Demonstration--Grave Error in the Indian
Budget--Affairs in Afghanistan--Disaster at Maiwand--Roberts’s
March--The New Ameer--Revolt of the Boers--The Ministerial
Programme--The Burials Bill--The Hares and Rabbits Bill--The
Employers’ Liability Bill--Supplementary Budget--The Compensation
for Disturbance Bill--Boycotting--Trial of Mr. Parnell and Mr.
Dillon--The Queen’s Visit to Germany--The Queen Presents the Albert
Medal to George Oatley of the Coastguard--Reviews at Windsor--The
Queen’s Speech to the Ensigns--The Battle of the Standards--Royalty
and Riflemen--Outrages in Ireland--“Endymion”--Death of George
Eliot.

If 1880 opened cheerfully, it was solely because men felt a sense of relief at getting rid of what they called “the bad old year.” It had begun with bitter frosts, varied by black fogs. Its spring was a prolonged winter. Cold gloom marked its dog-days. There was no summer worth recording, and as for autumn, October and November saw the crops rotting in the fields. Farmers and squires, like Sheridan, were striving “to live on their debts.” Two great bank failures--that of the City of Glasgow Bank and that of the West of England Bank--had shaken the fabric of credit and reduced thousands of the well-to-do middle class to penury, while trade seemed going from bad to worse. Even science and invention appeared to be in a conspiracy to ruin people, for Edison’s contrivance of the electric lamp frightened investors in gas shares into a panic, which seriously depreciated the value of their property. Disasters in war, which are courteously called blunders, were followed by catastrophes by flood and field, which it is customary to call accidents. The ghastly tale of misfortunes was completed by the frightful hurricane that swept over the country on the last Sunday of the old year. At half-past seven of the evening of that day a furious gust swept down the Firth of Tay and cut a section out of the great railway bridge that spanned the estuary. A train crossing at the moment was blown, with the wreckage of the bridge and its precious freight of human life, into the surly waters of the Firth.[151] Very promptly did the Queen instruct Sir Henry Ponsonby to telegraph from Osborne a sympathetic message from her to the relatives of the dead.[152] Her Majesty had herself crossed the bridge on her way to Balmoral, and the shock of the disaster struck her to the heart.

It was when the people were moodily pondering over the evil fate of England under the Government that was to have given it rest and prosperity, that Lord Beaconsfield’s opponents became unusually active. Mr. Gladstone reprinted his speech on Finance which he had delivered in Edinburgh in November (1879), and reminded the electors how Lord Beaconsfield, after promising to repeal the Income Tax in 1874, had raised it; how in bad times he had increased expenditure, whereas in good times the Liberals had reduced it; how he had imposed £6,000,000 more taxes than he remitted, whereas the Liberals remitted £12,500,000 more than they imposed; how he had transformed a surplus into a deficit, and kept on rolling up debt, instead of paying off the nation’s liabilities as they were incurred. There was a stroke of high art in publishing this sombre speech when the New Year opened. Sir Stafford Northcote had, at Leeds, essayed a mild and apologetic reply to it. Mr. Gladstone thus considered it necessary, when men were beginning to suspect that they were ruled by a Government of bad luck, to answer Sir Stafford in an appendix to the November speech, which tended to deepen the prevailing depression of spirits. Sir William Harcourt, in his New Year orations at Oxford, on the other hand, dealt with the Government from a comic point of view. He touched with caustic wit on their incongruities and inconsistencies, and by contrasting their swelling words with their small deeds, their affluence of promise with their poverty of performance, contrived to create an impression that Ministers were making the country the laughing-stock of the world. When Mr. Gladstone showed that the nation was being ruined, Sir William Harcourt immediately followed up by declaring, in speeches which everybody read, because they were amusing and personal, that it was being ruined by a group of mountebanks. To him succeeded Mr. Bright, who, at a Liberal banquet at Birmingham (20th of January), elaborately explained how that which had happened was only what might have been looked for. He exhibited, from the treasure-house of his memory, an interminable series of examples to illustrate one simple thesis. It was that the history of England had ever been a tragic conflict between the Spirits of Good and Evil--the Tory Party representing the Spirit of Evil. His political Manichæism would not have influenced the country if it had not been downhearted. Inasmuch as it manifestly affected public opinion, it ought to have warned Lord Beaconsfield that the people were out of humour with him. The Tories, however, had eyes and ears for nothing, save Sir William Harcourt’s jokes and gibes, and flouts and sneers. These were not highly refined or polished, but they were just what was wanted to make the average voter laugh at Imperialism. The Imperialists being sensitive, not to say short-tempered persons, instead of pleading their own case rationally before the country, spent their force in vituperative attacks on Sir William Harcourt. It was also the misfortune of Lord Beaconsfield, that at this juncture he became nervous over the growing hostility of the clergy of all denominations to his foreign policy, the tone of which they deemed anti-Christian.

A desperate effort which was made to counteract this impression, displayed Sir Henry Layard at Constantinople--an Envoy who was supposed to be more Turkish than the Turks--figuring as a champion of the Cross against the Crescent. People, in fact, were startled at the beginning of the year to learn that the Government had suspended diplomatic relations with Turkey, because the Turkish authorities had threatened to execute a Mussulman schoolmaster for helping an Anglican missionary to translate the Bible.[153] Sir Henry Layard had been unmoved by the massacre and judicial murder of thousands of Christian subjects of the Sultan in Epirus, Macedonia, and Armenia, in defiance of Treaty law. It was, therefore, amazing that he should have suddenly burst into a convulsion of diplomatic wrath because a Turkish Court

passed on a Turkish Mussulman the sentence appointed by the law of his race and creed for an act which, when done by him, was legally a crime. Still, from the point of view of the practical statesman on the eve of a General Election, the step taken by Sir Henry Layard would not have been open to criticism merely because of its inconsistency and injustice. The fatal objection to it was that, whilst it failed to conciliate the religious world, it made the Government seem ineffably ridiculous to the electors. The foreign policy that was to give England ascendency in the councils of Europe, had reduced her to such a poor pass that, at Constantinople, Sir Henry Layard had to threaten war ere the Porte would even listen to his appeal for clemency to the obscurest of offenders against the letter of a harsh and obsolete law. Nor was the situation improved as the quarrel developed. The Turks resolutely refused even to deliver up Dr. Köller’s MSS., which they hardly had any right to keep, and it was not till the German Ambassador interfered on behalf of the English missionary that they were restored. When Sir Henry Layard pressed for the dismissal of Hafiz Pasha, he was foiled by the Sultan averring that he, and not the Minister, had ordered the arrest of Ahmed Tewfik. After Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall eulogies on the Sultan, Ministers were seriously embarrassed by this new turn in the affair. Ultimately the intervention of Germany and Austria induced the Sultan, who listened to the menaces of the British Government with imperturbable serenity, to offer concessions. He still refused Sir Henry Layard’s demand for the annulment of the sentence of death on Ahmed Tewfik. But he offered to commute it by exiling Ahmed to a remote Turkish island with a Christian population. He also ordered Hafiz Pasha, the Minister of Police, to apologise.[154] The commutation of Ahmed’s sentence meant that, though England had saved him from the gallows, “Kismet” had destined him for a premature grave. The apology from Hafiz was immediately converted into a further insult to the British Government, for, as soon as it had been delivered, the Sultan decorated him with the Grand Cordon of the Medjidie. Nor was this act quite atoned for by the issue of an Imperial edict forbidding the Mohammedan Press to laugh at the British Ambassador. It was, therefore, easy to predict that the Queen’s Speech would be demure, if not actually meek in tone, when it touched on Foreign Affairs.

Parliament was opened on the 5th of February, and her Majesty’s Speech was read by the Lord Chancellor. Events, according to the Royal Message, still tended to safeguard the peace of Europe on the basis of the Berlin Treaty, and the Sultan had signed a Convention for the suppression of the Slave Trade. The abdication of the Ameer rendered it impossible to recall the army of occupation. But the Government, in their dealings with Afghanistan, merely desired to strengthen their Indian frontier and preserve the independence of that State. The success of Sir Garnet Wolseley’s policy in South Africa was touched on. It was stated that the Irish authorities had been instructed to make special provisions for coping with distress in Ireland, which would necessitate an Indemnity Bill; and a Criminal Code Bill, a Bankruptcy Bill, a Lunacy Bill, and a Conveyancing Bill were promised. Mr. Cross had, at the end of the previous Session, also promised a Bill to transfer the Metropolitan Water Companies to the ratepayers of London. The debates on the Address were uninteresting. The Tories tried to discredit their opponents by proving that in election contests they angled for the Irish vote by promising to support an inquiry into the demand for Home Rule. The Liberals retorted by proving that though Lord Beaconsfield was ever ready to pass sentence of political excommunication on Home Rulers, he was equally ready to confer honours on Home Rulers,[155] that the Home Rule movement was started by Tories, and that it was a rich Tory who found the money for the Fenian candidature of O’Donovan Rossa in Tipperary.

The Irish Relief Bill was introduced on the 7th, and read a second time on the 23rd of February. It granted loans to the amount of £1,092,985 without interest for two years and a half, but bearing 1 per cent. interest after that time, to landlords and sanitary authorities for works of improvement; it also permitted the Baronial Sessions to start such works, and relaxed the law of out-door relief. Most of the Irish members complained that as a measure of relief, the Bill was inadequate. Some, like Mr. Synan, objected to the loans being taken from the Irish Church surplus. Others wished Boards of Guardians to be able to give out-door relief in money, and to take up loans for improvements. The Bill was passed on the 15th of March, and Major Nolan also passed a Seed Bill which enabled poor farmers to get seeds on loan. It is now clear that the Government had no true conception of the state of Ireland. They had been satisfied with the jaunty assurances of the Chief Secretary, Mr. Lowther, in the previous year, that there was no exceptional agrarian distress in that country. Yet, as a matter of fact, a famine was imminent, and at the beginning of 1880 the Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the Lord-Lieutenant, and Mr. E. Dwyer Gray, Lord Mayor of Dublin, were compelled to start Relief Funds to avert that dreadful calamity.

Even with this evidence before them, the Tory Ministry in 1880 fell into a blunder worthy of the Whigs in 1847-9. They adopted the fatal Whig principle, that the best way to relieve the Irish peasant’s distress was to vote the relief money to be doled out in wages by his landlord, who, by rack-renting and evictions had aggravated that distress, and who, though in most cases an absentee, was yet for some inexplicable reason supposed to be the best almoner the State could find in Ireland.[156] That this mistake was made can only be accounted for by the fact that Lord Beaconsfield’s advanced age, and his absorption in Foreign Affairs, rendered it possible for his less competent colleagues to control his policy.[157]

However, all Englishmen were predisposed to believe that Mr. Gladstone’s Land Act of 1870 had averted famine for ever from Ireland. They did not know that it had broken down because it made no provision against rack-renting, and, therefore, no real provision against unjust eviction. It permitted eviction in cases where a tenant was unable to pay rent; so that, in order to evict, a landlord had merely to put up his rent to the point at which the tenant could not pay it, the tenant’s claim for improvements on eviction being in such a case usually swallowed up in long out-standing arrears. It was quite obvious to those who looked beneath the surface that the coming question was the agrarian difficulty in Ireland. And yet the Ministry treated it as a matter of trivial importance, a blunder which, however, was also committed by the majority of Liberals, who were convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s Land Act had brought content to Ireland.

Still, the Session was quiet and business-like, and the Liberal leaders were studiously polite to Ministers. They helped to pass a Standing Order checking obstruction, hinting that it was not strong enough. By these tactics they artfully neutralised the insinuation that they were fishing for the Home Rule vote.[158] But it was clear that Parliament was moribund and quite “gravelled for lack of matter.” It could not legally survive another year; in fact, since the sixteenth century only four Parliaments had existed as long. Naturally public opinion was pressing for a dissolution, and it merely remained for Ministers to select the “psychological moment” which was most advantageous to themselves for going to the country. Lord Beaconsfield suddenly resolved in spring not to exhaust his mandate, and on the 8th of March Sir Stafford Northcote intimated that the Budget would be brought in before Easter, and that, after taking formal and necessary business, Parliament would be dissolved. Lord Beaconsfield was guided to this step by three considerations. He thought that the glamour of his Asiatic Imperialism still blinded the eyes of the nation to the disasters in Afghanistan and South Africa. He imagined that, because the returns from three bye-elections were favourable to the Tory Party, public opinion was still with him.[159] He trusted that Mr. Cross’s Water Bill would consolidate the popularity of the Ministry, not only in the Capital, but among municipal reformers all over the country. This last forecast was most untoward. When Mr. Cross produced his Water Bill on the 2nd of March, the _Standard_, which was the organ of the Ministry in the Press, suddenly deserted its Party and its leaders, and assailed Mr. Cross’s scheme with astounding ferocity.[160] The opposition of the _Standard_ at the critical moment not only depressed the spirits of the Tories, but also forced the hand of the “independent” newspapers, who had up till now supported Lord Beaconsfield loyally. They could not be more royalist than the King, so they, too, poured forth their invective on Mr. Cross’s Bill. The effect of this sudden attack of the whole metropolitan Press was to paralyse a vast body of metropolitan opinion that up till then had run in favour of the Ministry. “It came into power on beer,” said a malicious Liberal one afternoon in the Tea-room of the House of Commons, “and it will float out on water.” A more cautious statesman would have postponed dissolution till a happier moment; but Lord Beaconsfield persisted in appealing to the people, and the Government passed an Electoral Bill repealing the law which prohibited candidates from paying for the carriage of voters to the poll. It was obvious that in the coming struggle the Tories were at least resolved to give the rich men on both sides all the advantages of their opulence.

When the Budget was produced Sir Stafford Northcote had a sad tale to tell. His revenue for the past year, instead of yielding £83,055,000, only yielded £80,860,000, showing a deficit of £2,195,000, to which had to be added

supplementary estimates for South Africa, bringing it up to £3,340,000. For the coming year, however, he estimated, supposing there were no changes of taxation, a revenue of £81,560,000, and an expenditure of £81,486,472. But it was no longer possible to postpone payment of past deficits. These had accumulated to a sum of £8,000,000. He proposed to pay this off by creating £6,000,000 of annuities terminable in five years, and meeting the yearly charge for them by adding £800,000 a year to the service of the National Debt. As this would relieve the Government from its existing payments for interest on Exchequer Bonds, the fresh revenue needed to meet the payments for the new annuities in reality came to £589,000, and not £800,000. As to the remaining £2,000,000 of deficits, Sir Stafford Northcote seemed to trust to luck for their payment. The additional revenue he proposed to get by a revision of the Probate Duty. As he increased the Succession Duty on personal property, and left that on land untouched, the Budget was extremely unpopular with the landless class. But even his scheme as it stood, with its £6,000,000 added for five years to the National Debt, and its £2,000,000 of postponed deficits, involved the sacrifice of his Sinking Fund for paying off the debt. Virtually the Government told the electors that they had brought Britain to such a pass, that she had to abandon for five years her scheme for paying off her National Debt, in order to clear off £6,000,000 of their deficits.

On the 24th of March Parliament was dissolved, and the new writs were made returnable on the 29th of April. Lord Beaconsfield’s Manifesto, however, had been issued in the shape of a letter to the Duke of Marlborough, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, on the 8th of March. In this letter he called on the people to support the Ministry in order to give England an ascendency in the councils of Europe, and check the Home Rule movement in Ireland, which was “scarcely less disastrous than pestilence or famine.” This movement had been patronised, he declared, by the Liberal Party, whose “policy of decomposition” was meant to destroy the Imperial character of the realm. On the other side, the leaders traversed all Lord Beaconsfield’s insinuations. They scoffed at his Foreign Policy, asserted that it was pretentious, futile, and costly; they denounced his restless turbulence and his bankrupt finance, and, though they declared against Home Rule, they promised to give Ireland equal laws and equal rights with England. When the struggle began it was predicted in London that Lord Beaconsfield’s majority would be so vastly increased that the Liberals would be ostracised from power for a generation. As the contest proceeded it was noticed that at Liberal meetings no man could mention Mr. Gladstone’s name without being stopped by prolonged outbursts of cheering. That had happened in 1868, and it was a bad omen, whereupon it was said that the Tories would come back with only a slight reduction in their majority. Finally it was admitted, when the first day’s returns came in, that Lord Beaconsfield’s majority had vanished, and that he himself had fallen from power. The incidents of the struggle were curious. Mr. Gladstone’s campaign in the North was a marvellous achievement, and the sustained passion and energy of his attack on the policy of the Government, alike in principle and detail, seemed to paralyse the Tory leaders. Lord Hartington’s political duel with Mr. Cross in Lancashire completed the wreck of that Minister’s reputation, already damaged by his abortive Water Bill. Lord Derby’s letter to Lord Sefton (12th March) intimating his inability to support the Ministry and his adhesion to the Liberal Party, was a cruel blow, struck at the Tory Party in their most formidable stronghold. Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Lowe vied with each other in rendering Ministers ridiculous. Mr. Bright roused the conscience of the nation against their warlike policy. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke stirred the latent socialistic sympathies of the masses. As for the Irish vote, it was cast solidly against the Tories, in order to avenge the passage describing Home Rule in Lord Beaconsfield’s letter. Looking back on this historic election, it is amazing to find how few Ministerial speeches of importance were made. Lulled into a false sense of security by the support of the London Press and the gossip of Pall Mall clubs, Ministers seem to have permitted their opponents to talk them down. As for the result, why dwell on it? The first day’s Borough elections destroyed Lord Beaconsfield’s majority. The Counties deserted him in the most unaccountable manner. In Scotland the Tory Party was almost obliterated.[161] In Ireland two-thirds of the Members elected were Home Rulers. The net result was, that when the Election was over, there were returned 351 Liberals, 237 Tories, and 65 Home Rulers. The verdict of the country, therefore, was this: the electors were more afraid of Lord Beaconsfield’s Foreign Policy than of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Nationalist sympathies. The sweeping reforms which he was pledged to demand and support by his Midlothian speeches did not displease the country so much as Lord Beaconsfield’s manifest reluctance to pledge himself to a strong programme of domestic legislation.

While the elections were taking place the Queen was abroad. Little dreaming that the verdict of the people would destroy Lord Beaconsfield’s Ministry, she had arranged to visit Hesse-Darmstadt to be present at the confirmation of the daughters of the late Princess Alice, and after that ceremony to spend a brief holiday at Baden. Her Majesty returned to England on the 17th of April, and on the 28th of April Ministers resigned office. Lord Beaconsfield was not present on the occasion. He had bade farewell to the Queen on the previous day. After the results of the Election were known strenuous efforts were made to prevent Mr. Gladstone from becoming Prime Minister. The general opinion, however, was that, as Lord Beaconsfield’s fall from power was due mainly to Mr. Gladstone’s energetic and persistent criticism of his policy, Mr. Gladstone ought to take the responsibility of forming a Government. His own views on the subject can be gleaned from two letters which he wrote to Mr. Hayward. In one he seems to resent the idea of taking any office lower than that of the Premiership, supposing he took office at all.[162] In another he tries to explain away a statement he was alleged to have made to a reporter of the _Gaulois_, who asked him in November, 1879, if he would resume office, and to whom he replied, “No; I am now out of the question.” He (the reporter), says Mr. Gladstone, “rejoined, ‘_Mais vos compatriotes vont vous forcer_.’ I said, ‘_C’est à eux à déterminer, mais je n’en vois aucun signe!_’ I meant by these words to get out of this branch of the discussion as easily as I could. My duty is clear: it is to hold fast by Granville and Hartington, and try to promote the union and efficiency of the Party led by them.”[163]

In the ordinary course it was the duty of the Queen to send first for the actual Leader of the Opposition, who was Lord Granville. On the contrary, the first Liberal statesman summoned to Windsor was Lord Hartington, who, when he arrived there on the 22nd of April, it was remarked, declined the use of one of the Royal carriages, and strolled in a leisurely manner to the Castle. He informed her Majesty that a Liberal Ministry which was not headed by Mr. Gladstone could not command the confidence of the country. Next day the Queen sent for Lord Granville, who went to Windsor, accompanied by Lord Hartington. His advice was to entrust Mr. Gladstone with the formation of a Cabinet. They returned to London, and, after an interview with them, Mr. Gladstone proceeded to Windsor and received the Queen’s commission to organise a Government. Whenever Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister the Whigs (who had secretly done their utmost as a Party to prevent his return to office) swarmed round him like a cloud of locusts. The Whigs and moderate Liberals were, as of old, to have all the comfortable places.

As for the Radicals, they would, it was suggested, be amply repaid for their services by a few of the minor offices under the Government, by including Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster in the Cabinet, and by offering a seat to Mr. Stansfeld, whose health prevented him from accepting it. That, however, was not the view of the Radicals. North of the Humber they constituted the bulk of the Liberal Party. Their system of representative Party organisation, invented in Birmingham and popularised by Mr. Chamberlain, had enabled them to consolidate the opposition to the Tories, to prevent double candidatures, and to win seats that, under a looser form of discipline, it would have been hopeless to contest. If Mr. Gladstone was the Napoleon,

(_From a Photograph by Russell and Sons._)]

Mr. Chamberlain was the Carnot of the campaign. The cry went forth that some uncompromising Radical must have a seat in the Cabinet, and Mr. Chamberlain was suggested as the fittest person to select. But what had Mr. Chamberlain done? His speeches--hard, brilliant, and clever--were permeated with “socialism.” Good Tory matrons were said to frighten their unruly babes with the whisper of his name. In Parliament he had chiefly distinguished himself by his obstructive tactics and his revolt against Lord Hartington’s leadership. He was even a more persistent opponent of the Monarchy than Sir Charles Dilke, who had abandoned the advocacy of Republicanism for the critical study of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Gladstone’s chief objection to Mr. Chamberlain was that he had no official training. Lord Hartington (who knew, to his cost, that his obstructive opposition in the House of Commons could be most embarrassing), on the other hand, was in favour of including Mr. Chamberlain in the Cabinet. So was Lord Granville, who probably thought that there was no surer way of muzzling a dangerous Republican than that of making him a Cabinet Minister. Still, the Whig antagonism to Mr. Chamberlain was too strong to be ignored, and a compromise was arrived at when office was offered to Sir Charles Dilke. He, however, refused to take any place unless one advanced Radical, at least, was included in the Cabinet, and he said that Mr. Chamberlain should be chosen. After much intriguing Mr. Gladstone yielded, and Mr. Chamberlain became President of the Board of Trade. At the end of April the Cabinet was complete. Mr. Gladstone combined the two offices of Premier and Chancellor of the Exchequer; Lord Selborne was Lord Chancellor; Lord Granville, Foreign Secretary; Sir William Harcourt, Home Secretary; Lord Hartington, Indian Secretary; Mr. Childers, War Secretary; Lord Northbrook, First Lord of the Admiralty; Lord Kimberley, Colonial Secretary; Mr. Bright, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary for Ireland; the Duke of Argyll, Lord Privy Seal; Mr. Dodson, President of the Local Government Board; Lord Spencer, Lord President of the Council. Outside the Cabinet, Mr. Fawcett became Postmaster-General; Sir Charles Dilke, Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs (the office which he specially desired, and for which he was specially qualified); Sir Henry James, Attorney-General; Sir Farrer Herschel, Solicitor-General; Mr. Mundella, Vice-President of the Council; Mr. Adam (the famous Whip), First Commissioner of Works; and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, Secretary to the Admiralty. Mr. Lowe was sent to the Upper House with a Peerage as Lord Sherbrooke. Mr. Goschen (whose opposition to any extension of Household Franchise to the counties rendered him impossible as a Cabinet Minister) was sent as a Special Ambassador to Constantinople. Sir H. A. Layard was not recalled, but he was granted an indefinite leave of absence. Lord Lytton having resigned the Indian Viceroyalty, Lord Ripon was appointed in his place.

No sooner had Parliament met, on the 29th of April, than it was apparent that one gentleman had read aright the lesson to be derived from Mr. Chamberlain’s successful career. To prove that one’s capacity for obstruction was not inferior to that of Mr. Parnell, to reform on a popular basis the organisation of one’s Party, and to flout openly on fitting occasions the authority of one’s leader, these, argued Lord Randolph Churchill, are the keys that unlock the doors of the Cabinet. He, together with Sir H. D. Wolff, Mr. A. J. Balfour, and Mr. Gorst, organised a small band of Tory obstructionists called the Fourth Party, who hoped, by their unscrupulous tactics in embarrassing Mr. Gladstone, that their gibes at Sir Stafford Northcote’s prudent leadership would be forgiven. Their first opportunity for wasting the time of the House arrived when Mr. Bradlaugh, the Member for Northampton, came forward to be sworn on the 3rd of May. Mr. Bradlaugh was notoriously an Atheist, and he claimed to make an affirmation. At first the Fourth Party did not move in the matter, but the Speaker doubted if he could affirm, and a Select Committee appointed to consider the question, reported that he could not. Lord Frederick Cavendish had, in nominating the Committee, included several members who being Ministers would have to stand for re-election, and Sir Drummond Wolff and his friends raised an acrimonious debate by objecting to the names of gentlemen who were not technically members of the House being appointed to the Committee. On the 21st of May Mr. Bradlaugh came forward and claimed to take the oath. This the Fourth Party opposed as revolting to their consciences, for had not Mr. Bradlaugh publicly declared that as he was an Atheist the religious sanction in the oath was to him meaningless? There was no precedent for refusing to swear a member. The law seemed to be that it was his duty to his constituents to get himself sworn. But the point was referred to another Committee, and they reported that Mr. Bradlaugh could not be sworn. The absurdity of this proceeding is easily illustrated. In the Parliament of 1886, Mr. Bradlaugh was allowed to take the oath without a word of protest from the conscience-seared pietists of the Fourth Party. But by that time most of them had become Ministers, and were not anxious to encourage the obstruction of public business. On the 21st of June Mr. Labouchere, the senior member for Northampton, moved that Mr. Bradlaugh be allowed to affirm. The motion was rejected on the 22nd of June by a vote of 275 to 230, and when Mr. Bradlaugh, after speaking in his defence, refused to leave the bar, Sir Stafford Northcote carried a motion that he be imprisoned in the Clock Tower. This step made the House the laughing-stock of the nation, and the Tories promptly released Mr. Bradlaugh from his luxurious retreat. On the 1st of July Mr. Gladstone moved and carried a resolution allowing Mr. Bradlaugh to affirm at his own risk, and subject to any penalties he might incur by doing so, if it were found by the Courts that he had broken the law. Three points had been gained. Lord Randolph Churchill and his friends had forced Sir Stafford Northcote to follow their lead. They had blocked Government business. They had, to some extent, disseminated an impression abroad that the Cabinet was a champion of Atheism--and no doubt there were many good people who looked with suspicion on Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright for endeavouring to prevent Northampton from being disfranchised by a combination of faction and bigotry in the House of Commons.

During the interval between the appointment of the Ministry and the reading of the Queen’s Speech, a last attempt was made by the foreign allies of Lord Beaconsfield--and not without some success--to damage the new Government. One of the strange incidents of the Election had been the appearance every morning in the London papers of extracts from the Continental Press urging the English people to vote for Lord Beaconsfield’s supporters. Lord Beaconsfield, as the candidate of the foreigner, was pressed on the constituencies with abject servility by Tory speakers, who, if they had reflected for a moment, must have seen that they were deeply offending the insular instincts and prejudices of Englishmen. But the zenith of imprudence was attained when one morning a semi-official telegram purporting to emanate from the British Embassy at Vienna, appeared in a Ministerial organ informing Englishmen that it was the august desire of the Emperor of Austria that Mr. Gladstone should be defeated in Midlothian. No Englishman will tolerate, even from a foreign Emperor, any interference between him and his constituents during a contested election. Mr. Gladstone accordingly treated the Emperor of Austria as if he had been an interloper from the Carlton Club, who had come down to Midlothian to give extraneous aid to Lord Dalkeith, the Conservative candidate. He snubbed the successor of the Cæsars mercilessly, and greatly to the delight of the British Democracy. This called forth a denial from Sir Henry Elliot that the Emperor of Austria had ever used the words attributed to him, though Sir Henry did not explain how the correspondent of the _Standard_ had come to publish them. Mr. Gladstone retorted that the interest of Austria in preventing his election lay in his known determination to upset her plans for absorbing the heritage of the rising nationalities in Turkey. Austria had always shown herself to be an incompetent tyrant in dealing with subject races, and his warning to the Austrian intriguers, who hoped, if Lord Beaconsfield were returned to power, to make a dash for Salonica, was “Hands Off.” When Mr. Gladstone became Premier this speech was brought up for dissection. Would his Ministry quarrel with Austria? Would Count Karolyi ask for his papers? Then two long telegrams from Vienna were published in the Times, of date 28th of April and 6th of May, semi-officially denying that Austria was conspiring to make a dash for Salonica. Her sole desire now was to stand by the Treaty of Berlin. Count Karolyi had some interviews with Lord Granville on the subject, and in return for assurances of Austrian loyalty and goodwill, he pressed for some expression of opinion from Mr. Gladstone that would allay irritation in Vienna. Mr. Hayward seems to have been asked to use his influence over Mr. Gladstone to get him to make this explanation. Mr. Gladstone accordingly, in a letter to Count Karolyi (4th of May), declared that since he had become a Minister he had resolved not to defend by argument polemical language which he had used in a position of “greater freedom and less responsibility.” He wished Austria well. He had threatened to thwart her policy solely because the evidence at his command indicated that she was hostile to the freedom of the rising nationalities of Turkey. But he accepted the assurances of Count Karolyi that Austria had no designs against that freedom, and added, “Had I been in possession of such an assurance as I have now been able to receive, I never would have uttered any one of the words which your Excellency justly describes as of a painful and wounding character.” The moment this letter was published, the Austrian organs in England, indeed, every Tory speaker and writer, made political capital out of it. The Premier was held up to odium for having humiliated England by an apology which was, undoubtedly, somewhat too exuberant. The people would have been better pleased if Mr. Gladstone had replied that an explanation should have been sought when it was possible for him to give it as the candidate for Midlothian. To ask for it now was to assume that a foreign potentate had a right to expect the Prime Minister of England to apologise for what he might choose to say, as a private person, fighting a contested election.

Difficulties of a more serious character soon gathered round the Ministry. The Turks refused to make those concessions of territory to Montenegro and Greece which had been recommended by the Treaty of Berlin. Lord Granville succeeded in uniting the European Powers in a vain attempt to induce Turkey to fulfil her obligations. The Porte was warned that, unless Dulcigno was given up to Montenegro by a certain date, the Powers would resort to coercion. When that date arrived the European Fleets assembled at Ragusa, under the command of Sir Beauchamp Seymour, to make a naval demonstration against Turkey, but, as the captains of the ships were prohibited from firing a shot, the naval demonstration amused rather than alarmed the Porte. At this point Mr. Gladstone hit on a happy expedient for bringing the Sultan to reason. He threatened to send a British fleet to Smyrna, and, though France refused to join in the scheme, Russia and Italy were willing to act with England. The mere threat was sufficient. The customs dues of the port of Smyrna supplied the only ready money on which the Sultan could depend for the payment of his household expenses. Mr. Gladstone’s intention plainly was to intercept or impound these moneys till Turkey fulfilled her obligations; and the Sultan, alarmed at the prospect, instructed Dervish Pasha to hand over Dulcigno to the Montenegrins. The Greeks were less fortunate. Finding that they could get no concessions from Turkey by diplomacy, they threatened war. But, under pressure from the European Powers, they were held down, and the diplomatists again undertook to reconsider their claims.

In India Lord Lytton resigned. One of his last acts was to deliver a contemptuous speech refuting Mr. Gladstone’s suggestion that the finances of that Dependency were in a state of confusion. To the very last Lord Lytton endeavoured to persuade the English people that the Afghan War had cost only six millions of money, and his Finance Minister (Sir John Strachey) produced a most comforting “Prosperity Budget.” It had, however, one defect. As Lord Hartington discovered when he went to the India Office, a trifling sum of £9,000,000 sterling had been dropped out of the expenditure side of the Afghan War accounts; in other words, a mistake which would have been called by a very ugly name indeed had it been made in the office of a bank or of a railway company, had been made at the expense of the British taxpayer by the Indian Government. While Lord Lytton was assuring England that the war was costing £200,000 a month, it was costing £500,000. Nay, for two years he had been paying away this excess of expenditure over estimates without knowing it, or getting from the Treasury a monthly statement of the money spent on the war! But the position of affairs in Afghanistan was rapidly becoming unendurable. England held Cabul as the Emperor Augustus held Rome--like a man who had a wolf by the ear. Lord Lytton recognised Shere Ali Khan as independent Wali of Candahar, and the ex-Ameer Yakoob was a prisoner in India. But Abdurrahman Khan (a grandson of Dost Mahommed, and an exile in Russia) was a pretender for the throne; and so was the warlike Ayoob Khan, a son of the ex-Ameer, Shere Ali. Ayoob was, moreover, marching from Herat against the British at Candahar with a force of fierce irregular troops.

When Mr. Gladstone’s Government took office they began by trying to discover a Prince who could take Afghanistan off their hands, and for that purpose they tried to treat with Abdurrahman Khan. Unfortunately, Candahar was not only held by a weak force under General Primrose, but it had been decided by the Indian authorities to still further weaken it by sending General Burrows with a moiety of its garrison--some 2,000 men--to meet Ayoob Khan, and co-operate with the troops of the Wali of Candahar in checking the advance of the Heratees. The troops of the Wali, however, deserted to Ayoob Khan, and on the 27th of July Burrows and his small force were overwhelmed by the Heratees at Maiwand. The line of their retreat was covered with the bodies of those who perished by the way, and comparatively few survivors arrived to tell the tale of their terrible disaster. Of course Candahar was now at the mercy of Ayoob Khan, and it was known that the fall of that stronghold would shake the foundations of the British Empire in India. At this critical moment Sir Frederick Roberts saved the situation. He set forth from Cabul with a picked force of 10,000 men, and by a marvellous series of forced marches he arrived in time to defeat Ayoob Khan and rescue Candahar. Ere this crowning victory was won, it had been settled that Abdurrahman was to be the new Ameer of Afghanistan, and as the year closed the British Army of occupation had quitted Sherpore on its homeward march to India.

The mischievous policy of annexation which had been pursued in South Africa was now bearing fruit. When the Transvaal Republic was annexed Englishmen were told that the Boers desired annexation. As a matter of fact, the Boers never meant to submit to the loss of their independence. When the Boers in the Transvaal asked for the restoration of their rights, they were told by Sir Bartle Frere that England would never concede their claims; though, as a matter of fact, no sane Englishman had ever dreamt of holding the Transvaal Republic by an army of occupation against the will of its people. The effect of these misrepresentations was somewhat neutralised by Boer deputations who visited England, by Radicals like Mr. Courtney, and Home Rulers like Mr. Parnell and Mr. F. H. O’Donnell, who warned Englishmen that the Boers were discontented, and that they would rise in insurrection. Mr. Gladstone, too, in his election speeches kept alive Boer aspirations for independence, by condemning their enforced subjection to a British Colonial bureaucracy. The Boers ultimately rebelled, the occasion of the revolt being the refusal of a citizen at Pretoria to pay an illegal claim made on him by the Treasury. On the 13th of December, 1880, at Heidelberg, they proclaimed a Republic under the Triumvirate of Kruger, Joubert, and Pretorius. A collision between the insurgents and British troops under Colonel Anstruther occurred at Bronkhorst Spruit, which ended in the defeat of the latter; and as the year closed, General Sir George Pomeroy Colley was making a futile effort to quell the rising and reconquer the Transvaal.

The Ministerial programme of domestic legislation was popular, but it

took a long time to carry it out. At the end of July business was seriously in arrear, and yet Ministers said that they were determined to push on all their Bills. Towards the end of August no great progress had been made, and the proposal of a Session which might be prolonged into October was seriously discussed. The obstructive strategy devised by Mr. Parnell in Lord Beaconsfield’s Parliament was now developed with great success by the little band of Tories called the Fourth Party, under the leadership of Lord Randolph Churchill. Their method differed from Mr. Parnell’s in one point. He obstructed great measures in mass, so to speak. The Fourth Party organised persistent and systematic obstruction in detail, that is to say, they wasted small scraps of time all through a sitting at odd moments, the cumulative effect of which was most serious. Nor did they on this account refrain from obstruction on the system practised by Mr. Parnell when occasion served, only they carried it on without raising the clamant scandals that spring from prolonged and melodramatic sittings. At the end of August their efforts provoked Lord Hartington into revealing the fact that in the course of the Session Mr. Gorst had made 105 speeches and asked 18 questions, that Lord Randolph Churchill had made 74 speeches and asked 21 questions, that Sir H. Drummond Wolff had made 68 speeches and asked 34 questions, while three Irish Members had delivered 160 speeches and asked 30 questions. In fact, six Members (Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Gorst, Sir H. D. Wolff, Mr. Biggar, Mr. O’Connor, and Mr. Finigan) had delivered during the Session 407 speeches. Still, the Government persevered and, after Lord Hartington’s exposure of the tactics of the Opposition, business progressed more rapidly. A Burials Bill, allowing Dissenting ministers to hold services in parish churchyards at the burial of their dead, was passed. Sir William Harcourt passed a Bill giving farmers an inalienable right to kill hares and rabbits. Mr. Dodson’s Employers’ Liability Bill was fiercely obstructed, but it passed and gave great satisfaction to the working classes. It made employers responsible for accidents to their work-people where the accident was traceable to the conduct of the master’s representative, or any workman or person who might reasonably be supposed to be his representative. In the House of Lords, it is true, Lord Beaconsfield succeeded in limiting the operation of the Bill to two years, but this period was extended to seven years by the Commons. The Supplementary Estimates had devoured the small surplus which Sir Stafford Northcote’s Budget showed in March. Hence on the 10th of June Mr. Gladstone brought in a Supplementary Budget, in which he abolished the Malt Tax, substituting for it a Beer Duty, reduced the duties on light foreign wines, increased and readjusted the licence duties on the sale of spirits, and added a penny to the Income Tax. The general result was that a final surplus of £381,000 could be shown on the year’s accounts.

Nothing could be more embarrassing than the condition of Ireland when Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister. The Home Rulers returned sixty-eight members to the House of Commons, and, though a few of them were lukewarm Nationalists, they had organised themselves into a separate Party, under the leadership of Mr. Parnell. He plainly indicated that they would make use of the feuds between the Opposition and the Government to further their own cause. Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster first of all decided to rule Ireland without coercive legislation. But during the debates on the Address to the Crown it was made manifest that they had no clear idea of the extent to which agrarian distress prevailed in Ireland; that they ignored the alarming increase of harsh evictions, which were certain to excite the peasantry to savage deeds of retaliation; that they failed to understand how famine had been averted solely by the charitable funds raised during the previous year; and that they accordingly did not mean to reopen the Land Question. The Irish Party, therefore, at the outset ranged themselves with the Opposition, and even sat beside the Tories below the gangway on the left side of the Speaker’s chair. They began operations by bringing in a Bill to suspend evictions for non-payment of rent, which the Government opposed. But the case presented by the Irish Members seemed too serious to be put aside.

It was at last admitted that there was a crisis in Ireland to be dealt with, and Mr. Forster therefore introduced a short Bill, which so far amended the Act of 1870 as to make disturbance for non-payment of rent, where the tenant was too poor to pay, a case for compensation. The Bill passed through the House of Commons after violent recriminatory debates, in the course of which Mr. Gladstone declared that in the distressed districts eviction was “very near to a sentence of death.”[164] The measure was promptly rejected by the House of Lords. Ministers acquiesced in this rebuff, and from that moment they lost their hold over rural Ireland. They had publicly declared that 15,000 persons were to be evicted that year, in circumstances which rendered eviction tantamount to a sentence of death. They had publicly admitted that it was wicked to extort rack rents from these persons by threats of eviction, and that, unless they were protected from the rapacity of their landlords, the peace of Ireland would be imperilled. And then they permitted the Peers to reject the protective Bill, which Mr. Forster had pressed forward as necessary for the preservation of tranquillity! Either the Government was wrong in introducing the Bill, or it was wrong to remain responsible for the peace of Ireland after the Bill had been rejected. All that Mr. Forster did in this crisis was to promise a new Land Bill next year, and appoint a Commission to inquire into Irish distress. Rural Ireland had by this time been completely organised into a Land League by Mr. Michael Davitt, and this Land League was really a gigantic trades-union, to promote a strike against rack rents. Incidentally, its organisation was also used to further the Home Rule cause. The leaders of the League advised the people to resist eviction, and Mr. John Dillon used words to which Sir W. Barttelot called attention in the House of Commons on the 17th of August, that seemed to advise a general strike against rent. Acrimonious debates followed day after day, in the course of which the hostility between the Parnellites and the Ministry deepened with every turn. Mr. Parnell’s cynical argument that as Ministers could not, because of a Parliamentary defeat, carry the Disturbance Bill, which they admitted was essential for the good government of Ireland, they ought, as men of honour, to free Ireland from the mischievous interference of the Imperial Parliament, seemed to cut Mr. Forster to the quick. At last, in Committee of Supply on the 26th of August, it was clear that an organised attempt to coerce the Government by obstruction was to be made. On the motion for going into Supply, Lord Randolph Churchill raised an irrelevant and discursive debate on the Irish policy of the Government, which had already been under bitter discussion for the best part of a fortnight. This set the Parnellites and the Ministerialists by the ears, and consumed a great part of the sitting. Then, when the vote for the Irish Police was moved, Lord Randolph Churchill and the Fourth Party vanished into the background, and left the work of obstruction to the Parnellites, who kept it up till one o’clock in the afternoon of the following day (Friday, the 27th of August). The debate was at this stage adjourned till next Monday, when, after further discussion, the vote was carried. During these exciting and troublous scenes Mr. Gladstone was absent from the House of Commons. He had fallen ill on the 4th of July, and had gone for a cruise in one of Sir Donald Currie’s steamers, the _Grantully Castle_, to recover his health. During his absence his duties were taken up by Lord Hartington, who led the House till Mr. Gladstone was able to reappear on the 3rd of September. On the 6th of September Parliament was prorogued. But during the recess the condition of Ireland grew worse and worse. The landlords, dreading the forthcoming Land Bill, pressed on evictions. The Land League urged the people to refuse to pay rack rents, and the League had by this time become so powerful, that it could enforce its decrees almost as surely as if it had been the regular Government of the country. Its favourite weapon of coercion was to pronounce against bailiff or landlord, land agent or “land grabber”--_i.e._, a man who offered to take a farm from which the tenant had been unjustly evicted--sentence of social ostracism. The victim of this sentence was not assaulted or outraged, but he was treated as if he were a leper by his neighbours, and the system came to be known as “boycotting.”[165] Boycotting was indignantly assailed in England, and yet it was in itself a mark of progress. Just as slavery in primitive warfare was an improvement on cannibalism as a means of disposing of prisoners, so boycotting, carefully carried out within the law, was an improvement on assassination as a means of agrarian coercion. But the demand for retaliatory measures against the Parnellites was loud and strong among the upper and middle classes. Mr. Forster at last yielded to it, and it was in vain that Mr. Bright protested in one of his speeches that “force was no remedy.” Outrages increased in Ireland. The ladies of the Tory aristocracy, and some of the great Whig families, made arrangements for devoting their _salons_ during the coming Session, to a social campaign against Mr. Chamberlain and the Radical section of the Cabinet. On the 2nd of November, 1880, the Irish Attorney-General filed an indictment of nineteen counts, against Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and various leaders of the Land League, for conspiring to incite tenants not to pay rent or take farms from which the occupiers had been evicted, but the trial, after lasting for twenty days, broke down, because the jury could not agree on a verdict. Ere the year ended it was known that the Cabinet, though it had nearly been broken up by the decision, had at last consented to let Mr. Forster bring in a strong Coercion Bill next Session.

The year was not an eventful one in the family life of the Court. Before Parliament was dissolved the Queen arranged to visit her relatives in Germany. The time had come when her granddaughters, the Princesses Victoria and Elizabeth of Hesse, were to be confirmed, and she desired to be present at the ceremony. Her Majesty and the Princess Beatrice (travelling as the Countess of Balmoral and the Countess Beatrice of Balmoral), attended by Sir H. F. Ponsonby, Viscount Bridport, and Lady Churchill, left Windsor Castle on the 25th of March, and embarked at one o’clock on the royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_. It was intended that the Queen should proceed to Darmstadt to visit the Grand Duke of Hesse and the tomb of Princess Alice. There the Queen would be joined by the Prince and Princess of Wales. On the 25th the Queen and her suite landed at five o’clock at Cherbourg, and entered their special train. The public were excluded from the stations on

the route, and every effort was made to respect the Queen’s incognito. The Royal party arrived at Baden-Baden at half-past three in the afternoon of the 27th, and the Queen drove immediately to the Villa Hohenlohe, which was to be her residence during her stay. As for her suite, they were lodged at the Hotel Europe. On the 30th her Majesty, the Princess Beatrice, and suite, left Baden-Baden by special train for Darmstadt, where they were received by the Grand Duke and the elder Princesses of Hesse. A carriage drawn by four horses was in waiting to convey the Royal party to the Castle, where the Queen occupied the Assembly Chamber, whilst apartments were allotted to the Princess Beatrice in the Clock Tower. The Prince and Princess of Wales, who had left Marlborough House three days before, arrived at Darmstadt on the 29th. On the 31st the Queen and Princess Beatrice, accompanied by the Grand Duke of Hesse, proceeded at half-past four to the mausoleum on the Rosenhöhe, where Princess Alice was buried. On the morning of the same day the Queen, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Princess Beatrice, the German Crown Prince, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, and the Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, attended the confirmation of the Princesses Victoria and Elizabeth, daughters of the Grand Duke of Hesse. The Queen and Princess Beatrice then returned to Baden on the 1st of April. On April the 16th, on her return from Baden, her Majesty arrived at Laeken, and was received at the railway station by the King and Queen of the Belgians and Mr. Lumley, the British Minister. After visiting the park and grounds of the Palace, and partaking of luncheon, the Queen left for Flushing. On April the 17th her Majesty and suite left Flushing for Queenborough, _en route_ for Windsor, where she arrived in safety, to find the station thronged with residents, who had gathered to welcome her on her return, while crowds of kindly spectators lined the way to the Castle. She returned just as the electoral crisis was over, to find the Ministry she had thought so stable overthrown, and public opinion not only clamouring for the dismissal of Lord Beaconsfield from office, but for the return of Mr. Gladstone to power. On the 27th of April she gave Lord Beaconsfield his farewell audience, and for the next fortnight was deeply absorbed in transacting the business incidental to the formation of a new Ministry amidst distracting intrigues which were not altogether friendly to the new Ministers.

On the 20th of May the Queen and the Princess Beatrice left Windsor for Balmoral, and the Prince and Princess of Wales discharged her Majesty’s social duties during her absence. On her way to her Highland home the Queen took part in a ceremony of which she was, in fact, the promoter. During a terrific storm on the 16th of February, a Swedish ship had been thrown on the rocks near Peterhead. The Coastguard succeeded in flinging a rocket over the wreck, but the crew were apparently unable to understand the working of the apparatus. And so, in all human probability, the vessel would have been lost with all souls but for the bravery of George Oatley, one of the Coastguard. Oatley, disregarding every appeal to the contrary, resolved to swim out to the distressed ship. After a fierce conflict with the angry waves he gained the vessel, fixed the rocket appliance, saw the crew safely conveyed ashore, and was himself the last to take his place in the cradle. The Duke of Edinburgh having recommended him for the Albert Medal of the First Class, her Majesty presented it in person on the 22nd of May. The interesting ceremony took place at Ferry Hill Junction, where a platform had been erected for the occasion along the side of the line. The Queen and Princess Beatrice were greeted with the heartiest cheers as they left the saloon. Captain Best, R.N., Commander of the coastguard division to which the hero of the day belonged, having introduced him to her Majesty, the Queen attached the medal to Oatley’s breast, and expressed the pleasure it afforded her to decorate him for his gallant conduct. She then resumed her seat in the train, and her journey was continued. The Court returned to Windsor on the 23rd of June.

On the 13th of July a General Order was issued by the Duke of Cambridge, by command of the Queen, conveying her congratulations to the Volunteers on the completion of the twenty-first year of their existence, and expressing her regret that she was unable to hold a review of the citizen soldiers in Windsor Great Park. On the afternoon of the following day her Majesty reviewed 11,000 regular troops in Windsor Great Park. This was a brilliant affair, the 5th and 7th Dragoon Guards winding up the display with a most dashing charge. On the 19th of July the Queen and the Princess Beatrice left Windsor and took up their quarters at Osborne where, on the 28th, her Majesty received a party of eight officers and men of the 24th Regiment, who brought with them the colours of that corps, which had been rescued from the hands of the Zulus by two ensigns at the cost of their lives. Her Majesty inspected the colours, and spoke with brief and simple eloquence of the bravery and loyalty of the regiment, touching with manifest emotion on the death of the ensigns who had sacrificed their lives for their standards. Curiously enough, Indian telegrams published about this time in the newspapers showed that at the battle of Maiwand the majority of the officers of the 66th Regiment were killed in the vain attempt to defend their colours; in fact, the regiment lost 400 out of its strength of 500 in this action. The attention of military men was thus drawn to the practice of carrying colours into action, and it was argued that it was one more honoured in the breach than the observance. History hardly records a case where a regiment has been rallied on its colours. On the other hand, a hundred fights besides Isandhlwana and Maiwand testify that many valuable lives have been lost in defending them. Nor are colours necessary as incentives to bravery, for the Rifle regiments (whose record is one of unsullied glory) never carried any colours, though they fought fully as well as the regiments that encumbered themselves with flaunting banners.[166] On the 21st of August the Queen crossed over to Portsmouth, and inspected the 1st battalion of the Rifle Brigade previous to its departure for India. The regiments were not drawn up in line in spick and span order, but were visited by her Majesty as they sat at mess in undress uniform on board the troopship, and, as she made a minute inspection of their quarters, the novelty of the scene apparently interested and amused her very much. The exceptional honour thus conferred on the Riflemen was due to the close connection of the corps with the Royal Family.[167]

On the 26th of August the Court went to Balmoral, from whence, just before Parliament was prorogued, she addressed to the Ministry a strong Memorandum drawing attention to the frequency with which railway accidents were occurring, and urging that steps should be taken to provide travellers with better security for safety. In October she held many anxious consultations with Lord Granville and Lord Hartington on the state of Ireland, where the increase in outrages, such as the savage murders of Mr. Boyd and Lord Mountmorres[168] gave her great pain. The result was that Lord Hartington, when he arrived in London from Balmoral on the 11th of October, was immediately visited by Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, and in political circles it was soon rumoured that the Irish Government was about to prosecute the leaders of the Irish Land League. On the 10th of October the Queen and Princess Beatrice went to spend a few days amidst the snowdrifts of the Glassalt Sheil. The Court returned to Windsor on the 17th of December, to find the world--for a time at least--talking of something else besides Irish outrages.

Lord Beaconsfield had just published his last brilliant and audacious political novel, “Endymion,” in what one of its characters describes as “the Corinthian style, in which the Mænad of Mr. Burke was habited in the last mode of Almack’s.” The town was in raptures over a burlesque of Society, which blended together into amusing personalities such opposite characters as Cardinal Wiseman and Cardinal Manning; Lord Palmerston and Sidney Herbert; Poole the tailor, and Hudson the railway king; which made Prince Bismarck tilt with Napoleon III. at the Eglinton Tournament; which idealised the author as Endymion, Lady Beaconsfield as Imogen, and Napoleon III. as Prince Florestan; which travestied Lady Palmerston as Zenobia, caricatured Thackeray cleverly but spitefully as Mr. St. Barbe, and George Smythe cleverly but not spitefully as Waldershare.

The year closed with a more serious event in the world of literature, the death (on the 22nd of December) of George Eliot, whose novels were ever a perennial source of pure enjoyment to the Queen. George Eliot was, at her death, the first of living novelists, and the womanhood of England in the Victorian period produced no genius that in culture, strength, tenderness, spiritual insight, and humour, could be compared with hers. The sombre fatalism of the Greek tragedians overshadows her “Mill on the Floss.” The humour of Shakespeare ripples through the taproom scenes in “Silas Marner.” In “Romola,” were it not overweighted with psychological analysis, she would have defeated Scott in the glowing field of historical romance, and did defeat the author of “Esmond” in an arena in which he was supposed to be peerless among his contemporaries. In “Adam Bede,” which has probably been read more widely than any other story of our time by the English-speaking race, she revealed all the grace, sweetness, delicacy of feeling, nobility of intellect, and purity of heart, that formed her fascinating and sympathetic personality.