LIBRARY 
 
 University of 
 
 California 
 
 Irvine 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IRVINE 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 Gerald Sherman
 
 /
 
 A HISTORY 
 OF OUR OWN TIMES 
 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES 
 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 BY 
 
 JUSTIN MCCARTHY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE FOUR GEORGES" "SiR ROBERT PEEL" ETC. 
 
 Elustratefc 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ESTES AND LAURIAT 
 1897
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 VICTORIA (August 10, 1835) Frontispiece 
 
 LORD BROUGHAM 32 
 
 PRINCE ALBERT 124 
 
 JOHN H. NEWMAN 176 
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELL . 236 
 
 ROBERT PEEL . . 308
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD ! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN ! 
 
 BEFORE half-past two o'clock on the morning of June 
 20th, 1837, William IV. was lying dead in Windsor Castle, 
 while the messengers were already hurrying off to Ken- 
 sington Palace to bear to his successor her summons to 
 the throne. The illness of the King had been but short, 
 and at one time, even after it had been pronounced alarm- 
 ing, it seemed to take so hopeful a turn that the physi- 
 cians began to think it would pass harmlessly away. But 
 the King was an old man was an old man even when he 
 came to the throne and when the dangerous symptoms 
 again exhibited themselves, their warning was very soon 
 followed by fulfilment. The death of King William may 
 be fairly regarded as having closed an era of our history. 
 With him, we may believe, ended the reign of personal 
 government in England. William was, indeed, a constitu- 
 tional king in more than mere name. Pie was to the best 
 of his lights a faithful representative of the constitutional 
 principle. He was as far in advance of his two predeces- 
 sors in understanding and acceptance of the principle as 
 his successor has proved herself beyond him. Constitu- 
 tional government has developed itself gradually, as every-
 
 8 A UISTOltY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 thing else has done in English politics. The written 
 principle and code of its system it would be as vain to 
 look for as for the British Constitution itself. King Wil- 
 liam still held to and exercised the right to dismiss his 
 ministers when he pleased, and because he pleased. His 
 father had held to the right of maintaining favorite min- 
 isters in defiance of repeated votes of the House of Com- 
 mons. It would not be easy to find any written rule or 
 declaration of constitutional law pronouncing decisively 
 that either was in the wrong. But in our day we should 
 believe that the constitutional freedom of England was 
 outraged, or at least put in the extremest danger, if a 
 sovereign were to dismiss a ministry at mere pleasure, or 
 to retain it in spite of the expressed wish of the House of 
 Commons. Virtually, therefore, there was still personal 
 government in the reign of William IV. With his death 
 the long chapter of its history came to an end. We find 
 it difficult now to believe that it was a living principle, 
 openly at work among us, if not openly acknowledged, so 
 lately as in the reign of King William. 
 
 The closing scenes of King William's life were undoubt- 
 edly characterized by some personal dignity. As a rule, 
 sovereigns show that they know how to die. Perhaps the 
 necessary consequence of their training, by virtue of which 
 they come to regard themselves always as the central 
 figures in great State pageantry, is to make them assume 
 a manner of dignity on all occasions when the eyes of their 
 subjects may be supposed to be on them, even if the 
 dignity of bearing is not the free gift of nature. The 
 manners of William IV. had been, like those of most of 
 his brothers, somewhat rough and overbearing. He had 
 been an unmanageable naval officer. He had again and 
 again disregarded or disobeyed orders, and at last it had 
 been found convenient to withdraw him from active service 
 altogether, and allow him to rise through the successive
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN I 9 
 
 ranks of his profession by a merely formal and technical 
 process of ascent. In his more private capacity he had, 
 when younger, indulged more than once in unseemly and 
 insufferable freaks of temper. He had made himself 
 unpopular, while Duke of Clarence, by his strenuous 
 opposition to some of the measures which were especially 
 desired by all the enlightenment of the country. He was, 
 for example, a determined opponent of the measures 
 for the abolition of the slave-trade. He had wrangled 
 publicly, in open debate, with some of his brothers in the 
 House of Lords ; and words had been interchanged among 
 the royal princes which could not be heard in our day 
 even in the hottest debates of the more turbulent House 
 of Commons. But William seems to have been one of the 
 men whom increased responsibility improves. He was 
 far better as a king than as a prince. He proved that he 
 was able at least to understand that first duty of a con- 
 stitutional sovereign which, to the last day of his active 
 life, his father, George III., never could be brought to 
 comprehend that the personal predilections and preju- 
 dices of the King must sometimes give way to the public 
 interest. 
 
 Nothing perhaps in life became him like to the leaving 
 of it. His closing days were marked by gentleness and 
 kindly consideration for the feelings of those around him. 
 When he awoke on June 18th he remembered that it was 
 the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. He expressed a 
 strong pathetic wish to live over that day, even if he were 
 never to see another sunset. He called for the flag which 
 the Duke of Wellington always sent him on that anniver- 
 sary, and he laid his hand upon the eagle which adorned 
 it, and said he felt revived by the touch. He had himself 
 attended, since his accession, the Waterloo banquet ; but 
 this time the Duke of Wellington thought it would perhaps 
 be more seemly to have the dinner put off, and sent accord-
 
 10 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ingly to take the wishes of his Majesty. The King declared 
 that the dinner must go on as usual, and sent to the Duke 
 a friendly, simple message expressing his hope that the 
 guests might have a pleasant day. He talked in his 
 homely way to those about him, his direct language seem- 
 ing to acquire a sort of tragic dignity from the approach 
 of the death that was so near. He had prayers read to 
 him again and again, and called those near him to witness 
 that he had always been a faithful believer in the truths 
 of religion. He had his despatch-boxes brought to him, 
 and tried to get through some business with his private 
 secretary. It was remarked with some interest that the 
 last official act he ever performed was to sign with his 
 trembling hand the pardon of a condemned criminal. 
 Even a far nobler reign than his would have received new 
 dignity if it closed with a deed of mercy. When some of 
 those around him endeavored to encourage him with the 
 idea that he might recover and live many years yet, he 
 declared, with a simplicity which had something oddly 
 pathetic in it, that he would be willing to live ten years 
 yet for the sake of the country. The poor King was 
 evidently under the sincere conviction that England could 
 hardly get on without him. His consideration for his 
 country, whatever whimsical thoughts it may suggest, is 
 entitled to some, at least, of the respect which we give to 
 the dying groan of a Pitt or a Mirabeau, who fears with 
 too much reason that he leaves a blank not easily to be 
 filled. " Young royal tarry-breeks " William had been jocu- 
 larly called by Robert Burns fifty years before, when there 
 was yet a popular belief that he would come all right and 
 do brilliant and gallant things, and become a stout sailor 
 in whom a seafaring nation might feel pride. He disap- 
 pointed all such expectations ; but it must be owned that 
 when responsibility came upon him he disappointed ex- 
 pectation anew in a different way, and was a better sover-
 
 11 
 
 eign, more deserving of the complimentary title of patriot- 
 king, than even his friends would have ventured to antic- 
 ipate. 
 
 There were eulogies pronounced upon him after his death 
 in both Houses of Parliament, as a matter of course. It is 
 not necessary, however, to set down to mere court homage 
 or parliamentary form some of the praises that were be- 
 stowed on the dead King by Lord Melbourne and Lord 
 Brougham and Lord Grey. A certain tone of sincerity, not 
 quite free, perhaps, from surprise, appears to run through 
 some of these expressions of admiration. They seem to say 
 that the speakers were at one time or another considerably 
 surprised to find that, after all, William really was able 
 and willing on grave occasions to subordinate his personal 
 likings and dislikings to considerations of State policy, and 
 to what was shown to him to be for the good of the nation. 
 In this sense at least he may be called a patriot-king. We 
 have advanced a good deal since that time, and we require 
 somewhat higher and more positive qualities in a sovereign 
 now to excite our political wonder. But we must judge 
 William by the reigns that went before, and not the reign 
 that came after him ; and with that consideration borne 
 in mind, we may accept the panegyric of Lord Melbourne 
 and of Lord Grey, and admit that on the whole he was 
 better than his education, his early opportunities, and his 
 early promise. 
 
 William IV. (third son of George III.) had left no chil- 
 dren who could have succeeded to the throne, and the crown 
 passed, therefore, to the daughter of his brother (fourth 
 son of George), the Duke of Kent. This was the Princess 
 Alexandrina Victoria, who was born at Kensington Palace 
 on May 24th, 1819. The Princess was, therefore, at this 
 time little more than eighteen years of age. The Duke of 
 Kent died a few months after the birth of his daughter, 
 and the child was brought up under the care of his widow.
 
 12 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 She was well brought up : both as regards her intellect 
 and her character her training was excellent. She was 
 taught to be self-reliant, brave, and systematical. Pru- 
 dence and economy were inculcated on her as though she 
 had been born to be poor. One is not generally inclined 
 to attach much importance to what historians tell us of 
 the education of contemporary princes or princesses ; but 
 it cannot be doubted that the Princess Victoria was trained 
 for intelligence and goodness. 
 
 "The death of the King of England has everywhere 
 caused the greatest sensation. . . . Cousin Victoria is 
 said to have shown astonishing self-possession. She 
 undertakes a heavy responsibility, especially at the 
 present moment, when parties are so excited, and alt rest 
 their hopes on her." These words are an extract from a 
 letter written on July 4th, 1837, by the late Prince Albert, 
 the Prince Consort of so many happy years. The letter 
 was written to the Prince's father, from Bonn. The young 
 Queen had, indeed, behaved with remarkable self-posses- 
 sion. There is a pretty description, which has been often 
 quoted, but will bear citing once more, given by Miss 
 Wynn, of the manner in which the young sovereign 
 received the news of her accession to a throne. The Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, and the Lord Chamber- 
 lain, the Marquis of Conyngham, left Windsor for Kensing- 
 ton Palace, where the Princess Victoria had been resid- 
 ing, to inform her of the King's death. It was two hours 
 after midnight when they started, and they did not reach 
 Kensington until five o'clock in the morning. " They 
 knocked, they rang, they thumped for a considerable time 
 before they could rouse the porter at the gate ; they were 
 again kept waiting in the court-yard, then turned into one 
 of the lower rooms, where they seemed forgotten by every- 
 body. They rang the bell, and desired that the attendant 
 of the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform her Royal
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 18 
 
 Highness that they requested an audience on business of 
 importance. After another delay, and another ringing 
 to inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, who 
 stated that the Princess was in such a sweet sleep that 
 she could not venture to disturb her. Then they said, 
 ' We are come on business of state to the Queen, and even 
 her sleep must give way to that.' It did ; and to prove 
 that she did not keep them waiting, in a few minutes she 
 came into the room in a loose white night-gown and 
 shawl, her nightcap thrown off, and her hair falling upon 
 her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but 
 perfectly collected and dignified." The Prime-minister, 
 Lord Melbourne, was presently sent for, and a meeting of 
 the privy council summoned for eleven o'clock, when the 
 Lord Chancellor administered the usual oaths to the 
 Queen, and her Majesty received in return the oaths of 
 allegiance of the cabinet ministers and other privy coun- 
 cillors present. Mr. Greville, who was usually as little 
 disposed to record any enthusiastic admiration of royalty 
 and royal personages as Humboldt or Varnhagen von Ense 
 could have been, has described the scene in words well 
 worthy of quotation : 
 
 " The King died at twenty minutes after two yesterday 
 morning, and the young Queen met the council at Ken- 
 sington Palace at eleven. Never was anything like the 
 first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and 
 admiration which is raised about her manner and beha- 
 vior, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraor- 
 dinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. 
 Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of 
 the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curi- 
 osity to see how she would act on this trying occasion, 
 and there was a considerable assemblage at the palace, 
 notwithstanding the short notice which was given. The 
 first thing to be done was to teach her her lesson, which,
 
 14 A IIISTORT OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 for this purpose, Melbourne had himself to learn. . . . She 
 bowed to the lords, took her seat, and then read her speech 
 in a clear, distinct, and audible voice, and without any 
 appearance of fear or embarrassment. She was quite 
 plainly dressed, and in mourning. After she had read 
 her speech, and taken and signed the oath for the security 
 of the Church of Scotland, the privy councillors were 
 sworn, the two royal dukes first by themselves ; and as 
 these two old men, her uncles, knelt before her, swearing 
 allegiance and kissing her hand, I saw her blush up to the 
 eyes, as if she felt the contrast between their civil and 
 their natural relations, and this was the only sign of emo- 
 tion which she evinced. Her manner to them was very 
 graceful and engaging ; she kissed them both, and rose 
 from her chair and moved toward the Duke of Sussex, 
 who was farthest from her, and too infirm to reach her. 
 She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men 
 who were sworn, and who came, one after another, to kiss 
 her hand, but she did not speak to anybody, nor did she 
 make the slightest difference in her manner, or show any 
 in her countenance, to any individual of any rank, station, 
 or party. I particularly watched her when Melbourne 
 and the ministers, and the Duke of Wellington and Peel 
 approached her. She went through the whole ceremony, 
 occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when 
 she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred, 
 and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the 
 same time with a graceful modesty and propriety particu- 
 larly interesting and ingratiating." 
 
 Sir Robert Peel told Mr. Greville that he was amazed 
 at " her manner and behavior, at her apparent deep sense 
 of her situation, and at the same time her firmness." The 
 Duke of Wellington said in his blunt way that if she had 
 been his own daughter he could not have desired to see 
 her perform her part better. " At twelve," says Mr. Gre-
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 15 
 
 ville, " she held a council, at which she presided with as 
 much ease as if she had been doing nothing else all her 
 life ; and though Lord Lansdowne and my colleague had 
 contrived, between them, to make some confusion with 
 the council papers, she was not put out by it. She looked 
 very well ; and though so small in stature, and without 
 much pretension to beauty, the gracefulness of her man- 
 ner and the good expression of her countenance give her, 
 on the whole, a very agreeable appearance, and, with her 
 youth, inspire an excessive interest in all who approach 
 her, and which I can't help feeling myself. ... In short, 
 she appears to act with every sort of good taste and good 
 feeling, as well as good sense ; and, as far as it has gone, 
 nothing can be more favorable than the impression she 
 has made, and nothing can promise better than her manner 
 and conduct do ; though," Mr. Greville somewhat super- 
 fluously adds, " it would be rash to count too confidently 
 upon her judgment and discretion in more weighty mat- 
 ters." 
 
 The interest or curiosity with which the demeanor of 
 the young Queen was watched was all the keener because 
 the world in general knew so little about her. Not merely 
 was the world in general thus ignorant, but even the 
 statesmen and officials in closest communication with court 
 circles were in almost absolute ignorance. According to 
 Mr. Greville, whose authority, however, is not to be taken 
 too implicitly except as to matters which he actually saw, 
 the young Queen had been previously kept in such seclu- 
 sion by her mother " never," he says, " having slept out 
 of her bedroom, nor been alone with anybody but herself 
 and the Baroness Lehzen " that " not one of her acquaint- 
 ance, none of the attendants at Kensington, nor even the 
 Duchess of Northumberland, her governess, have any idea 
 what she is or what she promises to be." There was 
 enough in the court of the two sovereigns who went
 
 16 A IltSTORY OF ( UK OWN TIMES. 
 
 before Queen Victoria to justify any strictness of seclusion 
 which the Duchess of Kent might desire for her daughter. 
 George IV. was a Charles II. without the education or the 
 talents ; William IV. was a Frederick William of Prussia 
 without the genius. The ordinary manners of the society 
 at the court of either had a full flavor, to put it in the 
 softest way, such as a decent tap-room would hardly ex- 
 hibit in a time like the present. No one can read even 
 the most favorable descriptions given by contemporaries 
 of the manners of those two courts without feeling grate- 
 ful to the Duchess of Kent for resolving that her daughter 
 should see as little as possible of their ways and their 
 company. 
 
 It was remarked with some interest that the queen sub- 
 scribed herself simply " Victoria," and not, as had been 
 expected, "Alexandrina Victoria." Mr. Greville men- 
 tions in his diary of December 24th, 1819, that " the Duke 
 of Kent gave the name of Alexandrina to his daughter in 
 compliment to the Emperor of Russia. She was to have 
 had the name of Georgiana, but the Duke insisted upon 
 Alexandrina being her first name. The Regent sent for 
 Lieven " (the Russian ambassador, husband of the famous 
 Princess de Lieven), " and made him a great many com- 
 pliments, en le persiflant, on the Emperor's being godfather, 
 but informed him that the name of Georgiana could be 
 second to no other in this country, and therefore she could 
 not bear it at all." It was a very wise choice to employ 
 simply the name of Victoria, around which no ungenial 
 associations of any kind hung at that time, and which can 
 have only grateful associations in the history of this coun- 
 try for the future. 
 
 It is not necessary to go into any formal description of 
 the various ceremonials and pageantries which celebrated 
 the accession of the new sovereign. The proclamation of 
 the Queen, her appearance for the first time on the throne
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! ^ONG LIVE TUE QUEEN! 17 
 
 ill the House of Lords when she prorogued Parliament in 
 person, and even the gorgeous festival of her coronation, 
 which took place on June 28th, in the following year, 1838, 
 may be passed over with a mere word of record. It is 
 worth mentioning, however, that at the coronation proces- 
 sion one of the most conspicuous figures was that of 
 Marsha] Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, the opponent of Moore 
 and Wellington in the Peninsula, the commander of the 
 Old Guard at Ltitzen, and one of the strong arms of 
 Napoleon at Waterloo. Soult had been sent as ambas- 
 sador-extraordinary to represent the French Government 
 and people at the coronation of Queen Victoria, and noth- 
 ing could exceed the enthusiasm with which he was 
 received by the crowds in the streets of London on that 
 day. The white-haired soldier was cheered wherever a 
 glimpse of his face or figure could be caught. He 
 appeared in the procession in a carriage, the frame of 
 which had been used on occasions of state by some of the 
 Princes of the House of Conde, and which Soult had had 
 splendidly decorated for the ceremony of the coronation. 
 Even the Austrian ambassador, says an eye-witness, 
 attracted less attention than Soult, although the dress of 
 the Austrian, Prince Esterhazy, " down to his very boot- 
 heels, sparkled with diamonds." The comparison savors 
 now of the ridiculous, but is remarkably expressive and 
 effective. Prince Esterhazy's name in those days sug- 
 gested nothing but diamonds. His diamonds may be said 
 to glitter through all the light literature of the time. 
 When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wanted a com- 
 parison with which to illustrate excessive splendor and 
 brightness, she found it in "Mr. Pitt's diamonds." 
 Prince Esterhazy's served the same purpose for the 
 writers of the early years of the present reign. It was, 
 therefore, perhaps, no very poor tribute to the stout old 
 moustache of the Republic and the Empire to say that at 
 
 2
 
 18 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 a London pageant his war-worn face drew attention away 
 from Prince Esterhazy's diamonds. Soult, himself, felt 
 very warmly the genuine kindness of the reception given 
 to him. Years after, in a debate in the French Chamber, 
 when M. Guizot was accused of too much partiality for 
 the English alliance, Marshal Soult declared himself a 
 warm champion of that alliance. " I fought the English 
 down to Toulouse," he said, " when I fired the last cannon 
 in defence of the national independence; in the mean- 
 time I have been in London, and France knows the recep- 
 tion which I had there. The English themselves cried 
 * Vive Soult ! ' they cried ' Soult forever ! ' I had learned 
 to estimate the English on the field of battle; I have 
 learned to estimate them in peace ; and I repeat that I am 
 a warm partisan of the English alliance." History is 
 not exclusively made by cabinets and professional diplo- 
 matists. It is highly probable that the cheers of a Lon- 
 don crowd on the day of the Queen's coronation did 
 something genuine and substantial to restore the good 
 feeling between this country and France, and efface the 
 bitter memories of Waterloo. 
 
 It is a fact well worthy of note, amidst whatever 
 records of court ceremonials and of political change, that 
 a few days after the accession of the Queen, Mr. Monte- 
 fiore was elected Sheriff of London, the first Jew who had 
 ever been chosen for that office ; and that he received 
 knighthood at the hands of her Majesty when she visited 
 the City on the following Lord Mayor's day. He was the 
 first Jew whom royalty had honored in this country since 
 the good old times when royalty was pleased to borrow 
 the Jew's money, or order instead the extraction of his 
 teeth. The expansion of the principle of religious liberty 
 and equality, which has been one of the most remark- 
 able characteristics of the reign of Queen Victoria, could 
 hardly have been more becomingly inaugurated than by
 
 19 
 
 the compliment which sovereign and city paid to Sir 
 Moses Montefiore. 
 
 The first signature attached to the Act of Allegiance 
 presented to the Queen at Kensington Palace was that 
 of her eldest surviving uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumber- 
 land. The fact may be taken as an excuse for intro- 
 ducing a few words here to record the severance that 
 then took place between the interests of this country, or 
 at least the reigning family of these realms, and another 
 state, which had for a long time been bound up together 
 in a manner seldom satisfactory to the English people. 
 In the whole history of England it will be observed that 
 few things have provoked greater popular dissatisfaction 
 than the connection of a reigning family with the crown 
 or rulership of some foreign state. There is an instinc- 
 tive jealousy on such a point, which, even when it is 
 unreasonable, is not unnatural. A sovereign of England 
 had better be sovereign of England, and of no foreign state. 
 Many favorable auspices attended the accession of Queen 
 Victoria to the throne ; some at least of these were associ- 
 ated with her sex. The country was in general disposed 
 to think that the accession of a woman to the throne would 
 somewhat clarify and purify the atmosphere of the court. 
 It had another good effect as well, and one of a strictly 
 political nature. It severed the connection which had 
 existed for some generations between this country and 
 Hanover. The connection was only personal, the succes- 
 sive kings of England being also by succession sovereigns 
 of Hanover. 
 
 The crown of Hanover was limited in its descent to the 
 male line, and it passed on the death of William IV. to his 
 eldest surviving brother, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. 
 The change was in almost every way satisfactory to the 
 English people. The indirect connection between Eng- 
 land and Hanover had at no time been a matter of gratifi-
 
 20 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 cation to the public of this country. Many cooler and 
 more enlightened persons than honest Squire Western 
 had viewed with disfavor, and at one time with distrust, 
 the division of interests which the ownership of the two 
 crowns seemed almost of necessity to create in our English 
 sovereigns. Besides, it must be owned that the people of 
 this country were not by any means sorry to be rid of the 
 Duke of Cumberland. Not many of George III.'s sons 
 were popular : the Duke of Cumberland was probably the 
 least popular of all. He was believed by many persons to 
 have had something more than an indirect, or passive, or 
 innocent share in the Orange plot, discovered and exposed 
 by Joseph Hume in 1835, for setting aside the claims of the 
 young Princess Victoria, and putting himself, the Duke of 
 Cumberland, on the throne ; a scheme which its authors 
 pretended to justify by the preposterous assertion that they 
 feared the Duke of Wellington would otherwise seize the 
 crown for himself. His manners were rude, overbearing, 
 and sometimes even brutal. He had personal habits which 
 seemed rather fitted for the days of Tiberius, or for the 
 court of Peter the Great, than for the time and sphere to 
 which he belonged. Rumor not unnaturally exaggerated 
 his defects, and in the mouths of many his name was the 
 symbol of the darkest and fiercest passions, and even 
 crimes. Some of the popular reports with regard to him 
 had their foundation only in the common detestation of his 
 character and dread of his influence ; but it is certain that 
 he was profligate, selfish, overbearing, and quarrelsome. 
 A man with these qualities would usually be described 
 in fiction as at all events bluntly honest and outspoken ; 
 but the Duke of Cumberland was deceitful and treacher- 
 ous. He was outspoken in his abuse of those with whom 
 he quarrelled, and in his style of anecdote and jocular con- 
 versation ; but in no other sense. The Duke of Welling- 
 ton, whom he hated, told Mr. Greville that he once asked
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN ! 21 
 
 George IV. why the Duke of Cumberland was so unpopu- 
 lar, and the King replied, " Because there never was a 
 father well with his son, or husband with his wife, or 
 lover with his mistress, or friend with his friend, that he 
 did not try to make mischief between them." The first 
 thing he did on his accession to the throne of Hanover 
 was to abrogate the constitution which had been agreed 
 to by the Estates of the kingdom, and sanctioned by the 
 late King, William IV. " Radicalism," said the King, 
 writing to an English nobleman, " has been here all the 
 order of the day, and all the lower class appointed to 
 office were more or less imbued with these laudable prin- 
 ciples. . . . But I have cut the wings of this democracy." 
 He went, indeed, pretty vigorously to work, for he dis- 
 missed from their offices seven of the most distinguished 
 professors of the University of Gottingen, because they 
 signed a protest against his arbitrary abrogation of the 
 constitution. Among the men thus pushed from their 
 stools were Gervinus, the celebrated historian and Shak- 
 spearian critic, at that time professor of history and litera- 
 ture ; Ewald, the Orientalist and theologian ; Jacob Grimm ; 
 and Frederick Dahlmann, professor of political science. 
 Gervinus, Grimm, and Dahlmann were not merely de- 
 prived of their offices, but were actually sent into exile. 
 The exiles were accompanied across the frontier by an 
 immense concourse of students, who gave them a trium- 
 phant Geleit in true student fashion, and converted what 
 was meant for degradation and punishment into a pro- 
 cession of honor. The offence against all rational prin- 
 ciples of civil government in these arbitrary proceedings 
 on the part of the new King was the more flagrant because 
 it could not even be pretended that the professors were 
 interfering with political matters outside their province, 
 or that they were issuing manifestoes calculated to dis- 
 turb the public peace. The University of Gottingen at
 
 22 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 that time sent a representative to the Estates of the king- 
 dom, and the protest to which the seven professors at- 
 tached their names was addressed to the academical senate, 
 and simply declared that they would take no part in the 
 ensiling election, because of the suspension of the con- 
 stitution. All this led to somewhat serious disturbances 
 in Hanover, which it needed the employment of military 
 force to suppress. 
 
 It was felt in England that the mere departure of the 
 Duke of Cumberland from this country would have made 
 the severance of the connection with Hanover desirable, 
 even if it had not been in other ways an advantage to us. 
 Later times have shown how much we have gained by 
 the separation. It would have been exceedingly incon- 
 venient, to say the least, if the crown worn by a sovereign 
 of England had been hazarded in the war between Austria 
 and Prussia in 1866. Our reigning family must have 
 seemed to suffer in dignity if that crown had been roughly 
 knocked off the head of its wearer, who happened to be 
 an English sovereign ; and it would have been absurd to 
 expect that the English people could engage in a quarrel 
 with which their interests and honor had absolutely noth- 
 ing to do, for the sake of a mere family possession of their 
 ruling house. Looking back from this distance of time, 
 and across a change of political and social manners far 
 greater than the distance of time might seem to explain, 
 it appears difficult to understand the passionate emotions 
 which the accession of the young Queen seems to have 
 excited on all sides. Some influential and prominent 
 politicians talked and wrote as if there were really a pos- 
 sibility of the Tories attempting a revolution in favor of 
 the Hanoverian branch of the royal family ; and if some 
 such crisis had again come round as that which tried the 
 nation when Queen Anne died. On the other hand, there 
 were heard loud and shrill cries that the Queen was des-
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 23 
 
 tined to be conducted by her constitutional advisers into 
 a precipitate pathway leading sheer down into popery 
 and anarchy. The Times insisted that " the anticipations 
 of certain Irish Roman Catholics respecting the success 
 of their warfare against Church and State under the aus- 
 pices of these not untried ministers, into whose hands the 
 all but infant Queen has been compelled by her unhappy 
 condition to deliver herself and her indignant people, are 
 to be taken for nothing, and as nothing, but the chimeras 
 of a band of visionary traitors." The Times even thought 
 it necessary to point out that for her Majesty to turn papist, 
 to marry a papist, " or in any manner follow the footsteps 
 of the Coburg family, whom these incendiaries describe 
 as papists," would involve an "immediate forfeiture of the 
 British crown." On the other hand, some of the Radical 
 and more especially Irish papers talked in the plainest terms 
 of Tory plots to depose, or even to assassinate, the Queen, 
 and put the Duke of Cumberland in her place. O'Connell, 
 the great Irish agitator, declared in a public speech that 
 if it were necessary he could get " five hundred thousand 
 brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honor, and the per- 
 son of the beloved young lady by whom England's throne 
 is now filled." Mr. Henry Grattan, the son of the famous 
 orator, and like his father a Protestant, declared, at a 
 meeting in Dublin, that " if her Majesty were once fairly 
 placed in the hands of the Tories, I would not give an 
 orange-peel for her life." He even went on to put his 
 rhetorical declaration into a more distinct form: " If 
 some of the low miscreants of the party got round her 
 Majesty, and had the mixing of the royal bowl at night, I 
 fear she would have a long sleep." This language seems 
 almost too absurd for sober record, and yet was hardly 
 more absurd than many things said on what may be 
 called the other side. A Mr. Bradshaw, Tory member for 
 Canterbury, declared at a public meeting in that ancient
 
 24 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 city that the sheet-anchor of the Liberal Ministry was the 
 body of " Irish papists and rapparees whom the priests 
 return to the House of Commons." " These are the men 
 who represent the bigoted savages, hardly more civilized 
 than the natives of New Zealand, but animated with a 
 fierce, undying hatred of England. Yet on these men are 
 bestowed the countenance and support of the Queen of 
 Protestant England. For, alas ! her Majesty is Queen 
 only of a faction, and is as much of a partisan as the Lord 
 Chancellor himself." At a Conservative dinner in Lan- 
 cashire, a speaker denounced the Queen and her ministers 
 on the same ground so vehemently, that the Commander- 
 in-chief addressed a remonstrance to some military 
 officers who were amongst the guests at this excited ban- 
 quet, pointing out to them the serious responsibility they 
 incurred by remaining in any assembly when such lan- 
 guage was uttered and such sentiments were expressed. 
 
 No one, of course, would take impassioned and inflated 
 harangues of this kind on either side as a representation 
 of the general feeling. Sober persons all over the country 
 must have known perfectly well that there was not the 
 slightest fear that the young Queen would turn a Roman 
 Catholic, or that her ministry intended to deliver the 
 country up as a prey to Rome. Sober persons every- 
 where, too, must have known equally well that there was 
 no longer the slightest cause to feel any alarm about a Tory 
 plot to hand over the throne of England to the detested 
 Duke of Cumberland. We only desire, in quoting such 
 outrageous declarations, to make more clear the condition 
 of the public mind, and to show what the state of the 
 political world must have been when such extravagance 
 and such delusions were possible. "We have done this 
 partly to show what were the trials and difficulties under 
 which her Majesty came to the throne, and partly for the 
 mere purpose of illustrating the condition of the country
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 25 
 
 and of political education. There can be no doubt that all 
 over the country passion and ignorance were at work to 
 make the task of constitutional government peculiarly 
 difficult. A vast number of the followers of the Tories 
 in country places really believed that the Liberals were 
 determined to hurry the sovereign into some policy tend- 
 ing to the degradation of the monarchy. If any cool and 
 enlightened reasoner were to argue with them on this 
 point, and endeavor to convince them of the folly of 
 ascribing such purposes to a number of English statesmen 
 whose interests, position, and honor were absolutely 
 bound up with the success and the glory of the State, the 
 indignant and unreasoning Tories would be able to cite 
 the very words of so great and so sober-minded a states- 
 man as Sir Robert Peel, who, in his famous speech to the 
 electors of Tamworth, promised to rescue the constitution 
 from being made the " victim of false friends," and the 
 country from being "trampled under the hoof of a 
 ruthless democracy." If, on the other hand, a sensible 
 person were to try to persuade hot-headed people on the 
 opposite side that it was absurd to suppose the Tories 
 really meant any harm to the freedom and the peace of 
 the country and the security of the succession, he might 
 be invited, with significant expression, to read the 
 manifesto issued by Lord Durham to the electors of 
 Sunderland, in which that eminent statesman declared 
 that " in all circumstances, at all hazards, be the personal 
 consequences what they may," he would ever be found 
 ready when called upon to defend the principles on which 
 the constitution of the country was then settled. We know 
 now very well that Sir Robert Peel and Lord Durham 
 were using the language of innocent metaphor. Sir 
 Robert Peel did not really fear much the hoof of the 
 ruthless democracy ; Lord Durham did not actually expect 
 to be called upon at any terrible risk to himself to fight
 
 26 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the battle of freedom on English soil. But when those 
 whose minds had been bewildered and whose passions had 
 been inflamed by the language of the Times on the one 
 side, and that of O'Connell on the other, came to read the 
 calmer and yet sufficiently impassioned words of respon- 
 sible statesmen like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Durham, 
 they might be excused if they found rather a confirmation 
 than a refutation of their arguments and their fears. 
 
 The truth is that the country was in a very excited con- 
 dition, and that it is easy to imagine a succession of events 
 which might in a moment have thrown it into utter 
 confusion. At home and abroad things were looking 
 ominous for the new reign. To begin with, the last two 
 reigns had, on the whole, done much to loosen, not only the 
 personal feeling of allegiance, but even the general con- 
 fidence in the virtue of monarchical rule. The old plan 
 of personal government had become an anomaly, and the 
 system of a genuine constitutional government, such as we 
 know, had not yet been tried. The very manner in which 
 the Reform Bill had been carried, the political stratagem 
 which had been resorted to when further resistance 
 seemed dangerous, was not likely to exalt in popular 
 estimate the value of what was then gracefully called 
 constitutional government. Only a short time before, 
 the country had seen Catholic emancipation conceded, 
 not from a sense of justice on the part of ministers, but 
 avowedly because further resistance must lead to civil 
 disturbance. There was not much in all this to impress 
 an intelligent and independent people with a sense of the 
 great wisdom of the rulers of the country, or of the indis- 
 pensable advantages of the system which they represented. 
 Social discontent prevailed almost everywhere. Economic 
 laws were hardly understood by the country in general. 
 Class interests were fiercely arrayed against each other. 
 The cause of each man's class filled him with a positive
 
 THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 27 
 
 fanaticism. He was not a mere selfish and grasping 
 partisan, but he sincerely believed that each other class 
 was arrayed against his, and that the natural duty of 
 self-defence and self-preservation compelled him to stand 
 firmly by his own.
 
 28 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 STATESMEN AND PAETIE8. 
 
 LORD MELBOURNE was the First Minister of the Crown 
 when the Queen succeeded to the throne. He was a man 
 who then and always after made himself particularly dear 
 to the Queen, and for whom she had the strongest regard. 
 He was of kindly, somewhat indolent nature; fair and 
 even generous toward his political opponents ; of the most 
 genial disposition toward his friends. He was emphati- 
 cally not a strong man. He was not a man to make good 
 grow where it was not already growing, to adopt the 
 expression of a great author. Long before that time his 
 eccentric wife, Lady Caroline Lamb, had excused herself 
 for some of her follies and frailties 'by pleading that her 
 husband was not a man to watch over any one's morals. 
 He was a kindly counsellor to a young Queen ; and, hap- 
 pily for herself, the young Queen in this case had strong, 
 clear sense enough of her own not to be absolutely 
 dependent on any counsel. Lord Melbourne was not a 
 statesman. His best qualities, personal kindness and 
 good-nature apart, were purely negative. He was unfor- 
 tunately not content even with the reputation for a sort 
 of indolent good-nature which he might have well de- 
 served : he strove to make himself appear hopelessly idle, 
 trivial, and careless. When he really was serious and 
 earnest, he seemed to make it his business to look like one 
 in whom no human affairs could call up a gleam of inter-
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 29 
 
 est. He became the fanfaron of levities which, he never 
 had. We have amusing pictures of him as he occupied 
 himself in blowing a feather or nursing a sofa-cushion 
 while receiving an important and perhaps highly sensi- 
 tive deputation from this or that commercial " interest." 
 Those who knew him insisted that he really was listening 
 with all his might and main ; that he had sat up the 
 whole night before, studying the question which he 
 seemed to think so unworthy of any attention ; and that, 
 so far from being, like Horace, wholly absorbed in his 
 trifles, he was at very great pains to keep up the appear- 
 ance of a trifler. A brilliant critic has made a lively and 
 amusing attack on this alleged peculiarity. " If the truth 
 must be told," says Sydney Smith, " our viscount is some- 
 what of an impostor. Everything about him seems to 
 betoken careless desolation ; any one would suppose from 
 his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with 
 human happiness ; that he was always on the heel of pas- 
 time ; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and 
 decide by the method of teetotum whether my lords the 
 bishops should or should not retain their seats in the 
 House of Lords. All this is but the mere vanity of sur- 
 prising, and making us believe that he can play with 
 kingdoms as other men can with ninepins. ... I am 
 sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away the 
 magnificent fabric of levity and gayety he has reared; 
 but I accuse our minister of honesty and diligence; I 
 deny that he is careless or rash : he is nothing more than 
 a man of good understanding and good principle disguised 
 in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a 
 political roue" 
 
 Such a masquerading might perhaps have been excu- 
 sable, or even attractive, in the case of a man of really 
 brilliant and commanding talents. Lookers-on are always 
 rather apt to be fascinated by the spectacle of a man of
 
 30 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 well recognized strength and force of character playing 
 for the moment the part of an indolent trifler. The con- 
 trast is charming in a brilliant Prince Hal or such a Sar- 
 danapalus as Byron drew. In our own time a consider- 
 able amount of the popularity of Lord Palmerston was in- 
 spired by the amusing antagonism between his assumed 
 levity and his well-known force of intellect and strength 
 of will. But in Lord Melbourne's case the affectation 
 had no such excuse or happy effect. He was not by any 
 means a Palmerston. He was only fitted to rule in the 
 quietest times. He was a poor speaker, utterly unable to 
 encounter the keen, penetrating criticisms of Lyndhurst 
 or the vehement and remorseless invectives of Brougham. 
 Debates were then conducted with a bitterness of person- 
 ality unknown, or at all events very rarely known, in our 
 days. Even in the House of Lords language was often 
 interchanged of the most virulent hostility. The rushing 
 impetuosity and fury of Brougham's style had done much 
 then to inflame the atmosphere which in our days is 
 usually so cool and moderate. 
 
 It probably added to the warmth of the attacks on the 
 ministry of Lord Melbourne that the Prime-minister was 
 supposed to be an especial favorite with the young Queen. 
 When Victoria came to the throne the Duke of Welling- 
 ton gave frank expression to his feelings as to the future 
 of his party. He was of opinion that the Tories would 
 never have any chance with a young woman for a sover- 
 eign. " I have no small-talk," lie said, " and Peel has no 
 manners." It had probably not occurred to the Duke of 
 Wellington to think that a woman could be capable of as 
 sound a constitutional policy, and could show as little 
 regard for personal predilections in the business of govern- 
 ment, as any man. All this, however, only tended to em- 
 bitter the feeling against the Whig government. Lord 
 Melbourne's constant attendance on the young Queen was
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 31 
 
 regarded with keen jealousy and dissatisfaction. Accord- 
 ing to some critics, the Prime-minister was endeavoring 
 to inspire her with all his own gay heedlessness of char- 
 acter and temperament. According to others, Lord Mel- 
 bourne's purpose was to make himself agreeable and indis- 
 pensable to the Queen ; to surround her with his friends, 
 relations, and creatures, and thus get a lifelong hold of 
 power in England, in defiance of political changes and 
 parties. It is curious now to look back on much that was 
 said in the political and personal heats and bitternesses of 
 the time. If Lord Melbourne had been a French mayor of 
 the palace, whose real object was to make himself virtual 
 ruler of the state, and to hold the sovereign as a puppet in 
 his hands, there could not have been greater anger, fear, 
 and jealousy. Since that time we have all learned on the 
 very best authority that Lord Melbourne actually was 
 himself the person to advise the Queen to show some con- 
 fidence in the Tories to " hold out the olive-branch a little 
 to them," as he expressed it. He does not appear to have 
 been greedy of power, or to have used any unfair means 
 of getting or keeping it. The character of the young sov- 
 ereign seems to have impressed him deeply. His real or 
 affected levity gave way to a genuine and lasting desire to 
 make her life as happy, and her reign as successful, as he 
 could. The Queen always felt the warmest affection and 
 gratitude for him, and showed it long after the public had 
 given up the suspicion that she could be a puppet in the 
 hands of a minister. 
 
 Still, it is certain that the Queen's Prime-minister was 
 by no means a popular man at the time of her accession. 
 Even observers who had no political or personal interest 
 whatever in the conditions of cabinets were displeased to 
 see the opening of the new reign so much, to all appear- 
 ance, under the influence of one who either was or tried 
 to be a mere lounger. The deputations went away
 
 32 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 offended and disgusted when Lord Melbourne played 
 with feathers or dandled sofa-cushions in their presence. 
 The almost fierce energy and strenuousness of a man 
 like Brougham showed in overwhelming contrast to the 
 happy-go-lucky airs and graces of the Premier. It is 
 likely that there was quite as much of affectation in the 
 one case as in the other ; but the affectation of a devour- 
 ing zeal for the public service told at least far better than 
 the other in the heat and stress of debate. When the new 
 reign began, the ministry had two enemies or critics in 
 the House of Lords of the most formidable character. 
 Either alone would have been a trouble to a minister of 
 far stronger mould than Lord Melbourne; but circum- 
 stances threw them both, for the moment, into a chance 
 alliance against him. 
 
 One of these was Lord Brougham. Xo stronger and 
 stranger a figure than his is described in the modern his- 
 tory of England. He was gifted with the most varied and 
 striking talents, and with capacity for labor which some- 
 times seemed almost superhuman. Not merely had he 
 the capacity for labor, but he appeared to have a positive 
 passion for work. His restless energy seemed as if it 
 must stretch itself out on every side seeking new fields of 
 conquest. The study that was enough to occupy the 
 whole time and wear out the frame of other men was only 
 recreation to him. He might have been described as one 
 possessed by a very demon of work. His physical strength 
 never gave way. His high spirits never deserted him. 
 His self-confidence was boundless. He thought he knew 
 everything, and could do everything better than any other 
 man. He delighted in giving evidence that he understood 
 the business of the specialist better than the specialist 
 himself. His vanity was overweening, and made him 
 ridiculous almost as often and as much as his genius made 
 him admired. The comic literature of more than a gen-
 
 L.DHD BROUGHAM.
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 33 
 
 eration had no subject more fruitful than the vanity and 
 restlessness of Lord Brougham. He was beyond doubt a 
 great Parliamentary orator. His style was too diffuse and 
 sometimes too uncouth to suit a day like our own, when 
 form counts for more than substance, when passion seems 
 out of place in debate, and not to exaggerate is far more 
 the object than to try to be great. Brougham's action 
 was wild, and sometimes even furious ; his gestures were 
 singularly ungraceful ; his manners were grotesque ; but 
 of his power over his hearers there could be no doubt. 
 That power remained with him until a far later date; 
 and long after the years when men usually continue to 
 take part in political debate, Lord Brougham could be 
 impassioned, impressive, and even overwhelming. He was 
 not an orator of the highest class : his speeches have not 
 stood the test of time. Apart from the circumstances of 
 the hour and the personal power of the speaker, they could 
 hardly arouse any great delight, or even interest; for 
 they are by no means models of English style, and they 
 have little of that profound philosophical interest, that 
 pregnancy of thought and meaning, and that splendor of 
 eloquence, which make the speeches of Burke always 
 classic, and even in a certain sense always popular among 
 us. In truth, no man could have done with abiding success 
 all the things which Brougham did successfully for the 
 hour. On law, on politics, on literature, on languages, on 
 science, on art, on industrial and commercial enterprise, 
 he professed to pronounce with the authority of a teacher. 
 " If Brougham knew a little of law," said O'Connell, when 
 the former became Lord Chancellor, " he would know a 
 little of everything." The anecdote is told in another 
 way too, which perhaps makes it even more piquant. 
 " The new Lord Chancellor knows a little of everything in 
 the world even of law." 
 
 Brougham's was an excitable and self-asserting nature. 
 
 3
 
 34 A niSTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 He had during many years shown himself an embodied 
 influence, a living, speaking force in the promotion of 
 great political and social reforms. If his talents were 
 great, if his personal vanity was immense, let it be said 
 that his services to the cause of human freedom and 
 education were simply inestimable. As an opponent of 
 slavery in the colonies, as an advocate of political reform 
 at home, of law reform, of popular education, of religious 
 equality, he had worked with indomitable zeal, with resist- 
 less passion, and with splendid success. But his career 
 passed through two remarkable changes which, to a great 
 extent, interfered with the full efficacy of his extraordinary 
 powers. The first was when from popular tribune and 
 reformer he became Lord Chancellor in 1830; the second 
 was when he was left out of office on the reconstruction of 
 the Whig Ministry hi April, 1835, and he passed for the 
 remainder of his life into the position of an independent or 
 unattached critic of the measures and policy of other men. 
 It has never been clearly known why the Whigs so sud- 
 denly threw over Brougham. The common belief is that 
 his eccentricities and his almost savage temper made him 
 intolerable in a cabinet. It has been darkly hinted that for 
 awhile his intellect was actually under a cloud, as people 
 said that of Chatham was during a momentous season. 
 
 Lord Brougham was not a man likely to forget or for- 
 give the wrong which he must have believed that he had 
 sustained at the hands of the Whigs. He became the 
 fiercest and most formidable of Lord Melbourne's hostile 
 critics. 
 
 The other opponent who has been spoken of was Lord 
 Lyndhurst. Lord Lyndhurst resembled Lord Brougham 
 in the length of his career and in capacity for work, if in 
 nothing else. Lyndhurst, who was born in Boston the 
 year before the tea-ships were boarded in that harbor 
 and their cargoes flung into the water, has been heard
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 35 
 
 addressing the House of Lords in all vigor and fluency 
 by men who are yet far from middle age. He was one of 
 the most effective Parliamentary debaters of a time which 
 has known such men as Peel and Palmerston, Gladstone 
 and Disraeli, Bright and Cobden. His style was singu- 
 larly and even severely clear, direct, and pure ; his man- 
 ner was easy and graceful ; his voice remarkably sweet 
 and strong. Nothing could have been in greater contrast 
 than his clear, correct, nervous argument, and the impas- 
 sioned invectives and overwhelming strength of Broug- 
 ham. Lyndhurst had, as has been said, an immense capa- 
 city for work, when the work had to be done ; but his 
 natural tendency was as distinctly toward indolence as 
 Brougham's was toward unresting activity. Nor were 
 Lyndhurst's political convictions ever very clear. By the 
 habitude of associating with the Tories, and receiving 
 office from them, and speaking for them, and attacking 
 their enemies with argument and sarcasm, Lyndhurst 
 finally settled down into all the ways of Toryism. But 
 nothing in his varied history showed that he had any 
 particular preference that way ; and there were many 
 passages in his career when it would seem as if a turn of 
 chance decided what path of political life he was to fol- 
 low. As a keen debater he was, perhaps, hardly ever 
 excelled in Parliament ; but he had neither the passion 
 nor the genius of the orator ; and his capacity was narrow 
 indeed in its range when compared with the astonishing 
 versatility and omnivorous mental activity of Brougham. 
 As a speaker he was always equal. He seemed to know 
 no varying moods or fits of mental lassitude. Whenever 
 he spoke he reached at once the same high level as a 
 debater. The very fact may in itself, perhaps, be taken 
 as conclusive evidence that he was not an orator. The 
 higher qualities of the orator are no more to be sum- 
 moned at will than those of the poet.
 
 3(i A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 These two men were without any comparison the two 
 leading debaters in the House of Lords. Lord Melbourne 
 had not at that time in the Upper House a single man of 
 first-class or even of second-class debating power on the 
 bench of the ministry. An able writer has well remarked 
 that the position of the ministry in the House of Lords 
 might be compared to that of a water-logged wreck into 
 which enemies from all quarters are pouring their broad- 
 sides. 
 
 The accession of the Queen made it necessary that a 
 new Parliament should be summoned. The struggle be- 
 tween parties among the constituencies was very ani- 
 mated, and was carried on in some instances with a re- 
 course to manoeuvre and stratagem such as in our time 
 would hardly be possible. The result was not a very 
 marked alteration in the condition of parties ; but, on the 
 whole, the advantage remained with the Tories. Some- 
 where about this time, it may be remarked, the use of the 
 word " Conservative," to describe the later political party, 
 first came into fashion. Mr. Wilson Croker is credited 
 with the honor of having first employed the word in that 
 sense. In an article in the Quarterly Review some years 
 before, he spoke of being decidedly and conscientiously 
 attached " to what is called the Tory, but which might 
 with more propriety be called the Conservative party." 
 During the elections for the new Parliament, Lord John 
 Russell, speaking at a public dinner at Stroud, made 
 allusion to the new name which his opponents were 
 beginning to affect for their party. " If that," he said, 
 " is the name that pleases them, if they say that the old 
 distinction of Whig and Tory should no longer be kept 
 up, I am ready, in opposition to their name of Conserva- 
 tive, to take the name of Reformer, and to stand by that 
 opposition." 
 
 The Tories, or Conservatives, then, had a slight gain
 
 STATESMEN AND PAETIES. 87 
 
 as the result of the appeal to the country. The new Par- 
 liament, on its assembling, seems to have gathered in the 
 Commons an unusually large number of gifted and prom- 
 ising men. There was something, too, of a literary stamp 
 about it, a fact not much to be observed in Parliaments 
 of a date nearer to the present time. Mr. Grote, the his- 
 torian of Greece, sat for the city of London. The late 
 Lord Lytton, then Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, had a 
 seat an advanced Radical at that day. Mr. Disraeli 
 came then into Parliament for the first time. Charles 
 Buller, full of high spirits, brilliant humor, and the very 
 inspiration of keen good-sense, seemed on the sure way to 
 that career of renown which a premature death cut short. 
 Sir William Molesworth was an excellent type of the 
 school which in later days was called the Philosophical 
 Radical. Another distinguished member of the same 
 school, Mr. Roebuck, had lost his seat, and was for the mo- 
 ment an outsider. Mr. Gladstone had been already five 
 years in Parliament. The late Lord Carlisle, then Lord 
 Morpeth, was looked upon as a graceful specimen of the 
 literary and artistic young nobleman, who also cultivates 
 a little politics for his intellectual amusement. Lord John 
 Russell had but lately begun his career as leader of the 
 House of Commons ; Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secre- 
 tary, but had not even then got the credit of the great 
 ability which he possessed. Not many years before Mr. 
 Greville spoke of him as a man who " had been twenty 
 years in office, and had never distinguished himself 
 before." Mr. Greville expresses a mild surprise at the high 
 opinion which persons who knew Lord Palmerston inti- 
 mately were pleased to entertain as to his ability and his 
 capacity for work. Only those who knew him very inti- 
 mately indeed had any idea of the capacity for governing 
 Parliament and the country which he was soon afterward 
 to display. Sir Robert Peel was leader of the Conserva-
 
 88 A U1STORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tive party. Lord Stanley, the late Lord Derby, was still 
 in the House of Commons. He had not long before broken 
 definitely with the Whigs on the question of the Irish 
 ecclesiastical establishment, and had passed over to that 
 Conservative party of which he afterward became the 
 most influential leader, and the most powerful Parliament- 
 ary orator. O'Connell and Sheil represented the eloquence 
 of the Irish national party. Decidedly the House of Com- 
 mons first elected during Queen Victoria's reign was 
 strong in eloquence and talent. Only two really great 
 speakers have arisen, in the forty years that followed, 
 who were not members of Parliament at that time Mr. 
 Cobden and Mr. Bright. Mr. Cobden had come forward 
 as a candidate for the borough of Stockport, but was not 
 successful, and did not obtain a seat in Parliament until 
 four years after. It was only by what may be called an 
 accident that Macaulay and Mr. Roebuck were not hi the 
 Parliament of 1837. It is fair to say, therefore, that, 
 except for Cobden and Bright, the subsequent forty years 
 had added no first-class name to the records of Parlia- 
 mentary eloquence. 
 
 The ministry was not very strong in the House of Com- 
 mons. Its conditions, indeed, hardly allowed it to feel 
 itself strong even if it had had more powerful representa- 
 tives in either House. Its adherents were but loosely 
 held together. The more ardent reformers were disap- 
 pointed with ministers; the Free-trade movement was 
 rising into distinct bulk and proportions, and threatened 
 to be formidably independent of mere party ties. The 
 Government had to rely a good deal on the precarious 
 support of Mr. O'Connell and his followers. They were 
 not rich in debating talent in the Commons any more than 
 in the Lords. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the Opposi- 
 tion, was by far the most powerful man in the House of 
 Commons. Added to his great qualities as an adniinis-
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 39 
 
 trator and a Parliamentary debater, he had the virtue, 
 then very rare among Conservative statesmen, of being a 
 sound and clear financier, with a good grasp of the funda- 
 mental principles of political economy. His high austere 
 character made him respected by opponents as well as by 
 friends. He had not, perhaps, many intimate friends. 
 His temperament was cold, or at least its heat was self-con- 
 tained ; he threw out no genial glow to those around him. 
 He was by nature a reserved and shy man, in whose man- 
 ners shyness took the form of pompousness and coldness. 
 Something might be said of him like that which Richter 
 said of Schiller : he was to strangers stony, and like a pre- 
 cipice from which it was their instinct to spring back. It 
 is certain that he had warm and generous feelings, but 
 his very sensitiveness only led him to disguise them. 
 The contrast between his emotions and his lack of demon- 
 strativeness created in him a constant artificiality which 
 often seemed mere awkwardness. It was in the House of 
 Commons that his real genius and character displayed 
 themselves. The atmosphere of debate was to him what 
 Macaulay says wine was to Addison, the influence which 
 broke the spell under which his fine intellect seemed other- 
 wise to lie imprisoned. Peel was a perfect master of the 
 House of Commons. He was as great an orator as any 
 man could be who addresses himself to the House of Com- 
 mons, its ways and its purposes alone. He went as near, 
 perhaps, to the rank of a great orator as any one can go 
 who is but little gifted with imagination. Oratory has 
 been well described as the fusion of reason and passion. 
 Passion always carries something of the imaginative along 
 with it. Sir Robert Peel had little imagination, and 
 almost none of that passion which in eloquence sometimes 
 supplies its place. His style was clear, strong, and stately ; 
 full of various argument and apt illustration drawn from 
 books and from the world of politics and commerce. He
 
 40 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 followed a difficult argument home to its utter conclusions ; 
 and if it had in it any lurking fallacy he brought out the 
 weakness into the clearest light, often with a happy touch 
 of humor and quiet sarcasm. His speeches might be de- 
 scribed as the very perfection of good-sense and high prin- 
 ciple clothed in the most impressive language. But they 
 were something more peculiar than this, for they were so 
 constructed, in their argument and their style alike, as to 
 touch the very core of the intelligence of the House of 
 Commons. They told of the feelings and the inspiration 
 of Parliament as the ballad-music of a country tells of its 
 scenery and its national sentiments. 
 
 Lord Stanley was a far more energetic and impassioned 
 speaker than Sir Robert Peel, and perhaps occasionally, in 
 has later career, came now and then nearer to the height 
 of genuine oratory. But Lord Stanley was little more 
 than a splendid Parliamentary partisan, even when, long 
 after, he was Prime-minister of England. He had very 
 little, indeed, of that class of information which the 
 modern world requires of its statesmen and leaders. Of 
 political economy, of finance, of the development and the 
 discoveries of modern science, he knew almost as little as 
 it is possible for an able and energetic man to know who 
 lives in the throng of active life and hears what people 
 are talking of around him. He once said good-humoredly 
 of himself, that he was brought up in the pre-scientific 
 period. His scholarship was merely such training in the 
 classic languages as allowed him to have a full literary 
 appreciation of the beauty of Greek and Roman literature. 
 He had no real and deep knowledge of the history of the 
 Greek and the Roman people, nor probably did he at all 
 appreciate the great difference between the spirit of 
 Roman and of Greek civilization. He had, in fact, what 
 would have been called at an earlier day an elegant schol- 
 arship ; he had a considerable knowledge of the politics of
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 41 
 
 his time in most European countries, an energetic, intrepid 
 spirit, and with him, as Macaulay well said, the science of 
 Parliamentary debate seemed to be an instinct. There 
 was no speaker on the ministerial benches at that time 
 who could for a moment be compared with him. 
 
 Lord John Russell, who had the leadership of the party 
 in the House of Commons, was really a much stronger 
 man than he seemed to be. He had a character for daunt- 
 less courage and confidence among his friends ; for bound- 
 less self-conceit among his enemies. Every one remem- 
 bers Sydney Smith's famous illustrations of Lord John 
 Russell's unlimited faith in his own power of achievement. 
 Thomas Moore addressed a poem to him at one time, when 
 Lord John Russell thought or talked of giving up politi- 
 cal life, in which he appeals to " thy genius, thy youth, 
 and thy name," declares that the instinct of the young 
 statesman is the same as " the eaglet's to soar with his 
 eyes on the sun," and implores him not to " think for an 
 instant thy country can spare such a light from her darken- 
 ing horizon as thou." Later observers, to whom Lord 
 John Russell appeared probably remarkable for a cold and 
 formal style as a debater, and for lack of originating 
 power as a statesman, may find it difficult to reconcile the 
 poet's picture with their own impressions of the reality. 
 But it is certain that at one time the reputation of Lord 
 John Russell was that of a rather reckless man of genius, 
 a sort of Whig Shelley. He had, in truth, much less 
 genius than his friends and admirers believed, and a great 
 deal more of practical strength than either friends or foes 
 gave him credit for. He became, not indeed an orator, 
 but a very keen debater, who was especially effective in a 
 cold, irritating sarcasm which penetrated the weakness of 
 an opponent's argument like some dissolving acid. In the 
 poem from which we have quoted, Moore speaks of the 
 eloquence of his noble friend as " not like those rills from
 
 42 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 a height, which sparkle and foam and in vapor are o'er ; 
 but a current that works out its way into light through 
 the filtering recesses of thought and of lore." Allowing 
 for the exaggeration of friendship and poetry, this is not 
 a bad description of what Lord John Russell's style 
 became at its best. The thin bright stream of argument 
 worked its way slowly out, and contrived to wear a path 
 for itself through obstacles which at first the looker-on 
 might have felt assured it never could penetrate. Lord 
 John Russell's swordsmanship was the swordsmanship of 
 Saladin, and not that of stout King Richard. But it was 
 very effective sword-play in its own way. Our English 
 system of government by party makes the history of 
 Parliament seem like that of a succession of great political 
 duels. Two men stand constantly confronted during a 
 series of years, one of whom is at the head of the Govern- 
 ment, while the other is at the head of the Opposition. 
 They change places with each victory. The conqueror 
 goes into office ; the conquered into opposition. This is 
 not the place to discuss either the merits or the probable 
 duration of the principle of government by party ; it is 
 enough to say here that it undoubtedly gives a very ani- 
 mated and varied complexion to our political struggles, 
 and invests them, indeed, with much of the glow and pas- 
 sion of actual warfare. It has often happened that the 
 two leading opponents are men of intellectual and oratori- 
 cal powers so fairly balanced that their followers may 
 well dispute among themselves as to the superiority of 
 their respective chiefs, and that the public in general may 
 become divided into two schools, not merely political, but 
 even critical, according to their partiality for one or the 
 other. We still dispute as to whether Fox or Pitt was 
 the greater leader, the greater orator ; it is probable that 
 for a long time to come the same question will be asked 
 by political students about Gladstone and Disraeli. For
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 43 
 
 many years Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel stood 
 thus opposed. They will often come into contrast and 
 comparison in these pages. For the present it is enough 
 to say that Peel had by far the more original mind, and 
 that Lord John Russell never obtained so great an in- 
 fluence over the House of Commons as that which his 
 rival long enjoyed. The heat of political passion after- 
 ward induced a bitter critic to accuse Peel of lack of origi- 
 nality because he assimilated readily and turned to account 
 the ideas of other men. Not merely the criticism, but the 
 principle on which it was founded, was altogether wrong. 
 It ought to be left to children to suppose that nothing is 
 original but that which we make up, as the childish phrase 
 is, " out of our own heads." Originality in politics, as in 
 every field of art, consists in the use and application of the 
 ideas which we get or are given to us. The greatest proof 
 Sir Robert Peel ever gave of high and genuine states- 
 manship was in his recognition that the time had come to 
 put into practical legislation the principles which Cobden 
 and Villiers and Bright had been advocating in the House 
 of Commons. Lord John Russell was a born reformer. 
 He had sat at the feet of Fox. He was cradled in the 
 principles of Liberalism. He held faithfully to his creed ; 
 he was one of its boldest and keenest champions. He had 
 great advantages over Peel, in the mere fact that he had 
 begun his education in a more enlightened school. But 
 he wanted passion quite as much as Peel did, and remained 
 still farther than Peel below the level of the genuine orator. 
 Russell, as we have said, had not long held the post of 
 leader of the House of Commons when the first Parlia- 
 ment of Queen Victoria assembled. He was still, in a 
 manner, on trial ; and even among his friends, perhaps 
 especially among his friends, there were whispers that his 
 confidence in himself was greater than his capacity for 
 leadership.
 
 44 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 After the chiefs of Ministry and of Opposition, the 
 most conspicuous figure in the House of Commons was 
 the colossal form of O'Connell, the great Irish agitator, of 
 whom we shall hear a good deal more. Among the fore- 
 most orators of the House at that time was O'Connell's 
 impassioned lieutenant, Richard Lalor Sheil. It is curi- 
 ous how little is now remembered of Sheil, whom so 
 many well-qualified authorities declared to be a genuine 
 orator. Lord Beaconsfield, in one of his novels, speaks of 
 Shell's eloquence in terms of the highest praise, and dispar- 
 ages Canning. It is but a short time since Mr. Gladstone 
 selected Sheil as one of three remarkable illustrations of 
 great success as a speaker, achieved in spite of serious 
 defects of voice and delivery; the other two examples 
 being Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Newman. Mr. Gladstone 
 described Sheil's voice as like nothing but the sound pro- 
 duced by " a tin kettle battered about from place to place,'* 
 knocking first against one side and then against another. 
 "In anybody else," Mr. Gladstone went on to say, "I 
 would not, if it had been in my choice, like to have listened 
 to that voice ; but in him I would not have changed it, 
 for it was part of a most remarkable whole, and nobody 
 ever felt it painful while -listening to it. He was a great 
 orator, and an orator of much preparation, I believe, car- 
 ried even to words, with a very vivid imagination and 
 an enormous power of language, and of strong feeling. 
 There was a peculiar character, a sort of half-wildness in 
 his aspect and delivery ; his whole figure, and his delivery, 
 and his voice and his matter, were all in such perfect keep- 
 ing with one another that they formed a great Parlia- 
 mentary picture; and although it is now thirty-five years 
 since I heard Mr. Sheil, my recollection of him is just as 
 vivid as if I had been listening to him to-day." This surely 
 is a picture of a great orator, as Mr. Gladstone says 
 Sheil was. Nor is it easy to understand how a man, with-
 
 STATESMEN AND PAETIES. 45 
 
 out being a very great orator, could have persuaded two 
 experts of such different schools as Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
 Disraeli that he deserves such a name. Yet the after- 
 years have in a curious but unmistakable way denied the 
 claims of Sheil. Perhaps it is because, if he really was an 
 orator, he was that and nothing more, that our practical 
 age, finding no mark left by him on Parliament or politics, 
 has declined to take much account even of his eloquence. 
 His career faded away into second-class ministerial office, 
 and closed at last, somewhat prematurely, in the little 
 court of Florence, where he was sent as the represent- 
 ative of England. He is worth mentioning here, because 
 he had the promise of a splendid reputation ; because the 
 charm of his eloquence evidently lingered long in the 
 memories of those to whom it was once familiar, and be- 
 cause his is one of the most brilliant illustrations of that 
 career of Irish agitator, which begins in stormy opposition 
 to English government, and subsides after awhile into 
 meek recognition of its title and adoption of its ministerial 
 uniform. O'Connell we have passed over for the present, 
 because we shall hear of him again ; but of Sheil it is not 
 necessary that we should hear any more. 
 
 This was evidently a remarkable Parliament, with Rus- 
 sell for the leader of one party, and Peel for the leader of 
 another ; with O'Connell and Sheil as independent sup- 
 porters of the ministry ; with Mr. Gladstone still compar- 
 ativety new to public life, and Mr. Disraeli to address the 
 Commons for the first time ; with Palmerston still unrec- 
 ognized, and Stanley lately gone over to Conservatism, 
 itself the newest invented thing in politics ; with Grote 
 and Bulwer, and Joseph Hume, and Charles Buller ; and 
 Ward and Villiers, Sir Francis Burdett, and Smith 
 O'Brien, and the Radical Alcibiades of Finsbury, " Tom " 
 Duncombe.
 
 46 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 
 
 THE first disturbance to the quiet and good promise of 
 the new reign came from Canada. The Parliament which 
 we have described met for the first time on November 
 20th, 1837, and was to have been adjourned to February 
 1st, 1838 ; but the news which began to arrive from 
 Canada was so alarming, that the ministry were com- 
 pelled to change their purpose and fix the reassembling 
 of the Houses for January 16th. The disturbances in 
 Canada had already broken out into open rebellion. 
 
 The condition of Canada was very peculiar. Lower or 
 Eastern Canada was inhabited for the most part by men 
 of French descent, who still kept up in the midst of an 
 active and moving civilization most of the principles and 
 usages which belonged to France before the Revolution. 
 Even to this day, after all the changes, political and social, 
 that have taken place, the traveller from Europe sees hi 
 many of the towns of Lower Canada an old-fashioned 
 France, such as he had known otherwise only in books 
 that tell of France before '89. Nor is this only in small 
 sequestered towns and villages which the impulses of mod- 
 ern ways have yet failed to reach. In busy and trading 
 Montreal, with its residents made up of Englishmen, 
 Scotchmen, and Americans, as well as the men of French 
 descent, the visitor is more immediately conscious of the 
 presence of what may be called an old-fashioned Cathol-
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 47 
 
 icism than he is in Paris, or even indeed in Rome. In 
 Quebec, a city which for picturesqueness and beauty 
 of situation is not equalled by Edinburgh or Florence, 
 the curious interest of the place is further increased, 
 the novelty of the sensations it produces in the visitor is 
 made more piquant, by the evidences he meets with 
 everywhere, through its quaint and steepy streets and 
 under its antiquated archways, of the existence of a 
 society which has hardly in France survived the Great 
 Revolution. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign, 
 the undiluted character of this French medisevalism was, 
 of course, much more remarkable. It would doubtless 
 have exhibited itself quietly enough if it were absolutely 
 undiluted. Lower Canada would have dozed away in 
 its sleepy picturesqueness, held fast to its ancient ways, 
 and allowed a bustling, giddy world, all alive with com- 
 merce and ambition, and desire for novelty and the 
 terribly disturbing thing which unresting people called 
 progress, to rush on its wild path unheeded. But its 
 neighbors and its newer citizens were not disposed to 
 allow Lower Canada thus to rot itself in ease on the 
 decaying wharves of the St. Lawrence and the St. 
 Charles. In the large towns there were active traders 
 from England and other countries, who were by no means 
 content to put up with Old-World ways, and to let the 
 magnificent resources of the place run to waste. Upper 
 Canada, on the other hand, was all new as to its popula- 
 tion, and was full of the modern desire for commercial 
 activity. Upper Canada was peopled almost exclusively 
 by inhabitants from Great Britain. Scotch settlers, with 
 all the energy and push of their country ; men from the 
 northern province of Ireland, who might be described as 
 virtually Scotch also, came there. The emigrant from 
 the south of Ireland went to the United States because 
 he found there a country more or less hostile to England,
 
 48 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and because there the Catholic Church was understood to 
 be flourishing. The Ulsterman went to Canada as the 
 Scotchman did, because he saw the flag of England flying, 
 and the principle of religious establishment which he 
 admired at home still recognized. It is almost needless to 
 say that Englishmen in great numbers were settled there, 
 whose chief desire was to make the colony as far as pos- 
 sible a copy of the institutions of England. When Canada 
 was ceded to England by France, as a consequence of the 
 victories of Wolfe, the population was nearly all in the 
 lower province, and therefore was nearly all of French 
 origin. Since the cession the growth of the population 
 of the other province had been surprisingly rapid, and 
 had been almost exclusively the growth, as we have seen, 
 of immigration from Great Britain, one or two of the 
 colonizing states of the European continent, and the 
 American Republic itself. 
 
 It is easy to see on the very face of things some of the 
 difficulties which must arise in the development of such 
 a system. The French of Lower Canada would regard 
 with almost morbid jealousy any legislation which ap- 
 peared likely to interfere with their ancient ways and to 
 give any advantage or favor to the populations of British 
 descent. The latter would see injustice or feebleness in 
 every measure which did not assist them in developing 
 their more energetic ideas. The home Government, in 
 such a condition of things, often has especial trouble with 
 those whom we may call its own people. Their very 
 loyalty to the institutions of the Old Country impels 
 them to be unreasonable and exacting. It is not easy to 
 make them understand why they should not be at the 
 least encouraged, if not indeed actually enabled, to carry 
 boldly out the Anglicizing policy which they clearly see 
 is to be for the good of the colony in the end. The Gov- 
 ernment has all the difficulty that the mother of a house-
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 49 
 
 hold has when, with the best intentions and the most 
 conscientious resolve to act impartially, she is called 
 upon to manage her own children and the children of her 
 husband's former marriage. Every word she says, every 
 resolve she is induced to acknowledge, is liable to be 
 regarded with jealousy and dissatisfaction on the one 
 side as well as on the other. " You are doing everything 
 to favor your own children," the one set cry out. " You 
 ought to do something more for your own children," is 
 the equally querulous remonstrance of the other. 
 
 It would have been difficult, therefore, for the home 
 Government, however wise and far-seeing their policy, to 
 make the wheels of any system run smoothly at once in 
 such a colony as Canada. But their policy certainly does 
 not seem to have been either wise or far-seeing. The 
 plan of government adopted looks as if it were especially 
 devised to bring out into sharp relief all the antagonisms 
 that were natural to the existing state of things. By an 
 Act called the Constitution of 1791, Canada was divided 
 into two provinces, the Upper and the Lower. Each 
 province had a separate system of government consist- 
 ing of a governor ; an executive council appointed by the 
 Crown, and supposed in some way to resemble the Privy 
 Council of this country ; a legislative council, the mem- 
 bers of which, were appointed by the Crown for life ; and 
 a representative assembly, the members of which were 
 elected for four years. At the same time the clergy 
 reserves were established by Parliament. One-seventh 
 of the waste lands of the colony was set aside for the 
 maintenance of the Protestant clergy a fruitful source of 
 disturbance and ill-feeling. 
 
 When the two provinces were divided in 1791, the inten- 
 tion was that they should remain distinct in fact as well as 
 in name. It was hoped that Lower Canada would remain 
 altogether French, and that Upper Canada would be exclu- 
 
 4
 
 60 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 sively English. Then it was thought that they might be 
 governed on their separate systems as securely and with 
 as little trouble as we now govern the Mauritius on one 
 system and Malta on another. 
 
 Those who formed such an idea do not seem to have 
 taken any counsel with geography. The one fact, that 
 Upper Canada can hardly be said to have any means of 
 communication with Europe and the whole Eastern world 
 except through Lower Canada, or else through the United 
 States, ought to have settled the question at once. It was 
 in Lower Canada that the greatest difficulties arose. A 
 constant antagonism grew up between the majority of 
 the legislative council, who were nominees of the Crown, 
 and the majority of the representative assembly, who 
 were elected by the population of the province. The 
 home Government encouraged, and indeed kept up, that 
 most odious and dangerous of all instruments for the 
 supposed management of a colony a " British party " 
 devoted to the so-called interests of the mother country 
 and obedient to the word of command from their mas- 
 ters and patrons at home. The majority in the legisla- 
 tive council constantly thwarted the resolutions of the 
 vast majority of the popular assembly. Disputes arose as 
 to the voting of supplies. The Government retained in 
 their service officials whom the representative assembly had 
 condemned, and insisted on the right to pay them their 
 salaries out of certain funds of the colony. The repre- 
 sentative assembly took to stopping the supplies, and the 
 Government claimed the right to counteract this measure 
 by appropriating to the purpose such public moneys as 
 happened to be within their reach at the time. The colony 
 for indeed on these subjects the population of Lower 
 Canada, right or wrong, was so near to being of one mind 
 that we may take the declarations of public meetings as 
 representing the colony demanded that the legislative
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 51 
 
 council should be made elective, and that the colonial 
 government should not be allowed to dispose of the moneys 
 of the colony at their pleasure. The House of Commons 
 and the Government here replied by refusing to listen to 
 the proposal to make the legislative council an elective 
 body, and authorizing the provincial government, without 
 the consent of the colonial representation to appropriate 
 the money in the treasury for the administration of justice 
 and the maintenance of the executive system. This was, 
 in plain words, to announce to the French population, who 
 made up the vast majority, and whom we had taught to 
 believe in the representative form of government, that 
 their wishes would never count for anything, and that the 
 colony was to be ruled solely at the pleasure of the little 
 British party of officials and Crown nominees. It is not 
 necessary to suppose that in all these disputes the popular 
 majority were in the right and the officials in the wrong. 
 No one can doubt that there was much bitterness of feel- 
 ing arising out of the mere differences of race. The 
 French and the English could not be got to blend. In 
 some places, as it was afterwards said in the famous re- 
 port of Lord Durham, the two sets of colonists never 
 publicly met together except in the jury-box, and then 
 only for the obstruction of justice. The British residents 
 complained bitterly of being subject to French law and 
 procedure in so many of their affairs. The tenure of land 
 and many other conditions of the system were antique 
 French, and the French law worked, or rather did not 
 work, in civil affairs side by side with the equally impeded 
 British law in criminal matters. At last the representa- 
 tive assembly refused to vote any further supplies or to 
 carry on any further business. They formulated their 
 grievances against the home Government. Their com- 
 plaints were of arbitrary conduct on the part of the gov- 
 ernors ; intolerable composition of the legislative council,
 
 52 A HISTORY OF OUR Oll'N TIMES. 
 
 which they insisted ought to be elective ; illegal appro- 
 priation of the public money ; and violent prorogation of 
 the provincial Parliament. 
 
 One of the leading men in the movement which after- 
 ward became rebellion in Lower Canada was Mr. Louis 
 Joseph Papineau. This man had risen to high position 
 by his talents, his energy, and his undoubtedly honorable 
 character. He had represented Montreal in the Repre- 
 sentative Assembly of Lower Canada, and he afterward 
 became Speaker of the House. He made himself leader 
 of the movement to protest against the policy of the gover- 
 nors, and that of the Government at home, by whom they 
 were sustained. He held a series of meetings, at some of 
 which undoubtedly rather strong language was used, and 
 too frequent and significant appeals were made to the 
 example held out to the population of Lower Canada by 
 the successful revolt of the United States. Mr. Papineau 
 also planned the calling together of a great convention to 
 discuss and proclaim the grievances of the colonies. Lord 
 Gosford, the governor, began by dismissing several militia 
 officers who had taken part hi some of these demonstra- 
 tions ; Mr. Papineau himself was an officer of this force. 
 Then the governor issued warrants for the apprehension 
 of many members of the popular Assembly on the charge 
 of high-treason. Some of these at once left the country ; 
 others against whom warrants were issued were arrested, 
 and a sudden resistance was made by their friends and 
 supporters. Then, in the manner familiar to all who 
 have read anything of the history of revolutionary move- 
 ments, the resistance to a capture of prisoners suddenly 
 transformed itself into open rebellion. 
 
 The rebellion was not, in a military sense, a very great 
 thing. At its first outbreak the military authorities were 
 for a moment surprised, and the rebels obtained one or 
 two trifling advantages. But the commander-in-chief at
 
 CANADA AND LOED DURHAM. 53 
 
 once showed energy adequate to the occasion, and used, 
 as it was his duty to do, a strong hand in putting the 
 movement down. The rebels fought with something like 
 desperation in one or two instances, and there was, it must 
 be said, a good deal of blood shed. The disturbance, how- 
 ever, after awhile extended to the upper province. Upper 
 Canada too had its complaints against its governors and 
 the home Government, and its protests against having its 
 offices all disposed of by a " family compact ; " but the 
 rebellious movement does not seem to have taken a 
 genuine hold of the province at any time. There was 
 some discontent ; there was a constant stimulus to excite- 
 ment kept up from across the American frontier by sym- 
 pathizers with any republican movement ; and there were 
 some excitable persons inclined for revolutionary change 
 in the province itself whose zeal caught fire when the 
 flame broke out in Lower Canada. But it seems to have 
 been an exotic movement altogether, and, so far as its 
 military history is concerned, deserves notice chiefly for 
 the chivalrous eccentricity of the plan by which the 
 governor of the province undertook to put it down. The 
 governor was the gallant and fanciful soldier and traveller, 
 Sir Francis, then Major, Head. He who had fought at 
 Waterloo, and seen much service besides, was quietly per- 
 forming the duties of Assistant Poor Law Commissioner 
 for the county of Kent, when he was summoned, in 1835, 
 at a moment's notice, to assume the governorship of 
 Upper Canada. When the rebellion broke out in that 
 province, Major Head proved himself not merely equal to 
 the occasion, but boldly superior to it. He promptly 
 resolved to win a grand moral victory over all rebellion 
 then and for the future. He was seized with a desire to 
 show to the whole world how vain it was for any dis- 
 turber to think of shaking the loyalty of the province 
 under his control. He issued to rebellion in general a
 
 54 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 challenge not unlike that which Shakspeare's Prince 
 Harry offers to the chiefs of the insurrection against 
 Henry IV. He invited it to come on and settle the 
 controversy by a sort of duel. He sent all the regular 
 soldiers out of the province to the help of the authorities 
 of Lower Canada ; he allowed the rebels to mature their 
 plans in any way they liked ; he permitted them to choose 
 their own day and hour, and when they were ready to 
 begin their assaults on constituted authority, he summoned 
 to his side the militia and all the loyal inhabitants, and 
 with their help he completely extinguished the rebellion. 
 It was but a very trifling affair ; it went out or collapsed 
 in a moment. Major Head had his desire. He showed 
 that rebellion in that province was not a thing serious 
 enough to call for the intervention of regular troops. The 
 loyal colonists were for the most part delighted with the 
 spirited conduct of their leader and his new-fashioned way 
 of dealing with rebellion. No doubt the moral effect 
 was highly imposing. The plan was almost as original 
 as that described in Herodotus and introduced into one 
 of Massinger's plays, when the moral authority of the 
 masters is made to assert itself over the rebellious slaves 
 by the mere exhibition of the symbolic whip. But the 
 authorities at home took a somewhat more prosaic view 
 of the policy of Sir Francis Head. It was suggested that 
 if the fears of many had been realized, and the rebellion 
 had been aided by a large force of sympathizers from the 
 United States, the moral authority of Canadian loyalty 
 might have stood greatly in need of the material presence 
 of regular troops. In the end Sir Francis Head resigned 
 his office. His loyalty, courage, and success were acknowl- 
 edged by the gift of a baronetcy ; and he obtained the 
 admiration not merely of those who approved his policy, 
 but even of many among those who felt bound to con- 
 demn it. Perhaps it may be mentioned that there were
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 55 
 
 some who persisted to the last in the belief that Sir 
 Francis Head was not by any means so rashly chivalrous 
 as he had allowed himself to be thought, and that he had 
 full preparation made, if his moral demonstration should 
 fail, to supply its place in good time with more common- 
 place and effective measures. 
 
 The news of the outbreaks in Canada created a natural 
 excitement in this country. There was a very strong feel- 
 ing of sympathy among many classes here not, indeed, 
 with the rebellion, but with the colony which complained 
 of what seemed to be genuine and serious grievances. 
 Public meetings were held at which resolutions were 
 passed ascribing the disturbances, in the first place, to the 
 refusal by the Government of any redress sought for by 
 the colonists. Mr. Hume, the pioneer of financial reform, 
 took the side of the colonists very warmly both in and out 
 of Parliament. During one of the Parliamentary debates 
 on the subject, Sir Robert Peel referred to the principal 
 leader of the rebellion in Upper Canada as " a Mr. Mac- 
 kenzie." Mr. Hume resented this way of speaking of a 
 prominent colonist, and remarked that " there was a Mr. 
 Mackenzie as there might be a Sir Robert Peel," and 
 created some amusement by referring to the declarations 
 of Lord Chatham on the American Stamp Act, which he 
 cited as the opinion of " a Mr. Pitt." Lord John Russell, 
 on the part of the Government, introduced a bill to deal 
 with the rebellious province. The bill proposed, in brief, 
 to suspend for a time the constitution of Lower Canada, 
 and to send out from this country a governor-general and 
 high-commissioner, with full powers to deal with the rebel- 
 lion, and to remodel the constitution of both provinces. 
 The proposal met with a good deal of opposition at first 
 on very different grounds. Mr. Roebuck, who was then, 
 as it happened, out of Parliament, appeared as the agent 
 and representative of the province of Lower Canada, and
 
 50 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 demanded to be heard at the bar of both the Houses 
 in opposition to the bill. After some little demur his 
 demand was granted, and he stood at the bar, first of the 
 Commons, and then of the Lords, and opposed the bill on 
 the ground that it unjustly suspended the constitution 
 of Lower Canada in consequence of disturbances provoked 
 by the intolerable oppression of the home Government. 
 A critic of that day remarked that most orators seemed 
 to make it their business to conciliate and propitiate the 
 audience they desired to win over, but that Mr. Roebuck 
 seemed from the very first to be determined to set all 
 his hearers against him and his cause. Mr. Roebuck's 
 speeches were, however, exceedingly argumentative and 
 powerful appeals. Their effect was enhanced by the 
 singularly youthful appearance of the speaker, who is 
 described as looking like a boy hardly out of his teens. 
 
 It was evident, however, that the proposal of the Govern- 
 ment must in the main be adopted. The general opinion 
 of Parliament decided, not unreasonably, that that was not 
 the moment for entering into a consideration of the past 
 policy of the Government, and that the country could do 
 nothing better just then than send out some man of com- 
 manding ability and character to deal with the exist- 
 ing condition of things. There was an almost universal 
 admission that the Government had found the right man 
 when Lord John Russell mentioned the name of Lord 
 Durham. 
 
 Lord Durham was a man of remarkable character. It 
 is a matter of surprise how little his name is thought of 
 by the present generation, seeing what a .strenuous figure 
 he seemed in the eyes of his contemporaries, and how 
 striking a part he played in the politics of a time which 
 has even still some living representatives. He belonged 
 to one of the oldest families in England. The Lambtons 
 had lived on their estate in the North, in uninterrupted
 
 CANADA AND LOED DURHAM. 57 
 
 succession, since the Conquest. The male succession, it 
 is stated, never was interrupted since the twelfth century. 
 They were not, however, a family of aristocrats. Their 
 wealth was derived chiefly from coal mines, and grew up 
 in later days ; the property at first, and for a long time, 
 was of inconsiderable value. For more than a century, 
 however, the Lambtons had come to take rank among the 
 gentry of the county, and some member of the family 
 had represented the city of Durham in the House of Com- 
 mons from 1727 until the early death of Lord Durham's 
 father in December, 1797. William Henry Lambton, Lord 
 Durham's father, was a stanch Whig, and had been a 
 friend and associate of Fox. John George Lambton, the 
 son, was born at Lambton Castle in April, 1792. Before 
 he was quite twenty years of age, he made a romantic 
 marriage at Gretna Green with a lady who died three years 
 after. He served for a short time in a regiment of Hus- 
 sars. About a year after the death of his first wife he 
 married the eldest daughter of Lord Grey. He was then 
 only twenty-four years of age. He had before this been 
 returned to Parliament for the county of Durham, and 
 he soon distinguished himself as a very advanced and 
 energetic reformer. While in the Commons he seldom 
 addressed the House, but when he did speak, it was in 
 support of some measure of reform, or against what he 
 conceived to be antiquated and illiberal legislation. He 
 brought out a plan of his own for Parliamentary reform 
 in 1821. In 1828 he was raised to the peerage, with the 
 title of Baron Durham. When the ministry of Lord Grey 
 was formed, in November, 1830, Lord Durham became 
 Lord Privy Seal. He is said to have had an almost com- 
 plete control over Lord Grey. .He had an impassioned and 
 energetic nature, which sometimes drove him into out- 
 breaks of feeling which most of his colleagues dreaded. 
 Various highly-colored descriptions of stormy scenes
 
 68 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 between him and his companions in office are given by 
 writers of the time. Lord Durham, his enemies and some 
 of his friends said, bullied and browbeat his opponents in 
 the cabinet, and would sometimes hardly allow his father- 
 in-law and official chief a chance of putting hi a word on 
 the other side, or in mitigation of his tempestuous mood. 
 He was thorough in his reforming purposes, and would 
 have rushed at radical changes with scanty consideration 
 for the time or for the temper of his opponents, lie had 
 very little reverence indeed for what Carlyle calls the 
 majesty of custom. Whatever he wished he strongly 
 wished. He had no idea of reticence, and cared not much 
 for the decorum of office. It is not necessary to believe 
 all the stories told by those who hated and dreaded Lord 
 Durham, in order to accept the belief that he really was 
 somewhat of an enfant terrible to the stately Lord Grey, 
 and to the easy-going colleagues who were by no means 
 absolutely eaten up by their zeal for reform. In the 
 powerful speech which he delivered hi the House of Lords 
 on the Reform Bill there is a specimen of his eloquence 
 of denunciation which might well have startled listeners, 
 even in those days when the license of speech was often 
 sadly out of proportion with its legalized liberty. Lord 
 Durham was especially roused to anger by some observa- 
 tions made in the debate of a previous night by the Bishop 
 of Exeter. He described the prelate's speech as an exhibi- 
 tion of " coarse and virulent invective, malignant and false 
 insinuation, the grossest perversions of historical facts 
 decked out with all the choicest flowers of pamphleteer- 
 ing slang." He was called to order for these words, and 
 a peer moved that they be taken down. Lord Durham 
 was by no means dismayed. He coolly declared that ho 
 did not mean to defend his language as the most elegant 
 or graceful, but that it exactly conveyed the ideas regard- 
 ing the bishop which he meant to express ; that he believed
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 59 
 
 the bishop's speech to contain insinuations which were as 
 false as scandalous ; that he had said so ; that he now 
 begged leave to repeat the words, and that he paused to 
 give any noble lord who thought fit an opportunity of 
 taking them down. Not one, however, seemed disposed 
 to encounter any further this impassioned adversary, and 
 when he had had his say, Lord Durham became somewhat 
 mollified, and endeavored to soften the pain of the impres- 
 sion he had made. He begged the House of Lords to make 
 some allowance for him if he had spoken too warmly ; for, 
 as he said with much pathetic force, his mind had lately 
 been tortured by domestic loss. He thus alluded to the 
 recent death of his eldest son " a beautiful boy," says a 
 writer of some years ago, " whose features will live forever 
 in the well-known picture by Lawrence." 
 
 The whole of this incident the fierce attack and the 
 sudden pathetic expression of regret will serve well 
 enough to illustrate the emotional, uncontrolled character 
 of Lord Durham. He was one of the men who, even when 
 they are thoroughly in the right, have often the unhappy 
 art of seeming to put themselves completely in the wrong. 
 He was the most advanced of all the reformers in the 
 reforming ministry of Lord Grey. His plan of Reform in 
 1821 proposed to give four hundred members to certain 
 districts of town and country, in which every householder 
 should have a vote. When Lord Grey had formed his 
 reform ministry, Lord Durham sent for Lord John Russell 
 and requested him to draw up a scheme of reform. A 
 committee was formed on Lord Durham's suggestion con- 
 sisting of Sir James Graham, Lord Duncannon, Lord John 
 Russell, and Lord Durham himself. Lord John Russell 
 drew up a plan, which he published long after, with the 
 alterations which Lord Durham had suggested and written 
 in his own hand on the margin. If Lord Durham had had 
 his way the ballot would at that time have been included
 
 CO A IIISTOIIY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in the programme of the Government ; and it was, indeed, 
 understood that at one period of the discussion he "had 
 won over his colleagues to his opinion on that subject. 
 He was, in a word, the Radical member of the cabinet, 
 with all the energy which became such a character ; with 
 that " magnificent indiscretion " which had been attributed 
 to a greater man Edmund Burke ; with all that courage 
 of his opinions which, in the Frenchified phraseology of 
 modern politics, is so much talked of, so rarely found, and 
 so little trusted or successful when it is found. 
 
 Not long after Lord Durham was raised in the peerage 
 and became an earl. His influence over Lord Grey contin- 
 ued great, but his differences of opinion with his former 
 colleagues he had resigned his office became greater 
 and greater every day. More than once he had taken the 
 public into his confidence in his characteristic and heed- 
 less way. He was sent on a mission to Russia, perhaps 
 to get him out of the way, and afterward he was made 
 ambassador at the Russian court. In the interval between 
 his mission and his formal appointment he had come back 
 to England and performed a series of enterprises which in 
 the homely and undignified language of American politics 
 would probably be called " stumping the country." He 
 was looked to with much hope by the more extreme 
 Liberals in the country, and with corresponding dislike 
 and dread by all who thought the country had gone far 
 enough, or much too far in the recent political changes. 
 
 None of his opponents, however, denied his great ability. 
 He was never deterred by conventional beliefs and habits 
 from looking boldly into the very heart of a great political 
 difficulty. He was never afraid to propose what; in times 
 later than his, have been called heroic remedies. There 
 was a general impression, perhaps, even among those who 
 liked him least, that he was a sort of " unemployed Caesar," 
 a man who only required a field large enough to develop
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 61 
 
 great qualities in the ruling of men. The difficulties in 
 Canada seemed to have come as if expressly to give him 
 an opportunity of proving himself all that his friends 
 declared him to be, or of justifying forever the distrust of 
 his enemies. He went out to Canada with the assurance of 
 every one that his expedition would either make or mar 
 a career, if not a country. 
 
 Lord Durham went out to Canada with the brightest 
 hopes and prospects. He took with him two of the men 
 best qualified in England at that time to make his mission 
 a success Mr. Charles Buller and Mr. Edward Gibbon 
 Wakefield. He understood that he was going out as a 
 dictator, and there can be no doubt that his expedition 
 was regarded in this light by England and by the colonies. 
 We have remarked that people looked on his mission as 
 likely to make or mar a career, if not a country. What 
 it did, however, was somewhat different from that which 
 any one expected. Lord Durham found out a new alter- 
 native. He made a country, and he marred a career. He 
 is distinctly the founder of the system which has since 
 worked with such gratifying success in Canada ; he is the 
 founder, even, of the principle which allowed the quiet 
 development of the provinces into a confederation with 
 neighboring colonies under the name of the Dominion of 
 Canada. But the singular quality which in home politics 
 had helped to mar so much of Lord Durham's personal 
 career was in full work during his visit to Canada. It 
 would not be easy to find in modern political history so curi- 
 ous an example of splendid and lasting success combined 
 with all the appearance of utter and disastrous failure. 
 The mission of Lord Durham saved Canada. It ruined Lord 
 Durham. At the moment it seemed to superficial observ- 
 ers to have been as injurious to the colony as to the man. 
 
 Lord Durham arrived in Quebec at the end of May, 
 1838. He at once issued a proclamation, in style like that
 
 62 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of a dictator. It was not in any way unworthy of the 
 occasion, which especially called for the intervention of a 
 brave and enlightened dictatorship. He declared that he 
 would unsparingly punish any one who violated the laws, 
 but he frankly invited the co-operation of the colonies to 
 form a new system of government really suited to their 
 wants and to the altering conditions of civilization. Un- 
 fortunately, he had hardly entered on his work of dicta- 
 torship when he found that he was no longer a dictator. 
 In the passing of the Canada Bill through Parliament the 
 powers which he understood were to be conferred upon 
 him had been considerably reduced. Lord Durham went 
 to work, however, as if he were still invested with ab- 
 solute authority over all the laws and conditions of the 
 colony. A very Caesar laying down the lines for the 
 future government of a province could hardly have been 
 more boldly arbitrary. Let it be said, also, that Lord 
 Durham's arbitrariness was for the most part healthy in 
 effect and just in spirit. But it gave an immense oppor- 
 tunity of attack on himself and on the Government to 
 the enemies of both at home. Lord Durham had hardly 
 begun his work of reconstruction when his recall was 
 clamored for by vehement voices in Parliament. 
 
 Lord Durham began by issuing a series of ordinances 
 intended to provide for the security of Lower Canada. 
 He proclaimed a very liberal amnesty, to which, however, 
 there were certain exceptions. The leaders of the rebel- 
 lious movement, Papineau and others, who had escaped 
 from the colony, were excluded from the amnesty. So 
 likewise were certain prisoners who either had voluntarily 
 confessed themselves guilty of high- treason, or 'had been 
 induced to make such an acknowledgment in the hope of 
 obtaining a mitigated punishment. These Lord Durham 
 ordered to be transported to Bermuda ; and for any of 
 these, or of the leaders who had escaped, who should re-
 
 CANADA AND LORD DUEUAM. 63 
 
 turn to the colony without permission, he proclaimed that 
 they should be deemed guilty of high-treason, and con- 
 demned to suffer death. It needs no learned legal argu- 
 ment to prove that this was a proceeding not to be justi- 
 fied by any of the ordinary forms of law. Lord Durham 
 had not power to transport any one to Bermuda. He had 
 no authority over Bermuda ; he had no authority which 
 he could delegate to the officials of Bermuda enabling 
 them to detain political prisoners. Nor had he any power 
 to declare that persons who returned to the colony were 
 to be liable to the punishment of death. It is not a capi- 
 tal offence by any of the laws of England for even a trans- 
 ported convict to break bounds and return to his home. 
 All this was quite illegal ; that is to say, was outside the 
 limits of Lord Durham's legal authority. Lord Durham 
 was well aware of the fact. He had not for a moment 
 supposed that he was acting in accordance with ordinary 
 English law. He was acting in the spirit of a dictator, at 
 once bold and merciful, who is under the impression that 
 he has been invested with extraordinary powers for the 
 very reason that the crisis does not admit of the ordinary 
 operations of law. For the decree of death to banished 
 men returning without permission, he had, indeed, the 
 precedent and authority of acts passed already by the 
 colonial Parliament itself ; but Lord Durham did not care 
 for any such authority. He found that he had on his 
 hands a considerable number of prisoners whom it would 
 be absurd to put on trial in Lower Canada with the usual 
 forms of law. It would have been absolutely impossible 
 to get any unpacked jury to convict them. They would 
 have been triumphantly acquitted. The authority of the 
 Crown would have been brought into greater contempt 
 than ever. So little faith had the colonists in the im- 
 partial working of the ordinary law in the governor's 
 hands, that the universal impression in Lower Canada
 
 04 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 was that Lord Durham would have the prisoners tried by 
 a packed jury of his own officials, convicted as a matter 
 of course, and executed out of hand. It was with amaze- 
 ment people found that the new governor would not stoop 
 to the infamy of packing a jury. Lord Durham saw no 
 better way out of the difficulty than to impose a sort of 
 exile on those who admitted their connection with the 
 rebellion, and to prevent by the threat of a severe penalty 
 the return of those who had already fled from the colony. 
 His amnesty measure was large and liberal ; but he did 
 not see that he could allow prominent offenders to remain 
 unrebuked in the colony ; and to attempt to bring them to 
 trial would have been to secure for them, not punishment, 
 but public honor. 
 
 Another measure of Lord Durham's was likewise open 
 to the charge of the excessive use of power. The act 
 which appointed him prescribed that he should be advised 
 by a council, and that every ordinance of his should be 
 signed by at least five of its members. There was already 
 a council in existence nominated by Lord Durham's pre- 
 decessor, Sir J. Colborne a sort of provisional govern- 
 ment put together to supply for the moment the place of 
 the suspended political constitution. This council Lord 
 Durham set aside altogether, and substituted for it one of 
 his own making, and composed chiefly of his secretaries 
 and the members of his staff. In truth, this was but a 
 part of the policy which he had marked out for himself. 
 He was resolved to play the game which he honestly 
 believed he could play better than any one else. He had 
 in his mind, partly from the inspiration of the gifted and 
 well-instructed men who accompanied and advised him, a 
 plan which he was firmly convinced would be the salva- 
 tion of the colony. Events have proved that he was right. 
 His disposal of the prisoners was only a clearing of the 
 decks for the great action of remodelling the colony. He
 
 CANADA AND LOED DURHAM. 65 
 
 did not allow a form of law to stand between him and his 
 purpose. Indeed, as we have already said, he regarded 
 himself as a dictator sent out to reconstruct a whole 
 system in the best way he could. When he was accused 
 of having gone beyond the law, he asked with a scorn not 
 wholly unreasonable : " "What are the constitutional prin- 
 ciples remaining in force where the whole constitution is 
 suspended? What principle of the British constitution 
 holds good in a country where the people's money is taken 
 from them without the people's consent ; where represent- 
 ative government is annihilated ; where martial law has 
 been the law of the land, and where trial by jury exists 
 only to defeat the ends of justice, and to provoke the 
 righteous scorn and indignation of the community ? " 
 
 Still there can be no doubt that a less impetuous and im- 
 patient spirit than that of Lord Durham might have found 
 a way of beginning his great reforms without provoking 
 such a storm of hostile criticism. He was, it must always 
 be remembered, a dictator who only strove to use his 
 powers for the restoration of liberty and constitutional 
 government. His mode of disposing of his prisoners was 
 arbitrary only in the interests of mercy. He declared 
 openly that he did not think it right to send to an ordinary 
 penal settlement, and thus brand with infamy, men whom 
 the public feeling of the colony entirely approved, and 
 whose cause, until they broke into rebellion, had far more of 
 right on its side than that of the authority they complained 
 of could claim to possess. He sent them to Bermuda 
 simply as into exile ; to remove them from the colony, but 
 nothing more. He lent the weight of this authority to the 
 colonial Act, which prescribed the penalty of death for 
 returning to the colony, because he believed that the men 
 thus proscribed never would return. 
 
 But his policy met with the severest and most unmeas- 
 ured criticism at home. If Lord Durham had been guilty 
 
 5
 
 66 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of the worst excesses of power which Burke charged 
 against Warren Hastings, he could not have been more 
 fiercely denounced in the House of Lords. He was accused 
 of having promulgated an ordinance which would enable 
 him to hang men without any trial or form of trial. None 
 of his opponents seemed to remember that whether his 
 disposal of the prisoners was right or wrong, it was only 
 a small and incidental part of a great policy covering the 
 readjustment of the whole political and social system of a 
 splendid colony. The criticism went on as if the promul- 
 gation of the Quebec ordinances was the be-all and the 
 end-all of Lord Durham's mission. His opponents made 
 great complaint about the cost of his progress in Canada. 
 Lord Durham had undoubtedly a lavish taste and a love 
 for something like Oriental display. He made his goings 
 about in Canada like a gorgeous royal progress ; yet it was 
 well known that he took no remuneration whatever for 
 himself, and did not even accept his own personal travel- 
 ling expenses. He afterward stated in the House of Lords 
 that the visit cost him personally ten thousand pounds 
 at least. Mr. Hume, the advocate of economy, made 
 sarcastic comment on the sudden fit of parsimony which 
 seemed to have seized, in Lord Durham's case, men whom 
 he had never before known to raise their voices against 
 any prodigality of expenditure. 
 
 The ministry was very weak in debating power in the 
 House of Lords. Lord Durham had made enemies there. 
 The opportunity was tempting for assailing him and the 
 ministry together. Many of the criticisms were undoubt- 
 edly the conscientious protests of men who saw danger in 
 any departure from the recognized principles of constitu- 
 tional law. Eminent judges and lawyers in the House of 
 Lords naturally looked, above all things, to the proper 
 administration of the law as it existed. But it is hard to 
 doubt that political or personal enmity influenced some of
 
 CANADA AND LORD DUEIIAM. 67 
 
 the attacks on Lord Durham's conduct. Almost all the 
 leading men in the House of Lords were against him. 
 Lord Brougham and Lord Lyndhurst were for the time 
 leagued in opposition to the Government and in attack on 
 the Canadian policy. Lord Brougham claimed to be con- 
 sistent. He had opposed the Canada coercion from the 
 beginning, he said, and he opposed illegal attempts to deal 
 with Canada now. It seems a little hard to understand 
 how Lord Brougham could really have so far misunder- 
 stood the purpose of Lord Durham's proclamation as to 
 believe that he proposed to hang men without the form of 
 law. However Lord Durham may have broken the tech- 
 nical rules of law, nothing could be more obvious than the 
 fact that he did so in the interest of mercy and generosity, 
 and not that of tyrannical severity. Lord Brougham 
 inveighed against him with thundering eloquence, as if he 
 were denouncing another Sejanus. It must be owned 
 that his attacks lost some of their moral effect because of 
 his known hatred to Lord Melbourne and the ministry, 
 and even to Lord Durham himself. People said that 
 Brougham had a special reason for feeling hostile to 
 anything done by Lord Durham. A dinner was given to 
 Lord Grey by the Reformers of Edinburgh, in 1834, at 
 which Lord Brougham and Lord Durham were both 
 present. Brougham was called upon to speak, and in the 
 course of his speech he took occasion to condemn certain 
 too-zealous Reformers who could not be content with the 
 changes that had been made, but must demand that the 
 ministry should rush forward into wild and extravagant 
 enterprises. He enlarged upon this subject with great 
 vivacity and with amusing variety of humorous and 
 rhetorical illustration. Lord Durham assumed that the 
 attack was intended for him. His assumption was not 
 unnatural. When he came in his turn to speak, he was 
 indiscreet enough to reply directly to Lord Brougham, to
 
 68 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 accept the speech of the former as a personal challenge, 
 and in bitter words to retort invective and sarcasm. The 
 scene was not edifying. The guests were scandalized. 
 The effect of Brougham's speech was wholly spoiled. 
 Brougham was made to seem a disturber of order by the 
 indiscretion which provoked into retort a man notoriously 
 indiscreet and incapable of self-restraint. It is not unfair 
 to the memory of so fierce and unsparing a political 
 gladiator as Lord Brougham, to assume that when he felt 
 called upon to attack the Canadian policy of Lord Dur- 
 ham, the recollection of the scene at the Edinburgh dinner 
 inspired with additional force his criticism of the Quebec 
 ordinances. 
 
 The ministry were weak, and yielded. They had in the 
 first instance approved of the ordinances, but they quickly 
 gave way and abandoned them. They avoided a direct 
 attempt on the part of Lord Brougham to reverse the 
 policy of Lord Durham by announcing that they had 
 determined to disallow the Quebec ordinances. Lord Dur- 
 ham learned for the first time from an American paper 
 that the Government had abandoned him. He at once 
 announced his determination to give up his position and 
 to return to England. His letter announcing this resolve 
 crossed on the ocean the dispatch from home disallow- 
 ing his ordinances. With characteristic imprudence, he 
 issued a proclamation from the Castle of St. Louis, in the 
 city of Quebec, which was virtually an appeal to the public 
 feeling of the colony against the conduct of her Majesty's 
 Government. When the news of this extraordinary pro- 
 clamation reached home, Lord Durham was called by the 
 Times newspaper " the Lord High Seditioner." The rep- 
 resentative of the sovereign, it was said, had appealed 
 to the judgment of a still rebellious colony against the 
 policy of the sovereign's own advisers. Of course Lord 
 Durham's recall was unavoidable. The Government at
 
 CANADA AND LORD DUEHAM. 69 
 
 once sent out a dispatch removing him from his place as 
 Governor of British North America. 
 
 Lord Durham had not waited for the formal recall. He 
 returned to England a disgraced man. Yet even then there 
 was public spirit enough among the English people to 
 refuse to ratify any sentence of disgrace upon him. When 
 he landed at Plymouth he was received with acclamations 
 by the population, although the Government had prevented 
 any of the official honor usually shown to returning gov- 
 ernors from being offered to him. Mr. John Stuart Mill 
 has claimed with modest firmness and with perfect justice 
 a leading share in influencing public opinion in favor of 
 Lord Durham. " Lord Durham," he says in his autobiog- 
 raphy, " was bitterly attacked from all sides, inveighed 
 against by enemies, given up by timid friends ; while those 
 who would willingly have defended him did not know what 
 to say. He appeared to be returning a defeated and dis- 
 credited man. I had followed the Canadian events from 
 the beginning ; I had been one of the prompters of his 
 prompters ; his policy was almost exactly what mine 
 would have been, and I was in a position to defend it. I 
 wrote and published a manifesto in the [Westminster] 
 Review, in which I took the very highest ground in his 
 behalf, claiming for him not mere acquittal, but praise and 
 honor. Instantly a number of other writers took up the 
 tone. I believe there was a portion of truth in what Lord 
 Durham soon after, with polite exaggeration, said to me, 
 that to this article might be ascribed the almost triumphal 
 reception which he met with on his arrival in England. 
 I believe it to have been the word in season, which at a 
 critical moment does much to decide the results ; the touch 
 which determines whether a stone set in motion at the top 
 of an eminence shall roll down on one side or on the other. 
 All hopes connected with Lord Durham as a politician 
 soon vanished ; but with regard to Canadian and generally
 
 70 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 to colonial policy the cause was gained. Lord Durham's 
 report, written by Charles Duller, partly under the inspira- 
 tion of Wakefleld, begun a new era ; its recommendations, 
 extending to complete internal self-government, were in 
 full operation in Canada within two or three years, and 
 have been since extended to nearly all the other colonies 
 of European race which have any claim to the character 
 of important communities." In this instance the victa 
 causa pleased not only Cato, but, in the end, the gods as 
 well. 
 
 Lord Durham's report was acknowledged by enemies 
 as well as by the most impartial critics to be a masterly 
 document. As Mr. Mill has said, it laid the foundation of 
 the political success and social prosperity not only of Can- 
 ada but of all the other important colonies. After hav- 
 ing explained in the most exhaustive manner the causes 
 of discontent and backwardness in Canada, it went on to 
 recommend that the government of the colony should be 
 put as much as possible into the hands of the colonists 
 themselves, that they themselves should execute as well 
 as make the laws, the limit of the Imperial Government's 
 interference being in such matters as affect the relations 
 of the colony with the mother-country, such as the con- 
 stitution and form of government, the regulation of foreign 
 relations and trade, and the disposal of the public lands. 
 Lord Durham proposed to establish a thoroughly good 
 system of municipal institutions ; to secure the indepen- 
 dence of the judges ; to make all provincial officers, except 
 the governor and his secretary, responsible to the colonial 
 legislature ; and to repeal all former legislation with re- 
 spect to the reserves of land for the clergy. Finally, he 
 proposed that the provinces of Canada should be reunited 
 politically and should become one legislature, containing 
 the representatives of both races and of all districts. It 
 is significant that the report also recommended that in any
 
 CANADA AND LOUD DUEIIAM. 71 
 
 act to be introduced for this purpose, a provision should 
 be made by which all or any of the other North American 
 colonies should, on the application of their legislatures and 
 with the consent of Canada, be admitted into the Canadian 
 Union. Thus the separation which Fox thought unwise 
 was to be abolished, and the Canadas were to be fused 
 into one system, which Lord Durham would have had a 
 federation. In brief, Lord Durham proposed to make the 
 Canadas self-governing as regards their internal affairs, 
 and the germ of a federal union. It is not necessary to 
 describe in detail the steps by which the Government grad- 
 ually introduced the recommendations of Lord Durham 
 to Parliament and carried them to success. Lord Glenelg, 
 one of the feeblest and most apathetic of colonial secreta- 
 ries, had retired from office, partly, no doubt, because of 
 the attacks in Parliament on his administration of Cana- 
 dian affairs. He was succeeded at the Colonial Office by 
 Lord ISTormanby, and Lord Normanby gave way in a few 
 months to Lord John Russell, who was full of energy and 
 earnestness. Lord Durham's successor and disciple in the 
 work of Canadian government, Lord Sydenham best 
 known as Mr. Charles Poulett Thomson, one of the 
 pioneers of free-trade received Lord John Russell's cor- 
 dial co-operation and support. Lord John Russell intro- 
 duced into the House of Commons a bill which he described 
 as intended to lay the foundation of a permanent settle- 
 ment of the affairs of Canada. The measure was post- 
 poned for a session because some statesmen thought that 
 it would not be acceptable to the Canadians themselves. 
 Some little sputterings of the rebellion had also lingered 
 after Lord Durham's return to this country, and these for 
 a short time had directed attention away from the policy 
 of reorganization. In 1840, however, the Act was passed 
 which reunited Upper and Lower Canada on the basis 
 proposed by Lord Durham. Further legislation disposed
 
 72 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of the clergy reserve lands for the general benefit of all 
 churches and denominations. The way was made clear 
 for that scheme which in times nearer to our own has 
 formed the Dominion of Canada. 
 
 Lord Durham did not live to see the success of the 
 policy he had recommended. We may anticipate the close 
 of his career. "Within a few days after the passing of the 
 Canada Government Bill he died at Cowes, in the Isle of 
 Wight, on July 28th, 1840. He was then little more than 
 forty-eight years of age. He had for some time been in 
 failing health, and it cannot be doubted that the mortifi- 
 cation attending his Canadian mission had worn away 
 his strength. His proud and sensitive spirit could ill 
 bear the contradictions and humiliations that had been 
 forced upon him. His was an eager and a passionate 
 nature, full of that sceva indignatio which, by his own 
 acknowledgment, tortured the heart of Swift. He wanted 
 to the success of his political career that proud patience 
 which the gods are said to love, and by virtue of which 
 great men live down misappreciation, and hold out until 
 they see themselves justified and hear the reproaches 
 turn into cheers. But if Lord Durham's personal career 
 was hi any way a failure, his policy for the Canadas was a 
 splendid success. It established the principles of colonial 
 government. There were undoubtedly defects in the 
 construction of the actual scheme which Lord Durham 
 initiated, and which Lord Sydenham, who died not long 
 after him, instituted. The legislative union of the two 
 Canadas was in itself a makeshift, and was only adopted 
 as such. Lord Durham would have had it otherwise if 
 he might ; but he did not see his way then to anything 
 like the complete federation scheme afterward adopted. 
 But the success of the policy lay in the broad principles 
 it established, and to which other colonial systems as 
 well as that of the Dominion of Canada owe their strength
 
 CANADA AND LORD DURHAM. 73 
 
 and security to-day. One may say, with little help from 
 the merely fanciful, that the rejoicings of emancipated 
 colonies might have been in his dying ears as he sank 
 into his early grave.
 
 74. -4 HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIME. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 
 
 THE opening of the reign of Queen Victoria coincided 
 with the introduction of many of the great discoveries 
 and applications in science, industry, and commerce which 
 we consider specially representative of modern civiliza- 
 tion. A reign which saw in its earlier years the applica- 
 tion of the electric current to the task of transmitting 
 messages, the first successful attempts to make use of 
 steam for the business of transatlantic navigation, the 
 general development of the railway system all over these 
 countries, and in the introduction of the penny-post, must 
 be considered to have obtained for itself, had it secured 
 no other memorials, an abiding place in history. A dis- 
 tinguished author has lately inveighed against the spirit 
 which would rank such improvements as those just men- 
 tioned with the genuine triumphs of the human race, 
 and has gone so far as to insist that there is nothing 
 in any such which might not be expected from the self- 
 interested contrivings of a very inferior animal nature. 
 Amidst the tendency to glorify beyond measure the mere 
 mechanical improvements of modern civilization, it is 
 natural that there should arise some angry questioning, 
 some fierce disparagement of all that it has done. There 
 will always be natures to which the philosophy of con- 
 templation must seem far nobler than the philosophy 
 which expresses itself hi mechanical action. It may, how-
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 75 
 
 ever, be taken as certain that no people who were ever 
 great in thought and in art wilfully neglected to avail 
 themselves of all possible contrivances for making life 
 less laborious by the means of mechanical and artificial 
 contrivance. The Greeks were, to the best of their oppor- 
 tunity, and when at the highest point of their glory as an 
 artistic race, as eager for the application of all scientific 
 and mechanical contrivances to the business of life as the 
 most practical and boastful Manchester man or Chicago 
 man of our own day. We shall afterward see that the 
 reign of Queen Victoria came to have a literature, an art, 
 and a philosophy distinctly its own. For the moment we 
 have to do with its industrial science ; or, at least, with 
 the first remarkable movements in that direction which 
 accompanied the opening of the reign. This at least must 
 be said for them, that they have changed the conditions 
 of human life for us in such a manner as to make the 
 history of the past forty or fifty years almost absolutely 
 distinct from that of any preceding period. In all that 
 part of our social life which is affected by industrial and 
 mechanical appliances, the man of the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century was less widely removed from the 
 Englishman of the days of the Paston Letters than we are 
 removed from the ways of the eighteenth century. The 
 man of the eighteenth century travelled on land and sea 
 in much the same way that his forefathers had done hun- 
 dreds of years before. His communications by letter with 
 his fellows were carried on in very much the same method. 
 He got his news from abroad and at home after the same 
 slow, uncertain fashion. His streets and houses were 
 lighted very much as they might have been when Mr. 
 Pepys was in London. His ideas of drainage and ventila- 
 tion were equally elementary and simple. We see a com- 
 plete revolution in all these things. A man of the present 
 day suddenly thrust back fifty years in life would find
 
 76 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 himself almost as awkwardly unsuited to the ways of that 
 time as if he were sent back to the age when the Romans 
 occupied Britain. He would find himself harassed at 
 every step he took. He could do hardly anything as he 
 does it to-day. Whatever the moral and philosophical 
 value of the change in the eyes of thinkers too lofty to 
 concern themselves with the common ways and doings of 
 human life, this is certain at least, that the change is of 
 immense historical importance ; and that even if we look 
 upon life as a mere pageant and show, interesting to wise 
 men only by its curious changes, a wise man of this school 
 could hardly have done better, if the choice lay with him, 
 than to desire that the lines of his life might be so cast as 
 to fall into the earlier part of this present reign. 
 
 It is a somewhat curious coincidence that in the year 
 when Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke took out their 
 first patent "for improvements in giving signals and 
 sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric 
 currents transmitted through metallic circuit," Professor 
 Morse, the American electrician, applied to Congress for 
 aid hi the construction and carrying on of a small electric 
 telegraph to convey messages a short distance, and made 
 the application without success. In the following year he 
 came to this country to obtain a patent for his invention ; 
 but he was refused. He had come too late. Our own 
 countrymen were beforehand with him. Very soon after 
 we find experiments made with the electric telegraph 
 between Euston Square and Camden Town. These experi- 
 ments were made under the authority of the London and 
 North-western Railway Company, immediately on the 
 taking out of the patent by Messrs. Wheatstone and 
 Cooke. Mr. Robert Stephenson was one of those who 
 came to watch the operation of this new and wonderful 
 attempt to make the currents of the air man's faithful 
 Ariel. The London and Birmingham Railway was opened
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 77 
 
 through its whole length in 1838. The Liverpool and 
 Preston line was opened in the same year. The Liver- 
 pool and Birmingham had been opened in the year before ; 
 the London and Croydon was opened the year after. The 
 Act for the transmission of the mails by railways was 
 passed in 1838. In the same year it was noted as an un- 
 paralleled, and to many an almost incredible, triumph of 
 human energy and science over time and space, that a 
 locomotive had been able to travel at a speed of thirty- 
 seven miles an hour. 
 
 " The prospect of travelling from the metropolis to Liver- 
 pool, a distance of two hundred and ten miles, in ten hours, 
 calls forcibly to mind the tales of fairies and genii by which 
 we were amused in our youth, and contrasts forcibly with 
 the fact, attested on the personal experience of the writer 
 of this notice, that about the commencement of the pres- 
 ent century this same journey occupied a space of sixty 
 hours." These are the words of a writer who gives an 
 interesting account of the railways of England during the 
 first year of the reign of Queen Victoria. In the same 
 volume from which this extract is taken an allusion is 
 made to the possibility of steam communication being 
 successfully established between England and the United 
 States. " Preparations on a gigantic scale," a writer is able 
 to announce, " are now in a state of great forwardness for 
 trying an experiment in steam navigation which has been 
 the subject of much controversy among scientific men. 
 Ships of an enormous size, furnished with steam-power 
 equal to the force of four hundred horses and upward, 
 will, before our next volume shall be prepared, have prob- 
 ably decided the question whether this description of 
 vessels can, in the present state of our knowledge, profit- 
 ably engage in transatlantic voyages. It is possible that 
 these attempts may fail a result which is indeed predicted 
 by high authorities on this subject. We are more san-
 
 78 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 guine in our hopes ; but should these be disappointed, we 
 cannot, if we are to judge from our past progress, doubt 
 that longer experience and a further application of inven- 
 tive genius will, at no very distant day, render practicable 
 and profitable by this means the longest voyages in which 
 the adventurous spirit of man will lead him to embark." 
 The experiment thus alluded to was made with perfect 
 success. The /Sirius, the Great Western, and the Royal 
 William accomplished voyages between New York and 
 this country in the early part of 1838; and it was 
 remarked that " Transatlantic voyages by means of steam 
 may now be said to be as easy of accomplishment, with 
 ships of adequate size and power, as the passage between 
 London and Margate." The Great Western crossed the 
 ocean from Bristol to New York in fifteen days. She was 
 followed by the Sirius, which left Cork for New York, 
 and made the passage in seventeen days. The controversy 
 as to the possibility of such voyages, which was settled by 
 the Great Western and the Sirius, had no reference to the 
 actual safety of such an experiment. During seven years 
 the mails for the Mediterranean had been despatched by 
 means of steamers. The doubt was as to the possibility 
 of stowing in a vessel so large a quantity of coal or other 
 fuel as would enable her to accomplish her voyage across 
 the Atlantic, where there could be no stopping-place and 
 no possibility of taking in new stores. It was found, 
 to the delight of all those who believed in the practicability 
 of the enterprise, that the quantity of fuel which each 
 vessel had on board when she left her port of departure 
 proved amply sufficient for the completion of the voyage. 
 Neither the Sirius nor the Great Western was the first 
 vessel to cross the Atlantic by means of steam propulsion. 
 Nearly twenty years before, a vessel called the Savannah, 
 built at New York, crossed the ocean to Liverpool ; and 
 some years later an English-built steamer made several
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 79 
 
 voyages between Holland and the Dutch West Indian 
 colonies as a packet vessel in the service of that Govern- 
 ment. Indeed, a voyage had been made round the Cape 
 of Good Hope more lately still by a steamship. These 
 expeditions, however, had really little or nothing to do 
 with the problem which was solved by the voyages of the 
 /Sirius and the Great Western. In the former instances 
 the steam-power was employed merely as an auxiliary. 
 The vessel made as much use of her steam propulsion as 
 she could, but she had to rely a good deal on her capacity 
 as a sailer. This was quite a different thing from the 
 enterprise of the Sirius and the Great Western, which 
 was to cross the ocean by steam propulsion, and steam 
 propulsion only. It is evident that, so long' as the steam- 
 power was to be used only as an auxiliary, it would be 
 impossible to reckon on speed and certainty of arrival. 
 The doubt was whether a steamer could carry, with her 
 cargo and passengers, fuel enough to serve for the whole 
 of her voyage across the Atlantic. The expeditions of the 
 Sirius and the Great Western settled the whole question. 
 It was never again a matter of controversy. It is enough 
 to say that two years after the Great Western went out 
 from Bristol to New York the Cunardline of steamers was 
 established. The steam communication between Liverpool 
 and New York became thenceforth as regular and as un- 
 varying a part of the business of commerce as the journeys 
 of the trains on the Great Western Railway between 
 London and Bristol. It was not Bristol which benefited 
 most by the transatlantic voyages. They made the great- 
 ness of Liverpool. Year by year the sceptre of the 
 commercial marine passed away from Bristol to Liverpool. 
 No port in the world can show a line of docks like those 
 of Liverpool. There the stately Mersey flows for miles 
 between the superb and massive granite walls of the 
 enclosures within whose shelter the ships of the world are
 
 80 A UISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 arrayed, as if on parade, for the admiration of the traveller 
 who has hitherto been accustomed to the irregular and 
 straggling arrangements of the docks of London or of New 
 York. 
 
 On July 5th, 1839, an unusually late period of the 
 year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward 
 his annual budget. The most important part of the finan- 
 cial statement, so far as later times are concerned, is set 
 out in a resolution proposed by the finance minister, 
 which, perhaps, represents the greatest social improve- 
 ment brought about by legislation in modern times. The 
 Chancellor proposed a resolution declaring that "it is ex- 
 pedient to reduce the postage on letters to one uniform 
 rate of one penny charged upon every letter of a weight 
 to be hereafter fixed by law ; Parliamentary privileges of 
 franking being abolished and official franking strictly reg- 
 ulated; this House pledging itself at the same time to 
 make good any deficiency of revenue which may be occa- 
 sioned by such an alteration in the rates of the existing 
 duties." Up to this time the rates of postage had been 
 both high and various. They were varying both as to 
 distance and as to the weight and even the size or the 
 shape of a letter. The district or London post was a 
 separate branch of the postal department ; and the charge 
 for the transmission of letters was made on a different 
 scale in London from that which prevailed between town 
 and town. The average postage on every chargeable 
 letter throughout the United Kingdom was sixpence far- 
 thing. A letter from London to Brighton cost eight- 
 pence; to Aberdeen one shilling and threepence half- 
 penny ; to Belfast one shilling and f ourpence. Nor was 
 this all ; for if the letter were written on more than one 
 sheet of paper, it came under the operation of a higher 
 scale of charge. Members of Parliament had the privilege 
 of franking letters to a certain limited extent ; members
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 81 
 
 of the Government had the privilege of franking to an un- 
 limited extent. It is, perhaps, as well to mention, for the 
 sake of being intelligible to all readers in an age which 
 has not, in this country at least, known practically the 
 beauty and liberality of the franking privilege, that it con- 
 sisted in the right of the privileged person to send his 
 own or any other person's letters through the post free of 
 charge by merely writing his name on the outside. This 
 meant, in plain words, that the letters of the class who 
 could best afford to pay for them went free of charge, and 
 that those who could least afford to pay had to pay 
 double the expense, that is to say, of carrying their own 
 letters and the letters of the privileged and exempt. 
 
 The greatest grievances were felt everywhere because 
 of this absurd system. It had along with its other disad- 
 vantages that of encouraging what may be called the 
 smuggling of letters. Everywhere sprang up organiza- 
 tions for the illicit conveyance of correspondence at lower 
 rates than those imposed by the Government. The pro- 
 prietors of almost every kind of public conveyance are 
 said to have been engaged in this unlawful but certainly 
 not very unnatural or unjustifiable traffic. Five-sixths 
 of all the letters sent between Manchester and London 
 were said to have been conveyed for years by this process. 
 One great mercantile house was proved to have been in 
 the habit of sending sixty-seven letters by what we may 
 call this underground post-office for every one on which 
 they paid the Government charges. It was not merely to 
 escape heavy cost that these stratagems were employed. 
 As there was an additional charge when a letter was 
 written on more sheets than one, there was a frequent 
 and almost a constant tampering by officials with the 
 sanctity of sealed letters for the purpose of ascertaining 
 whether or not they ought to be taxed on the higher scale. 
 It was proved that in the years between 1815 and 1835, 
 
 6
 
 82 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 while the population had increased thirty per cent., and 
 the stage-coach duty had increased one hundred and 
 twenty-eight per cent., the Post-Office revenues had shown 
 no increase at all. In other countries the postal revenue 
 had been on the increase steadily during that time ; in 
 the United States the revenue had actually trebled, 
 although then and later the postal system of America was 
 full of faults which at that day only seemed intelligible 
 or excusable when placed in comparison with those of 
 our own system. 
 
 Mr. (afterward Sir Rowland) Hill is the man to whom 
 this country, and, indeed, all civilization, owes the adop- 
 tion of the cheap and uniform system. His plan has been 
 adopted by every state which professes to have a postal 
 system at all. Mr. Hill belonged to a remarkable family. 
 His father, Thomas Wright Hill, was a teacher, a man 
 of advanced and practical views in popular education, a 
 devoted lover of science, an advocate of civil and reli- 
 gious liberty, and a sort of celebrity in the Birmingham 
 of his day, where he took a bold and active part in try- 
 ing to defend the house of Dr. Priestley against the mob 
 who attacked it. He had five sons, every one of whom 
 made himself more or less conspicuous as a practical 
 reformer in one path or another. The eldest of the sons 
 was Matthew Davenport Hill, the philanthropic recorder 
 of Birmingham, who did so much for prison reform and 
 for the reclamation of juvenile offenders. The third son 
 was Rowland Hill, the author of the cheap postal system. 
 Rowland Hill when a little weakly child began to show 
 some such precocious love for arithmetical calculations 
 as Pascal showed for mathematics. His favorite amuse- 
 ment, as a child, was to lie on the hearth-rug and count 
 up figures by the hour together. As he grew up he 
 became teacher of mathematics in his father's school. 
 Afterward he was appointed Secretary to the South Aus-
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 83 
 
 tralian Commission, and rendered much valuable service 
 in the organization of the colony of South Australia. His 
 early love of masses of figures it may have been which 
 in the first instance turned his attention to the number 
 of letters passing through the Post-office, the proportion 
 they bore to the number of the population, the cost of 
 carrying them, and the amount which the Post-office 
 authorities charged for the conveyance of a single let- 
 ter. A picturesque and touching little illustration of the 
 veritable hardships of the existing system seems to have 
 quickened his interest in a reform of it. Miss Martineau 
 thus tells the story : 
 
 " Coleridge, when a young man, was walking through 
 the Lake district, when he one day saw the postman 
 deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The 
 woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned 
 it, saying she could not pay the postage, which was a 
 shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, 
 Coleridge paid the postage, in spite of the manifest un- 
 willingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was 
 out of sight she showed Coleridge how his money had 
 been wasted as far as she was concerned. The sheet 
 was blank. There was an agreement between her brother 
 and herself that as long as all went well with him he 
 should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter; 
 and she thus had tidings of him without expense of 
 postage. Most persons would have remembered this in- 
 cident as a curious story to tell ; but there was one mind 
 which wakened up at once to a sense of the significance 
 of the fact. It struck Mr. Rowland Hill that there must 
 be something wrong in a system which drove a brother 
 and sister to cheating, in order to gratify their desire to 
 hear of one another's welfare." 
 
 Mr. Hill gradually worked out for himself a compre- 
 hensive scheme of reform. He put it before the world
 
 84 A UISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 early in 1837. The public were taken by surprise when 
 the plan came before them in the shape of a pamphlet, 
 which its author modestly entitled " Post-office Reform ; 
 its importance and practicability." The root of Mr. Hill's 
 system lay in the fact, made evident by him beyond dis- 
 pute, that the actual cost of the conveyance of letters 
 through the post was very trifling, and was but little 
 increased by the distance over which they had to be car- 
 ried. 
 
 His proposal was, therefore, f ,hat the rates of postage 
 should be diminished to the minimum ; that at the same 
 time the speed of conveyance should be increased, and 
 that there should be much greater frequency of despatch. 
 His principle, was, in fact, the very opposite of that 
 which had prevailed in the calculations of the authorities. 
 Their idea was that the higher the charge for letters the 
 greater the return to the revenue. He started on the 
 assumption that the smaller the charge the greater the 
 profit. He, therefore, recommended the substitution of 
 one uniform charge of one penny the half-ounce, with- 
 out reference to the distance within the limits of the 
 United Kingdom which the letter had to be carried. The 
 Post-office authorities were at first uncompromising in 
 their opposition to the scheme. The Postmaster-general, 
 Lord Lichfield, said in the House of Lords, that of all the 
 wild and extravagant schemes he had ever heard of, it 
 was the wildest and most extravagant. " The mails," he 
 said, " will have to carry twelve times as much weight, 
 and therefore the charge for transmission, instead of 
 100,000, as now, must be twelve times that amount. The 
 walls of the Post-office would burst ; the whole area in 
 which the building stands would not be large enough to 
 receive the clerks and the letters." It is impossible not 
 to be struck by the paradoxical peculiarity of this argu- 
 ment. Because the change would be so much welcomed
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 85 
 
 by the public, Lord Lichfleld argued that it ought not to 
 be made. He did not fall back upon the then familiar 
 assertion that the public would not send anything like 
 the number of letters the advocates of the scheme expected. 
 He argued that they would send so many as to make it 
 troublesome for the Post-office authorities to deal with 
 them. In plain words, it would be such an immense ac- 
 commodation to the population in general that the officials 
 could not undertake the trouble of carrying it into effect. 
 Another Post-office official, Colonel Maberley, was, at all 
 events, more liberal. " My constant language," he said 
 afterward, " to the heads of the departments was This 
 plan we know will fail. It is our duty to take care that 
 no obstruction is placed in the way of it by the heads of 
 the departments, and by the Post-office. The allegation, 
 I have not the least doubt, will be made at a subsequent 
 period, that this plan has failed in consequence of the un- 
 willingness of the Government to carry it into fair execu- 
 tion. It is our duty, as servants of the Government, to 
 take care that no blame eventually shall fall on the Gov- 
 ernment through any unwillingness of ours to carry it 
 into proper effect." It is, perhaps, less surprising that 
 the routine mind of officials should have seen no future 
 but failure for the scheme, when so vigorous and untram- 
 melled a thinker as Sydney Smith spoke with anger and 
 contempt of the fact that " a million of revenue is given 
 up in the nonsensical Penny-post scheme, to please my 
 old, excellent, and universally dissentient friend, Noah 
 Warburton." Mr. Warburton was then member for 
 Bridport, and, with Mr. Wallace, another member of 
 Parliament, was very active in supporting and promoting 
 the views of Mr. Hill. " I admire the Whig Ministry," 
 Sydney Smith went on to say, "and think they have 
 done more good things than all the ministries since 
 the Revolution; but these concessions are sad and un-
 
 80 A IlISTOliY OF OUlt OWN TIMES. 
 
 worthy marks of weakness, and fill reasonable men with 
 alarm.'* 
 
 It will be seen from this remark alone that the ministry 
 had yielded somewhat more readily than might have been 
 expected to the arguments of Mr. Hill. At the time his 
 pamphlet appeared a commission was actually engaged 
 in inquiring into the condition of the Post-office depart- 
 ment. Their attention was drawn to Mr. Hill's plan, and 
 they gave it a careful consideration, and reported in its 
 favor, although the Post-office authorities were convinced 
 that it must involve an unbearable loss of revenue. In 
 Parliament Mr. Wallace, whose name has been already 
 mentioned, moved for a committee to inquire into the 
 whole subject, and especially to examine the mode recom- 
 mended for charging and collecting postage in the pam- 
 phlet of Mr. Hill. The committee gave the subject a very 
 patient consideration, and at length made a report recom- 
 mending uniform charges and prepayment by stamps. 
 That part of Mr. Hill's plan which suggested the use of 
 postage-stamps was adopted by him on the advice of Mr. 
 Charles Knight. The Government took up the scheme 
 with some spirit and liberality. The revenue that year 
 showed a deficiency, but they determined to run the 
 further risk which the proposal involved. The commer- 
 cial community had naturally been stirred greatly by the 
 project which promised so much relief and advantage. 
 Sydney Smith was very much mistaken, indeed, when he 
 fancied that it was only to please his old and excellent 
 friend, Mr. Warburton, that the ministry gave way to the 
 innovation. Petitions from all the commercial commu- 
 nities were pouring in to support the plan, and to ask 
 that at least it should have a fair trial. The Government 
 at length determined to bring in a bill which should pro- 
 vide for the almost immediate introduction of Mr. Hill's 
 scheme, and for the abolition of the franking system ex-
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 87 
 
 cept in the case of official letters actually sent on business 
 directly belonging to her Majesty's service. The bill 
 declared, as an introductory step, that the charge for post- 
 age should be at the rate of fourpence for each letter 
 under half an ounce in weight, irrespective of distance, 
 within the limits of the United Kingdom. This, however, 
 was to be only a beginning; for on January 10th, 1840, 
 the postage was fixed at the uniform rate of one penny 
 per letter of not more than half an ounce in weight. The 
 introductory measure was not, of course, carried without 
 opposition in both Houses of Parliament. The Duke of 
 "Wellington, in his characteristic way, declared that he 
 strongly objected to the scheme ; but, as the Government 
 had evidently set their hearts upon it, he recommended 
 the House of Lords not to offer any opposition to it. In 
 the House of Commons it was opposed by Sir Robert Peel 
 and Mr. Goulburn, both of whom strongly condemned 
 the whole scheme as likely to involve the country in vast 
 loss of revenue. The measure, however, passed into law. 
 Some idea of the effect it has produced upon the postal 
 correspondence of the country may be gathered from the 
 fact that in 1839, the last year of the heavy postage, the 
 number of letters delivered in Great Britain and Ireland 
 was a little more than eighty-two millions, which included 
 some five millions and a half of franked letters returning 
 nothing to the revenues of the country ; whereas, in 1875, 
 more than a thousand millions of letters were delivered in 
 the United Kingdom. The population during the same 
 time has not nearly doubled itself. It has already been 
 remarked that the principle of Sir Rowland Hill's reform 
 has since been put into operation in every civilized coun- 
 try in the world. It may be added that before long we 
 shall, in all human probability, see an interoceanic post- 
 age established at a rate as low as people sometimes 
 thought Sir Rowland Hill a madman for recommending
 
 88 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 as applicable to our inland post. The time is not far dis- 
 tant when a letter will be carried from London to San 
 Francisco, or to Tokio in Japan, at a rate of charge as 
 small as that which made financiers stare and laugh 
 when it was suggested as profitable remuneration for 
 carrying a letter from London to the towns of Sussex or 
 Hertfordshire. The " Penny-post," let it be said, is an 
 older institution than that which Sir Rowland Hill intro- 
 duced. A penny-post for the conveyance of letters had 
 been set up in London so long ago as 1683 ; and it was 
 adopted or annexed by the Government some years after. 
 An effort was even made to set up a half-penny post in 
 London, in opposition to the official penny-post, in 1708 ; 
 but the Government soon crushed this vexatious and in- 
 trusive rival. In 1738 Dr. Johnson writes to Mr. Cave 
 " to entreat that you will be pleased to inform me, by the 
 penny-post, whether you resolve to print the poem." 
 After awhile the Government changed their penny-post 
 to a twopfenny-post, and gradually made a distinction 
 between district and other postal systems, and contrived 
 to swell the price for deliveries of all kinds. Long before 
 even this time of the penny-post, the old records of the 
 city of Bristol contain an account of the payment of one 
 penny for the carriage of letters to London. It need 
 hardly be explained, however, that a penny in that time, 
 or even in 1683, was a payment of very different value 
 indeed from the modest sum which Sir Rowland Hill was 
 successful in establishing. The ancient penny-post 
 resembled the modern penny-post only in name.
 
 CHAETISM. 89 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 CHARTISM. 
 
 IT cannot, however, be said that all the omens under 
 which the new Queen's reign opened at home were as auspi- 
 cious as the coincidences which made it contemporary with 
 the first chapters of these new and noble developments hi 
 the history of science and invention. On the contrary, it 
 began amidst many grim and unpromising conditions hi 
 our social affairs. The winter of 1837-38, was one of 
 unusual severity and distress. There would have been 
 much discontent and grumbling hi any case among the 
 class described by French writers as the proletaire ; but 
 the complaints were aggravated by a common belief that 
 the young Queen was wholly under the influence of a 
 frivolous and selfish minister, who occupied her with 
 amusements while the poor were starving. It does not 
 appear that there was at any time the slightest justifi- 
 cation for such a belief; but it prevailed among the 
 working-classes and the poor very generally, and added to 
 the sufferings of genuine want the bitterness of imaginary 
 wrong. Popular education was little looked after ; so far 
 as the state was concerned, might be said not to be looked 
 after at all. The laws of political economy were as yet 
 only within the appreciation of a few, who were regarded 
 not uncommonly, because of their theories, somewhat as 
 phrenologists or mesmerists might be looked on in a more 
 enlightened time. Some writers have made a great deal
 
 90 A UISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of the case of Thorn and his disciples as evidence of the 
 extraordinary ignorance that prevailed. Thorn was a. 
 broken-down brewer, and in fact a madman, who had for 
 some time been going about in Canterbury and other parts 
 of Kent bedizened in fantastic costume, and styling himself 
 nt first Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham Castle, 
 Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, king of the gypsy 
 races, and we know not what else. He announced himself 
 as a great political reformer, and for awhile he succeeded 
 in getting many to believe in and support him. He was 
 afterward confined for some time in a lunatic asylum, and 
 when he came out he presented himself to the ignorant 
 peasantry in the character of a second Messiah. He found 
 many followers and believers again, among a humbler 
 class, indeed, than those whom he had formerly won over. 
 Much of his influence over the poor Kentish laborers was 
 due to his denunciations of the new Poor Law, which was 
 then popularly hated and feared with an almost insane 
 intensity of feeling. Thorn told them he had come to 
 regenerate the whole world, and also to save his followers 
 from the new Poor Law; and the latter announcement 
 commended the former. He assembled a crowd of his 
 supporters, and undertook to lead them to an attack 
 on Canterbury. With his own hand he shot dead a 
 policeman who endeavored to oppose his movements, 
 exactly as a savior of society of bolder pretensions and 
 greater success did at Boulogne not long after. Two com- 
 panies of soldiers came out from Canterbury to disperse 
 the rioters. The officer in command was shot dead by 
 Thorn. Thorn's followers then charged the unexpectmg 
 soldiers so fiercely that for a moment there was some 
 confusion ; but the second company fired a volley which 
 stretched Thorn and several of his adherents lifeless on 
 the field. That was an end of the rising. Several of 
 Thorn's followers were afterward tried for murder, con-
 
 CIIARTISM. . 91 
 
 victed, and sentenced ; but some pity was felt for their 
 ' ignorance and their delusion, and they were not consigned 
 to death. Long after the fall of their preposterous hero 
 and saint, many of Thorn's disciples believed that he would 
 return from the grave to carry out the promised work of 
 his mission. All this was lamentable, but could hardly 
 be regarded as specially characteristic of the early years 
 of the present reign. The Thorn delusion was not much 
 more absurd than the Tichborne mania of a later day. 
 Down to our own time there are men and women among 
 the Social Democrats of cultured Germany who still cherish 
 the hope that their idol Ferdinand Lassalle will come back 
 from the dead to lead and guide them. 
 
 But there were political and social dangers in the open- 
 ing of the present reign more serious than any that could 
 have been conjured up by a crazy man in a fantastic dress. 
 There were delusions having deeper roots and showing a 
 more inviting shelter than any that a religious fanatic of 
 the vulgar type could cause to spring up in our society. 
 
 Only a few weeks after the coronation of the Queen a 
 great Radical meeting was held in Birmingham. A mani- 
 festo was adopted there which afterward came to be known 
 as the Chartist petition. With that movement Chartism 
 began to be one of the most disturbing influences of the 
 political life of the country. It is a movement which,- 
 although its influence may now be said to have wholly 
 passed away, well deserves to have its history fully 
 written. For ten years it agitated England. It some- 
 times seemed to threaten an actual uprising of all the 
 proletaire against what were then the political and social 
 institutions of the country. It might have been a very 
 serious danger if the state had been involved in any 
 external difficulties. It was backed by much genuine 
 enthusiasm, passion, and intelligence. It appealed 
 strongy and naturally to whatever there was of discontent
 
 92 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 among the working-classes. It afforded a most acceptable 
 and convenient means by which ambitious politicians of 
 the self-seeking order could raise themselves into tem- 
 porary importance. Its fierce and fitful flame went out 
 at last under the influence of the clear, strong, and steady 
 light of political reform and education. The one great 
 lesson it teaches is, that political agitation lives and is 
 formidable only by virtue of what is reasonable in its 
 demands. Thousands of ignorant and miserable men all 
 over the country joined the Chartist agitation who cared 
 nothing about the substantial value of its political claims. 
 They were poor, they were overworked, they were badly 
 paid, their lives were altogether wretched. They got into 
 their heads some wild idea that the People's Charter would 
 give them better food and wages, and lighter work if it 
 were obtained, and that for that very reason the aristocrats 
 and the officials would not grant it. No political con- 
 cessions could really have satisfied these men. If the 
 Charter had been granted in 1838, they would no doubt 
 have been as dissatisfied as ever hi 1839. But the discon- 
 tent of these poor creatures would have brought with it 
 little danger to the state if it had not become part of the 
 support of an organization which could show some sound 
 and good reason for the demands it made. The moment 
 that the clear and practical political grievances were dealt 
 with, the organization melted way. Vague discontent, 
 however natural and excusable it may be, is only formi- 
 dable in politics when it helps to swell the strength and 
 the numbers of a crowd which calls for some reform that 
 can be made and is withheld. One of the vulgarest 
 fallacies of state-craft is to declare that it is of no use 
 granting the reforms which would satisfy reasonable 
 demands, because there are still unreasonable agitators 
 whom these will not satisfy. Get the reasonable men on 
 your side, and you need not fear the unreasonable. This
 
 CHARTISM. 93 
 
 is the lesson taught to statesmen by the Chartist agitation. 
 A funeral oration over Chartism was pronounced by 
 Sir John Campbell, then Attorney-general, afterward 
 Lord Chief-justice Campbell, at a public dinner at Edin- 
 burgh on October 24th, 1839. He spoke at some length 
 and with much complacency of Chartism as an agitation 
 which had passed away. Some ten days afterwards oc- 
 curred the most formidable outburst of Chartism that had 
 been known up to that time, and Chartism continued to 
 be an active and a disturbing influence in England for 
 nearly ten years after. If Sir John Campbell had told his 
 friends and constituents at the Edinburgh dinner that the 
 influence of Chartism was just about to make itself really 
 felt, he would have shown himself a somewhat more acute 
 politician than we now understand him to be. Seldom 
 has a public man setting up to be a political authority 
 made a worse hit than he did in that memorable declara- 
 tion. Campbell was, indeed, only a clever, shrewd lawyer 
 of the hard and narrow class. He never made any pre- 
 tension to statesmanship, or even to great political knowl- 
 edge ; and his unfortunate blunder might be passed over 
 without notice were it not that it illustrates fairly enough 
 the manner in which men of better information and judg- 
 ment than he were at that time in the habit of disposing 
 of all inconvenient political problems. The Attorney- 
 general was aware that there had been a few riots and a 
 few arrests, and that the law had been what he would call 
 vindicated ; and as he had no manner of sympathy with 
 the motives which could lead men to distress themselves 
 and their friends about imaginary charters, he assumed 
 that there was an end of the matter. It did not occur to 
 him to ask himself whether there might not be some un- 
 derlying causes to explain, if not to excuse, the agitation 
 that just then began to disturb the country, and that con- 
 tinued to disturb it for so many years. Even if he had
 
 94 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 inquired into the subject, it is not likely that he would 
 have come to any wiser conclusion about it. The dramatic 
 instinct, if we may be allowed to call it so, which enables 
 a man to put himself for the moment into the condition 
 and mood of men entirely unlike himself in feeling and 
 conditions, is an indispensable element of real statesman- 
 ship ; but it is the rarest of all gifts among politicians of 
 the second order. If Sir John Campbell had turned his 
 attention to the Chartist question, he would only have 
 found that a number of men, for the most part poor and 
 ignorant, were complaining of grievances where he could 
 not for himself see any substantial grievances at all. 
 That would have been enough for him. If a solid, wealthy, 
 and rising lawyer could not see any cause for grumbling, 
 he would have made up his mind that no reasonable 
 persons worthy the consideration of sensible legislators 
 would continue to grumble after they had been told by 
 those in authority that it was their business to keep quiet. 
 But if he had, on the other hand, looked with the light of 
 sympathetic intelligence, of that dramatic instinct which 
 has just been mentioned, at the condition of the classes 
 among whom Chartism was then rife, he would have seen 
 that it was not likely the agitation could be put down by a 
 few prosecutions and a few arrests, and the censure of a pros- 
 perous Attorney-general. He would have seen that Char- 
 tism was not a cause but a consequence. The intelligence 
 of a very ordinary man who approached the question in 
 an impartial mood might have seen that Chartism was 
 the expression of a vague discontent with very positive 
 grievances and evils. 
 
 We have, in our time, outlived the days of political 
 abstractions. The catchwords which thrilled our fore- 
 fathers with emotion on one side or the other fall with 
 hardly any meaning on our ears. We smile at such 
 phrases as " the rights of man." We hardly know what
 
 CHARTISM. 95 
 
 is meant by talking of " the people " as the words were 
 used long ago, when " the people " was understood to 
 mean a vast mass of wronged persons who had no repre- 
 sentation, and were oppressed by privilege and the aristo- 
 cracy. We seldom talk of " liberty ; " any one venturing 
 to found a theory or even a declamation on some supposed 
 deprival of liberty would soon find himself in the awk- 
 ward position of being called on to give a scientific defini- 
 tion of what he understood liberty to be. He would be as 
 much puzzled as were certain English working-men, who, 
 desiring to express to Mr. John Stuart Mill their sym- 
 pathy with what they called hi the slang of Continental 
 democracy " the Revolution," were calmly bidden by the 
 great Liberal thinker to ask themselves what they meant 
 by " the Revolution," which revolution, what revolution, 
 and why they sympathized with it. But perhaps we are 
 all a little too apt to think that because these abstractions 
 have no living meaning now they never had any living 
 meaning at all. They convey no manner of clear idea in 
 England now, but it does not by any means follow that 
 they never conveyed any such idea. The phrase which 
 Mr. Mill so properly comdemned when he found it in the 
 mouths of English working-men had a very intelligible 
 and distinct meaning when it first came to be used in 
 France and throughout the Continent. " The Revolu- 
 tion " expressed a clear reality, as recognizable by the in- 
 telligence of all who heard it as the name of Free-trade 
 or of Ultramontanism to men of our time. " The Revolu- 
 tion" was the principle which was asserting all over 
 Europe the overthrow of the old absolute power of kings, 
 and it described it just as well as any word could do. It is 
 meaningless in our day, for the very reason that it was 
 full of meaning then. So it was with " the people " and 
 " the rights of the people," and the " rights of labor," and 
 all the other grandiloquent phrases which seem to us so
 
 90 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 empty and so meaningless now. They are empty and 
 meaningless at the present hour; but they have no 
 application now chiefly because they had application then. 
 The Reform Bill of 1832 had been necessarily, and per- 
 haps naturally, a class measure. It had done great things 
 for the constitutional system of England. It had averted 
 a revolution which without some such concession would 
 probably have been inevitable. It had settled forever the 
 question which was so fiercely and so gravely debated 
 during the discussions of the reform years, whether the 
 English Constitution is or is not based upon a system of 
 popular representation. To many at present it may seem 
 hardly credible that sane men could have denied the 
 existence of the representative principle. But during the 
 debates on the great Reform Bill such a denial was the 
 strong point of many of the leading opponents of the 
 measure, including the Duke of "Wellington himself. The 
 principle of the Constitution, it was soberly argued, is 
 that the sovereign invites whatever communities or inter- 
 ests he thinks fit to send in persons to Parliament to 
 take council with him on the affairs of the nation. This 
 idea was got rid of by the Reform Bill. That bill abolished 
 fifty-six nomination or rotten boroughs, and took away 
 half the representation from thirty others ; it disposed 
 of the seats thus obtained by giving sixty-five additional 
 representatives to the counties, and conferring the right 
 of returning members on Manchester, Leeds, Birming- 
 ham, and some thirty-nine large and prosperous towns 
 which had previously had no representation; while, as 
 Lord John Russell said in his speech when he introduced 
 the bill in March, 1831, "a ruined mound" sent two 
 representatives to Parliament ; " three niches in a stone 
 wall" sent two representatives to Parliament ; "a park 
 where no houses were to be seen " sent two representa- 
 tives to Parliament. The bill introduced a 10 house-
 
 CHARTISM. 97 
 
 hold qualification for boroughs, and extended the county 
 franchise to lease-holders and copy-holders. But it left 
 the working-classes almost altogether out of the franchise. 
 Not merely did it confer no political emancipation on 
 them, but it took away in many places the peculiar fran- 
 chises which made the working-men voters. There were 
 communities such, for example, as that of Preston, in 
 Lancashire where the system of franchise existing 
 created something like universal suffrage. All this was 
 smoothed away, if such an expression may be used, by the 
 Reform Bill. In truth, the Reform Bill broke down the 
 monopoly which the aristocracy and landed classes had 
 enjoyed, and admitted the middle classes to a share of 
 the law-making power. The representation was divided 
 between the aristocracy and the middle class, instead 
 of being, as before, the exclusive possession of the 
 former. 
 
 The working-class, in the opinion of many of their ablest 
 and most influential representatives, were not merely left 
 out but shouldered out. This was all the more exasperat- 
 ing because the excitement and agitation by the strength 
 of which the Reform Bill was carried in the teeth of so 
 much resistance were kept up by the working-men. There 
 was, besides, at the time of the Reform Bill, a very high 
 degree of what may be called the temperature of the 
 French Revolution still heating the senses and influencing 
 the judgment even of the aristocratic leaders of the move- 
 ment. What Richter calls the " seed-grains " of the revo- 
 lutionary doctrines had been blown abroad so widely that 
 they rested in some of the highest as well as in most of 
 the lowliest places. Some of the Reform leaders Lord 
 Durham, for instance were prepared to go much farther 
 in the way of Radicalism than at a later period Mr. 
 Cobden or Mr. Bright would have gone. There was more 
 than once a sort of appeal to the working-men of the coun. 
 
 7
 
 98 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 try which, however differently it may have been meant, 
 certainly sounded in their ears as if it were an intimation 
 that in the event of the bill being resisted too long it 
 might be necessary to try what the strength of a popular 
 uprising could do. Many years after, in the defence of 
 the Irish state-prisoners at Clonmel, the counsel who 
 pleaded their cause insisted that they had warrant for 
 their conduct in certain proceedings which were in prepara- 
 tion during the Reform agitation. He talked with un- 
 disguised significance of the teacher being in the ministry 
 and the pupils in the dock ; and quoted Captain Macheath 
 to the effect that if laws were made equally for every 
 degree, there might even then be rare company on Tyburn 
 tree. It is not necessary to attach too much importance to 
 assertions of this kind, or to accept them as sober contribu- 
 tions to history ; but they are very instructive as a means 
 of enabling us to understand the feeling of soreness which 
 remained hi the minds of large masses of the population 
 when, after the passing of the Reform Bill, they found 
 themselves left out in the cold. Rightly or wrongly, they 
 believed that their strength had been kept in reserve or 
 in terrorem to secure the carrying of the Reform Bill, and 
 that when it was carried they were immediately thrown 
 over by those whom they had thus helped to pass it. 
 Therefore, at the time when the young sovereign ascended 
 the throne, the working-classes in all the large towns were 
 in a state of profound disappointment and discontent, 
 almost, indeed, of disaffection. Chartism was beginning to 
 succeed to the Reform agitation. The leaders who had 
 come from the ranks of the aristocracy had been discarded 
 or had withdrawn. In some cases they had withdrawn in 
 perfect good faith, believing sincerely that they had done 
 the work which they undertook to do, and that that was 
 all the country required. Men drawn more immediately 
 from the working-class itself, or who had in some way
 
 CHARTISM. 99 
 
 been dropped down by a class higher in the social scale, 
 took up the popular leadership now. 
 
 Chartism may be said to have sprung definitively into 
 existence in consequence of the formal declarations of the 
 leaders of the Liberal party in Parliament that they did 
 not intend to push Reform any farther. At the opening 
 of the first Parliament of Queen Victoria's reign the 
 question was brought to a test. A Radical member of 
 the House of Commons moved as an amendment to the 
 address a resolution declaring in favor of the ballot and of 
 shorter duration of Parliaments. Only twenty members 
 voted for it ; and Lord John Russell declared distinctly 
 against all such attempts to reopen the Reform question. 
 It was impossible that this declaration should not be re- 
 ceived with disappointment and anger by great masses of 
 the people. They had been in the full assurance that the 
 Reform Bill itself was only the means by which greater 
 changes were to be brought about. Lord John Russell 
 said in the House of Commons that to push Reform any 
 farther then would be a breach of faith toward those who 
 helped him to carry it. A great many outside Parliament 
 not unnaturally regarded the refusal to go any farther as 
 a breach of faith toward them on the part of the Liberal 
 leaders. Lord John Russell was right from his point of 
 view. It would have been impossible to carry the Reform 
 movement any farther just then. In a country like ours, 
 where interests are so nicely balanced, it must always 
 happen that a forward movement in politics is followed 
 by a certain reaction. The parliamentary leaders in Par- 
 liament were already beginning to feel the influence of this 
 law of our political growth. It would have been hopeless 
 to attempt to get the upper and middle classes at such a 
 time to consent to any further changes of considerable 
 importance. But the feeling of those who had helped so 
 materially to bring about the Reform movement was at
 
 100 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 least intelligible when they found that its effects were to 
 stop just short of the measures which alone could have 
 any direct influence on their political position. 
 
 A conference was held almost immediately between a 
 few of the Liberal members of Parliament who professed 
 radical opinions and some of the leaders of the working- 
 men. At this conference the programme, or what was 
 always afterward known as " the Charter," was agreed 
 upon and drawn up. The name of " Charter " appears to 
 have been given to it for the first time by O'Connell. 
 " There's your Charter," he said to the secretary of the 
 Working-men's Association ; " agitate for it, and never be 
 content with anything less." It is a great thing accom- 
 plished in political agitation to have found a telling name. 
 A name is almost as important for a new agitation as for 
 a new novel. The title of " The People's Charter " would 
 of itself have launched the movement. 
 
 Quietly studied now, the People's Charter does not seem 
 a very formidable document. There is little smell of gun- 
 powder about it. Its " points," as they were called, were 
 six. Manhood Suffrage came first. It was then called 
 universal suffrage, but it only meant manhood suffrage, 
 for the promoters of the movement had not the slightest 
 idea of insisting on the franchise for women. The second 
 was Annual Parliaments. Vote by Ballot was the third. 
 Abolition of the Property Qualification (then and for 
 many years after required for the election of a member to 
 Parliament) was the fourth. The Payment of Members 
 was the fifth ; and the Division of the Country into Equal 
 Electoral Districts, the sixth of the famous points. Of 
 these proposals some, it will be seen, were perfectly 
 reasonable. Not one was so absolutely unreasonable as to 
 be outside the range of fair and quiet discussion among 
 practical politicians. Three of the points half, that is 
 to say, of the whole number have already been made
 
 CHARTISM. 101 
 
 part of our constitutional system. The existing franchise 
 may be virtually regarded as manhood suffrage. We 
 have for years been voting by means of a written paper 
 dropped in a ballot-box. The property qualification for 
 members of Parliament could hardly be said to have been 
 abolished. Such a word seems far too grand and dignified 
 to describe the fate that befell it. We should rather say 
 that it was extinguished by its own absurdity and vicious- 
 ness. It never kept out of Parliament any person legally 
 disqualified, and it was the occasion of incessant tricks 
 and devices which would surely have been counted dis- 
 reputable and disgraceful to those who engaged in them, 
 but that the injustice and folly of the system generated a 
 sort of false public conscience where it was concerned, 
 and made people think it as lawful to cheat it, as at one 
 time the most respectable persons in private life thought 
 it allowable to cheat the revenue and wear smuggled lace 
 or drink smuggled brandy. The proposal to divide the 
 country into equal electoral districts is one which can 
 hardly yet be regarded as having come to any test. But 
 it is almost certain that sooner or later some alteration of 
 our present system in that direction will be adopted. Of 
 the two other points of the Charter, the payment of mem- 
 bers may be regarded as decidedly objectionable ; and that 
 for yearly parliaments as embodying a proposition which 
 would make public life an almost insufferable nuisance to 
 those actively concerned in it. But neither of these two 
 proposals would be looked upon in our time as outside the 
 range of legitimate political discussion. Indeed, the dif- 
 ficulty any one engaged in their advocacy would find 
 just now would be hi getting any considerable body of 
 listeners to take the slightest interest in the argument 
 either for or against them. 
 
 The Chartists might be roughly divided into three 
 classes the political Chartists, the social Chartists, and
 
 102 ^ HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the Chartists of vague discontent, who joined the move- 
 ment because they were wretched and felt angry. The 
 first were the regular political agitators, who wanted a 
 wider popular representation ; the second were chiefly 
 led to the movement by their hatred of the " bread-tax." 
 These two classes were perfectly clear as to what they 
 wanted : some of their demands were just and reasonable ; 
 none of them were without the sphere of rational and 
 peaceful controversy. The disciples of mere discontent 
 naturally swerved alternately to the side of those leaders 
 or sections who talked loudest and fiercest against the 
 law-makers and the constituted authorities. Chartism 
 soon split itself into two general divisions the moral 
 force, and the physical force Chartism. Nothing can be 
 more unjust than to represent the leaders and promoters 
 of the movement as mere factious and self-seeking dema- 
 gogues. Some of them were men of great ability and elo- 
 quence ; some were impassioned young poets drawn from 
 the class whom Kingsley has described hi his "Alton 
 Locke ; " some were men of education ; many were earnest 
 and devoted fanatics ; and so far as we can judge, all, or 
 nearly all, were sincere. Even the man who did the move- 
 ment most harm, and who made himself most odious to 
 all reasonable outsiders, the once famous, now forgotten, 
 Feargus O'Connor, appears to have been sincere, and to 
 have personally lost more than he gained by his Chartism. 
 Four or five years after the collapse of what may be called 
 the active Chartist agitation, a huge, white-headed, vac- 
 uous-eyed man was to be seen of mornings wandering 
 through the arcades of Covent Garden Market, looking at 
 the fruits and flowers, occasionally taking up a flower, 
 smelling at it, and putting it down, with a smile of 
 infantile satisfaction ; a man who might have reminded 
 observers of Mr. Dick in Dickens's " David Copperfield ; " 
 and this was the once renowned, once dreaded and detested
 
 CHARTISM. 103 
 
 Feargus O'Connor. For some time before his death his 
 reason had wholly deserted him. Men did not know at 
 first in the House of Commons the meaning of the odd 
 pranks which Feargus was beginning to play there to the 
 bewilderment of the great assembly. At last it was seen 
 that the. fallen leader of Chartism was a hopeless madman. 
 It is hardly to be doubted that insanity had long been 
 growing on him, and that some at least of his political follies 
 and extravagances were the result of an increasing disorder 
 of the brain. In his day he had been the very model for 
 a certain class of demagogue. He was of commanding 
 presence, great stature, and almost gigantic strength. He 
 had education ; he had mixed in good society ; he belonged 
 to an old family, and, indeed, boasted his descent from a 
 line of Irish kings, not without some ground for the claim. 
 He had been a man of some fashion at one time, and had 
 led a life of wild dissipation in his early years. He had 
 a kind of eloquence which told with immense power on a 
 mass of half-ignorant hearers ; and, indeed, men who had 
 no manner of liking for him or sympathy with his doctrines 
 have declared that he was the most effective mob orator 
 they had ever heard. He was ready, if needs were, to fight 
 his way single-handed through a whole mass of Tory 
 opponents at a contested election. Thomas Cooper, the 
 venerable poet of Chartism, has given an amusing de- 
 scription, in his autobiography, of Feargus O'Connor, who 
 was then his hero, leaping from a wagon at a Nottingham 
 election into the midst of a crowd of Tory butchers, and 
 with only two stout Chartist followers fighting his way 
 through all opposition, " flooring the butchers like nine- 
 pins." " Once," says Mr. Cooper, " the Tory lambs fought 
 off all who surrounded him and got him down, and my 
 heart quaked for I thought they would kill him. But 
 in a very few moments his red head emerged again from
 
 104 A UISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the rough human billows, and he was fighting his way as 
 before." 
 
 There were many men in the movement of a nobler 
 moral nature than poor, huge, wild Feargus O'Connor. 
 There were men like Thomas Cooper himself, devoted, im- 
 passioned, full of poetic aspiration, and no scant measure 
 of poetic inspiration as well. Henry Vincent was a man 
 of unimpeachable character and of some ability, an effec- 
 tive popular speaker, who has since maintained in a very 
 unpretending way a considerable reputation. Ernest 
 Jones was as sincere and self-sacrificing a man as ever 
 joined a sinking cause. He had proved his sincerity more 
 in deed than word. His talents only fell short of that 
 height which might claim to be regarded as genius. His 
 education was that of a scholar and a gentleman. Many 
 men of education and ability were drawn into sympathy, 
 if not into actual co-operation, with the Chartists by a 
 conviction that some of their claims were well-founded, 
 and that the grievances of the working-classes, which were 
 terrible to contemplate, were such as a Parliament better 
 representing all classes would be able to remedy. Some 
 of these men have since made for themselves an honorable 
 name hi Parliament and out of it ; some of them have 
 risen to high political position. It is necessary to read 
 such a book as Thomas Cooper's autobiography, to under- 
 stand how genuine was the poetic and political enthusiasm 
 which was at the heart of the Chartist movement, and how 
 bitter was the suffering which drove into its ranks so many 
 thousands of stout working-men who, in a country like 
 England, might well have expected to be able to live by 
 the hard work they were only too willing to do. One 
 must read the Anti-Corn-law rhymes of Ebenezer Elliot to 
 understand how the "bread-tax" became identified in 
 the minds of the very best of the working-class, and iden- 
 tified justly, with the system of political and economical
 
 CHARTISM. 105 
 
 legislation which was undoubtedly kept up, although not 
 of conscious purpose, for the benefit of a class. In the 
 minds of too many, the British Constitution meant hard 
 work and half-starvation. 
 
 A whole literature of Chartist newspapers sprang up to 
 advocate the cause. The Northern Star, owned and con- 
 ducted by Feargus O'Connor, was the most popular and 
 influential of them ; but every great town had its Chartist 
 press. Meetings were held at which sometimes very vio- 
 lent language was employed. It began to be the practice 
 to hold torch-light meetings at night, and many men 
 went armed to these, and open clamor was made by the 
 wilder of the Chartists for an appeal to arms. A formi- 
 dable riot took place in Birmingham, where the authori- 
 ties endeavored to put down a Chartist meeting. Ebene- 
 zer Elliott and other sensible sympathizers endeavored to 
 open the eyes of the more extreme Chartists to the folly 
 of all schemes for measures of violence ; but, for the time, 
 the more violent a speaker was, the better chance he had 
 of becoming popular. Efforts were made at times to 
 bring about a compromise with the middle-class Liberals 
 and the Anti-Corn-law leaders ; but all such attempts 
 proved failures. The Chartists would not give up their 
 Charter : many of them would not renounce the hope of 
 seeing it carried by force. The Government began to 
 prosecute some of the orators and leaders of the Charter 
 movement ; and some of these were convicted, imprisoned, 
 and treated with great severity. Henry Vincent's im- 
 prisonment at Newport, in Wales, was the occasion of an 
 attempt at rescue which bore a very close resemblance 
 indeed to a scheme of organized and armed rebellion. 
 
 Newport had around it a large mining population, and 
 the miners were nearly all physical-force Chartists. It 
 was arranged among them to march in three divisions to 
 a certain rendezvous, and when they had formed a June-
 
 100 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tion there, which was to be two hours after midnight, to 
 march into Newport, attack the jail, and effect the release 
 of Vincent and other prisoners. The attempt was to be 
 under the chief command of Mr. Frost, a trader of New- 
 port, who had been a magistrate, but was deprived of the 
 commission of the peace for violent political speeches a 
 man of respectable character and conduct up to that time. 
 This was on November 4th, 1839. There was some mis- 
 understanding and delay, as almost invariably happens in 
 wuch enterprises, and the divisions of the little army did 
 not effect their junction in time. "When they entered 
 Newport, they found the authoritiej fully prepared to 
 meet them. Frost entered the town at the head of one 
 division only, another following him at some interval. 
 The third was nowhere, as far as the object of the enter- 
 prise was concerned. A conflict took place between the 
 rioters and the soldiery and police, and the rioters were 
 dispersed with a loss of some ten killed and fifty wounded. 
 In their flight they encountered some of the other divi- 
 sions coming up to the enterprise all too late. Nothing 
 was more remarkable than the courage shown by the 
 mayor of Newport, the magistrate, and the little body of 
 soldiers. The mayor, Mr. Phillips, received two gunshot 
 wounds. Frost was arrested next day along with some 
 of his colleagues. They were tried on June 6th, 1840. 
 The charge against them was one of high-treason. There 
 did really appear ground enough to suppose that the 
 expedition led by Frost was not merely to rescue Vincent, 
 but to set going the great rebellious movement of which 
 the physical-force Chartists had long been talking. The 
 Chartists appear at first to have numbered some ten 
 thousand twenty thousand, indeed, according to other 
 accounts and they were armed with guns, pikes, swords, 
 pickaxes, and bludgeons. If the delay and misunder- 
 standing had not taken place, and they had arrived at
 
 CHARTISM. 107 
 
 their rendezvous at the appointed time, the attempt might 
 have led to very calamitous results. The jury found 
 Frost and two of his companions, Williams and Jones, 
 guilty of high-treason, and they were sentenced to death ; 
 the sentence, however, was commuted to one of transpor- 
 tation for life. Even this was afterward relaxed, and 
 when some years had passed away, and Chartism had 
 ceased to be a disturbing influence, Frost was allowed to 
 return to England, where he found that a new generation 
 had grown up, and that he was all but forgotten. In the 
 mean time the Corn-law agitation had been successful ; 
 the year of revolutions had passed harmlessly over ; Fear- 
 gus O'Connor's day was done. 
 
 But the trial and conviction of Frost, Williams, and 
 Jones did not put a stop to the Chartist agitation. On 
 the contrary, that agitation seemed rather to wax and 
 strengthen and grow broader because of the attempt at 
 Newport and its consequences. Thomas Cooper, for 
 example, had never attended a Chartist meeting, nor known 
 anything of Chartism beyond what he read in the news- 
 papers, until after the conviction of Frost and his com- 
 panions. There was no lack of what were called energetic 
 measures on the part of the Government. The leading 
 Chartists all over the country were prosecuted and tried, 
 literally by hundreds. In most cases they were convicted 
 and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. The imprison- 
 ment served rather to make the Chartist leaders popular, 
 and to advertise the movement, than to accomplish any 
 purpose the Government had at heart. They helped to 
 make the Government very unpopular. The working- 
 classes grew more and more bitter against the Whigs, 
 who, they said, had professed Liberalism only to gain their 
 own ends, and were really at heart less Liberal than the 
 Tories. Now and then an imprisoned representative of 
 the Chartist movement got to the end of his period of
 
 108 ^ HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 sentence, and came out of durance. He was a hero all 
 over again, and his return to public life was the signal for 
 fresh demonstrations of Chartism. At the general elec- 
 tion of 1841, the vast majority of the Chartists, acting on 
 the advice of some of their more extreme leaders, threw 
 all their support into the cause of the Tories, and so helped 
 the downfall of the Melbourne Administration. 
 
 Wide and almost universal discontent among the work- 
 ing-classes in town and country still helped to swell the 
 Chartist ranks. The weavers and stockingers in some of 
 the manufacturing towns were miserably poor. Wages 
 were low everywhere. In the agricultural districts the 
 complaints against the operation of the new Poor Law 
 were vehement and passionate ; and although they were 
 unjust in principle and sustained by monstrous exaggera- 
 tions of statement, they were not the less potent as recruit- 
 ing agents for Chartism. There was a profound distrust 
 of the middle class and their leaders. The Anti-Corn-law 
 agitation which was then springing up, and which, one 
 might have thought, must find its most strenuous support 
 among the poor artisans of the towns, was regarded with 
 deep disgust by some of the Chartists, and with down- 
 right hostility by others. A very temperate orator of the 
 Chartists put the feeling of himself and his fellows hi clear 
 terms. "We do not object to the repeal of the Com 
 Laws," he said ; " on the contrary, when we get the Char- 
 ter we will repeal the Corn Laws and all the bad laws. 
 But if you give up your agitation for the Charter to help 
 the Free-traders, they will never help you to get the Char- 
 ter. Don't be deceived by the middle classes again ! 
 You helped them to get the Reform Bill, and where are 
 the fine promises they made you ? Don't listen to their 
 humbug any more. Stick to your Charter. Without 
 your votes you are veritable slaves." The Chartists 
 believed themselves abandoned by their natural leaders.
 
 CHARTISM. 109 
 
 All manner of socialist doctrines began to creep in among 
 them. Wild and infidel opinions were proclaimed by 
 many. Thomas Cooper tells one little anecdote which he 
 says fairly illustrates the feelings of many of the fiercer 
 spirits among the artisan Chartists in some of the towns. 
 He and his friends were holding a meeting one day in 
 Leicester. A poor religious stockinger said : " Let us be 
 patient a little longer ; surely God Almighty will help us 
 soon." " Talk to us no more about thy Goddle Mighty," 
 was the fierce cry that came, in reply, from one of the 
 audience ; " there isn't one ! If there was one, he wouldn't 
 let us suffer as we do ! " About the same time a poor 
 stockinger rushed into Cooper's house, and throwing him- 
 self wildly on a chair, exclaimed : " I wish they would hang 
 me ! I have lived on cold potatoes that were given me 
 these two days, and this morning I've eaten a raw potato 
 for sheer hunger. Give me a bit of bread and a cup of 
 coffee, or I shall drop ! " Thomas Cooper's remark about 
 this time is very intelligible and simple. It tells a long, 
 clear story about Chartism. " How fierce," he says, " my 
 discourses became now in the Market-place on Sunday 
 evenings ! My heart often burned with indignation I knew 
 not how to express. I began, from sheer sympathy, to feel 
 a tendency to glide into the depraved thinking of some of 
 the stronger but coarser spirits among the men." 
 
 So the agitation went on. We need not follow it 
 through all its incidents. It took in some places the form 
 of industrial strikes ; in others of socialistic assemblages. 
 Its fanaticism had in many instances a strong flavor of 
 nobleness and virtue. Some men under the influence of 
 thoughtful leaders pledged themselves to total abstinence 
 from intoxicating drinks, in the full belief that the agita- 
 tion would never succeed until the working-classes had 
 proved themselves, by their self-control, to be worthy of 
 the gift of freedom. In other instances, as has been
 
 110 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 already remarked, the disappointment and despair of the 
 people took the form of infidelity. There were many riots 
 and disturbances ; none, indeed, of so seemingly rebellious 
 a nature as that of Frost and his companions, but many 
 serious enough to spread great alarm, and to furnish fresh 
 occasion for Government prosecutions and imprisonments. 
 Some of the prisoners seem to have been really treated 
 with a positively wanton harshness and even cruelty. 
 Thomas Cooper's account of his own sufferings in prison 
 is painful to read. It is not easy to understand what 
 good purpose any Government could have supposed the 
 prison authorities were serving by the unnecessary 
 degradation and privation of men who, whatever their 
 errors, were conspicuously and transparently sincere and 
 honest. 
 
 It is clear that at that time the Chartists, who repre- 
 sented the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large 
 towns, did in their very hearts believe that England was 
 ruled for the benefit of aristocrats and millionaires who 
 were absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. 
 It is equally clear that most of what are called the ruling 
 class did really believe the English working-men who 
 joined the Chartist movement to be a race of fierce, 
 unmanageable, and selfish communists who, if they were 
 allowed their own way for a moment, would prove them- 
 selves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and all 
 established securities of society. An ignorant panic pre- 
 vailed on both sides. England was indeed divided then, 
 as Mr. Disraeli's novel described it, into two nations, the 
 rich and the poor, hi towns at least ; and each hated and 
 feared the other with all that unthinking hate and fear 
 which hostile nations are capable of showing even amidst 
 all the influences of civilization.
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 QUESTION" DE JUPOXS. 
 
 MEANWHILE things were looking ill with the Melbourne 
 Ministry. Sir Robert Peel was addressing great meetings 
 of his followers, and declaring with much show of justice 
 that he had created anew the Conservative party. The 
 position of the Whigs would in any case have been diffi- 
 cult. Their mandate, to use the French phrase, seemed 
 to be exhausted. They had no new thing to propose. 
 They came into power as reformers, and now they had 
 nothing to offer in the way of reform. It may be taken 
 as a certainty that in English politics reaction must 
 always follow advance. The Whigs must just then have 
 come in for the effects of reaction. But they had more 
 than that to contend with. In our own time, Mr. Glad- 
 stone had no sooner passed his great measures of reform 
 than he began to experience the effects of reaction. But 
 there was a great difference between his situation and 
 that of the Whigs under Melbourne. He had not failed to 
 satisfy the demands of his followers. He had no extreme 
 wing of his party clamoring against him on the ground 
 that he had made use of their strength to help him in 
 carrying out as much of his programme as suited his own 
 coterie, and that he had then deserted them. This was 
 the condition of the Whigs. The more advanced Liberals 
 and the whole body of the Chartists, and the working- 
 classes generally, detested and denounced them. Many
 
 112 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of the Liberals had had some hope while Lord Durham 
 still seemed likely to be a political power, but with the 
 fading of his influence they lost all interest in the Whig 
 Ministry. On the other hand, the support of O'Connell 
 was a serious disadvantage to Melbourne and his party 
 in England. 
 
 But the Whig ministers were always adding by some 
 mistake or other to the difficulties of their position. The 
 Jamaica Bill put them in great perplexity. This was a 
 measure brought in on April 9th, 1839, to make temporary 
 provision for the government of the island of Jamaica, by 
 setting aside the House of Assembly for five years, and 
 during that time empowering the governor and council 
 with three salaried commissioners to manage the affairs 
 of the colony. In other words, the Melbourne Ministry pro- 
 posed to suspend for five years the constitution of Jamaica. 
 No body of persons can be more awkwardly placed than a 
 Whig Ministry proposing to set aside a constitutional gov- 
 ernment anywhere. Such a proposal may be a necessary 
 measure ; it may be unavoidable ; but it always comes 
 with a bad grace from Whigs or Liberals, and gives their 
 enemies a handle against them which they cannot fail to 
 use to some purpose. What, indeed, it may be plausibly 
 asked, is the raison d'etre of a Liberal Government, if 
 they have to return to the old Tory policy of suspended 
 constitutions and absolute law? WhenRabagas, become 
 minister, tells his master that the only way to silence 
 discontent is by the literal use of the cannon, the Prince 
 of Monaco remarks very naturally that if that was to be 
 the policy, he might as well have kept to his old ministers 
 and his absolutism. So it is with an English Liberal 
 Ministry advising the suspension of constitutions. 
 
 In the case of the Jamaica Bill there was some excuse 
 for the harsh policy. After the abolition of slavery, the 
 former masters in the island found it very hard to reconcile
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 113 
 
 themselves to the new condition of things. They could 
 not all at once understand that their former slaves were 
 to be their equals before the law. As we have seen much 
 more lately in the Southern States of America, after the civil 
 war and the emancipation of the negroes, there was still a 
 pertinacious attempt made by the planter class to regain 
 in substance the power they had had to renounce in name. 
 This was not to be justified or excused ; but, as human 
 nature is made, it was not unnatural. On the other hand, 
 some of the Jamaica negroes were too ignorant to under- 
 stand that they had acquired any rights ; others were a 
 little too clamorous in their assertion. Many a planter 
 worked his men and whipped his women just as before the 
 emancipation, and the victims did not understand that 
 they had any right to complain. Many negroes, again, 
 were ignorantly and thoughtlessly " bumptious," to use a 
 vulgar expression, in the assertion of their newly-found 
 equality. The imperial governors and officials were gen- 
 erally and justly eager to protect the negroes ; and the 
 result was a constant quarrel between the Jamaica House 
 of Assembly and the representatives of the home Govern- 
 ment. The Assembly became more insolent and offensive 
 every day. A bill, very necessary in itself, was passed by 
 the Imperial Parliament for the better regulation of prisons 
 in Jamaica, and the House of Assembly refused to submit to 
 any such legislation. Under these circumstances, the Mel- 
 bourne Ministry proposed the suspension of the constitu- 
 tion of the island. The measure was opposed not only by 
 Peel and the Conservatives, but by many Radicals. It 
 was argued that there were many courses open to the 
 ministry short of the high-handed proceeding they pro- 
 posed ; and, in truth, there was not that confidence in the 
 Melbourne Ministry at all which would have enabled 
 them to obtain from Parliament a majority sufficient to 
 carry through such a policy. The ministry was weak and 
 
 8
 
 114 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 discredited ; anybody might now throw a stone at it. They 
 only had a majority of five in favor of their measure. 
 This, of course, was a virtual defeat. The ministry acknowl- 
 edged it, and resigned. Their defeat was a humiliation ; 
 their resignation an inevitable submission ; but they came 
 back to office almost immediately under conditions that 
 made the humiliation more humbling, and rendered their 
 subsequent career more difficult by far than their past 
 struggle for existence had been. 
 
 The return of the Whigs to office for they cannot be 
 said to have returned to power came about in a very odd 
 way. Gulliver ought to have had an opportunity of telling 
 such a story to the king of the Brobdingnagians, in order 
 the better to impress him with a clear idea of the logical 
 beauty of constitutional government. It was an entirely 
 new illustration of the old cherchezlafemme principle, the 
 femme in this case, however, being altogether a passive 
 and innocent cause of trouble. The famous controversy 
 known as the " Bedchamber Question " made a way back 
 for the Whigs into place. When Lord Melbourne resigned, 
 the Queen sent for the Duke of Wellington, who advised 
 her to apply to Sir Robert Peel, for the reason that the 
 chief difficulties of a Conservative Government would be 
 in the House of Commons. The Queen sent for Peel, and 
 when he came, told him, with a simple and girlish frank- 
 ness, that she was sorry to have to part with her late 
 ministers, of whose conduct she entirely approved, but that 
 she bowed to constitutional usage. This must have been 
 rather an astonishing beginning to the grave and formal 
 Peel ; but he was not a man to think any worse of the 
 candid young sovereign for her outspoken ways. The 
 negotiations went on very smoothly as to the colleagues 
 Peel meant to recommend to her Majesty, until he hap- 
 pened to notice the composition of the royal household 
 as regarded the ladies most closely in attendance on the
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 115 
 
 Queen. For example, he found that the wife of Lord 
 Normanby and the sister of Lord Morpeth were the two 
 ladies in closest attendance on her Majesty. Now it has 
 to be borne in mind it was proclaimed again and again 
 during the negotiations that the chief difficulty of the 
 Conservatives would necessarily be in Ireland, where their 
 policy would be altogether opposed to that of the Whigs. 
 Lord Normanby had been Lord-lieutenant of Ireland under 
 the Whigs, and Lord Morpeth, whom we can all remem- 
 ber as the amiable and accomplished Lord Carlisle of later 
 time, Irish Secretary. It certainly could not be satis- 
 factory for Peel to try to work a new Irish policy while 
 the closest household companions of the Queen were the 
 wife and sister of the displaced statesmen who directly 
 represented the policy he had to supersede. Had this 
 point of view been made clear to the sovereign at first, it 
 is hardly possible that any serious difficulty could have 
 arisen. The Queen must have seen the obvious reason- 
 ableness of Peel's request ; nor is it to be supposed that 
 the two ladies in question could have desired to hold their 
 places under such circumstances. But unluckily some 
 misunderstanding took place at the very beginning of the 
 conversations on this point. Peel only desired to press 
 for the retirement of the ladies holding the higher offices ; 
 he did not intend to ask for any change affecting a place 
 lower in official rank than that of lady of the bedchamber. 
 But somehow or other he conveyed to the mind of the 
 Queen a different idea. She thought he meant to insist, 
 as a matter of principle, upon the removal of all her famil- 
 iar attendants and household associates. Under this im- 
 pression she consulted Lord John Russell, who advised 
 her on what he understood to be the state of the facts. 
 On his advice, the Queen stated in reply that she could 
 not " consent to a course which she conceives to be con- 
 trary to usage and is repugnant to her feelings." Sir
 
 116 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Robert Peel held firm to his stipulation ; and the chance 
 of his then forming a ministry was at an end. Lord Mel- 
 bourne and his colleagues had to be recalled ; and at a 
 cabinet meeting they adopted a minute declaring it rea- 
 sonable " that the great offices of the Court and situations 
 in the household held by members of Parliament should 
 be included in the political arrangements made on, change 
 in the Administration ; but they are not of opinion that a 
 similar principle should be applied or extended to the 
 offices held by ladies in her Majesty's household." 
 
 The matter was naturally made the subject of explana- 
 tion in both Houses of Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was 
 undoubtedly right in his view of the question, and if he 
 had been clearly understood the right could hardly have 
 been disputed; but he defended his position in language 
 of what now seems rather ludicrous exaggeration. He 
 treated this question de jupons as if it were of the last 
 importance not alone to the honor of the ministry, but even 
 to the safety of the realm. " I ask you," he said, " to go 
 back to other times : take Pitt or Fox, or any other min- 
 ister of this proud country, and answer for yourselves the 
 question, is it fitting that one man shall be the minister, 
 responsible for the most arduous charge that can fall to 
 the lot of man, and that the wife of the other that other 
 his most formidable political enemy shall, with his ex- 
 press consent, hold office in immediate attendance on the 
 sovereign? " " Oh, no ! " he exclaimed, in an outburst of 
 indignant eloquence. " I felt that it was impossible ; I 
 could not consent to this. Feelings more powerful than 
 reasoning told me that it was not for my own honor or 
 for the public interests that I should consent to be min- 
 ister of England." This high-flown language seems oddly 
 out of place on the lips of a statesman who, of all his con- 
 temporaries, was the least apt to indulge in bursts of over- 
 wrought sentiment. Lord Melbourne, on the other hand,
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS 117 
 
 defended his action in the House of Lords in language of 
 equal exaggeration. " I resume office," he said, " unequiv- 
 ocally and solely for this reason, that I will not desert 
 my sovereign in a situation of difficulty and distress, es- 
 pecially when a demand is made upon her Majesty with 
 which I think she ought not to comply a demand incon- 
 sistent with her personal honor, and which, if acquiesced 
 in, would render her reign liable to all the changes and 
 variations of political parties, and make her domestic life 
 one constant scene of unhappiness and discomfort." 
 
 In the country the incident created great excitement. 
 Some Liberals bluntly insisted that it was not right in 
 such a matter to consult the feelings of the sovereign at 
 all, and that the advice of the minister, and his idea of 
 what was for the good of the country, ought alone to be 
 considered. On the other hand, O'Connell burst into 
 impassioned language of praise and delight, as he dwelt 
 upon the decision of the Queen, and called upon the 
 Power above to bless " the young creature that creat- 
 ure of only nineteen, as pure as she is exalted," who con- 
 sulted not her head, but " the overflowing feelings of her 
 young heart." " Those excellent women who had been 
 so long attached to her, who had nursed and tended to 
 her wants in her childhood, who had watched over her in 
 her sickness, whose eyes beamed with delight as they 
 saw her increasing daily in beauty and in loveliness 
 when they were threatened to be forced away from her 
 her heart told her that she could as well part with that 
 heart itself as with those whom it held so dear." Fear- 
 gus O'Connor went a good deal farther, however, when 
 he boldly declared that he had excellent authority for the 
 statement that if the Tories had got the young Queen 
 into their hands by the agency of the new ladies of the 
 bedchamber, they had a plan for putting her out of the 
 way and placing " the bloody Cumberland " on the throne
 
 118 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in her stead. In O'Connell's case, no mystery was made 
 of the fact that he believed the ladies actually surround- 
 ing the young Queen to be friendly to what he considered 
 the cause of Ireland ; and that he was satisfied Peel and 
 the Tories were against it. For the wild talk represented 
 by the words of Feargus O'Connor, it is only necessary 
 to say that, frenzied and foolish as it must seem now to 
 us, and as it must even then have seemed to all rational 
 beings, it had the firm acceptance of large masses of 
 people throughout the country, who persisted in seeing in 
 Peel's pleadings for the change of the bedchamber women 
 the positive evidence of an unscrupulous Tory plot to get 
 possession of the Queen's person, not indeed for the 
 purpose of violently altering the succession, but in the 
 hope of poisoning her mind against all Liberal opinions. 
 Lord Brougham was not likely to lose so good an 
 opportunity of attacking Lord Melbourne and his col- 
 leagues. He insisted that Lord Melbourne had sacrificed 
 Liberal principles and the interest of the country to the 
 private feelings of the sovereign. "I thought," he de- 
 clared, in a burst of eloquent passion, " that we belonged 
 to a country hi which the government by the Crown and 
 the wisdom of Parliament was everything, and the per- 
 sonal feelings of the sovereign were absolutely not to be 
 named at the same time. ... I little thought to have 
 lived to hear it said by the Whigs of 1839, 'Let us rally 
 round the Queen ; never mind the House of Commons ; 
 never mind measures ; throw principles to the dogs ; 
 leave pledges unredeemed ; but for God's sake rally round 
 the throne.' Little did I think the day would come when 
 I should hear such language, not from the unconstitu- 
 tional, place-hunting, king-loving Tories, who thought the 
 public was made for the king, not the king for the public, 
 but from the Whigs themselves ! The Jamaica Bill, said 
 to be a most important measure, had been brought for-
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 119 
 
 ward. The Government staked their existence upon it. 
 They were not able to carry it ; they therefore conceived 
 they had lost the confidence of the House of Commons. 
 They thought it a measure of paramount necessity then. 
 Is it less necessary now ? Oh, but that is altered ! The 
 Jamaica question is to be new-fashioned ; principles are 
 to be given up, and all because of two ladies of the bed- 
 chamber." 
 
 Nothing could be more undesirable than the position in 
 which Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had allowed the 
 sovereign to place herself. The more people in general 
 came to think over the matter, the more clearly it was 
 seen that Peel was in the right, although he had not made 
 himself understood at first, and had, perhaps, not shown 
 all through enough of consideration for the novelty of the 
 young sovereign's position, or for the difficulty of finding 
 a conclusive precedent on such a question, seeing that 
 since the principle of ministerial responsibility had come to 
 be recognized among us in its genuine sense, there never 
 before had been a woman on the throne. But no one could 
 deliberately maintain the position at first taken up by the 
 Whigs ; and, in point of fact, they were soon glad to drop 
 it as quickly and quietly as possible. The whole ques- 
 tion, it may be said at once, was afterward settled by a 
 sensible compromise which the Prince Consort suggested. 
 It was agreed that on a change of ministry the Queen 
 would listen to any representation from the incoming 
 Prime-minister as to the composition of her household, 
 and would arrange for the retirement, " of their own 
 accord," of any ladies who were so closely related to the 
 leaders of Opposition as to render their presence inconve- 
 nient. The Whigs came back to office utterly discredited. 
 They had to tinker up somehow a new Jamaica Bill. They 
 had declared that they could not remain in office unless 
 they were allowed to deal in a certain way with Jamaica ;
 
 120 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TINES. 
 
 and now that they were back again in office, they could 
 not avoid trying to do something with the Jamaica busi- 
 ness. They, therefore, introduced a new bill, which was 
 a mere compromise put together in the hope of its being 
 allowed to pass. It was allowed to pass, after a fashion ; 
 that is, when the Opposition in the House of Lords had 
 tinkered it and amended it at their pleasure. The bed- 
 chamber question, in fact, had thrown Jamaica out of per- 
 spective. The unfortunate island must do the best it 
 could now ; in this country, statesmen had graver matter 
 to think of. Sir Robert Peel could not govern with Lady 
 Normanby ; the Whigs would not govern without her. 
 
 It does not seem by any means clear, however, that 
 Lord Melbourne and his colleagues deserved the savage 
 censure of Lord Brougham merely for having returned to 
 office and given up their original position with regard to 
 the Jamaica Bill. "What else remained to be done ? If 
 they had refused to come back, the only result would have 
 been that Peel must have become Prime-minister, with a 
 distinct minority in the House of Commons. Peel could 
 not have held his ground there, except by the favor and 
 mercy of his opponents ; and those were not merciful 
 days in politics. He would only have taken office to be 
 called upon at once to resign it by some adverse vote of 
 the House of Commons. The state of things seems, in 
 this respect, to be not unlike that which existed when Mr. 
 Gladstone was defeated on the Irish University Bill in 1873. 
 Mr. Gladstone resigned, or rather tendered his resigna- 
 tion ; and by his advice her Majesty invited Mr. Disraeli 
 to form a cabinet. Mr. Disraeli did not see his way to 
 undertake the government of the country with the exist- 
 ing House of Commons ; and as the conditions under 
 which he was willing to undertake the duty were not con- 
 veniently attainable, the negotiation came to an end. The 
 Queen sent again for Mr. Gladstone, who consented to re-
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 121 
 
 sume his place as Prime-minister. If Lord Melbourne re- 
 turned to office with the knowledge that he could not carry 
 the Jamaica Bill, which he had declared to be necessary, 
 Mr. Gladstone resumed his place at the head of his minis- 
 try without the remotest hope of being able to carry his 
 Irish University measure. No one ever found fault with 
 Mr. Gladstone for having, under the circumstances, done 
 the best he could, and consented to meet the request of 
 the sovereign and the convenience of the public service by 
 again taking on himself the responsibility of government, 
 although the measure on which he had declared he would 
 stake the existence of his ministry had been rejected by 
 the House of Commons. 
 
 Still, it cannot be denied that the Melbourne Govern- 
 ment were prejudiced in the public mind by these events, 
 and by the attacks for which they gave so large an oppor- 
 tunity. The feeling in some part of the country were still 
 sentimentally with the Queen. At many a dinner -table 
 it became the fashion to drink the health of her Majesty 
 with a punning addition, not belonging to an order of wit 
 any higher than that which in other days toasted the King 
 " over the water ; " or prayed of heaven to " send this 
 crumb well down." The Queen was toasted as the sover- 
 eign of spirit who " would not let her belles be peeled." 
 But the ministry were almost universally believed to have 
 placed themselves in a ridiculous light, and to have crept 
 again into office, as an able writer puts it, " behind the 
 petticoats of the ladies in waiting." The death of Lady 
 Flora Hastings, which occurred almost immediately, 
 tended further to arouse a feeling of dislike to the Whigs. 
 This melancholy event does not need any lengthened com- 
 ment. A young lady who belonged to the household of 
 the Duchess of Kent fell under an unfounded, but, in the 
 circumstances, not wholly unreasonable, suspicion. It 
 was the classic story of Calisto, Diana's unhappy nymph,
 
 122 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 reversed. Lady Flora was proved to be innocent; but 
 her death, imminent probably in any case from the dis- 
 ease which had fastened on her, was doubtless hastened 
 by the humiliation to which she had been subjected. It 
 does not seem that any one was to blame in the matter. 
 The ministry certainly do not appear to have done any- 
 thing for which they could fairly be reproached. No one 
 can be surprised that those who surrounded the Queen 
 and the Duchess of Kent should have taken some pains 
 to inquire into the truth or falsehood of scandalous 
 rumors, for which there might have appeared to be some 
 obvious justification. But the whole story was so sad 
 and shocking ; the death of the poor young lady followed 
 with such tragic rapidity upon the establishment of her 
 innocence ; the natural complaints of her mother were so 
 loud and impassioned, that the ministers who had to 
 answer the mother's appeals were unavoidably placed in 
 an invidious and a painful position. The demands of the 
 Marchioness of Hastings for redress were unreasonable. 
 They endeavored to make out the existence of a cruel 
 conspiracy against Lady Flora, and called for the peremp- 
 tory dismissal and disgrace of the eminent court physi- 
 cian, who had merely performed a most painful duty, and 
 whose report had been the especial means of establishing 
 the injustice of the suspicions which were directed against 
 her. But it was a damaging duty for a minister to have 
 to write to the distracted mother, as Lord Melbourne 
 found it necessary to do, telling her that her demand was 
 " so unprecedented and objectionable, that even the re- 
 spect due to your ladyship's sex, rank, family, and char- 
 acter would not justify me in more, if, indeed, it author- 
 izes so much, than acknowledging that letter for the sole 
 purpose of acquainting your ladyship that I have received 
 it." The "Palace scandal," as it was called, became 
 known shortly before the dispute about the ladies of the
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 123 
 
 bedchamber. The death of Lady Flora Hastings happened 
 soon after it. It is not strictly in logical propriety that 
 such events, or their rapid succession, should tend to 
 bring into disrepute the ministry, who can only be re- 
 garded as their historical contemporaries. But the world 
 must change a great deal before ministers are no longer 
 held accountable in public opinion for anything but the 
 events over which they can be shown to have some con- 
 trol.
 
 124 A 1IISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE. 
 
 ON January 16th, 1840, the Queen, opening Parliament 
 in person, announced her intention to marry her cousin, 
 Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha a step which she 
 trusted would be " conducive to the interests of my peo- 
 ple as well as to my own domestic happiness." In the 
 discussion which followed hi the House of Commons, Sir 
 Robert Peel observed that her Majesty had " the singu- 
 lar good fortune to be able to gratify her private feelings, 
 while she performs her public duty, and to obtain the best 
 guarantee for happiness by contracting an alliance founded 
 on affection." Peel spoke the simple truth ; it was, indeed, 
 a marriage founded on affection. No marriage contracted 
 in the humblest class could have been more entirely a 
 union of love, and more free from what might be called 
 selfish and worldly considerations. The Queen had for a 
 long time loved her cousin. He was nearly her own age, 
 the Queen being the elder by three months and two or 
 three days. Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel 
 was the full name of the young Prince. He was the 
 second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and 
 of his wife Louisa, daughter of Augustus, Duke of Saxe- 
 Gotha-Altenberg. Prince Albert was born at the Rosenau, 
 one of his father's residences, near Coburg, on August 
 26th, 1819. The court historian notices with pardonable 
 complacency the " remarkable coincidence " easily ex-
 
 PRINCE ALBERT.
 
 THE QUEERS MAERIAGE. 125 
 
 plained, surely that the same accoucheuse, Madame 
 Siebold, assisted at the birth of Prince Albert, and of the 
 Queen some three months before, and that the Prince was 
 baptized by the clergyman, Professor Genzler, who had 
 the year before officiated at the marriage of the Duke and 
 Duchess of Kent. A marriage between the Princess Vic- 
 toria and Prince Albert had been thought of as desirable 
 among the families on both sides, but it was always wisely 
 resolved that nothing should be said to the young Princess 
 on the subject unless she herself showed a distinct liking 
 for her cousin. In 1836 Prince Albert was brought by 
 his father to England, and made the personal acquaint- 
 ance of the Princess, and she seems at once to have been 
 drawn toward him in the manner which her family and 
 friends would most have desired. Three years later the 
 Prince again came to England, and the Queen, in a letter 
 to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, wrote of him 
 in the warmest terms. " Albert's beauty," she said, " is 
 most striking, and he is most amiable and unaffected in 
 short, very fascinating." Not many days after she wrote 
 to another friend and faithful counsellor, the Baron 
 Stockmar, to say, " I do feel so guilty I know not how to 
 begin my letter ; but I think the news it will contain will 
 be sufficient to insure your forgiveness. Albert has com- 
 pletely won my heart, and all was settled between us this 
 morning." The Queen had just before informed Lord 
 Melbourne of her intention, and Lord Melbourne, it is 
 needless to say, expressed his decided approval. There 
 was no one to disapprove of such a marriage. 
 
 Prince Albert was a young man to win the heart of any 
 girl. He was singularly handsome, graceful, and gifted. 
 In princes, as we know, a small measure of beauty and 
 accomplishment suffices to throw courtiers and court ladies 
 into transports of admiration ; but had Prince Albert been 
 the son of a farmer or a butler, he must have been admired
 
 126 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 for his singular personal attractions. He had had a sound 
 and a varied education. He had been brought up as if he 
 were to be a professional musician, a professional chemist 
 or botanist, and a professor of history and belles-lettres 
 and the fine arts. The scientific and the literary were 
 remarkably blended in his bringing-up ; remarkably, that 
 is to say, for some half-century ago, when even in Germany 
 a system of education seldom aimed at being totus, teres 
 atque rotundus. He had begun to study the constitutional 
 history of states, and was preparing himself to take an 
 interest in politics. There was much of the practical and 
 business-like about him, as he showed in after-life ; he 
 loved farming, and took a deep interest in machinery and 
 hi the growth of industrial science. He was a sort of 
 combination of the troubadour, the savant, and the man 
 of business. His tastes were for a quiet, domestic, and 
 unostentatious life a life of refined culture, of happy, 
 calm evenings, of art and poetry, and genial communion 
 with Nature. He was made happy by the songs of birds, 
 and delighted hi sitting alone and playing the organ. But 
 there was in him, too, a great deal of the political philoso- 
 pher. He loved to hear political and other questions well 
 argued out, and once observed that a false argument jarred 
 on his nerves as much as a false note in music. He seems 
 to have had from his youth an all-pervading sense of duty. 
 So far as we can guess, he was almost absolutely free 
 from the ordinary follies, not to say sins, of youth. 
 Young as he was when he married the queen, he devoted 
 himself at once to what he conscientiously believed to be 
 the duties of his station with a self-control and self-devotion 
 rare even among the aged, and almost unknown in youth. 
 He gave up every habit, however familiar and dear, every 
 predilection, no matter how sweet, every indulgence of 
 sentiment or amusement that in any way threatened to 
 interfere with the steadfast performance of the part he had
 
 THE Q UEEW S NAREIA GE. 127 
 
 assigned to himself. No man ever devoted himself more 
 faithfully to the difficult duties of a high and a new situa- 
 tion, or kept more strictly to his resolve. It was no task to 
 him to be a tender husband and a loving father. This 
 was apart of his sweet, pure, and affectionate nature. It 
 may well be doubted whether any other queen ever had a 
 married life so happy as that of Queen Victoria. 
 
 The marriage of the Queen and the Prince took place on 
 February 10th, 1840. The reception given by the people 
 in general to the Prince on his landing in England a few 
 days before the ceremony, and on the day of the marriage, 
 was cordial, and even enthusiastic. But it is not certain 
 whether there was a very cordial feeling to the Prince 
 among all classes of politicians. A rumor of the most 
 absurd kind had got abroad in certain circles that the 
 young Albert was not a Protestant that he was, in fact, 
 a member of the Church of Rome. In a different circle 
 the belief was curiously cherished that the Prince was a 
 free-thinker in matters of religion, and a radical in poli- 
 tics. Somewhat unfortunately, the declaration of the 
 intended marriage to the privy council did not mention 
 the fact that Albert was a Protestant Prince. The cabinet 
 no doubt thought that the leaders of public opinion on all 
 sides of politics would have had historical knowledge 
 among them to teach them that Prince Albert belonged to 
 that branch of the Saxon family which since the Reforma- 
 tion had been conspicuously Protestant. " There has not," 
 Prince Albert himself wrote to the Queen, on December 
 7th, 1839, " been a single Catholic princess introduced into 
 the Coburg family since the appearance of Luther in 1521. 
 Moreover, the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony was 
 the very first Protestant that ever lived." No doubt the 
 ministry thought also that the constitutional rule which 
 forbids an English sovereign to marry with a Roman 
 Catholic under penalty of forfeiting the crown, would be
 
 128 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 regarded as a sufficient guarantee that when they announced 
 the Queen's approaching marriage it must be a marriage 
 with a Protestant. All this assumption, however reason- 
 able and natural, did not find warrant in the events that 
 actually took place. It would have been better, of course, 
 if the Government had assumed that Parliament and the 
 public generally knew nothing about the Prince and his 
 ancestry, or the constitutional penalties for a member of 
 the Royal Family marrying a Catholic, and had formally 
 announced that the choice of Queen Victoria had happily 
 fallen on a Protestant. The wise and foreseeing Leopold, 
 King of the Belgians, had recommended that the fact 
 should be specifically mentioned ; but it was, perhaps, a 
 part of Lord Melbourne's indolent good-nature to take it 
 for granted that people generally would be calm and 
 reasonable, and that all would go right without interruption 
 or cavil. He therefore acted on the assumption that any 
 formal mention of Prince Albert's Protestantism would 
 be superfluous ; and neither in the declaration to the privy 
 council nor hi the announcement to Parliament was a word 
 said upon the subject. The result was that in the debate on 
 the address in the House of Lords a somewhat unseemly al- 
 tercation took place, an altercation the more to be regretted 
 because it might have been so easily spared. The question 
 was bluntly raised by no less a person than the Duke of 
 "Wellington whether the future husband of the Queen was 
 or was not a Protestant. The Duke actually charged the 
 ministry with having purposely left out the word " Prot- 
 estant " in the announcements, in order that they might 
 not offend their Irish and Catholic supporters, and by the 
 very charge did much to strengthen the popular feeling 
 against the statesmen who were supposed to be kept in 
 office by virtue of the patronage of O'Connell. The Duke 
 moved that the word "Protestant" be inserted in the 
 congratulatory address to the Queen, and he carried his
 
 THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE. 129 
 
 point, although Lord Melbourne held to the opinion that 
 the word was unnecessary in describing a Prince who was 
 not only a Protestant, but descended from the most Prot- 
 estant family in Europe. The lack of judgment and tact 
 on the part of the ministry was never more clearly shown 
 than in the original omission of the word. 
 
 Another disagreeable occurrence was the discussion that 
 took place when the bill for the naturalization of the Prince 
 was brought before the House of Lords. The bill in its 
 title merely set out the proposal to provide for the natu- 
 ralization of the Prince ; but it contained a clause to give 
 him precedence for life "next after her Majesty, hi Parlia- 
 ment or elsewhere, as her Majesty might think proper." 
 A great deal of objection was raised by the Duke of Wel- 
 lington and Lord Brougham to this clause on its own 
 merits ; but, as was natural, the objections were infinitely 
 aggravated by the singular want of judgment, and even 
 of common propriety, which could introduce a clause 
 conferring on the sovereign powers so large and so new 
 into a mere naturalization bill, without any previous 
 notice to Parliament. The matter was ultimately settled, 
 by allowing the bill to remain a simple naturalization 
 measure, and leaving the question of precedence to be 
 dealt with by Royal prerogative. Both the great political 
 parties concurred, without further difficulty, in an ar- 
 rangement by which it was provided in letters patent 
 that the Prince should thenceforth upon all occasions, and 
 in all meetings, except when otherwise provided by Act 
 of Parliament, have precedence next to the Queen. There 
 never would have been any difficulty in the matter if the 
 ministry had acted with any discretion ; but it would be 
 absurd to expect that a great nation, whose constitutional 
 system is built up of precedents, should agree at once and 
 without demur to every new arrangement which it might 
 seem convenient to a ministry to make in a hurry. Yet 
 
 9
 
 130 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 another source of dissatisfaction to the palace and the 
 people was created by the manner in which the ministry 
 took upon themselves to bring forward the proposition for 
 the settlement of an annuity on the Prince. In former 
 cases that, for example, of Queen Charlotte, Queen Ade- 
 laide, and Prince Leopold on his marriage with the Prin- 
 cess Charlotte the annuity granted had been 50,000. 
 It so happened, however, that the settlement to be made 
 on Prince Albert came hi times of great industrial and com- 
 mercial distress. The days had gone by when economy in 
 the House of Commons was looked upon as an ignoble prin- 
 ciple, and when loyalty to the sovereign was believed to 
 bind members of Parliament to grant, without a murmur 
 of discussion, any sums that might be asked by the minister 
 in the sovereign's name. Parliament was beginning to feel 
 more thoroughly its responsibility as the guardian of the 
 nation's resources, and it was no longer thought a fine 
 thing to give away the money of the tax-payer with mag- 
 nanimous indifference. It was, therefore, absurd on the 
 part of the ministry to suppose that because great sums 
 of money had been voted without question on former oc- 
 casions, they would be voted without question now. It is 
 quite possible that the whole matter might have been set- 
 tled without controversy if the ministry had shown any 
 judgment whatever in their conduct of the business. In 
 our day the ministry would at once have consulted the 
 leaders of the Opposition. In all matters where the 
 grant of money to any one connected with the sovereign 
 is concerned, it is now understood that the gift shall come 
 with the full concurrence of both parties in Parliament. 
 The leader of the House of Commons would probably, by 
 arrangement, propose the grant, and the leader of the 
 Opposition would second it. In the case of the annuity 
 to Prince Albert, the ministry had the almost incredible 
 folly to bring forward their proposal without having
 
 THE QUEENS MARRIAGE. 131 
 
 invited in any way the concurrence of the Opposition. 
 They introduced the proposal without discretion ; they 
 conducted the discussion on it without temper. They 
 answered the most reasonable objections with imputa- 
 tions of want of loyalty ; and they gave some excuse for 
 the suspicion that they wished to provoke the Opposition 
 into some expression that might make them odious to the 
 Queen and the Prince. Mr. Hume, the economist, pro- 
 posed that the annuity be reduced from 50,000 to 21,- 
 000. This was negatived. Thereupon Colonel Sibthorp, 
 a once famous Tory fanatic of the most eccentric manners 
 and opinions, proposed that the sum be 30,000, and he 
 received the support of Sir Robert Peel and other eminent 
 members of the Opposition; and the amendment was 
 carried. 
 
 These were not auspicious incidents to prelude the 
 Royal marriage. There can be no doubt that for a time 
 the Queen, still more than the Prince, felt their influence 
 keenly. The Prince showed remarkable good sense and 
 appreciation of the condition of political arrangements in 
 England, and readily comprehended that there was noth- 
 ing personal to himself in any objections which the House 
 of Commons might have made to the proposals of the 
 ministry. The question of precedence was very easily 
 settled when it came to be discussed in reasonable fash- 
 ion ; although it was not until many years after (1857) 
 that the title of Prince Consort was given to the husband 
 of the Queen. 
 
 A few months after the marriage, a bill was passed 
 providing for a regency in the possible event of the death 
 of the Queen, leaving issue. With the entire concurrence 
 of the leaders of the Opposition, who were consulted this 
 time, Prince Albert was named Regent, following the pre- 
 cedent which had been adopted in the instance of the 
 Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. The Duke of
 
 132 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Sussex, uncle of the Queen, alone dissented in the House 
 of Lords, and recorded his protest against the proposal. 
 The passing of this bill was naturally regarded as one of 
 much importance to Prince Albert. It gave him to some 
 extent the status in the country which he had not had 
 before. It also proved that the Prince himself had risen 
 hi the estimation of the Tory party during the few months 
 that elapsed since the debates on the annuity and 
 the question of precedence. No one could have started 
 with a more resolute determination to stand clear of party 
 politics than Prince Albert. He accepted at once his posi- 
 tion as the husband of the Queen of a constitutional coun- 
 try. His own idea of his duty was that he should be the 
 private secretary and unofficial counsellor of the Queen. 
 To this purpose he devoted himself unswervingly. Out- 
 side that part of his duties, he constituted himself a sort of 
 minister without portfolio of art and education. He took 
 an interest, and often a leading part, in all projects and 
 movements relating to the spread of education, the cul- 
 ture of art, and the promotion of industrial science. Yet 
 it was long before he was thoroughly understood by the 
 country. It was long before he became hi any degree 
 popular ; and it may be doubted whether he ever was 
 thoroughly and generally popular. Not, perhaps, until 
 his untimely death did the country find out how entirely 
 disinterested and faithful his life had been, and how he 
 had made the discharge of duty his business and his task. 
 His character was one which is liable to be regarded by 
 ordinary observers as possessing none but negative vir- 
 tues. He was thought to be cold, formal, and apathetic. 
 His manners were somewhat shy and constrained, except 
 when he was in the company of those he loved, and then 
 he commonly relaxed into a kind of boyish freedom and 
 joyousness. But to the public in general he seemed 
 formal and chilling. It is not only Mr. Pendennis who
 
 THE QUEEN'S MAEEIAGE. 133 
 
 conceals his gentleness under a shy and pompous de- 
 meanor. With all his ability, his anxiety to learn, his 
 capacity for patient study, and his willingness to welcome 
 new ideas, he never, perhaps, quite understood the genius 
 of the English political system. His faithful friend and 
 counsellor, Baron Stockmar, was not the man best cal- 
 culated to set him right on this subject. Both were far 
 too eager to find in the English Constitution a piece of 
 symmetrical mechanism, or to treat it as a written code 
 from which one might take extracts or construct sum- 
 maries for constant reference and guidance. But this 
 was not, in the beginning, the cause of any coldness 
 toward the Prince on the part of the English public. 
 Prince Albert had not the ways of an Englishman ; and 
 the tendency of Englishmen, then as now, was to assume 
 that to have manners other than those of an English- 
 man was to be so far unworthy of confidence. He was 
 not made to shine in commonplace society. Pie could 
 talk admirably about something, but he had not the 
 gift of talking about nothing, and probably would not 
 have cared much to cultivate such a faculty. He was 
 fond of suggesting small innovations and improve- 
 ments in established systems, to the annoyance of men 
 with set ideas, who liked their own ways best. Thus it 
 happened that he remained for many years, if not exactly 
 unappreciated, yet not thoroughly appreciated, and that 
 a considerable and very influential section of society was 
 always ready to cavil at what he said, and find motive 
 for suspicion in most things that he did. Perhaps he was 
 best understood and most cordially appreciated among 
 the poorer classes of his wife's subjects. He found also 
 more cordial approval generally among the Radicals than 
 among the Tories, or even the Whigs. 
 
 One reform which Prince Albert worked earnestly to 
 bring about was the abolition of duelling in the army, and
 
 134 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the substitution of some system of courts of honorable 
 arbitration to supersede the barbaric recourse to the decis- 
 ion of weapons. He did not succeed in having his courts 
 of honor established. There was something too fanciful 
 in the scheme to attract the authorities of our two ser- 
 vices ; and there were undoubtedly many practical difficul- 
 ties in the way of making such a system effective. But he 
 succeeded so far, that he induced the Duke of Wellington 
 and the heads of the services to turn their attention very 
 seriously to the subject, and to use all the influence in 
 their power for the purpose of discouraging and discredit- 
 ing the odious practice of the duel. It is carrying courtly 
 politeness too far to attribute the total disappearance of 
 the duelling system, as one biographer seems inclined 
 to do, to the personal efforts of Prince Albert. It is 
 enough to his honor that he did his best, and that the 
 best was a substantial contribution toward so great 
 an object. But nothing can testify more strikingly to 
 the rapid growth of a genuine civilization in Queen 
 Victoria's reign than the utter discontinuance of the 
 duelling system. "When the Queen came to the throne, 
 and for years after, it was still in full force. The duel plays 
 a conspicuous part in the fiction and the drama of the 
 reign's earlier years. It was a common incident of all 
 political controversies. It was an episode of most con- 
 tested elections. It was often resorted to for the purpose 
 of deciding the right or wrong of a half-drunken quarrel 
 over a card-table. It formed as common a theme of gossip 
 as an elopement or a bankruptcy. Most of the eminent 
 statesmen who were prominent in the earlier part of the 
 Queen's reign had fought duels. Peel and O'Connell had 
 made arrangements for a "meeting." Mr. Disraeli had 
 challenged O'Connell, or any of the sons of O'Connell. 
 The great agitator himself had killed his man in a duel. 
 Mr. Roebuck had gone out ; Mr. Cobden, at a much later
 
 THE QUEEN'S MAERIAGE. 135 
 
 period, had been visited with a challenge, and had had 
 the good sense and the moral courage to laugh at it. At 
 the present hour a duel in England would seem as absurd 
 and barbarous an anachronism as an ordeal by touch or a 
 witch-burning. Many years have passed since a duel was 
 last talked of in Parliament ; and then it was only the 
 subject of a reprobation that had some work to do to keep 
 its countenance while administering the proper rebuke. 
 But it was not the influence of any one man, or even 
 any class of men, that brought about in so short a time 
 this striking change in the tone of public feeling and 
 morality. The change was part of the growth of educa- 
 tion and of civilization ; of the strengthening and broaden- 
 ing influence of the press, the platform, the cheap book, 
 the pulpit, and the less restricted intercourse of classes. 
 
 This is, perhaps, as suitable a place as any other to 
 introduce some notice of the attempts that were made 
 from time to time upon the life of the Queen. It is pro- 
 per to say something of them, although not one possessed 
 the slightest political importance, or could be said to 
 illustrate anything more than sheer lunacy, or that mor- 
 bid vanity and thirst for notoriety that is nearly akin to 
 genuine madness. The first attempt was made on June 
 10th, 1840, by Edward Oxford, a pot-boy of seventeen, 
 who fired two shots at the Queen as she was driving up 
 Constitution Hill with Prince Albert. Oxford fired both 
 shots deliberately enough, but happily missed in each 
 case. He proved to have been an absurd creature, half 
 crazy with a longing to consider himself a political 
 prisoner, and to be talked of. When he was tried, the 
 jury pronounced him insane, and he was ordered to be 
 kept in a lunatic asylum during her Majesty's pleasure. 
 The trial completely dissipated some wild alarms that 
 were felt, founded chiefly on absurd papers in Oxford's 
 possession, about a tremendous secret society called
 
 136 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 "Young England," having among its other objects the 
 assassination of royal personages. It is not an uninterest- 
 ing illustration of the condition of public feeling, that 
 some of the Irish Catholic papers in seeming good faith 
 denounced Oxford as an agent of the Duke of Cumberland 
 and the Orangemen, and declared that the object was to 
 assassinate the Queen and put the Duke on the throne. 
 The trial showed that Oxford was the agent of nobody, 
 and was impelled by nothing but his own crack-brained 
 love of notoriety. The finding of the jury was evidently 
 something of a compromise, for it is very doubtful whether 
 the boy was insane in the medical sense, and whether he 
 was fairly to be held irresponsible for his actions. But 
 it was felt, perhaps, that the wisest course was to treat 
 him as a madman ; and the result did not prove unsatis- 
 factory. Mr. Theodore Martin, in his " Life of the Prince 
 Consort," expresses a different opinion. He thinks it 
 would have been well if Oxford had been dealt with as 
 guilty in the ordinary way. "The best commentary," 
 he says, " on the lenity thus shown was pronounced by 
 Oxford himself, on being told of the similar attempts of 
 Francis and Bean in 1842, when he declared that if he 
 had been hanged there would have been no more shooting 
 at the Queen." It may be reasonably doubted whether 
 the authority of Oxford, as to the general influence of 
 criminal legislation, is very valuable. Against the philoso- 
 phic opinion of the half-crazy young pot-boy, on which 
 Mr. Martin places so much reliance, may be set the fact 
 that in other countries where attempts on the life of the 
 sovereign have been punished by the stern award of death, 
 it has not been found that the execution of one fanatic 
 was a safe protection against the murderous fanaticism of 
 another. 
 
 On May 30th, 1842, a man named John Francis, son of 
 a machinist hi Drury Lane, fired a pistol at the Queen as
 
 THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE. 137 
 
 she was driving down Constitution Hill, on the very spot 
 where Oxford's attempt was made. This was a somewhat 
 serious attempt, for Francis was not more than a few feet 
 from the carriage, which fortunately was driving at a very 
 rapid rate. The Queen showed great composure. She 
 was in some measure prepared for the attempt, for it 
 seems certain that the same man had on the previous 
 evening presented a pistol at the royal carriage, although 
 he did not then fire it. Francis was arrested and put on 
 trial. He was only twenty-two years of age, and although 
 at first he endeavored to brazen it out and put on a sort 
 of melodramatic regicide aspect, yet when the sentence of 
 death for high-treason was passed on him, he fell into a 
 swoon and was carried insensible from the court. The 
 sentence was not carried into effect. It was not certain 
 whether the pistol was loaded at all, and whether the 
 whole performance was not a mere piece of brutal 
 play-acting done out of a longing to be notorious. Her 
 Majesty, herself, was anxious that the death-sentence 
 should not be carried into effect, and it was finally com- 
 muted to one of transportation for life. The very day 
 after this mitigation of punishment became publicly 
 known, another attempt was made by a hunch -backed lad 
 named Bean. As the Queen was passing from Bucking- 
 ham Palace to the Chapel Royal, Bean presented a pistol 
 at her carriage, but did not succeed in firing it before his 
 hand was seized by a prompt and courageous boy who was 
 standing near. The pistol was found to be loaded with 
 powder, paper closely rammed down, and some scraps of 
 a clay pipe. It may be asked whether the argument of 
 Mr. Martin is not fully borne out by this occurrence, and 
 whether the fact of Bean's attempt having been made 
 on the day after the commutation of the capital sentence 
 in the case of Francis is not evidence that the leniency in 
 the former instance was the cause of the attempt made
 
 138 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in the latter. But it was made clear, and the fact is 
 recorded on the authority of Prince Albert himself, that 
 Bean had announced his determination to make the 
 attempt several days before the sentence of Francis was 
 commuted, and while Francis was actually lying under 
 sentence of death. With regard to Francis himself, the 
 Prince was clearly of opinion that to carry out the capital 
 sentence would have been nothing less than a judicial 
 murder, as it is essential that the act should be committed 
 with intent to kill or wound, and in Francis's case, to all 
 appearance, this was not the fact, or at least it was open 
 to grave doubt. In this calm and wise way did the hus- 
 band of the Queen, who had always shared with her 
 whatever of danger there might be in the attempts, argue 
 as to the manner in which they ought to be dealt with. 
 The ambition which most, or all of the miscreants, who 
 thus disturbed the Queen and the country was that of the 
 mountebank rather than of the assassin. The Queen her- 
 self showed how thoroughly she understood the signifi- 
 cance of all that had happened, when she declared, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Martin, that she expected a repetition of the 
 attempts on her life so long as the law remained unaltered 
 by which they could be dealt with only as acts of high- 
 treason. The seeming dignity of martydom had some- 
 thing fascinating in it to morbid vanity or crazy fanati- 
 cism, while, on the other hand, it was almost certain that 
 the martyr's penalty would not in the end be inflicted. A 
 very appropriate change in the law was effected by which 
 a punishment at once sharp and degrading was provided 
 even for mere mountebank attempts against the Queen 
 a punishment which was certain to be inflicted. A bill 
 was introduced by Sir Robert Peel making such attempts 
 punishable by transportation for seven years, or by 
 imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, " the 
 culprit to be publicly or privately whipped as often and
 
 THE Q UEEN' S MARKIA GE, 1 39 
 
 in such manner as the court shall direct, not exceeding 
 thrice." Bean was convicted under this act, and sen- 
 tenced to eighteen months' imprisonment in Millbank 
 Penitentiary. This did not, however, conclude the 
 attacks on the Queen. An Irish bricklayer, named 
 Hamilton, fired a pistol, charged only with powder, at her 
 Majesty, on Constitution Hill, on May 19th, 1849, and 
 was sentenced to seven years' transportation. A man 
 named Robert Pate, once a lieutenant of hussars, struck 
 her Majesty on the face with a stick as she was leaving 
 the Duke of Cambridge's residence in her carriage on May 
 27th, 1850. This man was sentenced to seven years' 
 transportation, but the judge paid so much attention 
 to the plea of insanity set up on his behalf, as to omit 
 from his punishment the whipping which might have 
 been ordered. Finally, on February 29th, 1872, a lad of 
 seventeen, named Arthur O'Connor, presented a pistol 
 at the Queen as she was entering Buckingham Palace 
 after a drive. The pistol, however proved to be unloaded 
 an antique and useless or harmless weapon, with a 
 flintlock which was broken, and in the barrel a piece of 
 greasy red rag. The wretched lad held a paper in one 
 hand, which was found to be some sort of petition on 
 behalf of the Fenian prisoners. "When he came up for 
 trial a plea of insanity was put in on his behalf, but 
 he did not seem to be insane in the sense of being 
 irresponsible for his actions or incapable of under- 
 standing the penalty they involved, and he was sentenced 
 to twelve months' imprisonment and a whipping. We 
 have hurried over many years for the purpose of com- 
 pleting this painful and ludicrous catalogue of the attempts 
 made against the Queen. It will be seen that in not a 
 single instance was there the slightest political significance 
 to be attached to them. Even in our own softened and 
 civilized time it sometimes happens that an attempt is
 
 140 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 made on the life of a sovereign which, however we may 
 condemn and reprobate it on moral grounds, yet does 
 seem to bear a distinct political meaning, and to show 
 that there are fanatical minds still burning under some 
 sense of national or personal wrong. But in the various 
 attacks which were made on Queen Victoria nothing of 
 the kind was even pretended. There was no opportunity 
 for any vaporing about Brutus and Charlotte Corday. 
 The impulse, where it was not that of sheer insanity, was 
 of kin to the vulgar love of notoriety in certain minds 
 which sets on those whom it pervades to mutilate noble 
 works of art and scrawl their autographs on the marble 
 of immortal monuments. There was a great deal of 
 wisdom shown in not dealing too severely with most of 
 these offences, and in not treating them too much au 
 serieux. Prince Albert himself said that " the vindictive 
 feeling of the common people would be a thousand times 
 more dangerous than the madness of individuals." There 
 was not, indeed, the slightest danger at any time that the 
 " common people " of England could be wrought up to any 
 sympathy with assassination ; nor was this what Prince 
 Albert meant. But the Queen and her husband were yet 
 new to power, and the people had not quite lost all 
 memory of sovereigns who, well-meaning enough, had yet 
 scarcely understood constitutional government, and there 
 were wild rumors of reaction this way and revolution that 
 way. It might have fomented a feeling of distrust and dis- 
 satisfaction if the people had seen any disposition on the 
 part of those in authority to strain the criminal law for 
 the sake of enforcing a death penalty against creatures 
 like Oxford and Bean. The most alarming and unnerving 
 of all dangers to a ruler is that of assassination. Even 
 the best and most blameless sovereign is not wholly secure 
 against it. The hand of Oxford might have killed the 
 Queen. Perhaps, however, the best protection a sovereign
 
 THE q UEEIT S MAERIA GE. 141 
 
 can have is not, to exaggerate the danger. There is no 
 safety in mere severity of punishment. Where the attempt 
 is serious and desperate, it is that of a fanaticism which 
 holds its life in its hand, and is not to be deterred hy fear 
 of death. The tortures of Ravaillac did not deter Damiens. 
 The birch hi the case of Bean and O'Connor may effectively 
 discountenance enterprises which are born of the mounte- 
 bank's and not the fanatic's spirit.
 
 142 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE OPIUM WAK. 
 
 THE Opium dispute with China was going on when the 
 Queen came to the throne. The Opium War broke out 
 soon after. On March 3d, 1843, five huge wagons, each 
 of them drawn by four horses, and the whole under escort 
 of a detachment of the 60th Regiment, arrived in front of 
 the Mint. An immense crowd followed the wagons. It 
 was seen that they were filled with boxes ; and one of the 
 boxes having been somewhat broken in its journey, the 
 crowd were able to see that it was crammed full of odd- 
 looking silver coins. The lookers-on were delighted, as 
 well as amused, by the sight of this huge consignment of 
 treasure ; and when it became known that the silver money 
 was the first instalment of the China ransom, there were 
 lusty cheers given as the wagons passed through the gates 
 of the Mint. This was a payment on account of the war 
 indemnity imposed on China. Nearly four millions and a 
 half sterling was the sum of the indemnity, in addition to 
 one million and a quarter which had already been paid by 
 the Chinese authorities. Many readers may remember 
 that for some time " China money " was regularly set down 
 as an item hi the revenues of each year with which the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer had to deal. The China 
 War, of which this money was the spoil, was not, per- 
 haps, an event of which the nation was entitled to be 
 very proud. It was the precursor of other wars; the
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 143 
 
 policy on which it was conducted has never since ceased 
 altogether to be a question of more or less excited contro- 
 versy; but it may safely be asserted that if the same 
 events were to occur in our day it would be hardly possi- 
 ble to find a ministry to originate a war, for which at the 
 same time it must be owned that the vast majority of the 
 people, of all politics and classes, were only too ready 
 then to find excuse and even justification. The wagon- 
 loads of silver conveyed into the Mint amidst the cheers 
 of the crowd were the spoils of the famous Opium War. 
 Reduced to plain words, the principle for which we 
 fought in the China War was the right of Great Britain 
 to force a peculiar trade upon a foreign people in spite of 
 the protestations of the Government and all such public 
 opinion as there was of the nation. Of course this was 
 not the avowed motive of the war. Not often in history 
 is the real and inspiring motive of a war proclaimed in so 
 many words by those who carry it on. Not often, indeed, 
 is it seen, naked and avowed, even in the minds of its pro- 
 moters themselves. As the quarrel between this country 
 and China went on, a great many minor and incidental sub- 
 jects of dispute arose, which for the moment put the one 
 main and original question out of people's minds ; and in 
 the course of these discussions it happened more than once 
 that the Chinese authorities took some steps which put 
 them decidedly in the wrong. Thus it is true enough 
 that there were particular passages of the controversy 
 when the English Government had all or nearly all of the 
 right on their side, so far as the immediate incident of the 
 dispute was concerned ; and when, if that had been the 
 whole matter of quarrel, or if the quarrel had begun there, 
 a patriotic minister might have been justified in thinking 
 that the Chinese were determined to offend England and 
 deserved humiliation. But no consideration of this kind 
 can now hide from our eyes the fact that in the beginning
 
 144 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and the very origin of the quarrel we were distinctly in 
 the wrong. We asserted or at least acted on the asser- 
 tion of a claim so unreasonable and even monstrous, that 
 it never could have been made upon any nation strong 
 enough to render its assertion a matter of serious respon- 
 sibility. The most important lessons a nation can learn 
 from its own history are found in the exposure of its own 
 errors. Historians have sometimes done more evil than 
 court flatterers when they have gone about to glorify the 
 errors of their own people, and to make wrong appear 
 right because an English Government talked the public 
 opinion of the time into a confusion of principles. 
 
 The whole principle of Chinese civilization, at the time 
 when the Opium War broke out, was based on conditions 
 which to any modern nation must seem erroneous and 
 unreasonable. The Chinese governments and people 
 desired to have no political relations or dealings whatever 
 with any other state. They were not so obstinately set 
 against private and commercial dealings ; but they would 
 have no political intercourse with foreigners, and they 
 would not even recognize the existence of foreign people 
 as states. They were perfectly satisfied with themselves 
 and their own systems. They were convinced that their 
 own systems were not only wise but absolutely perfect. 
 It is superfluous to say that this was in itself evidence of 
 ignorance and self-conceit. A belief hi the perfection of 
 their own systems could only exist among a people who 
 knew nothing of any other systems. But absurd as the 
 idea must appear to us, yet the Chinese might have found 
 a good deal to say for it. It was the result of civilization 
 so ancient that the oldest events preserved hi European 
 history were but as yesterday in the comparison. What- 
 ever its errors and defects, it was distinctly a civilization. 
 It was a system with a literature and laws and institutions 
 of its own ; it was a coherent and harmonious social and
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 145 
 
 political system which had, on the whole, worked toler- 
 ably well. It was not very unlike, in its principles, the 
 kind of civilization which at one time it was the whim of 
 men of genius, like Rousseau and Diderot, to idealize and 
 admire. The European, of whatever nation, may be said 
 to like change, and to believe in its necessity. His in- 
 stincts and his convictions alike tend this way. The sleep- 
 iest of Europeans the Neapolitan, who lies with his feet 
 in the water on the Chiaja ; the Spaniard, who smokes his 
 cigar and sips his coffee as if life had no active business 
 whatever; the fldneur of the Paris boulevards ; the beggar 
 who lounged from cabin to cabin in Ireland a generation 
 ago all these, no matter how little inclined for change 
 themselves, would be delighted to hear of travel and 
 enterprise, and of new things and new discoveries. But 
 to the Chinese, of all Eastern races, the very idea of travel 
 and change was something repulsive and odious. As the 
 thought of having to go a day unwashed would be to the 
 educated Englishman of our age, or as the edge of a preci- 
 pice is to a nervous man, so was the idea of innovation 
 to the Chinese of that time. The ordinary Oriental dreads 
 and detests change ; but the Chinese at that time went as 
 far beyond the ordinary Oriental as the latter goes be- 
 yond an average Englishman. In the present day a con- 
 siderable alteration has taken place in this respect. The 
 Chinese have had innovation after innovation forced on 
 them, until at last they have taken up with the new order 
 of things, like people who feel that it is idle to resist their 
 fate any longer. The emigration from China has been as 
 remarkable as that from Ireland or Germany; and the 
 United States finds itself confronted with a question of 
 the first magnitude when it asks itself what is to be the 
 influence and operation of the descent of the Chinese 
 populations along the Pacific slope. Japan has put on 
 modern and European civilization like a garment. Japan 
 
 10
 
 146 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 effected in a few years a revolution in the political con- 
 stitution and the social habits of her people, and in their 
 very way of looking at things, the like of which no other 
 state ever accomplished in a century. But nothing of all 
 this was thought of at the time of the China War. The 
 one thing which China asked of European civilization 
 and the thing called Modern Progress was to be let alone. 
 China's prayer to Europe was that of Diogenes to Alex- 
 ander " Stand out of my sunshine." 
 
 It was, as we have said, to political relationships rather 
 than to private and commercial dealings with foreign 
 peoples that the Chinese felt an unconquerable objection. 
 They did not, indeed, like even private and commercial 
 dealings with foreigners. They would much rather have 
 lived without ever seeing the face of a foreigner. But 
 they had put up with the private intrusion of foreigners 
 and trade, and had had dealings with American traders, 
 and with the East India Company. The charter and the 
 exclusive rights of the East India Company expired in 
 April, 1834; the charter was renewed under different con- 
 ditions, and the trade with China was thrown open. One 
 of the great branches of the East India Company's busi- 
 ness with China was the opium trade. When the trading 
 privileges ceased this traffic was taken up briskly by 
 private merchants, who bought of the Company the opium 
 which they grew in India and sold it to the Chinese. 
 The Chinese governments, and all teachers, moralists, and 
 persons of education in China, had long desired to get rid 
 of or put down this trade in opium. They considered it 
 highly detrimental to the morals, the health, and the pros- 
 perity of the people. Of late the destructive effects of 
 opium have often been disputed, particularly in the House 
 of Commons. It has been said that it is not, on the 
 average, nearly so unwholesome as the Chinese govern- 
 ments always thought, and that it does not do as much pro-
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 147 
 
 portionate harm to China as the use of brandy, whiskey, 
 and gin does to England. It seems to this writer hardly 
 possible to doubt that the use of opium is, on the whole, 
 a curse to any nation ; but even if this were not so, the 
 question between England and the Chinese governments 
 would remain just the same. The Chinese governments 
 may have taken exaggerated views of the evils of the 
 opium trade; their motives in wishing to put it down 
 may have been mixed with considerations of interest as 
 much political as philanthropic. Lord Palmerston in- 
 sisted that the Chinese Government were not sincere in 
 their professed objection on moral grounds to the traffic. 
 If they were sincere, he asked, why did they not prevent 
 the growth of the poppy in China ? It was, he tersely put 
 it, an " exportation of bullion question, an agricultural 
 protection question ; " it was a question of the poppy in- 
 terest in China, and of the economists who wished to pre- 
 vent the exportation of the precious metals. It is curious 
 that such arguments as this could have weighed with any 
 one for a moment. It was no business of ours to ask our- 
 selves whether the Chinese Government were perfectly 
 sincere in their professions of a lofty morality, or whether 
 they, unlike all other governments that have ever been 
 known, were influenced by one sole motive in the making 
 of their regulations. All that had nothing to do with the 
 question. States are not at liberty to help the subjects of 
 other states to break the laws of their own governments. 
 Especially when these laws even profess to concern ques- 
 tions of morals, is it the duty of foreign states not to in- 
 terfere with the regulations which a government considers 
 it necessary to impose for the protection of its people. 
 All traffic in opium was strictly forbidden by the govern- 
 ments and laws of China ; yet our English traders carried 
 on a brisk and profitable trade in the forbidden article. 
 Nor was this merely an ordinary smuggling, or a business
 
 148 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 akin to that of the blockade-running during the American 
 civil war. The arrangements with the Chinese Govern- 
 ment allowed the existence of all establishments and 
 machinery for carrying on a general trade at Canton 
 and Macao ; and under cover of these arrangements the 
 opium traders set up their regular head-quarters in these 
 towns. 
 
 Let us find an illustration intelligible to readers of the 
 present day to show how unjustifiable was this practice. 
 The State of Maine, as every one knows, prohibits the 
 common sale of spirituous liquors. Let us suppose that 
 several companies of English merchants were formed in 
 Portland and Augusta, and the other towns of Maine, for 
 the purpose of brewing beer and distilling whiskey, and 
 selling both to the public of Maine in defiance of the state 
 laws. Let us further suppose that when the authorities 
 of Maine proceeded to put the state laws in force against 
 these intruders, our Government here took up the cause 
 of the whiskey-sellers, and sent an iron-clad fleet to Port- 
 land to compel the people of Maine to put up with them- 
 It seems impossible to think of any English Government 
 taking such a course as this ; or of the English public 
 enduring it for one moment. In the case of such a nation 
 as the United States, nothing of the kind would be possi- 
 ble. The serious responsibilities of any such undertaking 
 would make even the most thoughtless minister pause, 
 and would give the public in general some time to think 
 the matter over ; and before any freak of the kind could 
 be attempted the conscience of the nation would be 
 aroused, and the unjust policy would have to be aban- 
 doned. But in dealing with China the ministry never 
 seems to have thought the right or wrong of the question 
 a matter worthy of any consideration. The controversy 
 was entered upon with as light a heart as a modern war 
 of still graver moment. The people in general knew
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 149 
 
 nothing about the matter until it had gone so far that the 
 original point of dispute was almost out of sight, and it 
 seemed as if the safety of English subjects and the honor 
 of England were compromised in some way by the high- 
 handed proceedings of the Chinese Government. 
 
 The English Government appointed superintendents to 
 manage our commercial dealings with China. Unluckily 
 these superintendents were in vested with a sort of political 
 or diplomatic character, and thus from the first became 
 objectionable to the Chinese authorities. One of the first 
 of these superintendents acted in disregard of the express 
 instructions of his own Government. He was told that he 
 must not pass the entrance of the Canton River in a vessel 
 of war, as the Chinese authorities always made a marked 
 distinction between ships of war and merchant vessels in 
 regard to the freedom of intercourse. Misunderstandings 
 occurred at every new step of negotiation. These misun- 
 derstandings were natural. Our people knew hardly any- 
 thing about the Chinese. The limitation of our means of 
 communication with them made this ignorance inevitable, 
 but certainly did not excuse our acting as if we were in 
 possession of the fullest and most accurate information. 
 The manner in which some of our official instructors went 
 on was well illustrated by a sentence in the speech of Sir 
 James Graham, during the debate on the whole subject in 
 the House of Commons in April, 1840. It was, Sir James 
 Graham said, as if a foreigner who was occasionally per- 
 mitted to anchor at the Nore, and at times to land at 
 Wapping, being placed in close confinement during his 
 continuance there, were to pronounce a deliberate opinion 
 upon the resources, the genius, and the character of the 
 British Empire. 
 
 Our representatives were generally disposed to be un- 
 yielding ; and not only that, but to see deliberate offence 
 in every Chinese usage or ceremony which the authorities
 
 150 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 endeavored to impose on them. On the other hand, it is 
 clear that the Chinese authorities thoroughly detested 
 them and their mission, and all about them, and often 
 made or countenanced delays that were unnecessary, and 
 interferences which were disagreeable and offensive. The 
 Chinese believed from the first that the superintendents 
 were there merely to protect the opium trade, and to force 
 on China political relations with the West. Practically 
 this was the effect of their presence. The superinten- 
 dents took no steps to aid the Chinese authorities in 
 stopping the hated trade. The British traders naturally 
 enough thought that the British Government were deter- 
 mined to protect them in carrying it on. Indeed, the 
 superintendents themselves might well have had the same 
 conviction. The Government at home allowed Captain 
 Elliott, the chief superintendent, to make appeal after 
 appeal for instructions without paying the slightest atten- 
 tion to him. Captain Elliott saw that the opium traders 
 were growing more and more reckless and audacious ; 
 that they were thrusting their trade under the very eyes 
 of the Chinese authorities. He also saw, as every one on 
 the spot must have seen, that the authorities, who had 
 been somewhat apathetic for a long time, were now at last 
 determined to go any lengths to put down the traffic. 
 At length the English Government announced to Captain 
 Elliott the decision which they ought to have made known 
 months, not to say years before, that " her Majesty's Gov- 
 ernment could not interfere for the purpose of enabling 
 British subjects to violate the laws of the country with 
 which they trade ; " and that " any loss, therefore, which 
 such persons may suffer in consequence of the more 
 effectual execution of the Chinese laws on this subject 
 must be borne by the parties who have brought that loss 
 on themselves by their own acts." This very wise and 
 proper resolve came, however, too late. The British
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 151 
 
 traders had been allowed to go on for a long time under 
 the full conviction that the protection of the English 
 Government was behind them, and wholly at their service. 
 Captain Elliott himself seems to have now believed that 
 the announcement of his superiors was but a graceful 
 diplomatic figure of speech. When the Chinese authorities 
 actually proceeded to insist on the forfeiture of an im- 
 mense quantity of the opium in the hand of British traders, 
 and took other harsh but certainly not unnatural meas- 
 ures to extinguish the traffic, Captain Elliott sent to the 
 Governor of India a request for as many ships of war as 
 could be spared for the protection of the life and prop- 
 erty of Englishmen in China. Before long British ships 
 arrived, and the two countries were at war. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe the successive steps by 
 which the war came on. It was inevitable from the mo- 
 ment that the English superintendent identified himself 
 with the protection of the opium trade. The English 
 believed that the Chinese authorities were determined on 
 war, and only waiting for a convenient moment to make a 
 treacherous beginning. The Chinese were convinced that 
 from the first we had meant nothing but war. Such a 
 condition of feeling on both sides would probably have 
 made war unavoidable, even in the case of two nations 
 who had far much better ways of understanding each 
 other than the English and Chinese. It is not surprising 
 if the English people at home knew little of the original 
 causes of the controversy. All that presented itself to 
 their mind was the fact that Englishmen were in danger 
 in a foreign country ; that they were harshly treated 
 and recklessly imprisoned; that their lives were in 
 jeopardy, and that the flag of England was insulted. 
 There was a general notion, too, that the Chinese were a 
 barbarous and a ridiculous people, who had no alphabet, 
 and thought themselves much better than any other people,
 
 152 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 even the English, and that on the whole it would be a 
 good thing to take the conceit out of them. Those who 
 remember what the common feeling of ordinary society 
 was at the time, will admit that it did not reach a much 
 loftier level than this. The matter was, however, taken 
 up more seriously in Parliament. 
 
 The policy of the Government was challenged in the 
 House of Commons, but with results of more importance to 
 the existing composition of the English Cabinet than to 
 the relations between this country and China. Sir James 
 Graham moved a resolution condemning the policy of 
 ministers for having, by its uncertainty and other errors, 
 brought about the war, which, however, he did not then 
 think it possible to avoid. A debate which continued for 
 three days took place. It was marked by the same curious 
 mixture of parties which we have seen in debates on China 
 questions in days nearer to the present. The defence 
 of the Government was opened by Mr. Macaulay, who 
 had been elected for Edinburgh and appointed Secretary 
 at War. The defence consisted chiefly hi the argu- 
 ment that we could not have put the trade in opium 
 down, no matter how earnest we had been, and that it 
 was not necessary or possible to keep on issuing fre- 
 quent instructions to agents so far away as our represent- 
 atives in China. Mr. Macaulay actually drew, from our 
 experience in India, an argument in support of his posi- 
 tion. We cannot govern India from London, he insisted ; 
 we must, for the most part, govern India hi India. One 
 can imagine how Macaulay would, in one of his essays, 
 have torn into pieces such an argument coming from any 
 advocate of a policy opposed to his own. The reply, in- 
 deed, is almost too obvious to need any exposition. In 
 India the complete materials of administration were in 
 existence. There was a Governor-general; there were 
 councillors ; there was an army. The men best qualified
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 153 
 
 to rule the country were there, provided with all the 
 appliances and forces of rule. In China we had an agent 
 with a vague and anomalous office dropped down in the 
 middle of a hostile people, possessed neither of recognized 
 authority nor of power to enforce its recognition. It was 
 probably true enough that we could not have put down 
 the opium trade ; that even with all the assistance of the 
 Chinese Government we could have done no more than to 
 drive it from one port in order to see it make its appear- 
 ance at another. But what we ought to have done is, 
 therefore, only the more clear. We ought to have an- 
 nounced from the first, and in the firmest tone, that we 
 would have nothing to do with the trade ; that we would 
 not protect it ; and we ought to have held to this determi- 
 nation. As it was, we allowed our traders to remain un- 
 der the impression that we were willing to support them 
 until it was too late to undeceive them with any profit to 
 their safety or our credit. The Chinese authorities acted 
 after awhile with a high-handed disregard of fairness, and 
 of anything like what we should call the responsibility of 
 law ; but it is evident that they believed they were them- 
 selves the objects of lawless intrusion and enterprise. 
 There were on the part of the Government great efforts 
 made to represent the motion as an attempt to prevent 
 the ministry from exacting satisfaction from the Chinese 
 Government, and from protecting the lives and interests 
 of Englishmen in China. But it is unfortunately only too 
 often the duty of statesmen to recognize the necessity of 
 carrying on a war, even while they are of opinion that 
 they whose mismanagement brought about the war 
 deserve condemnation. When Englishmen are being im- 
 prisoned and murdered, the innocent just as well as the 
 guilty, in a foreign country when, in short, war is 
 actually going on it is not possible for English states- 
 men in opposition to say, " We will not allow England to
 
 154 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 strike a blow in defence of our fellow-countrymen and 
 our flag, because we are of opinion that better judgment 
 on the part of our Government would have spared us the 
 beginning of such a war." There was really no incon- 
 sistency in recognizing the necessity of carrying on the 
 war, and at the same time censuring the ministry who 
 had allowed the necessity to be forced upon us. Sir 
 Robert Peel quoted with great effect, during the debate, 
 the example of Fox, who declared his readiness to give 
 every help to the prosecution of a war which the very 
 same day he proposed to censure the ministry for having 
 brought upon the country. With all their efforts, the 
 ministers were only able to command a majority of nine 
 votes as the result of the three days' debate. 
 
 The war, however, went on. It was easy work enough 
 so far as England was concerned. It was on our side 
 nothing but a succession of cheap victories. The Chinese 
 fought very bravely in a great many instances ; and they 
 showed still more often a Spartan-like resolve not to sur- 
 vive defeat. When one of the Chinese cities was taken 
 by Sir Hugh Gough, the Tartar general went into his 
 house as soon as he saw that all was lost, made his serv- 
 ants set fire to the building, and calmly sat in his chair 
 until he was burned to death. One of the English offi- 
 cers writes of the same attack, that it was impossible to 
 compute the loss of the Chinese, " for when they found 
 they could stand no longer against us, they cut the throats 
 of their wives and children, or drove them into wells or 
 ponds, and then destroyed themselves. In many houses 
 there were from eight to twelve dead bodies, and I myself 
 saw a dozen women and children drowning themselves in a 
 small pond the day after the fight." We quickly cap- 
 tured the island of Chusan, on the east coast of China ; 
 a part of our squadron went up the Peiho River to threaten 
 the capital ; negotiations were opened, and the prelimina-
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 155 
 
 ries of a treaty were made out, to which, however, neither 
 the English Government nor the Chinese would agree, and 
 the war was reopened. Chusan was again taken by us ; 
 Ningpo, a large city a few miles in on the main-land, fell 
 into our hands ; Amoy, farther south, was captured ; our 
 troops were before Nankin when the Chinese Government 
 at last saw how futile was the idea of resisting our arms. 
 Their women or their children might just as well have 
 attempted to encounter our soldiers. With all the 
 bravery which the Chinese often displayed, there was 
 something pitiful, pathetic, ludicrous, in the simple and 
 childlike attempts which they made to carry on war 
 against us. They made peace at last on any terms we 
 chose to ask. We asked, in the first instance, the cession 
 in perpetuity to us of the island of Hong- Kong. Of course 
 we got it. Then we asked that five ports Canton, 
 Amoy, Foo-Chow-Foo, Ningpo, and Shanghai should be 
 thrown open to British traders, and that consuls should 
 be established there. Needless to say that this, too, was 
 conceded. Then it was agreed that the indemnity already 
 mentioned should be paid by the Chinese Government 
 some four millions and a half sterling, in addition to one 
 million and a quarter as compensation for the destroyed 
 opium. It was also stipulated that correspondence be- 
 tween officials of the two Governments was thenceforth 
 to be carried on upon equal terms. The war was over for 
 the present, and the thanks of both Houses of Parliament 
 were voted to the fleet and army engaged in the opera- 
 tions. The Duke of Wellington moved the vote of thanks 
 in the House of Lords. He could hardly help, one would 
 think, forming in his mind as he spoke an occasional 
 contrast between the services which he asked the House 
 to honor, and the sort of warfare which it had been his 
 glorious duty to engage in so long. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington was a simple-minded man, with little sense of
 
 156 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 humor. He did not, probably, perceive himself the irony 
 that others might have seen in the fact that the conqueror 
 of Napoleon, the victor in years of warfare against 
 soldiers unsurpassed in history, should have had to move 
 a vote of thanks to the fleet and army which triumphed 
 over the unarmed, helpless, childlike Chinese. 
 
 The whole chapter of history ended, not inappropriately 
 perhaps, with a rather pitiful dispute between the English 
 Government and the English traders about the amount of 
 compensation to which the latter laid claim for their de- 
 stroyed opium. The Government were in something of 
 a difficulty ; for they had formally announced that they 
 were resolved to let the traders abide by any loss which 
 their violation of the laws of China might bring upon them. 
 But, on the other hand, they had identified themselves by 
 the war with the cause of the traders ; and one of the 
 conditions of peace had been the compensation for the 
 opium. The traders insisted that the amount given for 
 this purpose by the Chinese Government did not nearly 
 meet their losses. The English Government, on the other 
 hand, would not admit that they were bound in any way 
 further to make good the losses of the merchants. The 
 traders demanded to be compensated according to the 
 price of opium at the time the seizure was made ; a demand 
 which, if we admit any claim at all, seems only fair and 
 reasonable. The Government had clearly undertaken 
 their cause hi the end, and were hardly in a position, either 
 logical or dignified, when they afterward chose to say, 
 " Yes, we admit that we did undertake to get you redress, 
 but we do not think now that we are bound to give you 
 full redress." At last the matter was compromised ; the 
 merchants had to take what they could get, something 
 considerably below their demand, and give in return to 
 the Government an immediate acquittance in full. It is 
 hard to get up any feeling of sympathy with the traders
 
 TIIE OPIUM WAR. 157 
 
 who lost on such a speculation. It is hard to feel any 
 regret, even if the Government, which had done so much 
 for them in the war, treated them so shabbily when the 
 war was over, but that they were treated shabbily in the 
 final settlement seems to us to allow of no doubt. 
 
 The Chinese war, then, was over for the time. But as 
 the children say that snow brings more snow, so did that 
 war with China bring other wars to follow it.
 
 158 A lllSTORY OF OUR OFJV TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OP THE WHIG MINISTRY. 
 
 THE Melbourne Ministry kept going from bad to worse. 
 There was a great stirring in the country all around them, 
 which made their feebleness the more conspicuous. We 
 sometimes read in history a defence of some particular 
 sovereign whom common opinion cries down, the defence 
 being a reference to the number of excellent measures that 
 were set in motion during his reign. If we were to judge 
 of the Melbourne Ministry on the same principle, it might 
 seem, indeed, as if their career was one of extreme activity 
 and fruitfulness. Reforms were astir in almost every di- 
 rection. Inquiries into the condition of our poor and our 
 laboring classes were, to use a cant phrase of the time, the 
 order of the day. The foundation of the colony of New 
 Zealand was laid with a philosophical deliberation and 
 thoughtfulness which might have reminded one of Locke 
 and the Constitution of the Carolinas. Some of the first 
 comprehensive and practical measures to mitigate the 
 rigor and to correct the indiscriminateness of the death 
 punishment were taken during this period. One of the 
 first legislative enactments which fairly acknowledged 
 the difference between an English wife and a purchased 
 slave, so far as the despotic power of the master was 
 concerned, belongs to the same time. This was the 
 Custody of Infants Bill, the object of which was to obtain
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 159 
 
 for mothers of irreproachable conduct, who through no 
 fault of theirs were living apart from their husbands, 
 occasional access to their children with the permission 
 and under the control of the Equity Judges. It is curious 
 to notice how long and how fiercely this modest measure 
 of recognition for what may almost be called the natural 
 right of a wife and a mother was disputed in Parliament, 
 or at least in the House of Lords. 
 
 It is curious, too, to notice what a clamor was raised 
 over the small contribution to the cause of national edu- 
 cation which was made by the Melbourne Government. 
 In 1834, the first grant of public money for the purposes 
 of elementary education was made by Parliament. The 
 sum granted was twenty thousand pounds, and the same 
 grant was made every year until 1839. Then Lord John 
 Russell asked for an increase of ten thousand pounds, and 
 proposed a change in the manner of appropriating the 
 money. Up to that time the grant had been distributed 
 through the National School Society, a body in direct con- 
 nection with the Church of England, and the British and 
 Foreign School Association, which admitted children of all 
 Christian denominations, without imposing on them secta- 
 rian teaching. The money was dispensed by the Lords of 
 the Treasury, who gave aid to applicants in proportion to 
 the size and cost of the school buildings, and the number of 
 children who attended them. Naturally the result of such 
 an arrangement was that the districts which needed help 
 the most got it the least. If a place was so poor as not to be 
 able do to anything for itself, the Lords of the Treasury 
 would do nothing for it. Naturally, too, the rich and 
 powerful Church of England secured the greater part of the 
 grant for itself. There was no inspection of the schools ; 
 no reports were made to Parliament as to the manner in 
 which the system worked ; no steps were taken to find 
 out if the teachers were qualified or the teaching was
 
 160 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 good. " The statistics of the schools," says a writer in 
 the Ediiiburgh Iteview, " were alone considered the size 
 of the school-room, the cost of the building, and the number 
 of scholars." In 1839 Lord John Russell proposed to 
 increase the grant, and an Order in Council transferred its 
 distribution to a committee of the privy council, com- 
 posed of the president and not more than five members. 
 Lord John Russell also proposed the appointment of in- 
 spectors, the founding of a model school for the training 
 of teachers, and the establishment of infant schools. The 
 model school and the infant schools were to be practically 
 unsectarian. The committee of the privy council were to 
 be allowed to depart from the principle of proportioning 
 their grants to the amount of local contribution, to estab- 
 lish in poor and crowded places schools not necessarily 
 connected with either of the two educational societies, 
 and to extend their aid even to schools where the Roman 
 Catholic version of the Bible was read. The proposals of 
 the Government were fiercely opposed in both Houses 
 of Parliament. The most various and fantastic forms of 
 bigotry combined against them. The applicaton of public 
 money, and especially through the hands of the committee 
 of privy council, to any schools not under the control and 
 authority of the Church of England was denounced as a 
 state recognition of popery and heresy. Scarcely less 
 marvellous to us now are the speeches of those who 
 promoted than of those who opposed the scheme. Lord 
 John Russell himself, who was much in advance of the 
 common opinion of those among whom he moved, pleaded 
 for the principles of his measure in a tone rather of 
 apology than of actual vindication. He did not venture 
 to oppose point-blank the claim of those who insisted that 
 it was part of the sacred right of the Established Church 
 to have the teaching all done in her own way or to allow 
 no teaching at all.
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 161 
 
 The Government did not get all they sought for. They 
 had a fierce fight for their grant, and an amendment 
 moved by Lord Stanley, to the effect that her Majesty 
 be requested to revoke the Order in Council appointing 
 the Committee on Education, was only negatived by a 
 majority of two votes 275 to 273. In the Lords, to which 
 the struggle was transferred, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury actually moved and carried by a large majority an 
 address to the Queen praying her to revoke the Order in 
 Council. The Queen replied firmly that the funds voted 
 by Parliament would be found to be laid out in strict 
 accordance with constitutional usage, the rights of con- 
 science, and the safety of the Established Church, and 
 so dismissed the question. The Government, therefore, 
 succeeded in establishing their Committee of Council on 
 Education, the institution by which our system of pub- 
 lic instruction has been managed ever since. The minis- 
 try, on the whole, showed to advantage in this struggle. 
 They took up a principle, and they stood by it. If, as we 
 have said, the speeches made by the promoters of the 
 scheme seem amazing to any intelligent person of our 
 time because of the feeble, apologetic, and almost craven 
 tone in which they assert the claims of a system of na- 
 tional education, yet it must be admitted that the prin- 
 ciple was accepted by the Government at some risk, and 
 that it was not shabbily deserted in the face of hostile 
 pressure. It is worth noticing that while the increased 
 grant and the principles on which it was to be distributed 
 were opposed by such men as Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
 Stanley, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Disraeli, it had the sup- 
 port of Mr. O'Connell and of Mr. Smith O'Brien. Both 
 these Irish leaders only regretted that the grant was 
 not very much larger, and that it was not appropriated 
 on a more liberal principle. O'Connell was the recog- 
 nized leader of the Irish Catholics and Nationalists ; 
 
 11
 
 162 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Smith O'Brien was an aristocratic Protestant. With all 
 the weakness of the Whig Ministry, their term of office 
 must at least be remarkable for the new departure it took 
 in the matter of national education. The appointment of 
 the Committee of Council marks an epoch. 
 
 Indeed, 'the history of that time seems full of Reform 
 projects. The Parliamentary annals contain the names 
 of various measures of social and political improvement 
 which might in themselves, it would seem, bear witness 
 to the most unsleeping activity on the part of any minis- 
 try. Measures for general registration ; for the reduction of 
 the stamp duty on newspapers ; and of the duty on paper ; 
 for the improvement of the jail system ; for the spread of 
 vaccination ; for the regulation of the labor of children ; for 
 the prohibition of the employment of any child or young 
 person under twenty-one in the cleaning of chimneys by 
 climbing ; for the suppression of the punishment of the 
 pillory ; efforts to relieve the Jews from civil disabilities 
 these are but a few of the many projects of social and polit- 
 ical reform that occupied the attention of that busy period, 
 which somehow appears, nevertheless, to have been so 
 sleepy and do-nothing. How does it come about that we 
 can regard the ministry hi whose time all these things 
 were done or attempted as exhausted and worthless ? 
 
 One answer is plain. The reforming energy was hi the 
 time and not hi the ministry. In every instance public 
 opinion went far ahead of the inclinations of her Majesty's 
 ministers. There was a just and general conviction that 
 if the Government were left to themselves they would do 
 nothing. When they were driven into any course of im- 
 provement they usually did all they could to minimize 
 the amount of reform to be effected. Whatever they un- 
 dertook they seemed to undertake reluctantly, and as if 
 only with the object of preventing other people from hav- 
 ing anything to do with it. Naturally, therefore, they
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 163 
 
 got little or no thanks for any good they might have 
 done. When they brought in a measure to abolish in 
 various cases the punishment of death, they fell so far 
 behind public opinion and the inclinations of the commis- 
 sion that had for eight years been inquiring into the state 
 of our criminal law, that their bill only passed by very 
 narrow majorities, and impressed many ardent reformers 
 as if it were meant rather to withhold than to advance a 
 genuine reform. In truth, it was a period of enthusiasm 
 and of growth, and the ministry did not understand this. 
 Lord Melbourne seems to have found it hard to persuade 
 himself that there was any real anxiety in the mind of 
 any one to do anything in particular. He had, appar- 
 ently, got into his mind the conviction that the only sensi- 
 ble thing the people of England could do was to keep up 
 the Melbourne Ministry, and that, being a sensible people, 
 they would naturally do this. He had grown into some- 
 thing like the condition of a pampered old hall-porter, 
 who, dozing in his chair, begins to look on it as an act 
 of rudeness if any visitor to his master presumes to knock 
 at the door and so disturb him from his comfortable rest. 
 Any one who doubts that it was really a time of en- 
 thusiasm in these countries has only to glance at its 
 history. The Church of England and the Church of 
 Scotland were alike convulsed by movements which were 
 the offspring of a genuine and irresistible enthusiasm 
 enthusiasm of that strong, far-reaching kind which makes 
 epochs in the history of a church or a people. In Ireland 
 Father Mathew, a pious and earnest friar, who had neither 
 eloquence nor learning nor genius, but only enthusiasm 
 and noble purpose, had stirred the hearts of the population 
 in the cause of temperance as thoroughly as Peter the 
 Hermit might have stirred the heart of a people to a crusade. 
 Many of the efforts of social reform which are still periodi- 
 cally made among ourselves had their beginning then, and
 
 164 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 can scarcely be said to have made much advance from that 
 day to this. In July, 1840, Mr. Hume moved in the House 
 of Commons for an address to the Throne, pray ing that the 
 British Museum and the National Gallery might be opened 
 to the public after Divine service on Sundays, " at such 
 hours as taverns, beer-shops, and gin-shops are legally 
 open." The motion was, of course, rejected; but it is 
 worthy of mention now as an evidence of the point to 
 which the spirit of social reform had advanced at a period 
 when Lord Melbourne had seemingly made up his mind 
 that reform had done enough for his generation, and that 
 ministers might be allowed, at least during his time, to 
 eat their meals in peace without being disturbed by the 
 urgencies of restless Radicals, or threatened with hostile 
 majorities and Tory successes. 
 
 The Stockdale case was a disturbance of ministerial 
 repose which at one time threatened to bring about a 
 collision between the privileges of Parliament and the 
 authority of the law courts. The Messrs. Hansard, the 
 well-known Parliamentary printers, had published certain 
 Parliamentary reports on prisons, in which it happened 
 that a book published by J. J. Stockdale was described as 
 obscene and disgusting in the extreme. Stockdale pro- 
 ceeded against the Hansards for libel. The Hansards 
 pleaded the authority of Parliament ; but Lord Chief- 
 justice Denman decided that the House of Commons was 
 not Parliament, and had no authority to sanction the 
 publication of libels on individuals. Out of this contradic- 
 tion of authorities arose a long and often a very unseemly 
 squabble. The House of Commons would not give up its 
 privileges ; the law courts would not admit its authority. 
 Judgment was given by default against the Hansards in 
 one of the many actions for libel which arose out of the 
 affair, and the sheriffs of London were called on to seize 
 end sell some of the Hansards' property to satisfy the
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 165 
 
 demands of the plaintiff. The unhappy sheriffs were 
 placed, as the homely old saying would describe it, between 
 the devil and the deep sea. If they touched the property 
 of the Hansards they were acting in contempt of the privi- 
 lege of the House of Commons, and were liable to be com- 
 mitted to Newgate. If, on the other hand, they refused to 
 carry out the orders of the Court of Queen's Bench, that 
 court would certainly send them to prison for the refusal. 
 The reality of their dilemma was, in fact, very soon 
 proved. The amount of the damages was paid into the 
 Sheriffs Court in order to avoid the scandal of a sale, but 
 under protest ; the House of Commons ordered the sheriffs 
 to refund the money to the Hansards; the Court of 
 Queen's Bench was moved for an order to direct the 
 sheriffs to pay it over to Stockdale. The sheriffs were 
 finally committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms 
 for contempt of the House of Commons. The Court of 
 Queen's Bench served a writ of habeas corpus on the 
 sergeant-at-arms calling on him to produce the sheriffs in 
 court. The House directed the sergeant-at-arms to inform 
 the court that he held the sheriffs in custody by order of 
 the Commons. The sergeant-at-arms took the sheriffs to 
 the Court of Queen's Bench and made his statement 
 there ; his explanation was declared reasonable and suffi- 
 cient, and he marched his prisoners back again. A great 
 deal of this ridiculous sort of thing went on which it is 
 not now necessary to describe in any detail. The House 
 of Commons, what with the arrest of the sheriffs and of 
 agents acting on behalf of the pertinacious Stockdale, 
 had on their hands batches of prisoners with whom they 
 did not know in the least what to do ; the whole affair 
 created immense popular excitement mingled with much 
 ironical laughter. At last the House of Commons had 
 recourse to legislation, and Lord John Russell brought 
 in a bill on March 3d, 1840, to afford summary protection
 
 166 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 to all persons employed in the publication of Parlia- 
 mentary papers. The preamble of the measure declared 
 that "whereas it is essential to the due and effectual 
 discharge of the functions and duties of Parliament that 
 no obstruction should exist to the publication of the 
 reports, papers, votes, or proceedings of either House, as 
 such House should deem fit," it is to be lawful " for any 
 person or persons against whom any civil or criminal 
 proceedings shall be taken on account of such publication 
 to bring before the court a certificate under the hand of 
 the Lord Chancellor or the Speaker, stating that it was 
 published by the authority of the House, and the proceed- 
 ings should at once be stayed." This bill was run quickly 
 through both Houses not without some opposition or 
 at least murmur in the Upper House and it became 
 law on April 14th. It settled the question satisfactorily 
 enough, although it certainly did not define the relative 
 rights of Parliament and the courts of law. No difficulty 
 of the same kind has since arisen. The sheriffs and the 
 other prisoners were discharged from custody after a while, 
 and the public excitement went out in quiet laughter. 
 
 The question, however, was a very serious one ; and it 
 is significant that public opinion was almost entirely on 
 the side of the law courts and the sheriffs. The ministry 
 must have so fallen hi public favor as to bring the House 
 of Commons into disrepute along with them, or such a 
 sentiment could not have prevailed so widely out-of-doors. 
 The public seemed to see nothing in the whole affair 
 but a tyrannical House of Commons wielding illimitable 
 powers against a few humble individuals, some of whom, 
 the sheriffs, for instance, had no share in the controversy 
 except that imposed on them by official duty. Accord- 
 ingly, the sheriffs were the heroes of the hour, and were 
 toasted and applauded all over the country. Assuredly 
 it was an awkward position for the House of Commons to
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 167 
 
 be placed in when it had to vindicate its privileges by 
 committing to prison men who were merely doing a duty 
 which the law courts imposed on them. It would have 
 been better, probably, if the Government had more firmly 
 asserted the rights of the House of Commons at the begin- 
 ning, and thus allowed the public to see the real question 
 which the whole controversy involved. Nothing can be 
 more clear now than the paramount importance of secur- 
 ing to each House of Parliament an absolute authority and 
 freedom of publication. No evil that could possibly arise 
 out of the misuse of such a power could be anything like 
 that certain to come of a state of things which restricted by 
 libel laws, or otherwise, the right of either House to publish 
 whatever it thought proper for the public good. Not a sin- 
 gle measure for the reform of any great grievance, from 
 the abolition of slavery to the passing of the Factory Acts, 
 but might have been obstructed, and perhaps even pre- 
 vented, if the free exposure of existing evils were denied 
 to the Houses of Parliament. In this country, Parliament 
 only works through the power of public opinion. A social 
 reform is not carried out simply by virtue of the decision 
 of a cabinet that something ought to be done. The 
 attention of the Legislature and of the public has to be 
 called to the grievance again and again, by speeches, 
 resolutions, debates, and divisions, before there is any 
 chance of carrying a measure on the subject. When 
 public opinion is ripe, and is strong enough to help the 
 Government through with a reform in spite of prejudices 
 and vested interests, then, and not till then, the reform is 
 carried. But it would be hardly possible to bring the 
 matter up to this stage of growth if those who were inter- 
 ested in upholding a grievance had the power of worry- 
 ing the publishers of the Parliamentary reports by legal 
 proceedings in the earlier stages of the discussion. Nor 
 would it be of any use to protect merely the freedom of
 
 168 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 debate in Parliament itself. It is not through debate, but 
 through publication, that the public opinion of the coun- 
 try is reached. In truth, the poorer a man is, the weaker 
 and the humbler, the greater need is there that he should 
 call out for the full freedom of publication to be vested in 
 the hands of Parliament. The factory child, the climbing 
 boy, the apprentice under colonial systems of modified 
 slavery, the seaman sent to sea in the rotten ship ; the 
 woman clad in unwomanly rags who sings her " Song of 
 a Shirt ; " the other woman, almost literally unsexed hi 
 form, function, and soul, who in her filthy trousers of 
 sacking dragged on all-fours the coal trucks in the mines 
 these are the tyrants and the monopolists for whom we 
 assert the privilege of Parliamentary publication. 
 
 The operations which took place about this time in 
 Syria belong, perhaps, rather to the general history of the 
 Ottoman Empire than to that of England. But they had 
 so important a bearing on the relations between this coun- 
 try and France, and are so directly connected with sub- 
 sequent events in which England bore a leading part, that 
 it would be impossible to pass them over without some 
 notice here. Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, the most 
 powerful of all the Sultan's feudatories, a man of iron will 
 and great capacity both for war and administration, had 
 made himself for a time master of Syria. By the aid of 
 the warlike qualities of his adopted son, Ibrahim Pasha, 
 he had defeated the armies of the Porte wherever he had 
 encountered them. Mohammed's victories had, for the 
 time, compelled the Porte to allow him to remain hi power 
 in Syria ; but the Sultan had long been preparing to try 
 another effort for the reduction of his ambitious vassal. 
 In 1839 the Sultan again declared war against Mohammed 
 Ali. Ibrahim Pasha again obtained an overwhelming 
 victory over the Turkish army. The energetic Sultan Mah- 
 moud, a man not unworthy to cope with such an adversary
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 169 
 
 as Mohammed All, died suddenly ; and immediately after 
 his death the Capitan Pasha, or Lord High Admiral of the 
 Ottoman fleet, went over to the Egyptians with all his 
 vessels ; an act of almost unexampled treachery even in 
 the history of the Ottoman Empire. It was evident that 
 Turkey was not able to hold her own against the formi- 
 dable Mohammed and his successful son ; and the policy 
 of the "Western Powers of Europe, and of England especial- 
 ly, had long been to maintain the Ottoman Empire as a 
 necessary part of the common state system. The policy 
 of Russia was to keep up that empire as long as it suited 
 her own purposes ; to take care that no other power got 
 anything out of Turkey ; and to prepare the way for such 
 a partition of the spoils of Turkey as would satisfy Rus- 
 sian interests. Russia, therefore, was to be found now 
 defending Turkey and now assailing her. The course taken 
 by Russia was seemingly inconsistent ; but it was only 
 inconsistent as the course of a sailing ship may be 
 which now tacks to this side and now to that, but has 
 a clear object in view and a port to reach all the while. 
 England was then, and for a long time after, steadily bent 
 on preserving the Turkish Empire, and in a great measure 
 as a rampart against the schemes and ambitions imputed 
 to Russia herself. France was less firmly set on the 
 maintenance of Turkey ; and France, moreover, had got it 
 into her mind that England had designs of her own on 
 Egypt. Austria was disposed to go generally with Eng- 
 land ; Prussia was little more than a nominal sharer in 
 the alliance that was now tinkered up. It is evident that 
 such an alliance could not be very harmonious or direct in 
 its action. It was, however, effective enough to prove too 
 strong for the Pasha of Egypt. A fleet made up of English, 
 Austrian, and Turkish vessels bombarded Acre ; an allied 
 army drove the Egyptians from several of their strong- 
 holds. Ibrahim Pasha, with all his courage and genius,
 
 170 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 was not equal to the odds against which he now saw him- 
 self forced to contend. He had to succumb. No one could 
 doubt that he and his father were incomparably better 
 able to give good government and the chances of develop- 
 ment to Syria than the Porte had ever been. But in this 
 instance, as in others, the odious principle was upheld by 
 England and her actual allies that the Turkish Empire 
 must be maintained, at no matter what cost of suffering 
 and degradation to its subject populations. Mohammed 
 Ali was deprived of all his Asiatic possessions, but was 
 secured in his government of Egypt. A convention signed 
 at London on July 15th, 1840, arranged for the imposition 
 of those terms on Mohammed Ali. 
 
 The convention was signed by the representatives of 
 Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, on the one part, 
 and of the Ottoman Porte on the other. The name of 
 France was not found there. France had drawn back from 
 the alliance, and for some time seemed as if she were likely 
 to take arms against it. M. Thiers was then her Prime- 
 minister : he was a man of quick fancy, restless and 
 ambitious temperament, and what we cannot help calling 
 a vulgar spirit of national self-sufficiency we are speak- 
 ing now of the Thiers of 1840, not of the wise and capable 
 statesman, tempered and tried by the fire of adversity, 
 who reorganized France out of the ruin and welter of 1870. 
 Thiers persuaded himself and the great majority of his 
 countrymen that England was bent upon driving Moham- 
 med Ali out of Egypt as well as out of Syria, and that 
 her object was to obtain possession of Egypt for herself. 
 For some months it seemed as if war were inevitable 
 between England and France, although there was not in 
 reality the slightest reason why the two states should 
 quarrel. France was just as far away from any thought of 
 a really disinterested foreign policy as England. England, 
 on the other hand, had not the remotest idea of becom-
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF THE WHIG MINISTRY. 171 
 
 ing the possessor of Egypt. Fortunately Louis Philippe 
 and M. Guizot were both strongly in favor of peace ; 
 M. Thiers resigned ; and M. Guizot became Minister for 
 Foreign Affairs, and virtually head of the Government. 
 Thiers defended his policy in the French Chamber in a 
 scream of passionate and almost hysterical declamation. 
 Again and again he declared that his mind had been made 
 up to go to war if England did not at once give way and 
 modify the terms of the convention of July. It cannot 
 be doubted that Thiers carried with him much of the 
 excited public feeling of France. But the King and M. 
 Guizot were happily supported by the majority in and 
 out of the Chambers ; and on July 13th, 1841, the Treaty 
 of London was signed which provided for the settlement 
 of the affairs of Egypt on the basis of the arrangement 
 already made, and which contained, moreover, the stipula- 
 tion, to be referred to more than once hereafter, by which 
 the Sultan declared himself firmly resolved to maintain 
 the ancient principle of his empire that no foreign ship 
 of war was to be admitted into the Dardanelles and the 
 Bosphorus, with the exception of light vessels for which 
 a firman was granted. 
 
 The public of this country had taken but little interest 
 in the controversy about Egypt, at least until it seemed 
 likely to involve England in a war with France. Some 
 of the episodes of the war were indeed looked upon with 
 a certain satisfaction by people here at home. The 
 bravery of Charles Napier, the hot-headed, self-conceited 
 commodore, was enthusiastically extolled, and his feats of 
 successful audacity were glorified as though they had 
 shown the genius of a Nelson or the clever resource of a 
 Cochrane. Not many of Napier's admirers cared a rush 
 about the merits of the quarrel between the Porte and the 
 Pasha. Most of them would have been just as well pleased 
 if Napier had been fighting for the Pasha and against the
 
 172 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Porte ; not a few utterly ignorant as to whether he was 
 fighting for Porte or for Pasha. Those who claimed to 
 be more enlightened had a sort of general idea that it 
 was in some way essential to the safety and glory of Eng- 
 land that whenever Turkey was in trouble we should at 
 once become her champions, tame her rebels, and conquer 
 her enemies. Unfounded as were the suspicions of 
 Frenchmen about our designs upon Egypt, they can hardly 
 be called very unreasonable. Even a very cool and im- 
 partial Frenchman might be led to the conclusion that 
 free England would not without some direct purpose of 
 her own have pledged herself to the cause of a base and 
 a decaying despotism. 
 
 Steadily, meanwhile, did the ministry go from bad to 
 worse. They had greatly damaged their character by the 
 manner in which they had again and again put up with 
 defeat, and consented to resume or retain office on any 
 excuse or pretext. They were remarkably bad adminis- 
 trators ; their finances were wretchedly managed. In later 
 times we have come to regard the Tories as especially 
 weak in the matter of finance. A well-managed revenue 
 and a comfortable surplus are generally looked upon as in 
 some way or other the monopoly of a Liberal administra- 
 tion ; while lavish expenditure, deficit, and increased taxa- 
 tion are counted among the necessary accompaniments 
 of a Tory Government. So nearly does public opinion 
 on both sides go to accepting these conditions, that there 
 are many Tories who take it rather as a matter of pride 
 that their leaders are not mean economists, and who regard 
 a free-handed expenditure of the national revenue as 
 something peculiarly gentlemanlike, and in keeping with 
 the honorable traditions of a great country party. But 
 this was not the idea which prevailed in the days of the 
 Melbourne Ministry. Then the universal conviction was 
 that the "Whigs were incapable of managing the finances.
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF TIIE WHIG MINISTRY. 173 
 
 The budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. 
 Baring, showed a deficiency of nearly two millions. This 
 deficiency he proposed to meet in part by alteration in the 
 sugar duties ; but the House of Commons, after a long 
 debate, rejected his proposals by a majority of thirty-six. 
 It was then expected, of course, that ministers would 
 resign ; but they were not yet willing to accept the con- 
 sequences of defeat. They thought they had another 
 stone in their sling. Lord John Russell had previously 
 given notice of his intention to move for a committee of 
 the whole House to consider the state of legislation with 
 regard to the trade in corn ; and he now brought forward 
 an announcement of his plan, which was to propose a 
 fixed duty of eight shillings per quarter on wheat, and 
 proportionately diminished rates on rye, barley, and oats. 
 Except for its effect on the fortunes of the Melbourne 
 Ministry there is not the slightest importance to be 
 attached to this proposal. It was an experiment in the 
 direction of the Free-traders, who were just beginning 
 to be powerful, although they were not nearly strong 
 enough yet to dictate the policy of a government. We 
 shall have to tell the story of Free- trade hereafter ; this 
 present incident is no part of the history of a great move- 
 ment ; it is merely a small party dodge. It deceived no 
 one. Lord Melbourne had always spoken with the utter- 
 most contempt of the Free-trade agitation. With charac- 
 teristic oaths, he had declared that of all the mad things 
 he had ever heard suggested, Free-trade was the maddest. 
 Lord John Russell himself, although far more enlightened 
 than the Prime-minister, had often condemned and 
 sneered at the demand for Free-trade. The conversion 
 of the ministers into the official advocates of a moderate 
 fixed duty was all too sadden for the conscience, for the 
 very stomach of the nation. Public opinion would not 
 endure it. Nothing but harm came to the Whigs from
 
 174 A IllSTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the attempt. Instead of any new adherents or fresh 
 sympathy being won for them by their proposal, people 
 only asked, "Will nothing, then, turn them out of office? 
 Will they never have done with trying new tricks to keep 
 in place?" 
 
 Sir Robert Peel took, in homely phrase, the bull by the 
 horns. He proposed a direct vote of want of confidence 
 a resolution declaring that ministers did not possess 
 confidence of the House sufficiently to enable them to carry 
 through the measures which they deemed of essential im- 
 portance to the public welfare, and that their continuance 
 hi office under such circumstances was at variance with the 
 spirit of the Constitution. On June 4th, 1841, the division 
 was taken ; and the vote of no-confidence was carried by a 
 majority of one. Even the Whigs could not stand this. 
 Lord Melbourne at last began to think that things were 
 looking serious. Parliament was dissolved, and the result 
 of the general election was that the Tories were found to 
 have a majority even greater than they themselves had 
 anticipated. The moment the new Parliament was as- 
 sembled amendments to the address were carried hi both 
 Houses in a sense hostile to the Government. Lord Mel- 
 bourne and his colleagues had to resign, and Sir Robert 
 Peel was intrusted with the task of forming an adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 We have not much more to do with Lord Melbourne in 
 this history. He merely drops out of it. Between his ex- 
 pulsion from office and his death, which took place hi 1848, 
 he did little or nothing to call for the notice of any one. 
 It was said at one time that his closing years were lone- 
 some and melancholy ; but this has lately been denied, 
 and indeed it is not likely that one who had such a genial 
 temper and so many friends could have been left to the 
 dreariness of a not self-sufficing solitude and to the bitter- 
 ness of neglect. He was a generous and kindly man ; his
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF TUE WHIG MINISTRY. 175 
 
 personal character, although often assailed, was free of 
 any serious reproach ; he was a failure in office, not so 
 much from want of ability, as because he was a politician 
 without convictions. 
 
 The Peel Ministry came into power with great hopes. 
 It had Lord Lyndhurst for Lord Chancellor ; Sir James 
 Graham for Home Secretary ; Lord Aberdeen at the For- 
 eign Office; Lord Stanley was Colonial Secretary. The 
 most remarkable man not in the cabinet, soon to be one 
 of the foremost statesmen in the country, was Mr. W. E. 
 Gladstone. It is a fact of some significance in the history 
 of the Peel administration, that the elections which 
 brought the new ministry into power brought Mr. Cobden 
 for the first tune into the House of Commons.
 
 170 A IIISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHUBCHE8. 
 
 WHILE Lord Melbourne and his Whig colleagues, still 
 hi office, were fribbling away their popularity on the 
 pleasant assumption that nobody was particularly hi 
 earnest about anything, the Vice-chancellor and heads of 
 houses held a meeting at Oxford, and passed a censure on 
 the celebrated " No. 90," of " Tracts for the Times." The 
 movement, of which some important tendencies were for- 
 mally censured in the condemnation of this tract, was one 
 of the most momentous that had stirred the Church of 
 England since the Reformation. The author of the tract 
 was Dr. John Henry Newman, and the principal ground 
 for its censure, by voices claiming authority, was the 
 principle it seemed to put forward that a man might 
 honestly subscribe all the articles and formularies of the 
 English Church, while yet holding many of the doctrines 
 of the Church of Rome, against which those articles were 
 regarded as a necessary protest. The great movement 
 which was thus brought into sudden question and pub- 
 licity was in itself an offspring of the immense stirring of 
 thought which the French Revolution called up, and 
 which had its softened echo hi the English Reform Bill. 
 The centre of the religious movement was to be found hi 
 the University of Oxford. When it is in the right, and 
 when it is hi the wrong, Oxford has always had more of 
 the sentimental and of the poetic in its cast of thought 
 than its rival or colleague of Cambridge. There were two
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 177 
 
 influences then in operation over England, both of which 
 alike aroused the alarm and the hostility of certain gifted 
 and enthusiastic young Oxford men. One was the ten- 
 dency to Rationalism drawn from the German theologians ; 
 the other was the manner in which the connection of the 
 Church with the State in England was beginning to 
 operate to the disadvantage of the Church as a sacred 
 institution and teacher. The Reform party everywhere 
 were assailing the rights and property of the Church. In 
 Ireland, especially, experiments were made which every 
 practical man will now regard with approval, whether he 
 be Churchman or not, but which seemed to the devoted 
 ecclesiast of Oxford to be fraught with danger to the free- 
 dom and influence of the Church. Out of the contempla- 
 tion of these dangers sprang the desire to revive the 
 authority of the Church; to quicken her with a new 
 vitality ; to give her once again that place as guide and 
 inspirer of the national life which her ardent votaries 
 believed to be hers by right, and to have been forfeited 
 only by the carelessness of her authorities, and their 
 failure to fulfil the duties of her Heaven-assigned mission. 
 No movement could well have had a purer source. 
 None could have had more disinterested and high-minded 
 promoters. It was borne in upon some earnest, unresting, 
 souls, like that of the sweet and saintly Keble souls 
 " without haste and without rest," like Goethe's star that 
 the Church of England had higher duties and nobler 
 claims than the business of preaching harmless sermons 
 and the power of enriching bishops. Keble could not bear 
 to think of the Church taking pleasure since all is well. 
 He urged on some of the more vigorous and thoughtful 
 minds around him, or rather he suggested it by his influ- 
 ence and his example, that they should reclaim for the 
 Church the place which ought to be hers, as the true suc- 
 cessor of the Apostles. He claimed for her that she, and 
 
 12
 
 178 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 she alone, was the real Catholic Church, and that Rome 
 had wandered away from the right path, and foregone 
 the glorious mission which she might have maintained. 
 Among those who shared the spirit and purpose of Keble 
 were Richard Hurrell Froude, the historian's elder brother, 
 who gave rich promise of a splendid career, but who died 
 while still in comparative youth ; Dr. Pusey, afterward 
 leader of the school of ecclesiasticism which bears his 
 name ; and, most eminent of all, Dr. Newman. Keble 
 had taken part in the publication of a series of treatises 
 called " Tracts for the Times," the object of which was to 
 vindicate the real mission, as the writers believed, of the 
 Church of England. This was the Tractarian movement, 
 which had such various and memorable results. Newman 
 first started the project of the Tracts, and wrote the most 
 remarkable of them. He had, up to this time, been dis- 
 tinguished as one of the most unsparing enemies of Rome. 
 At the same time he was, as he has himself said, " fierce " 
 against the " instruments " and the " manifestations " of 
 " the Liberal cause." While he was at Algiers once, a 
 French vessel put in there, flying the tricolor ; Newman 
 would not even look at her. "On my return, though 
 forced to stop twenty-four hours at Paris, I kept in-doors 
 the whole time, and all that I saw of that beautiful city 
 was what I saw from the diligence." He had never had 
 any manner of association with Roman Catholics ; had, 
 in fact, known singularly little of them. As Newman 
 studied and wrote concerning the best way to restore the 
 Church of England to her proper place in the national 
 life, he kept the thought before him "that there was 
 something greater than the Established Church, and that 
 that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic, set up from 
 the beginning, of which she was but the local presence 
 and the organ. She was nothing unless she was this. 
 She must be dealt with strongly, or she would be lost
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 179 
 
 There was need of a second Reformation." At this time 
 the idea of leaving the Church never, Dr. Newman him- 
 self assures us, had crossed his imagination. He felt 
 alarmed for the Church between German Rationalism 
 and man-of-the- world liberalism. His fear was that the 
 Church would sink to be the servile instrument of a 
 State, and a Liberal State. 
 
 The abilities of Dr. Newman were hardly surpassed by 
 any contemporary in any department of thought. His 
 position and influence in Oxford were almost unique. There 
 was in his intellectual temperament a curious combination 
 of the mystic and the logical. He was at once a poetic 
 dreamer and a sophist in the true and not the corrupt 
 and ungenerous sense of the latter word. It had often 
 been said of him and of another great Englishman, that 
 a change in their early conditions and training would easily 
 have made of Newman a Stuart Mill, and of Mill a New- 
 man. England, in our time, has hardly had a greater 
 master of argument and of English prose than Newman. 
 He is one of the keenest of dialecticians ; and, like Mill, 
 has the rare art that dissolves all the difficulties of the 
 most abstruse or perplexed subject, and shows it bare 
 and clear even to the least subtle of readers. His words 
 dispel mists ; and whether they who listen agree or not, 
 they cannot fail to understand. A penetrating, poignant, 
 satirical humor is found in most of his writings, an irony 
 sometimes piercing suddenly through it like a darting 
 pain. On the other hand, a generous vein of poetry and 
 of pathos informs his style ; and there are many passages 
 of his works in which he rises to the height of a genuine 
 and noble eloquence. 
 
 In all the arts that make a great preacher or orator 
 Newman was strikingly deficient. His manner was con- 
 strained, ungraceful, and even awkward ; his voice was 
 thin and weak. His bearing was not at first impressive
 
 180 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in any way. A gaunt, emaciated figure, a sharp and eagle 
 face, a cold, meditative eye, rather repelled than attracted 
 those who saw him for the first time. Singularly devoid 
 of affectation, Newman did not always conceal his intel- 
 lectual scorn of men who made loud pretence with inferior 
 gifts, and the men must have been few indeed whose 
 gifts were not inferior to his. Newman had no scorn for 
 intellectual inferiority in itself ; he despised it only when 
 it gave itself airs. His influence while he was the vicar 
 at St. Mary's at Oxford was profound. As Mr. Gladstone 
 said of him in a recent speech, " without ostentation or 
 effort, but by simple excellence, he was continually drawing 
 undergraduates more and more around him." Mr. Glad- 
 stone in the same speech gave a description of Dr. New- 
 man's pulpit style which is interesting : " Dr. Newman's 
 manner in the pulpit was one which, if you considered it 
 in its separate parts, would lead you to arrive at very 
 unsatisfactory conclusions. There was not very much 
 change in the inflection of the voice ; action there was 
 none ; his sermons were read, and his eyes were always 
 on his book ; and all that, you will say, is against efficiency 
 in preaching. Yes ; but you take the man as a whole, 
 and there was a stamp and a seal upon him, there was a 
 solemn music and sweetness in his tone, there was a com- 
 pleteness in the figure, taken together with the tone and 
 with the manner, which made even his delivery, such as 
 I have described it, and though exclusively with written 
 sermons, singularly attractive." The stamp and seal were, 
 indeed, those which are impressed by genius, piety, and 
 earnestness. No opponent ever spoke of Newman but 
 with admiration for his intellect and respect for his char- 
 acter. Dr. Newman had a younger brother, Francis W. 
 Newman, who also possessed remarkable ability and 
 earnestness. He, too, was distinguished at Oxford, and 
 seemed to have a great career there before him. But he
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 181 
 
 was drawn one way by the wave of thought before his more 
 famous brother had been drawn the other way. In 1830 
 the younger Newman found himself prevented by religious 
 scruples from subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles for his 
 master's degree. He left the unversity, and wandered 
 for years in the East, endeavoring, not very successfully, 
 perhaps, to teach Christianity on its broadest base to 
 Mohammedans ; and then he came back to England to 
 take his place among the leaders of a certain school of 
 free thought. Fate had dealt with those brothers as with 
 the two friends in Richter's story : " it seized their bleed- 
 ing hearts, and flung them different ways." 
 
 When Dr. Newman wrote the famous Tract " No. 90," 
 for which he was censured, he bowed to the authority of 
 his bishop, if not to that of the heads of houses ; and he 
 discontinued the publication of such treatises. But he 
 did not admit any change of opinion ; and, indeed, soon 
 after he edited a publication called The British Critic, in 
 which many of the principles held to be exclusively those 
 of the Church of Rome were enthusiastically claimed for 
 the English Church. Yet a little and the gradual work- 
 ing of Newman's mind became evident to all the world. 
 The brightest and most penetrating intellect in the Church 
 of England was withdrawn from her service, and New- 
 man went over to the Church of Rome. His secession 
 was described by Mr. Disraeli, a quarter of a century 
 afterward, as having " dealt a blow to the Church of Eng- 
 land under which she still reels." To this result had the 
 inquiry conducted him which had led his friend Dr. Pusey 
 merely to endeavor to incorporate some of the mysticism 
 and the symbols of Rome with the ritual of the English 
 Protestant Church ; which had brought Keble only to seek 
 a more liberal and truly Christian temper for the faith of 
 the Protestant; and which had sent Francis Newman 
 into Radicalism and Rationalism.
 
 182 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 In truth, it is not difficult now to understand how the 
 elder Newman's mind became drawn toward the ancient 
 Church which won him at last. We can see from his own 
 candid account of his earlier sentiments how profoundly 
 mystical was his intellectual nature, and how, long before 
 he was conscious of any such tendency, he was drawn 
 toward the very symbolisms of the Catholic Church. Pas- 
 cal's early and unexplained mastery of mathematical prob- 
 lems which no one had taught him is not more suggestive 
 hi its way than those early drawings of Catholic symbols 
 and devices which, done in his childhood, Newman says 
 surprised and were inexplicable to him when he came on 
 them in years long after. No place could be better fitted 
 to encourage and develop this tendency to mysticism 
 in a thoughtful mind than Oxford, with all its noble 
 memories of scholars and of priests, with its picturesque 
 and poetic surroundings, and its never-fading mediaevalism. 
 Newman lived in the past. His spirit was with mediaeval 
 England. His thoughts were of a time when one Church 
 took charge of the souls of a whole, united, devout people, 
 and stood as the guide and authority appointed for them 
 by Heaven. He thought of such a time until first he 
 believed in it as a thing of the past, and next came to have 
 faith in the possibility of its restoration as a thing of the 
 present and the future. When once he had come to this 
 point the rest followed, " as by lot God wot." No creature 
 could for a moment suppose that that ideal Church was to 
 be found in the English Establishment, submitted as it was 
 to state-made doctrine, and to the decision of the Lord 
 Chancellor, who might be an infidel or a free-liver. The 
 question which Cardinal Manning tells us he asked himself 
 years after, at the time of the Gorham case, must often have 
 presented itself to the mind of Newman Suppose all 
 the Bishops of the Church of England should decide 
 unanimously on any question of doctrine, would any one
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 183 
 
 receive the decision as infallible ? Of course not. Such 
 is not the genius or the principle of the English Church. 
 The Church of England has no pretension to be considered 
 the infallible guide of the people in matters even of doc- 
 trine. Were she seriously to put forward any such pre- 
 tension, it would be rejected with contempt by the common 
 mind of the nation. We are not discussing questions of 
 dogma or the rivals claims of Churches here; we are 
 merely pointing out that to a man with Newman's idea 
 of a church, the Church of England could not long afford 
 a home. That very logical tendency, which in the mind 
 of Newman, as of that of Pascal, contended for supremacy 
 with the tendency to devotion and mysticism, only im- 
 pelled him more rigorously on his way. He could not put 
 up with compromises, and convince himself that he ought 
 to be convinced. He dragged every compromise and 
 every doctrine into the light, and insisted on knowing 
 exactly what it amounted to and what it meant to say. 
 The doctrines and compromises of his own Church did not 
 satisfy him. There are minds which, in this condition of 
 bewilderment, might have been content to find " 110 foot- 
 ing so solid as doubt." Newman had not a mind of that 
 class. He could not believe in a world without a church, 
 or a church without what he held to be inspiration ; and 
 accordingly he threw his whole soul, energy, genius, and 
 fame into the cause of the Church of Rome. 
 
 This, however, did not come all at once. We are antici- 
 pating by a few years the passing over of Dr. Newman, 
 Cardinal Manning, and others to the ancient Church. It 
 is clear that Newman was not himself conscious for a 
 long time of the manner in which he was being drawn, 
 surely although not quickly, in the direction of Rome. He 
 used to be accused at one time of having remained a con- 
 scious Roman Catholic in the English Church, laboring to 
 make new converts. Apart from his own calm assurances,
 
 184 A 1IISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and from the singularly pure and candid nature of the 
 man, there are reasons enough to render such a charge 
 absurd. Indeed, that simple and childish conception of 
 human nature which assumes that a man must always 
 see the logical consequences of certain admissions or 
 inquiries beforehand, because all men can see them after- 
 ward, is rather confusing and out of place when we are 
 considering such a crisis of thought and feeling as that 
 which took place in Oxford, and such men as those who 
 were principally concerned in it. For the present it is 
 enough to say that the object of that movement was to 
 raise the Church of England from apathy, from dull, easy- 
 going acquiescence, from the perfunctory discharge of 
 formal duties, and to quicken her again with the spirit of 
 a priesthood, to arouse her to the living work, spiritual 
 and physical, of an ecclesiastical sovereignty. The im- 
 pulse overshot itself in some cases, and was misdirected 
 in others. It proved a failure, on the whole, as to its 
 definite aims ; and it sometimes left behind it only the 
 ashes of a barren symbolism. But in its source it was 
 generous, beneficent, and noble, and it is hard to believe 
 that there has not been throughout the Church of England, 
 on the whole, a higher spirit at work since the famous 
 Oxford movement began. 
 
 Still greater was the practical importance, at least in 
 defined results, of the movement which went on in Scot- 
 land about the same time. A fortnight before the deci- 
 sion of the heads of houses at Oxford on Dr. Newman's 
 tract, Lord Aberdeen announced in the House of Lords 
 that he did not see his way to do anything in particular 
 with regard to the dissensions in the Church of Scotland. 
 He had tried a measure he said, the year before, and half 
 the Church of Scotland liked it, and the other half de- 
 nounced it, and the Government opposed it ; and he, there- 
 fore, had nothing further to suggest in the matter. The
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 185 
 
 perplexity of Lord Aberdeen only faintly typified the per- 
 plexity of the ministry. Lord Melbourne was about the 
 last man in the world likely to have any sympathy with 
 the spirit which animated the Scottish Reformers, or any 
 notion of how to get out of the difficulty which the whole 
 question presented. Differing as they did in so many 
 other points, there was one central resemblance between 
 the movement in the Kirk of Scotland and that which was 
 going on in the Church of England. In both cases alike 
 the effort of the reforming party was to emancipate the 
 Church from the control of the State in matters involving 
 religious doctrine and duty. In Scotland was soon to be 
 presented the spectacle of a great secession from an Es- 
 tablished Church, not because the seceders objected to the 
 principle of a Church, but because they held that the 
 Establishment was not faithful enough to its mission as a 
 Church. One of the seceders pithily explained the posi- 
 tion of the controversy when he said that he and his fel- 
 lows were leaving the Kirk of Scotland, not because she 
 was too " churchy," but because she was not " churchy " 
 enough. 
 
 The case was briefly this : During the reign of 
 Queen Anne an Act was passed which took from the 
 Church courts in Scotland the free choice as to the ap- 
 pointment of pastors, by subjecting the power of the pres- 
 bytery to the control and interference of the law courts. 
 Harley, Bolingbroke, and Swift, not one of whom cared 
 a rush about the supposed sanctity of an ecclesiastical 
 appointment, were the authors of this compromise, 
 which was exactly of the kind that sensible men of the 
 world everywhere might be supposed likely to accept and 
 approve. In an immense number of Scotch parishes the 
 minister was nominated by a lay patron ; and if the pres- 
 bytery found nothing to condemn in him as to "life, 
 literature, and doctrine," they were compelled to appoint
 
 186 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 him, however unwelcome he might be to the parishioners. 
 Now it is obvious that a man might have a blameless 
 character, sound religious views, and an excellent educa- 
 tion, and nevertheless be totally unfitted to undertake 
 the charge of a Scottish parish. The Southwark congre- 
 gation, who appreciate and delight in the ministrations 
 of Mr. Spurgeon, might very well be excused if they 
 objected to having a perfectly moral Charles Honeyman, 
 even though his religious opinions were identical with 
 those of their favorite, forced upon them at the will of 
 some aristocratic lay patron. The effect of the power 
 conferred on the law courts and the patron was simply 
 in a great number of cases to send families away from 
 the Church of Scotland and into voluntaryism. The 
 Scotch people are above all others impatient of any 
 attempt to force on them the services of unacceptable min- 
 isters. Men clung to the National Church as long as it 
 was natural that is, as long as it represented and pro- 
 tected the sacred claims of a deeply religious people. Dis- 
 sent, or rather voluntaryism, began to make a progress 
 in Scotland that alarmed thoughtful Churchmen. To get 
 over the difficulty, the General Assembly, the highest 
 ecclesiastical court in Scotland, and likewise a sort of 
 Church Parliament, declared that a veto on the nomina- 
 tion of the pastor should be exercised by the congrega- 
 tion, in accordance with a fundamental law of the Church 
 that no pastor should be intruded on any congregation 
 contrary to the will of the people. The Veto Act, as this 
 declaration was called, worked well enough for a short 
 time, and the highest legal authorities declared it not 
 incompatible with the Act of Queen Anne. But it dimin- 
 ished far too seriously the power of the lay patron to be 
 accepted without a struggle. In the celebrated Auchter- 
 arder case the patron won a victory over the Church hi 
 the courts of law, for having presented a minister whose
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 187 
 
 appointment was vetoed by the congregation ; he obtained 
 an order from the civil courts deciding that the presby- 
 tery must take him on trial, in obedience with the Act of 
 Queen Anne, as he was qualified by life, literature, and 
 doctrine. This question, however, was easily settled by 
 the General Assembly of the Church. They left to the 
 patron's nominee his stipend and his house, and took no 
 further notice of him. They did not recognize him as one 
 of their pastors, but he might have, if he would, the 
 manse and the money which the civil courts had declared 
 to be his. They merely appealed to the Legislature to 
 do something which might make the civil law in harmony 
 with the principles of the Church. A more serious ques- 
 tion, however, presently arose. This was the famous 
 Strathbogie case, which brought the authority of the 
 Church and that of the State into irreconcilable conflict. 
 A minister had been nominated in the parish of Marnoch 
 who was so unacceptable to the congregation that 261 out 
 of 300 heads of families objected to his appointment. The 
 General Assembly directed the presbytery of Strathbogie, 
 in which the parish lay, to reject the minister, Mr. Ed- 
 wards. The presbytery had long been noted for its lean- 
 ing toward the claims of the civil power, and it very 
 reluctantly obeyed the command of the highest authority 
 and ruling body of the Church. Another minister was 
 appointed to the parish. Mr. Edwards fought the ques- 
 tion out in the civil court and obtained an interdict 
 against the new appointment, and a decision that the 
 presbytery were bound to take himself on trial. Seven 
 members, constituting the majority of the presbytery, 
 determined, without consulting the General Assembly, to 
 obey the civil power, and they admitted Mr. Edwards on 
 trial. The seven were brought before the bar of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly, and by an overwhelming majority were 
 condemned to be deposed from their places in the minis-
 
 188 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 try. Their parishes were declared vacant. A more com- 
 plete antagonism between Church and State is not pos- 
 sible to imagine. The Church expelled from its ministry 
 seven men for having obeyed the command of the civil 
 laws. 
 
 It was on the motion of Dr. Chalmers that the seven 
 ministers were deposed. Dr. Chalmers became the leader 
 of the movement which was destined within two years 
 from the time we are now surveying to cause the disrup- 
 tion of the ancient Kirk of Scotland. No man could be 
 better fitted for the task of leadership in such a move- 
 ment. He was beyond comparison the foremost man in 
 the Scottish Church. He was the greatest pulpit orator 
 in Scotland, or, indeed, in Great Britain. As a scientific 
 writer, both on astronomy and on political economy, he 
 had made a great mark. From having been in his earlier 
 days the minister of an obscure Scottish village congre- 
 gation, he had suddenly sprung into fame. He was the 
 lion of any city which he happened to visit. If he 
 preached in London, the church was crowded with the 
 leaders of politics, science, and fashion, eager to hear him. 
 The effect he produced in England is all the more surpris- 
 ing seeing that he spoke in the broadest Scottish accent 
 conceivable, and, as one admirer admits, mispronounced 
 almost every word. We have already quoted what Mr. 
 Gladstone said about the style of Dr. Newman ; let us 
 cite also what he says about Dr. Chalmers. " I have 
 heard," said Mr. Gladstone, " Dr. Chalmers preach and 
 lecture. Being a man of Scotch blood, I am very much 
 attached to Scotland, and like even the Scotch accent, but 
 not the Scotch accent of Dr. Chalmers. Undoubtedly 
 the accent of Dr. Chalmers in preaching and delivery was 
 a considerable impediment to his success ; but notwith- 
 standing all that, it was overborne by the power of the 
 man hi preaching overborne by his power, which melted
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 189 
 
 into harmony with all the adjuncts and incidents of the 
 man as a whole, so much so, that although I would have 
 said that the accent of Dr. Chalmers was distasteful, 
 yet in Dr. Chalmers himself I would not have had it 
 altered in the smallest degree." Chalmers spoke with a 
 massive eloquence in keeping with his powerful frame 
 and his broad brow and his commanding presence. His 
 speeches were a strenuous blending of argument and emo- 
 tion. They appealed at once to the strong common-sense 
 and to the deep religious convictions of his Scottish audi- 
 ences. His whole soul was m his work as a leader of 
 religious movements. He cared little or nothing for any 
 popularity or fame that he might have won. Some strong 
 and characteristic words of his own have told us what he 
 thought of passing renown. He called it " a popularity 
 which rifles home of its sweets ; and by elevating a man 
 above his fellows places him in a region of desolation, 
 where he stands a conspicuous mark for the shafts of 
 malice, envy, and detraction; a popularity which, with 
 its head among storms and its feet on the treacherous 
 quicksands, has nothing to lull the agonies of its tottering 
 existence but the hosannas of a drivelling generation." 
 There is no reason to doubt that these were Chalmers's 
 genuine sentiments ; and scarcely any man of his time had 
 come into so sudden and great an endowment of popularity. 
 The reader of to-day must not look for adequate illustra- 
 tion of the genius and the influence of Chalmers in his 
 published works. These do, indeed, show him to have 
 been a strong reasoner and a man of original mind ; but 
 they do not show the Chalmers of Scottish controversy, 
 that Chalmers must be studied through the traces, lying 
 all around, of his influence upon the mind and the history 
 of the Scottish people. The Free Church of Scotland is 
 his monument. He did not make that Church. It was 
 not the work of one man, or, strictly speaking, of one
 
 190 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 generation. It grew naturally out of the inevitable 
 struggle between Church and State. But Chalmers did 
 more than any other man to decide the moment and the 
 manner of its coming into existence, and its success is his 
 best monument. 
 
 For we may anticipate a little in this instance as in that 
 of the Oxford movement, and mention at once the fact that 
 on May 18th, 1843, some five hundred ministers of the 
 Church of Scotland, under the leadership of Dr. Chalmers, 
 seceded from the old Kirk and set about to form the Free 
 Church. The Government of Sir Robert Peel had made a 
 weak effort at compromise by legislative enactment, but 
 had declined to introduce any legislation which should 
 free the Kirk of Scotland from the control of the civil 
 courts, and there was no course for those who held the 
 views of Dr. Chalmers but to withdraw from the Church 
 which admitted that claim of State control. Opinions 
 may differ as to the necessity, the propriety of the seces- 
 sion as to its effects upon the history and the character 
 of the Scottish people since that time ; but there can be 
 no difference of opinion as to the spirit of self-sacrifice in 
 which the step was taken. Five hundred ministers on that 
 memorable day went deliberately forth from their posi- 
 tions of comfort and honor, from home and competence, 
 to meet an uncertain and a perilous future, with perhaps 
 poverty and failure to be the final result of their enter- 
 prise, and with misconstruction and misrepresentation to 
 make the bitter bread of poverty more bitter still. In these 
 pages we have nothing to do with the merits of religious 
 controversies ; and it is no part of our concern to consider 
 even the social and political effects produced upon Scot- 
 land by this great secession. But we need not withhold 
 our admiration from the men who risked and suffered so 
 much in the cause of what they believed to be their 
 Church's true rights; and we are bound to give this
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHURCHES. 191 
 
 admiration as cordially to the poor and nameless ministers, 
 the men of the rank and file, about whose doings history 
 so little concerns herself, as to the leaders like Chalmers, 
 who, whether they sought it or not, found fame shining 
 on their path of self-sacrifice. The history of Scotland 
 is illustrated by many great national deeds. No deed it 
 tells of surpasses in dignity and in moral grandeur that 
 secession to cite the words of the protest "from an 
 Establishment which we loved and prized, through inter- 
 ference with conscience, the dishonor done to Christ's 
 crown, and the rejection of his sole and supreme author- 
 ity as King in his Church."
 
 192 A II1STORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE DISASTERS OP CABUL. 
 
 THE earliest days of the Peel Ministry fell upon trouble, 
 not indeed at home, but abroad. At home the prospect 
 still seemed bright. The birth of the Queen's eldest son 
 was an event welcomed by national congratulation . There 
 was still great distress in the agricultural districts ; but 
 there was a general confidence that the financial genius of 
 Peel would quickly find some way to make burdens light, 
 and that the condition of things all over the country would 
 begin to mend. It was a region far removed from the 
 knowledge and the thoughts of most Englishmen that 
 supplied the news now beginning to come into England 
 day after day, and to thrill the country with the tale of 
 one of the greatest disasters to English policy and Eng- 
 lish arms to be found in all the record of our dealings 
 with the East. There are many still living who can recall 
 with an impression as keen as though it belonged to yes- 
 terday the first accounts that reached this country of the 
 surrender at Cabul, and the gradual extinction of the 
 army that tried to make its retreat through the terrible 
 Pass. 
 
 This grim chapter of history had been for some time in 
 preparation. It may be said to open with the reign itself. 
 News travelled slowly then; and it was quite in the ordi- 
 nary course of things that some part of the empire might 
 be torn with convulsion for months before London knew 
 that the even and ordinary condition of things had been
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 193 
 
 disturbed. In this instance the rejoicings at the acces- 
 sion of the young Queen were still going on, when a series 
 of events had begun in Central Asia destined to excite the 
 profoundest emotion in England, and to exercise the most 
 powerful influence upon our foreign policy down to the 
 present hour. On September 20th, 1837, Captain Alexan- 
 der Burnes arrived at Cabul, the capital of the State of 
 Cabul, in the north of Afghanistan, and the ancient cap- 
 ital of the Emperor Baber, whose tomb is on a hill out- 
 side the city. Burnes was a famous Orientalist and 
 traveller, the Burton or Burnaby of his day ; he had con- 
 ducted an expedition into Central Asia; had published 
 his travels in Bokhara, and had been sent on a mission by 
 the Indian Government, in whose service he was, to study 
 the navigation of the Indus. He was, it may be remarked, 
 a member of the family of Robert Burns, the poet himself 
 having changed the original spelling of the name which 
 all the other members of the family retained. The object 
 of the journey of Captain Burnes to Cabul in 1837 was, 
 in the first instance, to enter into commercial relations 
 with Dost Mahomed, then ruler of Cabul, and with other 
 chiefs of the western regions. But events soon changed 
 his business from a commercial into a political and diplo- 
 matic mission ; and his tragic fate would make his journey 
 memorable to Englishmen forever, even if other events had 
 not grown out of it which give it a place of more than 
 personal importance in history. 
 
 The great region of Afghanistan, with its historical 
 boundaries as varying and difficult to fix at certain times 
 as those of the old Dukedom of Burgundy, has been called 
 the land of transition between Eastern and Western Asia. 
 All the great ways that lead from Persia to India pass 
 through that region. There is a proverb which declares 
 that no one can be king of Hindostan without first becom- 
 ing lord of Cabul. The Afghans are the ruling nation, 
 
 13
 
 194 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 but among them had long been settled Hindoos, Arabs, 
 Armenians, Abyssinians, and men of other races and 
 religions. The Afghans are Mohammedans of the Shunite 
 sect, but they allowed Hindoos, Christians, and even the 
 Persians, who are of the hated dissenting sect of the 
 Shiites, to live among them, and even to rise to high pos- 
 ition and influence. The founder of the Afghan Empire, 
 Ahmed Shah, died in 1773. He had made an empire 
 which stretched from Herat on the west to Sirhind on the 
 east, and from the Oxus and Cashmere on the north to 
 the Arabian Sea and the mouths of the Indus on the south. 
 The death of his son, Timur Shah, delivered the kingdom 
 up to the hostile factions, intrigues, and quarrels of his 
 sons : the leaders of a powerful tribe, the Barukzyes, 
 took advantage of the events that arose out of this condi- 
 tion of things to dethrone the descendants of Ahmed 
 Shah. When Captain Burnes visited Afghanistan in 1832, 
 the only part of all their great inheritance which yet re- 
 mained with the descendants of Ahmed Shah was the 
 principality of Herat. The remainder of Afghanistan was 
 parcelled out between Dost Mahomed and his brothers. 
 Dost Mahomed was a man of extraordinary ability and 
 energy. He would probably have made a name as a 
 soldier and a statesman anywhere. He had led a stormy 
 youth, but had put away with maturity and responsibility 
 the vices and follies of his earlier years. There seems no 
 reason to doubt that, although he was a usurper, he was 
 a sincere lover of his country, and on the whole a wise 
 and just ruler. When Captain Burnes visited Dost 
 Mahomed, he was received with every mark of friendship 
 and favor. Dost Mahomed professed to be, and no doubt 
 at one time was, a sincere friend of the English Govern- 
 ment and people. There was, however, at that time a 
 quarrel going on between the Shah of Persia and the 
 Prince of Herat, the last enthroned representative, as has
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 195 
 
 been already said, of the great family on whose fall Dost 
 Mahomed and his brothers had mounted into power. So 
 far as can now be judged, there does seem to have been 
 serious and genuine ground of complaint on the part of 
 Persia against the ruler of Herat. But it is probable, too, 
 that the Persian Shah had been seeking for, and in any 
 case would have found, a pretext for making war ; and 
 the strong impression at the time in England, and among 
 the authorities in India, was that Persia, herself was but 
 a puppet in the hands of Russia. A glance at the map 
 will show the meaning of this suspicion and the reasons 
 which at once gave it plausibility, and would have 
 rendered it of grave importance. If Persia were merely 
 the instrument of Russia, and if the troops of the Shah 
 were only the advance guard of the Czar, then, undoubt- 
 edly, the attack on Herat might have been regarded as 
 the first step of a great movement of Russia toward our 
 Indian dominion. 
 
 There were other reasons, too, to give this suspicion 
 some plausibility. Mysterious agents of Russia, officers 
 in her service and others, began to show themselves in 
 Central Asia at the time of Captain Burnes's visit to 
 Dost Mahomed. Undoubtedly Russia did set herself for 
 some reason to win the friendship and alliance of Dost 
 Mahomed : and Captain Burnes was for his part engaged in 
 the same endeavor. All considerations of a merely com- 
 mercial nature had long since been put away, and Burnes 
 was freely and earnestly negotiating with Dost Mahomed 
 for his alliance. Burnes always insisted that Dost 
 Mahomed himself was sincerely anxious to become an ally 
 of England, and that he offered more than once, on his own 
 free part, to dismiss the Russian agents even without seeing 
 them, if Burnes desired him to do so. But for some reason 
 Burnes's superiors did not share his confidence. In 
 Downing Street and in Simla the profoundest distrust of
 
 196 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Dost Mahomed prevailed. It was again and again im- 
 pressed on Burnes that he must regard Dost Mahomed as 
 a treacherous enemy, and as a man playing the part of Per- 
 sia and of Russia. It is impossible now to estimate fairly 
 all the reasons which may have justified the English 
 and the Indian Governments in this conviction. But we 
 know that nothing in the policy afterward followed out 
 by the Indian authorities exhibited any of the judgment 
 and wisdom that would warrant us in taking anything 
 for granted on the mere faith of their dictum. The story 
 of four years almost to a day the extent of this sad 
 chapter of English history will be a tale of such misfor- 
 tune, blunder, and humiliation as the annals of England 
 do not anywhere else present. Blunders which were, 
 indeed, worse than crimes, and a principle of action which 
 it is a crime in any rulers to sanction, brought things to 
 such a pass with us that in a few years from the accession 
 of the Queen we had in Afghanistan soldiers who were 
 positively afraid to fight the enemy, and some English 
 officials who were not ashamed to treat for the removal 
 of our most formidable foes by purchased assassination. 
 It is a good thing for us all to read in cold blood this 
 chapter of our history. It will teach us how vain is a 
 policy founded on evil and ignoble principles ; how vain 
 is the strength and courage of men when they have not 
 leaders fit to command. It may teach us, also, not to be 
 too severe in our criticism of other nations. The failure 
 of the French invasion of Mexico under the Second Empire 
 seems like glory when compared with the failure of our 
 attempt to impose a hated sovereign on the Afghan 
 people. 
 
 Captain Burnes then was placed in the painful diffi- 
 culty of having to carry out a policy of which he entirely 
 disapproved. He believed in Dost Mahomed as a friend, 
 and he was ordered to regard him as an enemy. It would
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 197 
 
 have been better for the career and for the reputation of 
 Burries if he had simply declined to have anything to do 
 with a course of action which seemed to him at once 
 unjust and unwise. But Burnes was a young man, full of 
 youth's energy and ambition. He thought he saw a 
 career of distinction opening before him, and he was 
 unwilling to close it abruptly by setting himself in obsti- 
 nate opposition to his superiors. He was, besides, of a 
 quick mercurial temperament, over which mood followed 
 mood in rapid succession of change. A slight contradic- 
 tion sometimes threw him into momentary despondency ; 
 a gleam of hope elated him into the assurance that all 
 was won. It is probable that after awhile he may have 
 persuaded himself to acquiesce in the judgment of his 
 chiefs. On the other hand, Dost Mahomed was placed in 
 a position of great difficulty and danger. He had to 
 choose. He could not remain absolutely independent of 
 all the disputants. If England would not support him, 
 he must for his own safety find alliances elsewhere in 
 Russian statecraft, for example. He told Burnes of this 
 again and again, and Burnes endeavored, without the 
 slightest success, to impress his superiors with his own 
 views as to the reasonableness of Dost Mahomed's argu- 
 ments. Runjeet Singh, the daring and successful ad- 
 venturer who had annexed the whole province of Cash- 
 mere to his dominions, was the enemy of Dost Mahomed 
 and the faithful ally of England. Dost Mahomed thought 
 the British Government could assist him in coming to terms 
 with Runjeet Singh, and Burnes had assured him that 
 the British Government would do all it could to establish 
 satisfactory terms of peace between Afghanistan and the 
 Punjaub, over which Runjeet Singh ruled. Burnes wrote 
 from Cabul to say that Russia had made substantial offers 
 to Dost Mahomed ; Persia had been lavish in her biddings 
 for his alliance ; Bokhara and other states had not been
 
 198 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 backward ; " yet in all that has passed, or is daily trans- 
 piring, the chief of Cabul declares that he prefers the 
 sympathy and friendly offices of the British to all these 
 offers, however alluring they may seem, from Persia or 
 from the Emperor ; which places his good-sense in a 
 light more than prominent, and in my humble judgment 
 proves that by an earlier attention to these countries we 
 might have escaped the whole of these intrigues and held 
 long since a stable influence in Cabul." Burnes, however, 
 was unable to impress his superiors with any belief either 
 in Dost Mahomed or in the policy which he himself advo- 
 cated, and the result was that Lord Auckland, the Gov- 
 ernor-general of India, at length resolved to treat Dost 
 Mahomed as an enemy, and to drive him from Cabul. 
 Lord Auckland, therefore, entered into a treaty with 
 Runjeet Singh and Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, the exiled 
 representative of what we may call the legitimist rulers 
 of Afghanistan, for the restoration of the latter to the 
 throne of his ancestors, and for the destruction of the 
 power of Dost Mahomed. 
 
 It ought to be a waste of time to enter into any argu- 
 ment in condemnation of such a policy in our days. Even 
 if its results had not proved in this particular instance its 
 most striking and exemplary condemnation, it is so grossly 
 and flagrantly opposed to all the principles of our more 
 modern statesmanship that no one among us ought now 
 to need a warning against it. Dost Mahomed was the 
 accepted, popular, and successful ruler of Cabul. No 
 matter what our quarrel with him, we had not the slight- 
 est right to make it an excuse for forcing on his people a 
 ruler whom they had proved before, as they were soon to 
 prove again, that they thoroughly detested. Perhaps the 
 nearest parallel to our policy in this instance is to be 
 found in the French invasion of Mexico, and the disas- 
 trous attempt to impose a foreign ruler on the Mexican
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 199 
 
 people. Each experiment ended in utter failure, and in 
 the miserable death of the unfortunate puppet prince who 
 was put forward as the figure-head of the enterprise. 
 But the French Emperor could at least have pleaded in 
 his defence that Maximilian of Austria had not already 
 heen tried and rejected by the Mexican people. Our pro- 
 teg$ had been tried and rejected. The French Emperor 
 might have pleaded that he had actual and substantial 
 wrongs to avenge. We had only problematical and possi- 
 ble dangers to guard against. In any case, as has been 
 already said, the calamities entailed on French arms and 
 counsels by the Mexican intervention read like a page of 
 brilliant success when compared with the immediate 
 result of our enterprise in Cabul. Before passing away 
 from this part of the subject, it is necessary to mention 
 the fact that among its many unfortunate incidents the 
 campaign led to some peculiarly humiliating debates and 
 some lamentable accusations in the House of Commons. 
 Years after Burnes had been flung into his bloody grave, it 
 was found that the English Government had presented to 
 the House of Commons his despatches in so mutilated 
 and altered a form, that Burnes was made to seem as if he 
 actually approved and recommended the policy which he 
 especially warned us to avoid. It is painful to have to 
 record such a fact, but it is indispensable that it should be 
 recorded. It would be vain to attempt to explain how 
 the principles and the honor, of English statesmanship 
 fell, for the hour, under the demoralizing influence which 
 allowed such things to be thought legitimate. An Ori- 
 ential atmosphere seemed to have gathered around our 
 official leaders. In Afghanistan they were entering into 
 secret and treacherous treaties ; in England they were 
 garbling despatches. When, years after, Lord Palmer- 
 ston was called upon to defend the policy which had thus 
 dealt with the despatches of Alexander Burnes, he did
 
 200 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 not say that the documents were not garbled. He only 
 contended that, as the Government had determined not to 
 act on the advice of Burnes, they were in nowise bound 
 to publish those passages of his despatches in which he 
 set forth assumptions which they believed to be un- 
 founded, and advised a policy which they looked upon as 
 mistaken. Such a defence is only to be read with wonder 
 and pain. The Government were not accused of sup- 
 pressing passages which they believed, rightly or wrongly, 
 to be worthless. The accusation was that, by suppressing 
 passages and sentences here and there, Burnes was made 
 to appear as if he were actually recommending the policy 
 against which he was at the time most earnestly protest- 
 ing. Burnes was himself the first victim of the policy 
 which he strove against, and which all England has since 
 condemned. No severer word is needed to condemn the 
 mutilation of his despatches than to say that he was 
 actually made to stand before the country as responsible 
 for having recommended that very policy. "It should 
 never be forgotten," says Sir J. "YV. Kaye, the historian 
 of the Afghan War, " by those who would form a correct 
 estimate of the character and career of Alexander Burnes, 
 that both had been misrepresented in those collections of 
 state papers which are supposed to furnish the best 
 materials of history, but which are often in reality only 
 one-sided compilations of garbled documents counter- 
 feits, which the ministerial stamp forces into currency, 
 defrauding a present generation, and handing down to 
 posterity a chain of dangerous lies." 
 
 Meanwhile the Persian attack on Herat had practically 
 failed, owing mainly to the skill and spirit of a young 
 English officer, Eldred Pottinger, who was assisting the 
 prince in his resistance to the troops of the Persian 
 Shah. Lord Auckland, however, ordered the assemblage 
 of a British force for service across the Indus, and issued
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 201 
 
 a famous manifesto, dated from Simla, October 1st, 1838, in 
 which he set forth the motives of his policy. The Gover- 
 nor-general stated that Dost Mahomed had made a sudden 
 and unprovoked attack upon our ancient ally, Runjeet 
 Singh, and that when the Persian army was besieging 
 Herat, Dost Mahomed was giving undisguised support 
 to the designs of Persia. The chiefs of Candahar, the 
 brothers of Dost Mahomed, had also, Lord Auckland 
 declared, given in their adherence to the plan of Persia. 
 Great Britain regarded the advance of Persian arms in 
 Afghanistan as an act of hostility toward herself. The 
 Governor-general had, therefore, resolved to support the 
 claims of the Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk, whose dominions 
 had been usurped by the existing rulers of Cabul, and 
 who had found an honorable asylum in British territory ; 
 and " whose popularity throughout Afghanistan " Lord 
 Auckland wrote in words that must afterward have read 
 like the keenest and cruellest satire upon his policy " had 
 been proved to his Lordship by the strong and unanimous 
 testimony of the best authorities." This popular sover- 
 eign, this favorite of his people, was at the time living in 
 exile, without the faintest hope of every again being 
 restored to his dominions. We pulled the poor man out 
 of his obscurity, told him that his people were yearning 
 for him, and that we would set him on his throne once 
 more. We entered for the purpose into the tripartite 
 treaty already mentioned. Mr. (afterward Sir W. H.) 
 Macnaghten, Secretary to the Government of India, was 
 appointed to be envoy and minister at the court of Shah 
 Soojah ; and Sir Alexander Burnes (who had been recalled 
 from the court of Dost Mahomed, and rewarded with a 
 title for giving the advice which his superiors thought 
 absurd) was deputed to act under his direction. It is 
 only right to say that the policy of Lord Auckland had the 
 entire approval of the British Government. It was after-
 
 202 A UISTOBY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ward stated in parliament on the part of the ministry 
 that a despatch recommending to Lord Auckland exactly 
 such a course as he pursued crossed on the way his de- 
 spatch announcing to the Government at home that he 
 had already undertaken the enterprise. 
 
 We conquered Dost Mahomed and dethroned him. He 
 made a bold and brilliant, sometimes even a splendid 
 resistance. "We took Ghuznee by blowing up one of its 
 gates with bags of powder, and thus admitting the rush 
 of a storming-party. It was defended by one of the sons 
 of Dost Mahomed, who became our prisoner. We took 
 Jellalabad, which was defended by Akbar Khan, another 
 of Dost Mahomed's sons, whose name came afterward to 
 have a hateful sound in all English ears. As we ap- 
 proached Cabul, Dost Mahomed abandoned his capital 
 and fled with a few horsemen across the Indus. Shah 
 Soojah entered Cabul accompanied by the British officers. 
 It was to have been a triumphal entry. The hearts of 
 those who believed in his cause must have sunk within 
 them when they saw how the Shah was received by the 
 people who, Lord Auckland was assured, were so devoted 
 to him. The city received him in sullen silence. Few of 
 its people condescended even to turn out to see him as he 
 passed. The vast majority stayed away, and disdained 
 even to look at him. One would have thought that the 
 least observant eye must have seen that his throne could 
 not last a moment longer than the time during which the 
 strength of Britain was willing to support it. The British 
 army, however, withdrew, leaving only a contingent of 
 some eight thousand men, besides the Shah's own hire- 
 lings, to maintain him for the present. Sir W. Macnaghten 
 seems to have really believed that the work was done, 
 and that Shah Soojah was as safe on his throne as Queen 
 Victoria. He was destined to be very soon and very 
 cruelly undeceived.
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 203 
 
 Dost Mahomed made more than one effort to regain his 
 place. He invaded Shah Soojah's dominions, and met the 
 combined forces of the Shah and their English ally in 
 more than one battle. On November 2d, 1840, he won 
 the admiration of the English themselves by the brilliant 
 stand he made against them. With his Afghan horse he 
 drove our cavalry before him, and forced them to seek 
 the shelter of the British guns. The native troopers 
 would not stand against him : they fled and left their Eng- 
 lish officers, who vainly tried to rally them. In this battle 
 of Purwandurrah victory might not unreasonably have 
 been claimed for Dost Mahomed. He won at least his part 
 of the battle. Xo tongues have praised him louder than 
 those of English historians. But Dost Mahomed had the 
 wisdom of a statesman as well as the genius of a soldier. 
 He knew well that he could not hold out against the 
 strength of England. A savage or semi-barbarous chief- 
 tain is easily puffed up by a seeming triumph over a 
 great Power, arid is led to his destruction by the vain 
 hope that he can hold out against it to the last. Dost 
 Mahomed had no such ignorant and idle notion. Perhaps 
 he knew well enough, too, that time was wholly on his 
 side ; that he had only to wait and see the sovereignty of 
 Shah Soojah tumble into pieces. The evening after his 
 brilliant exploit in the field Dost Mahomed rode quietly 
 to the quarters of Sir W. Macnaghten, met the envoy, 
 who was returning from an evening ride, and to Mac- 
 naghten's utter amazement announced himself as Dost 
 Mahomed, tendered to the envoy the sword that had 
 flashed so splendidly across the field of the previous day's 
 fight, and surrendered himself a prisoner. His sword was 
 returned ; he was treated with all honor ; and a few days 
 afterward he was sent to India, where a residence and a 
 revenue were assigned to him. 
 
 But the withdrawal of Dost Mahomed from the scene
 
 204 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 did nothing to secure the reign of the unfortunate Shah 
 Soojah. The Shah was hated on his own account. He 
 was regarded as a traitor who had sold his country to the 
 foreigners. Insurrections began to be chronic. They 
 were going on in the very midst of Cabul itself. Sir W. 
 Macnaghten was warned of danger, but seemed to take no 
 heed. Some fatal blindness appears to have suddenly 
 fallen on the eyes of our people in Cabul. On November 
 2d, 1841, an insurrection broke out. Sir Alexander Burnes 
 lived in the city itself ; Sir W. Macnaghten and the 
 military commander, Major-general Elphinstone, were in 
 cantonments at some little distance. The insurrection 
 might have been put down hi the first instance with 
 hardly the need even of Napoleon's famous "whiff of 
 grape-shot." But it was allowed to grow up without 
 attempt at control. Sir Alexander Burnes could not be 
 got to believe that it was anything serious, even when 
 a fanatical and furious mob were besieging his own house. 
 The fanatics were especially bitter against Burnes, because 
 they believed that he had been guilty of treachery. They 
 accused him of having pretended to be the friend of Dost 
 Mahomed, deceived him, and brought the English into the 
 country. How entirely innocent of this charge Burnes 
 was we all now know ; but it would be idle to deny that 
 there was much in the external aspect of events to excuse 
 such a suspicion in the mind of an infuriated Afghan. To 
 the last Burnes refused to believe that he was in danger. 
 He had always been a friend to the Afghans, he said, and 
 he could have nothing to fear. It was true. He had 
 always been the sincere friend of the Afghans. It was his 
 misfortune, and the heavy fault of his superiors, that he 
 had been made to appear as an enemy of the Afghans. He 
 had now to pay a heavy penalty for the errors and the 
 wrong-doing of others. He harangued the raging mob, 
 and endeavored to bring them to reason. He does not
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 
 
 seem to have understood, up to the very last moment, that 
 by reminding them that he was Alexander Burnes, their 
 old friend, he was only giving them a new reason for 
 demanding his life. He was murdered in the tumult. 
 He and his brother and all those with them were hacked 
 to pieces with Afghan knives. He was only in his thirty- 
 seventh year when he was murdered. He was the first 
 victim of the policy which had resolved to intervene in 
 the affairs of Afghanistan. Fate seldom showed with 
 more strange and bitter malice her proverbial irony than 
 when she made him the first victim of the policy adopted 
 in despite of his best advice and his strongest warnings. 
 
 The murder of Burnes was not a climax ; it was only a 
 beginning. The English troops were quartered in canton- 
 ments outside the city, and at some little distance from it. 
 These cantonments were, in any case of real difficulty, 
 practically indefensible. The popular monarch, the dar- 
 ling of his people, whom we had restored to his throne, 
 was in the Balla Hissar, or citadel of Cabul. From the 
 moment when the .insurrection broke out he may be 
 regarded as a prisoner or a besieged man there. He was 
 as utterly unable to help our people as they were to help 
 him. The whole country threw itself into insurrection 
 against him and us. The Afghans attacked the canton- 
 ments, and actually compelled the English to abandon the 
 forts in which all our commissariat was stored. We were 
 thus threatened with famine, even if we could resist the 
 enemy in arms. We were strangely unfortunate in our 
 civil and military leaders. Sir W. Macnaghten was a man 
 of high character and good purpose, but he was weak and 
 credulous. The commander, General Elphinstone, was 
 old, infirm, tortured by disease, broken down both in mind 
 and body, incapable of forming a purpose of his own, or 
 of holding to one suggested by anybody else. His second 
 in command was a far stronger and abler man, but
 
 206 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 unhappily the two could never agree. " They were both 
 of them," says Sir J. W. Kaye, "brave men. In any 
 other situation, though the physical infirmities of the one 
 and the cankered vanity, the dogmatical perverseness of 
 the other, might have in some measure detracted from 
 their efficiency as military commanders, I believe they 
 would have exhibited sufficient courage and constancy to 
 rescue an army from utter destruction, and the British 
 name from indelible reproach. But in the Cabul canton- 
 ments they were miserably out of place. They seem to 
 have been sent there, by superhuman intervention, to 
 work out the utter ruin and prostration of an unholy 
 policy by ordinary human means." One fact must be 
 mentioned by an English historian one which an English 
 historian has happily not often to record. It is certain 
 that an officer in our service entered into negotiations for 
 the murder of the insurgent chiefs, who were our worst 
 enemies. It is more than probable that he believed in 
 doing so he was acting as Sir W. Macnaghten would have 
 had him do. Sir W. Macnaghten was innocent of any 
 complicity in such a plot, and was incapable of it. But 
 the negotiations were opened and carried on in his name. 
 A new figure appeared on the scene, a dark and a fierce 
 apparition. This was Akbar Khan, the favorite son of 
 Dost Mahomed. He was a daring, a clever, an unscrupu- 
 lous young man. From the moment when he entered 
 Cabul he became the real leader of the insurrection 
 against Shah Soojah and us. Macnaghten, persuaded by 
 the military commander that the position of things was 
 hopeless, consented to enter into negotiations with Akbar 
 Khan. Before the arrival of the latter the chiefs of the 
 insurrection had offered us terms which made the ears of 
 our envoy tingle. Such terms had not often been even 
 suggested to British soldiers before. They were simply 
 unconditional surrender. Macnaghten indignantly re-
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 207 
 
 jected them. Everything went wrong with him, how- 
 ever. We were beaten again and again by the Afghans. 
 Our officers never faltered in their duty ; but the melan- 
 choly truth has to be told that the men, most of whom 
 were Asiatics, at last began to lose heart and would not 
 fight the enemy. So the envoy was compelled to enter 
 into terms with Akbar Khan and the other chiefs. Akbar 
 Khan received him at first with contemptuous insolence 
 as a haughty conqueror receives some ignoble and humili- 
 ated adversary. It was agreed that the British troops 
 should quit Afghanistan at once ; that Dost Mahomed and 
 family should be sent back to Afghanistan ; that on his 
 return the unfortunate Shah Soojah should be allowed to 
 take himself off to India or where he would ; and that 
 some British officers should be left at Cabul as hostages 
 for the fulfilment of the conditions. 
 
 The evacuation did not take place at once, although the 
 fierce winter was setting in, and the snow was falling 
 heavily, ominously. Macnaghten seems to have had still 
 some lingering hopes that something would turn up to 
 relieve him from the shame of quitting the country ; and 
 it must be owned that he does not seem to have had any 
 intention of carrying out the terms of the agreement if by 
 any chance he could escape from them. On both sides 
 there were dallyings and delays. At last Akbar Khan 
 made a new and startling proposition to our envoy. It 
 was that they two should enter into a secret treaty, 
 should unite their arms against the other chiefs, and 
 should keep Shah Soojah on the throne as nominal king, 
 with Akbar Khan as his vizier. Macnaghten caught at 
 the proposals. He had entered into terms of negotiation 
 with the Afghan chiefs together; he now consented to 
 enter into a secret treaty with one of the chiefs to turn 
 their joint arms against the others. It would be idle and 
 shameful to attempt to defend such a policy. We can
 
 208 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 only excuse it by considering the terrible circumstances 
 of Macnaghten's position, the manner in which his nerves 
 and moral fibre had been shaken and shattered by ca- 
 lamities, and his doubts whether he could place any reli- 
 ance on the promises of the chiefs. lie had apparently 
 sunk into that condition of mind which Macaulay tells us 
 that Clive adopted so readily in his dealings with Asiat- 
 ics, and under the influence of which men naturally hon- 
 orable and high-minded come to believe that it is right to 
 act treacherously with those whom we believe to be treach- 
 erous. All this is but excuse, and rather poor excuse. 
 When it has all been said and thought of, we must still 
 be glad to believe that there are not many Englishmen 
 who would, under any circumstances, have consented even 
 to give a hearing to the proposals of Akbar Khan. 
 
 Whatever Macnaghten's error, it was dearly expiated. 
 He went out at noon next day to confer with Akbar Khan 
 on the banks of the neighboring river. Three of his offi- 
 cers were with him. Akbar Khan was ominously sur- 
 rounded by friends and retainers. These kept pressing 
 round the unfortunate envoy. Some remonstrances was 
 made by one of the English officers, but Akbar Khan said 
 it was of no consequence, as they were all in the secret. 
 Not many words were spoken; the expected conference 
 had hardly begun when a signal was given or an order 
 issued by Akbar Khan, and the envoy and the officers 
 were suddenly seized from behind. A scene of wild con- 
 fusion followed, in which hardly anything is clear and 
 certain but the one most horrible incident. The envoy 
 struggled with Akbar Khan, who had himself seized Mac- 
 naghten ; Akbar Khan drew from his belt one of a pair 
 of pistols which Macnaghten had presented to him a short 
 time before, and shot him through the body. The fanat- 
 ics who were crowding round hacked the body to pieces 
 with their knives. Of the three officers one was killed on
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 209 
 
 the spot; the other two were forced to mount Afghan 
 horses and carried away as prisoners. 
 
 At first this horrid deed of treachery and blood shows 
 like that to which Clearchus and his companions, the 
 chiefs of the famous ten thousand Greeks, fell victims at 
 the hands of Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap. But it 
 seems certain that the treachery of Akbar, base as it was, 
 did not contemplate more than the seizure of the envoy 
 and his officers. There were jealousies and disputes among 
 the chiefs of the insurrection. One of them, in especial, 
 had got his mind filled with the conviction, inspired, no 
 doubt, by the unfortunate and unparalleled negotiation 
 already mentioned, that the envoy had offered a price for 
 his head. Akbar Khan was accused by him of being a 
 secret friend of the envoy and the English. Akbar Khan's 
 father was a captive in the hands of the English, and it 
 may have been thought that on his account and for per- 
 sonal purposes Akbar was favoring the envoy, and even 
 intriguing with him. Akbar offered to prove his sincerity 
 by making the envoy a captive and handing him over to 
 the chiefs. This was the treacherous plot which he strove 
 to carry out by entering into the secret negotiations with 
 the easily-deluded envoy. On the fatal day the latter 
 resisted and struggled ; Akbar Khan heard a cry of alarm 
 that the English soldiers were coming out of the canton- 
 ments to rescue the envoy ; and, wild with passion, he 
 suddenly drew his pistol and fired. This was the state- 
 ment made again and again by Akbar Khan himself. It 
 does not seem an improbable explanation for what other- 
 wise looks a murder as stupid and purposeless as it was 
 brutal. The explanation does not much relieve the dark- 
 ness of Akbar Khan's character. It is given here as his- 
 tory, not as exculpation. There is not the slightest reason 
 to suppose that Akbar Khan would have shrunk from 
 any treachery or any cruelty which served his purpose. 
 
 14
 
 210 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 His own explanation of his purpose in this instance shows 
 a degree of treachery which could hardly be surpassed 
 even in the East. But it is well to bear in mind that the 
 suspicion of perfidy under which the English envoy 
 labored, and which was the main impulse of Akbar Khan's 
 movement, had evidence enough to support it in the eyes 
 of suspicious enemies ; and that poor Macnaghten would 
 not have been murdered had he not consented to meet 
 Akbar Khan and treat with him on a proposition to which 
 an English official should never have listened. 
 
 A terrible agony of suspense followed among the little 
 English force in the cantonments. The military chiefs 
 afterward stated that they did not know until the follow- 
 ing day that any calamity had befallen the envoy. But 
 a keen suspicion ran through the cantonments that some 
 fearful deed had been done. No step was taken to avenge 
 the death of Macnaghten, even when it became known 
 that his hacked and mangled body had been exhibited in 
 triumph all through the streets and bazars of Cabul. A 
 paralysis seemed to have fallen over the councils of our 
 military chiefs. On December 24th, 1841, came a letter 
 from one of the officers seized by Akbar Khan, accom- 
 panying proposals for a treaty from the Afghan chiefs. It 
 is hard now to understand how any English officers could 
 have consented to enter into terms with the murderers 
 of Macnaghten before his mangled body could well have 
 ceased to bleed. It is strange that it did not occur to 
 most of them that there was an alternative ; that they 
 were not ordered by fate to accept whatever the conquerors 
 chose to offer. We can all see the difficulty of their posi- 
 tion. General Elphinstone and his second in command, 
 Brigadier Shelton, were convinced that it would be equally 
 impossible to stay where they were or to cut their way 
 through the Afghans. But it might have occurred to 
 many that they were nevertheless not bound to treat with
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 211 
 
 the Afghans. They might have remembered the famous 
 answer of the father in Corneille's immortal drama, who 
 is asked what his son could have done but yield in the 
 face of such odds, and exclaims in generous passion that 
 he could have died. One English officer of mark did 
 counsel his superiors in this spirit. This was Major 
 Eldred Pottinger, whose skill and courage in the defence 
 of Herat we have already mentioned. Pottinger was for 
 cutting their way through all enemies and difficulties as 
 far as they could, and then occupying the ground with 
 their dead bodies. But his advice was hardly taken into 
 consideration. It was determined to treat with the Af- 
 ghans ; and treating with the Afghans now meant accept- 
 ing any terms the Afghans chose to impose on their fallen 
 enemies. In the negotiations that went on, some written 
 documents were exchanged. One of these, drawn up by 
 the English negotiators, contains a short sentence which 
 we believe to be absolutely unique in the history of British 
 dealings with armed enemies. It is an appeal to the 
 Afghan conquerors not to be too hard upon the vanquished ; 
 not to break the bruised reed. "In friendship, kindness 
 and consideration are necessary, not overpowering the 
 weak with sufferings ! " In friendship ! we appealed to 
 the friendship of Macnaghten's murderers ; to the friend- 
 ship, in any case, of the man whose father we had de- 
 throned and driven into exile. Not overpowering the 
 weak with sufferings ! The weak were the English ! One 
 might fancy he was reading the plaintive and piteous 
 appeal of some forlorn and feeble tribe of helpless half- 
 breeds for the mercy of arrogant and mastering rulers. 
 " Suffolk's imperious tongue is stern and rough," says 
 one in Shakspeare's pages, when he is bidden to ask for 
 consideration at the hands of captors whom he is no longer 
 able to resist. The tongue with which the English force 
 at Cabul addressed the Afghans was not imperious or
 
 212 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 stern or rough. It was bated, mild, and plaintive. Only 
 the other day, it would seem, these men had blown up 
 the gates of Ghuznee, and rushed through the dense smoke 
 and the falling ruins to attack the enemy hand to hand. 
 Only the other day our envoy had received in surrender 
 the bright sword of Dost Mahomed. Now the same men 
 who had seen these things could only plead for a little 
 gentleness of consideration, and had no thought of resist- 
 ance, and did not any longer seem to know how to die. 
 
 We accepted the terms of treaty offered to us. Nothing 
 else could be done by men who were not prepared to 
 adopt the advice of the heroic father in Corneille. The 
 English were at once to take themselves off out of Af- 
 ghanistan, giving up all their guns except six, which they 
 were allowed to retain for their necessary defence in 
 their mournful journey home ; they were to leave behind 
 all the treasure, and to guarantee the payment of some- 
 thing additional for the safe-conduct of the poor little 
 army to Peshawur or to Jellalabad ; and they were to 
 hand over six officers as hostages for the due fulfilment 
 of the conditions. It is of course understood that the 
 conditions included the immediate release of Dost Ma- 
 homed and his family and their return to Afghanistan. 
 When these should return, the six hostages were to be 
 released. Only one concession had been obtained from 
 the conquerors. It was at first demanded that some of 
 the married ladies should be left as hostages ; but on the 
 urgent representations of the English officers this condi- 
 tion was waived at least for the moment. When the 
 treaty was signed, the officers who had been seized when 
 Macnaghten was murdered were released. 
 
 It is worth mentioning that these officers were not 
 badly treated by Akbar Khan while they were in his 
 power. On the contrary, he had to make strenuous 
 efforts, and did make them in good faith, to save them
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 213 
 
 from being murdered by bands of his fanatical followers. 
 One of the officers has himself described the almost des- 
 perate efforts which Akbar Khan had to make to save 
 him from the fury of the mob, who thronged thirsting 
 for the blood of the Englishman up to the very stirrup of 
 their young chief. " Akbar Khan," says this officer, " at 
 length drew his sword and laid about him right man- 
 fully" in defence of his prisoner. When, however, he 
 had got the latter into a place of safety, the impetuous 
 young Afghan chief could not restrain a sneer at his 
 captive and the cause his captive represented. Turning 
 to the English officer, he said more than once, " in a 
 tone of triumphant derision," some words such as 
 these : " So you are the man who came here to seize my 
 country?" It must be owned that the condition of 
 things gave bitter meaning to the taunt, if they did not 
 actually excuse it. At a later period of this melancholy 
 story it is told by Lady Sale that crowds of the fanatical 
 Ghilzyes were endeavoring to persuade Akbar Khan 
 to slaughter all the English, and that when he tried 
 to pacify them they said that when Burnes came into 
 the country they entreated Akbar Khan's father to 
 have Burnes killed, or he would go back to Hindostan, 
 and on some future day return and bring an army 
 with him, " to take our country from us ; " and all the 
 calamities had come upon them because Dost Mahomed 
 would not take their advice. Akbar Khan either was or 
 pretended to be moderate. He might, indeed, safely put 
 on an air of magnanimity. His enemies were doomed. 
 It needed no command from him to decree their destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The withdrawal from Cabul began. It was the heart of 
 a cruel winter. The English had to make their way 
 through the awful pass of Koord Cabul. This stupendous 
 gorge runs for some five miles between mountain ranges so
 
 214 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 narrow, lofty, and grim, that in the winter season the 
 rays of the sun can hardly pierce its darkness even at the 
 noontide. Down the centre dashed a precipitous moun- 
 tain torrent so fiercely that the stern frost of that terrible 
 time could not stay its course. The snow lay in masses 
 on the ground ; the rocks and stones that raised their 
 heads above the snow in the way of the unfortunate 
 travellers were slippery with frost. Soon the white snow 
 began to be stained and splashed with blood. Fearful as 
 this Koord Cabul Pass was, it was only a degree worse 
 than the road which for two whole days the English had 
 to traverse to reach it. The army which set out from 
 Cabul numbered more than four thousand fighting men 
 of whom Europeans, it should be said, formed but a small 
 proportion and some twelve thousand camp followers of 
 all kinds. There were also many women and children. 
 Lady Macnaghteu, widow of the murdered envoy ; Lady 
 Sale, whose gallant husband was holding Jellalabad, at 
 the near end of the Khyber Pass, toward the Indian fron- 
 tier ; Mrs. Stuart, her daughter, soon to be widowed by 
 the death of her young husband ; Mrs. Trevor and her 
 seven children, and many other pitiable fugitives. The 
 winter journey would have been cruel and dangerous 
 enough in time of peace ; but this journey had to be ac- 
 complished in the midst of something far worse than 
 common war. At every step of the road, every opening 
 of the rocks, the unhappy crowd of confused and heteroge- 
 neous fugitives were beset by bands of savage fanatics, 
 who with their long guns and long knives were murdering 
 all they could reach. It was all the way a confused con- 
 stant battle against a guerilla enemy of the most furious 
 and merciless temper, who were perfectly familiar with 
 the ground, and could rush forward and retire exactly as 
 suited their tactics. The English soldiers, weary, weak, 
 and crippled by frost, could make but a poor fight against
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 215 
 
 the savage Afghans. " It was no longer," says Sir J. W. 
 Kaye, "a retreating army; it was a rabble in chaotic 
 flight." Men, women, and children, horses, ponies, camels, 
 the wounded, the dying, the dead, all crowded together 
 in almost inextricable confusion among the snow and 
 amidst the relentless enemies. " The massacre " to quote 
 again from Sir J. W. Kaye, " was fearful in this Koord 
 Cabul Pass. Three thousand men are said to have fallen 
 under the fire of the enemy, or to have dropped down par- 
 alyzed and exhausted, to be slaughtered by the Afghan 
 knives. And amidst these fearful scenes of carnage, 
 through a shower of match-lock balls, rode English ladies 
 on horseback or in camel-panniers, sometimes vainly 
 endeavoring to keep their children beneath their eyes, and 
 losing them in the confusion and bewilderment of the 
 desolating march." 
 
 Was it for this, then, that our troops had been induced 
 to capitulate? Was this the safe-conduct which the 
 Afghan chiefs had promised in return for their accepting 
 the ignominious conditions imposed on them ? Some of 
 the chiefs did exert themselves to their utmost to protect 
 the unfortunate English. It is not certain what the real 
 wish of Akbar Khan may have been. He protested that 
 he had no power to restrain the hordes of fanatical 
 Ghilzyes whose own immediate chiefs had not authority 
 enough to keep them from murdering the English when- 
 ever they got a chance. The force of some few hundred 
 horsemen whom Akbar Khan had with him were utterly 
 incapable, he declared, of maintaining order among such 
 a mass of infuriated and lawless savages. Akbar Khan 
 constantly appeared on the scene during this journey of 
 terror. At every opening or break of the long straggling 
 flight he and his little band of followers showed them- 
 selves on the horizon : trying still to protect the English 
 from utter ruin, as he declared ; come to gloat over their
 
 216 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 misery, and to see that it was surely accomplished, some 
 of the unhappy English were ready to believe. Yet his 
 presence was something that seemed to give a hope of 
 protection. Akbar Khan at length startled the English 
 by a proposal that the women and children who were with 
 the army should be handed over to his custody to be con- 
 veyed by him in safety to Peshawur. There was nothing 
 better to be done. The only modification of his request, 
 or command, that could be obtained was that the husbands 
 of the married ladies should accompany their wives. With 
 this agreement the women and children were handed over 
 to the care of this dreaded enemy, and Lady Macnaghten 
 had to undergo the agony of a personal interview with 
 the man whose own hand had killed her husband. Few 
 scenes in poetry or romance can surely be more thrilling 
 with emotion than such a meeting as this must have been. 
 Akbar Khan was kindly in his language, and declared to 
 the unhappy widow that he would give his right arm to 
 undo, if it were possible, the deed that he had done. 
 
 The women and children and the married men whose 
 wives were among this party were taken from the unfor- 
 tunate army and placed under the care of Akbar Khan. 
 As events turned out, this proved a fortunate thing for 
 them. But in any case it was the best thing that could 
 be done. Not one of these women and children could have 
 lived through the horrors of the journey which lay before 
 the remnant of what had once been a British force. The 
 march was resumed ; new horrors set in ; new heaps of 
 corpses stained the snow ; and then Akbar Khan presented 
 himself with a fresh proposition. In the treaty made at 
 Cabul between the English authorities and the Afghan 
 chiefs there was an article which stipulated that "the 
 English force at Jellalabad shall march for Peshawur 
 before the Cabul army arrives, and shall not delay on the 
 road." Akbar Khan was especially anxious to get rid of
 
 TI1E DISASTERS OF CABUL. 217 
 
 the little army at Jellalabad, at the near end of the 
 Khyber Pass. He desired above all things that it should 
 be on the march home to India ; either that it might be out 
 of his way, or that he might have a chance of destroying 
 it on its way. It was in great measure as a security for 
 its moving that he desired to have the women and children 
 under his care. It is not likely that he meant any harm 
 to the women and children ; it must be remembered that 
 his father and many of the women of his family were 
 under the control of the British Government as prisoners 
 in Hindostan. But he fancied that if he had the English 
 women in his hands the army at Jellalabad could not 
 refuse to obey the condition set down in the article of the 
 treaty. Now that he had the women in his power, how- 
 ever, he demanded other guarantees with openly acknowl- 
 edged purpose of keeping these latter until Jellalabad 
 should have been evacuated. He demanded that General 
 Elphinstone, the commander, with his second in command, 
 and also one other officer, should hand themselves over to 
 him as hostages. He promised, if this were done, to exert 
 himself more than before to restrain the fanatical tribes, 
 and also to provide the army hi the Koord Cabul Pass 
 with provisions. There was nothing for it but to submit ; 
 and the English general himself became, with the women 
 and children, a captive in the hands of the inexorable 
 enemy. 
 
 Then the march of the army, without a general, went 
 on again. Soon it became the story of a general without 
 an army ; before very long there was neither general nor 
 army. It is idle to lengthen a tale of mere horrors. The 
 straggling remnant of an army entered the Jugdulluk 
 Pass a dark, steep, narrow, ascending path between crags. 
 The miserable toilers found that the fanatical, implacable 
 tribes had barricaded the pass. All was over. The army 
 of Cabul was finally extinguished hi that barricaded pass.
 
 218 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 It was a trap ; the British were taken in it. A few mere 
 fugitives escaped from the scene of actual slaughter, and 
 were on the road to Jellalabad, where Sale and his little 
 army were holding their own. When they were within 
 sixteen miles of Jellalabad the number was reduced to 
 six. Of these six, five were killed by straggling maraud- 
 ers on the way. One man alone reached Jellalabad to 
 tell the tale. Literally one man, Dr. Brydon, came to 
 Jellalabad out of a moving host which had numbered in 
 all some sixteen thousand when it set out on its march. 
 The curious eye will search through history or fiction in 
 vain for any picture more thrilling with the suggestions 
 of an awful catastrophe than that of this solitary survivor, 
 faint and reeling on his jaded horse, as he appeared under 
 the walls of Jellalabad, to bear the tidings of our Ther- 
 mopylae of pain and shame. 
 
 This is the crisis of the story. With this, at least, the 
 worst of the pain and shame were destined to end. The 
 rest is all, so far as we are concerned, reaction and recov- 
 ery. Our successes are common enough; we may tell 
 their tale briefly in this instance. The garrison at Jella- 
 labad had received, before Dr. Brydon's arrival, an inti- 
 mation that they were to go out and march toward India 
 in accordance with the terms of the treaty extorted from' 
 Elphinstone at Cabul. They very properly declined to be 
 bound by a treaty which, as General Sale rightly conject- 
 ured had been " forced from our envoy and military com- 
 mander with the knives at their throats." General Sale's 
 determination was clear and simple. " I propose to hold 
 this place on the part of Government until I receive its 
 order to the contrary." This resolve of Sale's was really 
 the turning-point of the history. Sale held Jellalabad ; 
 Nott was at Candahar. Akbar Khan besieged Jellalabad. 
 Nature seemed to have declared herself emphatically on 
 his side, for a succession of earthquake shocks shattered
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 219 
 
 the walls of the place, and produced more terrible de- 
 struction than the most formidable guns of modern warfare 
 could have done. But the garrison held out fearlessly ; 
 they restored the parapets, re-established every battery, 
 re-trenched the whole of the gates, and built up all the 
 breaches. They resisted every attempt of Akbar Khan to 
 advance upon their works, and at length, when it became 
 certain that General Pollock was forcing the Khyber Pass 
 to come to their relief, they determined to attack Akbar 
 Khan's army ; they issued boldly out of their forts, forced 
 a battle on the Afghan chief, and completely defeated 
 him. Before Pollock, having gallantly fought his way 
 through the Khyber Pass, had 'reached Jellalabad, the 
 beleaguering army had been entirely defeated and dis- 
 persed. General Nott at Candahar was ready now to co- 
 operate with General Sale and General Pollock for any 
 movement on Cabul which the authorities might advise 
 or sanction. Meanwhile the unfortunate Shah Soojah, 
 whom we had restored with so much pomp of announce- 
 ment to the throne of his ancestors, was dead. He was 
 assassinated in Cabul, soon after the departure of the 
 British, by the orders of some of the chiefs who detested 
 him ; and his body, stripped of its royal robes and its many 
 jewels, was flung into a ditch. Historians quarrel a good 
 deal over the question of his sincerity and fidelity in his 
 dealings with us. It is not likely that an Oriental of his 
 temperament and his weakness could have been capable 
 of any genuine and unmixed loyalty to the English stran- 
 gers. It seems to us probable enough that he may at im- 
 portant moments have wavered and even faltered, glad to 
 take advantage of any movement that might safely rid 
 him of us, and yet, on the whole, preferring our friend- 
 ship and our protection to the tender mercies which he 
 was doomed to experience when our troops had left him. 
 But if we ask concerning his gratitude to us, it may be'
 
 220 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 well also to ask what there was in our conduct toward him 
 which called for any enthusiastic display of gratitude. We 
 did not help him out of any love for him, or any concern 
 for the justice of his cause. It served us to have a pup- 
 pet, and we took him when it suited us. We also aban- 
 doned him when it suited us. As Lady Teazle pro- 
 poses to do with honor in her conference with Joseph 
 Surface, so we ought to do with gratitude in discussing 
 the merits of Shah Soojah leave it out of the question. 
 What Shah Soojah owed to us was a few weeks of idle 
 pomp and absurd dreams, a bitter awakening, and a 
 shameful death. 
 
 During this time a new Governor-general had arrived 
 in India. Lord Auckland's time had run out, and during 
 its latter months he had become nerveless and despond- 
 ent because of the utter failure of the policy which, in an 
 evil hour for himself and his country, he had been 
 induced to undertake. It does not seem that it ever was 
 at heart a policy of his own, and he knew that the East 
 India Company were altogether opposed to it. The com- 
 pany were well aware of the vast expense which our enter- 
 prises in Afghanistan must impose on the revenues of 
 India, and they looked forward eagerly to the earliest 
 opportunity of bringing it to a close. Lord Auckland had 
 been persuaded into adopting it against his better judg- 
 ment, and against even the whisperings of his conscience ; 
 and now he too longed to be done with it ; but he wished 
 to leave Afghanistan as a magnanimous conqueror. He 
 had in his own person discounted the honors of victory. 
 He had received an earldom for the services he was pre- 
 sumed to have rendered to his sovereign and his country. 
 He had, therefore, in full sight that mournful juxtaposi- 
 tion of incongruous objects which a great English writer 
 has described so touchingly and tersely the trophies of 
 victory and the battle lost. He was an honorable, kindly
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 221 
 
 gentleman, and the news of all the successive calamities 
 fell upon him with a crushing, an overwhelming weight. 
 In plain language, the Governor-general lost his head. 
 He seemed to have no other idea than that of getting all 
 our troops as quickly as might be out of Afghanistan, and 
 shaking the dust of the place off our feet forever. It may 
 be doubted whether, if we had pursued such a policy as 
 this, we might not as well have left India itself once for 
 all. If we had allowed it to seem clear to the Indian popu- 
 lations and princes that we could be driven out of Af- 
 ghanistan with humiliation and disaster, and that we were 
 unable or afraid to strike one blow to redeem our military 
 credit, we should before long have seen in Hindostan 
 many an attempt to enact there the scenes of Cabul and 
 Candahar. Unless a moralist is prepared to say that a 
 nation which has committed one error of policy is bound 
 in conscience to take all the worst and most protracted 
 consequences of that error, and never make any attempt 
 to protect itself against them, even a moralist of the 
 most scrupulous character can hardly deny that we were 
 bound, for the sake of our interests in Europe as well as 
 in India, to prove that our strength had not been broken 
 nor our counsels paralyzed by the disasters in Afghanis- 
 tan. Yet Lord Auckland does not appear to have thought 
 anything of the kind either needful or within the compass 
 of our national strength. He was, in fact, a broken man. 
 His successor came out with the brightest hopes of 
 India and the world, founded on his energy and strength 
 of mind. The successor was Lord Ellenborough, the son 
 of that Edward Law, afterward Lord Ellenborough, Chief- 
 justice of the King's Bench, who had been leading counsel 
 for "Warren Hastings when the latter was impeached 
 before the House of Lords. The second Ellenborough 
 was, at the time of his appointment, filling the office of 
 President of the Board of Control, an office he had held
 
 222 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 before. He was therefore well acquainted with the affairs 
 of India. He had come into office under Sir Robert Peel 
 on the resignation of the Melbourne Ministry. He was 
 looked upon as a man of great ability and energy. It was 
 known that his personal predilections were for the career 
 of a soldier. He was fond of telling his hearers then and 
 since that the life of a camp was that which he should 
 have loved to lead. He was a man of great and, in certain 
 lights, apparently splendid abilities. There was a certain 
 Orientalism about his language, his aspirations, and his 
 policy. He loved gorgeousness and dramatic ill-natured 
 persons said theatric effects. Life arranged itself in his 
 eyes as a superb and showy pageant, of which it would 
 have been his ambition to form the central figure. His 
 eloquence was often of a lofty and noble order. Men who 
 are still hardly of middle age can remember Lord Ellen- 
 borough on great occasions in the House of Lords, and 
 can recollect their having been deeply impressed by him, 
 even though they had but lately heard such speakers as 
 Gladstone or Bright in the other House. It was not easy, 
 indeed, sometimes to avoid the conviction that in listen- 
 ing to Lord Ellenborough one was listening to a really 
 great orator of a somewhat antique and stately type, who 
 attuned his speech to the pitch of an age of loftier and 
 less prosaic aims than ours. When he had a great ques- 
 tion to deal with, and when his instincts, if not his reason- 
 ing power, had put him on the right or at least the effec- 
 tive side of it, he could speak in a tone of poetic and 
 elevated eloquence to which it was impossible to listen 
 without emotion. But if Lord Ellenborough was in some 
 respects a man of genius, he was also a man whose love 
 of mere effects often made him seem like a quack. There 
 are certain characters in which a little of unconscious 
 quackery is associated with some of the elements of 
 true genius. Lord Ellenborough was one of these. Far
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 223 
 
 greater men than he must be associated in the same 
 category. The elder Pitt, the first Napoleon, Mirabeau, 
 Bolingbroke, and many others, were men in whom un- 
 doubtedly some of the charlatan was mixed up with some 
 of the very highest qualities of genius. In Lord Ellenbor- 
 ough this blending was strongly and sometimes even 
 startlingly apparent. To this hour there are men who 
 knew him well in public and private on whom his weak- 
 nesses made so disproportionate an impression that they 
 can see in him little more than a mere charlatan. This is 
 entirely unjust. He was a man of great abilities and 
 earnestness, who had in him a strange dash of the play- 
 actor, who at the most serious moment of emergency 
 always thought of how to display himself effectively, and 
 who would have met the peril of an empire, as poor Nar- 
 cissa met death, with an overmastering desire to show to 
 the best personal advantage. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough's appointment was hailed by all par- 
 ties in India as the most auspicious that could be made. 
 Here, people said, is surely the great stage for a great 
 actor ; and now the great actor is coming. There would 
 be something fascinating to a temper like his in the 
 thought of redeeming the military honor of his country 
 and standing out in history as the avenger of the shames 
 of Cabul. But those who thought in this way found them- 
 selves suddenly disappointed. Lord Ellenborough uttered 
 and wrote a few showy sentences about revenging our 
 losses and "re-establishing in all its original brilliancy 
 our military character." But when he had done this he 
 seemed to have relieved his mind and to have done 
 enough. With him there was a constant tendency to 
 substitute grandiose phrases for deeds ; or perhaps to 
 think that the phrase was the thing of real moment. He 
 said these fine words, and then at once he announced that 
 the only object of the Government was to get the troops
 
 224 A IIISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 out of Afghanistan as quickly as might be, and almost on 
 any terms. The whole of Lord Ellenborough's conduct 
 during this crisis is inexplicable, except on the assump- 
 tion that he really did not know at certain times how to 
 distinguish between phrases and actions. A general out- 
 cry was raised in India and among the troops in Afghan- 
 istan against the extraordinary policy which Lord Ellen- 
 borough propounded. Englishmen, in fact, refused to be- 
 lieve in it ; took it as something that must be put aside. 
 English soldiers could not believe that they were to be 
 recalled after defeat; they persisted in the conviction 
 that, let the Governor-general say what he might, his in- 
 tention must be that the army should retrieve its fame 
 and retire only after complete victory. The Governor- 
 general himself after awhile quietly acted on this inter- 
 pretation of his meaning. He allowed the military com- 
 manders in Afghanistan to pull their resources together 
 and prepare for inflicting signal chastisement on the 
 enemy. They were not long in doing this. They en- 
 countered the enemy wherever he showed himself and 
 defeated him. They recaptured town after town, until at 
 length, on September 15th, 1842, General Pollock's force 
 entered Cabul. A few days after, as a lasting mark of 
 retribution for the crimes which had been committed 
 there, the British commander ordered the destruction of 
 the great bazar of Cabul, where the mangled remains of 
 the unfortunate envoy Macnaghten had been exhibited in 
 brutal triumph and joy to the Afghan populace. 
 
 It is not necessary to enter into detailed descriptions of 
 the successful progress of our arms. The war may Joe 
 regarded as over. It is, however, necessary to say some- 
 thing of the fate of the captives, or hostages, who were 
 hurried away that terrible January night at the com- 
 mand of Akbar Khan. One thing has first to be told 
 which some may now receive with incredulity, but which
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 225 
 
 is, nevertheless, true there was a British general who was 
 disposed to leave them to their fate and take no trouble 
 about them, and who declared himself under the convic- 
 tion, from the tenor of all Lord Ellenborough's despatches, 
 that the recovery of the prisoners was " a matter of 
 indifference to the Government." There seems to have 
 been some unhappy spell working against us in all this 
 chapter of our history, by virtue of which even its most 
 brilliant pages were destined to have something ignoble 
 or ludicrous written on them. Better counsels, however, 
 prevailed. General Pollock insisted on an effort being 
 made to recover the prisoners before the troops began to 
 return to India, and he appointed to this noble duty the 
 husband of one of the hostage ladies Sir Robert Sale. 
 The prisoners were recovered with greater ease than \vas 
 expected so many of them as were yet alive. Poor Gen- 
 eral Elphinstone had long before succumbed to disease 
 and hardship. The ladies had gone through strange pri- 
 vations. Thirty-six years ago the tale of the captivity of 
 Lady Sale and her companions was in every mouth all 
 over England ; nor did any civilized land fail to take an 
 interest in the strange and pathetic story. They were 
 hurried from fort to fort as the designs and the fortunes 
 of Akbar Khan dictated his disposal of them. They suf- 
 fered almost every fierce alternation of cold and heat. 
 They had to live on the coarsest fare ; they were lodged in a 
 manner which would have made the most wretched prison 
 accommodation of a civilized country seem luxurious by 
 comparison; they were in constant uncertainty and 
 fear, not knowing what might befall. Yet they seem to 
 have held up their courage and spirits wonderfully well, 
 and to have kept the hearts of the children alive with 
 mirth and sport at moments of the utmost peril. Gradu- 
 ally it became more and more suspected that the fortunes 
 of Akbar Khan were falling. At last it was beyond 
 
 15
 
 226 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 doubt that he had been completely defeated. Then they 
 were hurried away again, they knew not whither, 
 through ever-ascending mountain-passes, under a scorch- 
 ing sun. They were being carried off to the wild, rugged 
 regions of the Indian Caucasus. They were bestowed in 
 a miserable fort at Bameean. They were now under the 
 charge of one of Akbar Khans soldiers of fortune. This 
 man had begun to suspect that things were well-nigh 
 hopeless with Akbar Khan. He was induced by gradual 
 and very cautious approaches to enter into an agreement 
 with the prisoners for their release. The English officers 
 signed an agreement with him to secure him a large re- 
 ward and a pension for life if he enabled them to escape. 
 He accordingly declared that he renounced his allegiance 
 to Akbar Khan; all the more readily seeing that news 
 came hi of the chiefs total defeat and flight, no one knew 
 whither. The prisoners and their escort, lately their 
 jailer and guards, set forth on their way to General Pol- 
 lock's camp. On their way they met the English parties 
 sent out to seek for them. Sir Robert Sale found his wife 
 again. "Our joy," says one of the rescued prisoners, 
 " was too great, too overwhelming, for tongue to utter." 
 Description, indeed, could do nothing for the effect of 
 such a meeting but to spoil it. 
 
 There is a very different ending to the episode of the 
 English captives in Bokhara. Colonel Stoddart, who had 
 been sent to the Persian camp in the beginning of all these 
 events to insist that Persia must desist from the siege of 
 Herat, was sent subsequently on a mission to the Ameer 
 of Bokhara. The Ameer received him favorably at first, 
 but afterward became suspicious of English designs of 
 conquest, and treated Stoddart with marked indignity. 
 The Ameer appears to have been the very model of a 
 melodramatic Eastern tyrant. He was cruel and capri- 
 cious as another Caligula, and perhaps, in truth, quite as
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 227 
 
 mad. He threw Stoddart into prison. Captain Conolly 
 was appointed two years after to proceed to Bokhara and 
 other countries of the same region. He undertook to 
 endeavor to effect the liberation of Stoddart, but could 
 only succeed in sharing his sufferings, and, at last, his 
 fate. The Ameer had written a letter to the Queen of 
 England, and the answer was written by the Foreign 
 Secretary, referring the Ameer to the Governor-general 
 of India. The savage tyrant redoubled the ill-treatment 
 of his captives. He accused them of being spies and of 
 giving help to his enemies. The Indian Government were 
 of opinion that the envoys had in some manner exceeded 
 their instructions, and that Conolly, in particular, had 
 contributed by indiscretion to his own fate. Nothing, 
 therefore, was done to obtain their release beyond diplo- 
 matic efforts, and appeals to the magnanimity of the 
 Ameer, which had not any particular effect. Dr. Wolff, 
 the celebrated traveller and missionary, afterward under- 
 took an expedition of his own in the hope of saving the 
 unfortunate captives ; but he only reached Bokhara in time 
 to hear that they had been put to death. The moment and 
 the actual manner of their death cannot be known to 
 positive certainty, but there is little doubt that they were 
 executed on the same day by the orders of the Ameer. 
 The journals of Conolly have been preserved up to an 
 advanced period of his captivity, and they relieve so far 
 the melancholy of the fate that fell on the unfortunate 
 officers by showing that the horrors of their hopeless 
 imprisonment were so great that their dearest friends 
 must have been glad to know of their release even by the 
 knife of the executioner. It is perhaps not the least 
 bitter part of the story that, in the belief of many, includ- 
 ing the unfortunate officers themselves, the course pur- 
 sued by the English authorities in India had done more 
 to hand them over to the treacherous cruelty of their
 
 228 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 captor than to release them from his power. In truth, the 
 authorities in India had had enough of intervention. It 
 would have needed a great exigency, indeed, to stir them 
 into energy of action soon again in Central Asia. 
 
 This thrilling chapter of English history closes with 
 something like a piece of harlequinade. The curtain fell 
 amidst general laughter. Only the genius of Lord Ellen- 
 borough could have turned the mood of India and of Eng- 
 land to mirth on such a subject. Lord Ellenborough was 
 equal to this extraordinary feat. ' The never-to-be-forgot- 
 ten proclamation about the restoration to India of the 
 gates of the Temple of Somnauth, redeemed at Lord Ellen- 
 borough's orders when Ghuznee was retaken by the Eng- 
 lish, was first received with incredulity as a practical joke ; 
 then with one universal burst of laughter; then with 
 indignation ; and then, again, when the natural anger had 
 died away, with laughter again. " My brothers and my 
 friends," wrote Lord Ellenborough "to all the princes, 
 chiefs, and people of India," " Our victorious army bears 
 the gates of the Temple of Somnauth in triumph from 
 Afghanistan, and the despoiled tomb of Sultan Mahmoud 
 looks upon the ruins of Ghuznee. The insult of eight 
 hundred years is at last avenged. The gates of the 
 Temple of Somnauth, so long the memorial of your 
 humiliation, are become the proudest record of your 
 national glory ; the proof of your superiority in arms over 
 the nations beyond the Indus." 
 
 No words of pompous man could possibly have put to- 
 gether greater absurdities. The brothers and friends were 
 Mohammedans and Hindoos, who were about as likely to 
 agree as to the effect of these symbols of triumph as a Fe- 
 nian and an Orangeman would be to fraternize in a toast 
 to the glorious, pious, and immortal memory. To the Mo- 
 hammedans the triumph of Lord Ellenborough was simply 
 an insult. To the Hindoos the offer was ridiculous, for the
 
 THE DISASTERS OF CABUL. 229 
 
 Temple of Somnauth itself was in ruins, and the ground 
 it covered was trodden by Mohammedans. To finish the 
 absurdity, the gates proved not to be genuine relics at all. 
 On October 1st, 1842, exactly four years since Lord Auck- 
 land's proclamation announcing and justifying the inter- 
 vention to restore Shah Soojah, Lord Ellenborough issued 
 another proclamation announcing the complete failure 
 and the revocation of the policy of his predecessor. Lord 
 Ellenborough declared that " to force a sovereign upon 
 a reluctant people would be as inconsistent with the policy 
 as it is with the principles of the British Government ; " 
 that, therefore, they would recognize any government ap- 
 proved by the Afghans themselves ; that the British arms 
 would be withdrawn from Afghanistan, and that the Gov- 
 ernment of India would remain " content with the limits 
 nature appears to have assigned to its empire." Dost 
 Mahomed was released from his captivity, and before long 
 was ruler of Cabul once again. Thus ended the story of 
 our expedition to reorganize the internal condition of 
 Afghanistan. After four years of unparalleled trial and 
 disaster everything was restored to the condition in which 
 we found it, except that there were so many brave Eng- 
 lishmen sleeping in bloody graves. The Duke of Wel- 
 lington ascribed the causes of our failure to making war 
 with a peace establishment ; making war without a safe 
 base of operations ; carrying the native army out of India 
 into a strange and cold climate ; invading a poor country 
 which was unequal to the supply of our wants ; giving 
 undue power to political agents ; want of forethought and 
 undue confidence in the Afghans on the part of Sir W. 
 Macnaghten ; placing our magazines, even our treasure, in 
 indefensible places ; great military neglect and misman- 
 agement after the outbreak. Doubtless these were, in a 
 military sense, the reasons for the failure of an enterprise 
 which cost the revenues of India an enormous amount of
 
 230 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 treasure. But the causes of failure were deeper than any 
 military errors could explain. It is doubtful whether the 
 genius of a Napoleon and the forethought of a Wellington 
 could have won any permanent success for an enterprise 
 founded on so false and fatal a policy. Nothing in the 
 ability or devotion of those intrusted with the task of 
 carrying it out could have made it deserve success. Our 
 first error of principle was to go completely out of our 
 way for the purpose of meeting mere speculative dangers ; 
 our next and far greater error was made when we at- 
 tempted, in the words of Lord Ellenborough's proclama- 
 tion, to force a sovereign upon a reluctant people.
 
 THE EEPEAL YEAR. 231 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 
 
 "THE year 1843," said O'Connell, "is and shall be the 
 great Repeal year." In the year 1843, at all events, O'Con- 
 nell and his Repeal agitation are entitled to the foremost 
 place. The character of the man himself well deserves 
 some calm consideration. "We are now, perhaps, in a con- 
 dition to do it justice. We are far removed in sentiment 
 and political association, if not exactly in years, from the 
 time when O'Connell was the idol of one party, and the 
 object of all the bitterest scorn and hatred of the other. 
 No man of his time was so madly worshipped and so 
 fiercely denounced. No man in our time was ever the 
 object of so much abuse in the newspapers. The fiercest 
 and coarsest attacks that we can remember to have been 
 made in English journals on Cobden and Bright during 
 the heat of the Anti-Corn-law agitation seem placid, 
 gentle, and almost complimentary when compared with 
 the criticisms daily applied to O'Connell. The only vitu- 
 peration which could equal in vehemence and scurrility 
 that poured out upon O'Connell was that which O'Connell 
 himself poured out upon his assailants. His hand was 
 against every man, if every man's hand was against him. 
 He asked for no quarter, and he gave none. 
 
 We have outlived not the times merely, but the whole 
 spirit of the times, so far as political controversy is con- 
 cerned. We are now able to recognize the fact that a
 
 232 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 public man may hold opinions which are distasteful to 
 the majority, and yet be perfectly sincere and worthy of 
 respect. We are well aware that a man may differ from 
 us, even on vital questions, and yet be neither fool nor 
 knave. But this view of things was not generally taken 
 in the days of O'Connell's great agitation. He and his 
 enemies alike acted in their controversies 9n the principle 
 that a political opponent is necessarily a blockhead or a 
 scoundrel. It is strange and somewhat melancholy to read 
 the strictures of so enlightened a woman as Miss Martineau 
 upon O'Connell. They are all based upon what a humor- 
 ous writer has called the " fiend-in-human-shape theory." 
 Miss Martineau not merely assumes that O'Connell was 
 absolutely insincere and untrustworthy, but discourses of 
 him on the assumption that he was knowingly and pur- 
 posely a villain. Not only does she hold that his Repeal 
 agitation was an unqualified evil for his country, and that 
 Repeal, if gained, would have been a curse to it, but she 
 insists that O'Connell himself was thoroughly convinced 
 of the facts. She devotes whole pages of lively and acrid 
 argument to prove not only that O'Connell was ruining 
 his country, but that he knew he was ruining it, and 
 persevered in his wickedness out of pure self-seeking. 
 No writer possessed of one-tenth of Miss Martineau's 
 intellect and education would now reason after that 
 fashion about any public man. If there is any common 
 delusion of past days which may be taken as entirely 
 exploded now, it is the idea that any man ever swayed 
 vast masses of people, and became the idol and the hero 
 of a nation, by the strength of a conscious hypocrisy and 
 imposture. 
 
 O'Connell in this Repeal year, as he called it, was by far 
 the most prominent politician in these countries who had 
 never been in office. He had been the patron of the Mel- 
 bourne Ministry, and his patronage had proved baneful to
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 233 
 
 it. One of the great causes of the detestation in which 
 the Melbourne Whigs were held by a vast number of 
 English people was their alleged subserviency to the Irish 
 agitator. We cannot be surprised if the English public 
 just then was little inclined to take an impartial esti- 
 mate of O'Connell. He had attacked some of their public 
 men in language of the fiercest denunciation. He had 
 started an agitation which seemed as if it were directly 
 meant to bring about a break-up of the Imperial sys- 
 tem so lately completed by the Act of Union. He was 
 opposed to the existence of the State Church in Ireland. 
 He was the bitter enemy of the Irish landlord class of 
 the landlords, that is to say, who took their title in any 
 way from England. He was familiarly known in the 
 graceful controversy of the time as the " Big Beggarman." 
 It was an article of faith with the general public that he 
 was enriching himself at the expense of a poor and foolish 
 people. It is a matter of fact that he had given up a 
 splendid practice at the bar to carry on his agitation; 
 that he lost by the agitation, pecuniarily,' far more than 
 he ever got by it ; that he had not himself received from 
 first to last anything like the amount of the noble tribute 
 so becomingly and properly given to Mr. Cobdeu, and so 
 honorably accepted by him ; and that he died poor, leav- 
 ing his sons poor. Indeed, it is a remarkable evidence of 
 the purifying nature of any great political cause, even 
 where the object sought is but a phantom, that it is 
 hardly possible to give a single instance of a great political 
 agitation carried on in these countries and in modern times 
 by leaders who had any primary purpose of making 
 money. But at that time the general English public 
 were firmly convinced that O'Connell was simply keeping 
 up his agitation for the sake of pocketing "the rent." 
 Some of the qualities, too, that specially endeared him to 
 his Celtic countrymen made him particularly objectionable
 
 234 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 to Englishmen ; and Englishmen have never been famous 
 for readiness to enter into the feelings and accept the 
 point of view of other peoples. O'Connell was a thorough 
 Celt. He represented all the impulsiveness, the quick- 
 changing emotions, the passionate, exaggerated loves and 
 hatreds, the heedlessness of statement, the tendency to 
 confound impressions with facts, the ebullient humor all 
 the other qualities that are especially characteristic of 
 the Celt. The Irish people were the audience to which 
 O'Connell habitually played. It may, indeed, be said 
 that even in playing to this audience he commonly played 
 to the gallery. As the orator of a popular assembly, as 
 the orator of a monster meeting, he probably never had 
 an equal in these countries. He had many of the physical 
 endowments that are especially favorable to success in 
 such a sphere. He had a herculean frame, a stately 
 presence, a face capable of expressing easily and effec- 
 tively the most rapid alternations of mood, and a voice 
 which all hearers admit to have been almost unrivalled for 
 strength and sweetness. Its power, its pathos, its passion, 
 its music have been described in words of positive rapture 
 by men who detested O'Connell, and who would rather, if 
 they could, have denied to him any claim on public atten- 
 tion, even in the matter of voice. He spoke without 
 studied preparation, and of course had all the defects of 
 such a style. He fell into repetition and into carelessness 
 of construction ; he was hurried away into exaggeration 
 and sometimes into mere bombast. But he had all the 
 peculiar success, too, which rewards the orator who can 
 speak without preparation. He always spoke right to 
 the hearts of his hearers. On the platform or in Parlia- 
 ment, whatever he said was said to his audience, and was 
 never hi the nature of a discourse delivered over their 
 heads. He entered the House of Commons when he was 
 nearly fifty-four years of age. Most persons supposed
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 235 
 
 that the style of speaking he had formed, first in address- 
 ing juries, and next in rousing Irish mobs, must cause 
 his failure when he came to appeal to the unsympathetic 
 and fastidious House of Commons. But it is certain that 
 O'Connell became one of the most successful Parliament- 
 ary orators of his time. Lord Jeffrey, a professional critic, 
 declared that all other speakers in the House seemed to 
 him only talking school-boy talk after he had heard 
 O'Connell. No man we now know of is less likely to be 
 carried away by any of the clap-trap arts of a false 
 demagogic style than Mr. Roebuck; and Mr. Roebuck 
 has said that he considers O'Connell the greatest orator 
 he ever heard in the House of Commons. Charles Dickens, 
 when a reporter in the gallery, where he had few equals, 
 if any, in his craft, put down his pencil once when 
 engaged in reporting a speech of O'Connell's on one of 
 the tithe riots in Ireland, and declared that he could not 
 take notes of the speech, so moved was he by its pathos. 
 Lord Beaconsfield, who certainly had no great liking for 
 O'Connell, has spoken in terms as high as any one could 
 use about his power over the House. But O'Connell's 
 eloquence only helped him to make all the more enemies 
 in the House of Commons. He was reckless even there in 
 his denunciation, although he took care never to obtrude 
 on Parliament the extravagant and unmeaning abuse of 
 opponents which delighted the Irish mob meetings. 
 
 O'Connell was a crafty and successful lawyer. The 
 Irish peasant, like the Scottish, is, or at least then was, 
 remarkably fond of litigation. He delighted in the quirks 
 and quibbles of law, and in the triumphs won by the skill 
 of lawyers over opponents. He admired O'Connell all the 
 more when O'Connell boasted and proved that he could 
 drive a coach and six through any Act of Parliament. 
 One of the pet heroes of Irish legend is a personage whose 
 cleverness and craft procure for him a sobriquet which has
 
 236 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 been rendered into English by the words " twists upon 
 twists and tricks upon tricks." O'Connell was in the eyes 
 of many of the Irish peasantry an embodiment of " twists 
 upon twists and tricks upon tricks," enlisted in their cause 
 for the confusion of their adversaries. He had borne the 
 leading part in carrying Catholic emancipation. He had 
 encountered all the danger and responsibility of the some- 
 what aggressive movement by which it was finally secured. 
 It is true that it was a reform which in the course of civil- 
 ization must have been carried. It had in its favor all 
 the enlightenment of the time. The eloquence of the 
 greatest orators, the intellect of the truest philosophers, 
 the prescience of the wisest statesmen had pleaded for it 
 and helped to make its way clear. Xo man can doubt 
 that it must in a short time have been carried if O'Con- 
 nell had never lived. But it was carried just then by 
 virtue of O'Connell's bold agitation, and by the wise resolve 
 of the Tory Government not to provoke a civil war. It is 
 deeply to be regretted that Catholic emancipation was not 
 conceded to the claims of justice. Had it been so yielded, 
 it is very doubtful whether we should ever have heard 
 much of the Repeal agitation. But the Irish people saw, 
 and indeed all the world was made aware of the fact, 
 that emancipation would not have been conceded, just then 
 at least, but for the fear of civil disturbance. To an Eng- 
 lishman looking coolly back from a distance, the difference 
 is clear between granting to-day, rather than provoke dis- 
 turbance, that which every one sees must be granted 
 some time, and conceding what the vast majority of the 
 English people believe can never with propriety or even 
 safety be granted at all. But we can hardly wonder if 
 the Irish peasant did not make such distinctions. All he 
 knew was that O'Connell had demanded Catholic eman- 
 cipation, and had been answered at first by a direct refusal ; 
 that he had said he would compel its concession, and that
 
 DANIEL D'
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 237 
 
 in the end it was conceded to him. When, therefore, 
 O'Connell said that he would compel the Government to 
 give him repeal of the Union, the Irish peasant naturally 
 believed that he could keep his word. 
 
 Nor is there any reason to doubt that O'Connell him- 
 self believed in the possibility of accomplishing his pur- 
 pose. We are apt now to think of the union between 
 England and Ireland as of time-honored endurance. It 
 had been scarcely thirty years in existence when O'Con- 
 nell entered Parliament. The veneration of ancient line- 
 age, the majesty of custom, the respect due to the " wisdom 
 of our ancestors " none of these familiar claims could be 
 urged on behalf of the legislative union between England 
 and Ireland. To O'Connell it appeared simply as a modern 
 innovation which had nothing to be said for it except 
 that a majority of Englishmen had by threats and bribery 
 forced it on a majority of Irishmen. Mr. Lecky, the author 
 of the " History of European Morals," may be cited as an 
 impartial authority on such a subject. Let us see what 
 he says in his work on " The Leaders of Public Opinion 
 in Ireland," with regard to the movement for repeal of 
 the Union, of which it seems almost needless to say he 
 disapproves. " O'Connell perceived clearly," says Mr. 
 Lecky, " that the tendency of affairs in Europe was toward 
 the recognition of the principle that a nation's will is the 
 one legitimate rule of its government. All rational men 
 acknowledged that the Union was imposed on Ireland by 
 corrupt means, contrary to the wish of one generation. 
 O'Connell was prepared to show, by the protest of the 
 vast majority of the people, that it was retained without 
 the acquiescence of the next. He had allied himself with 
 the parties that were rising surely and rapidly to power 
 in England with the democracy, whose gradual progress 
 is effacing the most venerable landmarks of the Constitu- 
 tion with the Free-traders, whose approaching triumph
 
 238 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 he had hailed and exulted in from afar. He had perceived 
 the possibility of forming a powerful party hi Parliament, 
 which would be free to co-operate with all English parties 
 without coalescing with any, and might thus turn the 
 balance of factions and decide the fate of ministries. He 
 saw, too, that while England in a time of peace might 
 resist the expressed will of the Irish nation, its policy 
 would be necessarily modified in time of war ; and he pre- 
 dicted that should there be a collision with France while 
 the nation was organized as in 1843, Repeal would be the 
 immediate and the inevitable consequence. In a word, he 
 believed that under a constitutional government the will 
 of four-fifths of a nation, if peacefully, perseveringly, and 
 energetically expressed, must sooner or later be triumph- 
 ant. If a war had broken out during the agitation if 
 the life of O'Connell had been prolonged ten years longer 
 if any worthy successor had assumed his mantle if a 
 fearful famine had not broken the spirit of the people 
 who can say that the agitation would not have been suc- 
 cessful ? " No one, we fancy, except those who are always 
 convinced that nothing can ever come to pass which they 
 think ought not to come to pass. At all events, if an 
 English political philosopher, surveying the events after 
 a distance of thirty years, is of opinion that Repeal was 
 possible, it is not surprising that O'Connell thought its 
 attainment possible at the time when he set himself to 
 agitate for it. Even if this be not conceded, it will at 
 least be allowed that it is not very surprising if the Irish 
 peasant saw no absurdity in the movement. Our system 
 of government by party does not lay claim to absolute per- 
 fection. It is an excellent mechanism, on the whole ; it is 
 probably the most satisfactory that the wit of man has 
 yet devised for the management of the affairs of a state ; 
 but its greatest admirers will bear to be told that it has its 
 drawbacks and disadvantages. One of these undoubtedly
 
 THE REPEAL TEAR. 239 
 
 is found in the fact that so few reforms are accomplished 
 in deference to the claims of justice, in comparison with 
 those that are yielded to the pressure of numbers. A 
 great English statesman in our own day once said that 
 Parliament had done many just things, but few things 
 because they were just. O'Connell and the Irish people 
 saw that Catholic emancipation had been yielded to pres- 
 sure rather than to justice ; it is not wonderful if they 
 thought that pressure might prevail as well in the matter 
 of Repeal. 
 
 In many respects O'Connell differed from more modern 
 Irish Nationalists. He was a thorough Liberal. He was 
 a devoted opponent of negro slavery ; he was a stanch 
 Free-trader ; he was a friend of popular education ; he was 
 an enemy to all excess ; he was opposed to strikes ; he 
 was an advocate of religious equality everywhere ; and he 
 declined to receive the commands of the Vatican in his po- 
 litical agitation. " I am a Catholic, but I am not a Papist," 
 was his own definition of his religious attitude. He 
 preached the doctrine of constitutional agitation strictly, 
 and declared that no political Reform was worth the shed- 
 ding of one drop of blood. It may be asked how it came 
 about that with all these excellent attributes, which all 
 critics now allow to him, O'Connell was so detested by the 
 vast majority of the English people. One reason, undoubt- 
 edly, is, that O'Connell deliberately revived and worked 
 up for his political purposes the almost extinct national 
 hatreds of Celt and Saxon. As a phrase of political 
 controversy, he may be said to have invented the word 
 " Saxon." He gave a terrible license to his tongue. His 
 abuse was outrageous ; his praise was outrageous. The 
 very effusiveness of his loyalty told to his disadvantage. 
 People could not understand how one who perpetually 
 denounced " the Saxon " could be so enthusiastic and rapt- 
 urous in his professions of loyalty to the Saxon's Queen.
 
 240 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 In the common opinion of Englishmen, all the evils of 
 Ireland, all the troubles attaching to the connection 
 between the two countries, had arisen from this unmiti- 
 gated, rankling hatred of Celt for Saxon. It was im- 
 possible for them to believe that a man who deliberately 
 applied all the force of his eloquence to revive it could be 
 a genuine patriot. It appeared intolerable that while thus 
 laboring to make the Celt hate the Saxon he should yet 
 profess an extravagant devotion to the Sovereign of Eng- 
 land. Yet O'Connell was probably quite sincere in his 
 professions of loyalty. He was in no sense a revolutionist. 
 He had from his education in a French college acquired 
 an early detestation of the principles of the French Revolu- 
 tion. Of the Irish rebels of '98 he spoke with as savage 
 an intolerance as the narrowest English Tories could 
 show in speaking of himself. The Tones, and Emmetts, 
 and Fitzgeralds, whom so many of the Irish people adored, 
 were, in O'Connell's eyes, and in his words, only " a gang 
 of miscreants." He grew angry at the slightest expres- 
 sion of an opinion among his followers that seemed to 
 denote even a willingness to discuss any of the doctrines 
 of Communism. His theory and his policy evidently were 
 that Ireland was to be saved by a dictatorship intrusted 
 to himself, with the Irish priesthood acting as his officers 
 and agents. He maintained the authority of the priests, 
 and his own authority by means of them and over them. 
 The political system of the country for the purposes of 
 agitation was to be a sort of hierarchy ; the parish priests 
 occupying the lowest grade, the bishops standing on the 
 higher steps, and O'Connell himself supreme, as the 
 pontiff, over all. 
 
 He had a Parliamentary system by means of which he 
 proposed to approach more directly the question of Repeal 
 of the Union. He got seats in the House of Commons for 
 a number of his sons, his nephews, and his sworn retain-
 
 THE REPEAL TEAR. 241 
 
 ers. "O'Connell's tail" was the precursor of "the Pope's 
 Brass Band" in the slang of the House of Commons. He 
 had an almost supreme control over the Irish constitu- 
 encies, and whenever a vacancy took place he sent down 
 the Repeal candidate to contest it. He always inculcated 
 and insisted on the necessity of order and peace. Indeed, 
 as he proposed to carry on his agitation altogether by the 
 help of the bishops and the priests, it was not possible 
 for him, even were he so inclined, to conduct it on any 
 other than peaceful principles. " The man who commits 
 a crime gives strength to the enemy," was a maxim which 
 he was never weary of impressing upon his followers. 
 The Temperance movement set on foot with such remark- 
 able and sudden success by Father Mathew was at once 
 turned to account by O'Connell. He was himself, in his 
 later years at all events, a very temperate man, and he was 
 delighted at the prospect of good order and discipline which 
 the Temperance movement afforded. Father Mathew was 
 very far from sharing all the political opinions of O'Con- 
 nell. The sweet and simple friar, whose power was that 
 of goodness and enthusiasm only, and who had but little 
 force of character or intellect, shrank from political agita- 
 tion, and was rather Conservative than otherwise in his 
 views. But he could not afford to repudiate the support 
 of O'Connell, who on all occasions glorified the Temperance 
 movement, and called upon his followers to join it, and 
 was always boasting of his " noble army of Teetotallers." 
 It was probably when he found that the mere fact of his 
 having supported the Melbourne Government did so much 
 to discredit that Government in the eyes of Englishmen, 
 and to bring about its fall, that O'Connell went deliberately 
 out of the path of mere Parliamentary agitation, and 
 started that system of agitation by monster meeting which 
 has since his time been regularly established among us as 
 a principal part of all political organization for a definite 
 
 16
 
 242 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 purpose. He founded in Dublin a Repeal Association 
 which met in a place on Burgh Quay, and which he styled 
 Conciliation Hall. Around him in this Association he 
 gathered his sons, his relatives, his devoted followers, 
 priestly and lay. The Nation newspaper, then hi its 
 youth and full of a fresh literary vigor, was one of his 
 most brilliant instruments. At a later period of the 
 agitation it was destined to be used against him, and with 
 severe effect. The famous monster meetings were usually 
 held on a Sunday, on some open spot, mostly selected for 
 its historic fame, and with all the picturesque surround- 
 ings of hill and stream. From the dawn of the summer 
 day the Repealers were thronging to the scene of the 
 meeting. They came from all parts of the neighboring 
 country for miles and miles. They were commonly mar- 
 shalled and guided by their parish priests. They all 
 attended the services of their Church before the meeting 
 began. The influence of his religion and of his patriotic 
 feelings was brought to bear at once upon the impression- 
 able and emotional Irish Celt. At the meeting O'Connell 
 and several of his chosen orators addressed the crowd on 
 the subject of the wrongs done to Ireland by " the Saxon," 
 the claims of Ireland to the restoration of her old Parlia- 
 ment in College Green, and the certainty of her having it 
 restored if Irishmen only obeyed O'Connell and their 
 priests, were sober, and displayed their strength and their 
 unity. 
 
 O'Connell himself, it is needless to say, was always the 
 great orator of the day. The agitation developed a great 
 deal of literary talent among the younger men of educa- 
 tion ; but it never brought out a man who was even spoken 
 of as a possible successor to O'Connell in eloquence. His 
 magnificent voice enabled him to do what no genius and 
 no eloquence less aptly endowed could have done. He 
 could send his lightest word thrilling to the extreme of
 
 THE REPEAL TEAR. 243 
 
 the vast concourse of people whom he desired to move. 
 He swayed them with the magic of an absolute control. 
 He understood all the moods of his people ; to address him- 
 self to them came naturally to him. He made them roar 
 with laughter ; he made them weep ; he made them thrill 
 with indignation. As the shadow runs over a field, so 
 the impression of his varying eloquence ran over the as- 
 semblage. He commanded the emotions of his hearers as 
 a consummate conductor sways the energies of his or- 
 chestra. Every allusion told. When, in one of the meet- 
 ings held in his native Kerry, he turned solemnly round and 
 appealed to " yonder blue mountains where you and I were 
 cradled ; " or in sight of the objects he described he apos- 
 trophized Ireland as the " land of the green valley and the 
 rushing river " an admirably characteristic and complete 
 description ; or recalled some historical association con- 
 nected with the scene he surveyed each was some special 
 appeal to the instant feelings of his peculiar audience. 
 Sometimes he indulged hi the grossest and what ought 
 to have been the most ridiculous flattery of his hearers 
 flattery which would have offended and disgusted the 
 dullest English audience. But the Irish peasant, with all 
 his keen sense of the ridiculous in others, is singularly 
 open to the influence of any appeal to his own vanity. 
 There is a great deal of the " eternal- womanly " in the 
 Celtic nature, and it is not easy to overflatter one of the 
 race. Doubtless O'Connell knew this and acted purposely 
 on it ; and this was a peculiarity of his political conduct 
 which it would be hard indeed to commend or even to 
 defend. But, in truth, he adopted in his agitation the 
 tactics he had employed at the bar. " A good speech is a 
 good thing," he used to say ; " but the verdict is the thing." 
 His flattery of his hearers was not grosser than his abuse 
 of all those whom they did not like. His dispraise often 
 had absolutely no meaning in it. There was no sense
 
 244 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 whatever in calling the Duke of Wellington " a stunted 
 corporal ; " one might as well have called Mont Blanc a 
 mole-hill. Nobody could have shown more clearly than 
 O'Connell did that he did not believe the Times to be " an 
 obscure rag." It would have been as humorous and as 
 truthful to say that there was no such paper as the Times. 
 But these absurdities made an ignorant audience laugh 
 for the moment, and O'Connell had gained the only point 
 he just then wanted to carry. He would probably have 
 answered any one who remonstrated with him on the dis- 
 ingenuousness of such sayings, as Mrs. Thrale says Burke 
 once answered her when she taxed him with a want of 
 literal accuracy, by quoting, " Odds life, must one swear 
 to the truth of a song ? " But this recklessness of epithet 
 and description did much to make O'Connell distrusted 
 and disliked hi England, where, hi whatever heat of 
 political controversy, words are supposed to be the expres- 
 sions of some manner of genuine sentiment. Of course 
 many of O' Council's abusive epithets were not only full 
 of humor, but did, to some extent, fairly represent the 
 weakness at least of those against whom they were 
 directed. Some of his historical allusions were of a more 
 mischievous nature than any mere personalities could 
 have been. " Peel and Wellington," he said at Kilkenny, 
 " may be second Cromwells ; they may get Cromwell's 
 blunted truncheon, and they may oh, sacred heavens ! 
 enact on the fair occupants of that gallery " (pointing to 
 the ladies' gallery), " the murder of the Wexford women. 
 Let it not be supposed that when I made that appeal to 
 the ladies it was but a flight of my imagination. No ! 
 when Cromwell entered the town of Wexford by treachery, 
 three hundred ladies, the beauty and loveliness of Wex- 
 ford, the young and the old, the maid and the matron, 
 were collected round the Cross of Christ ; they prayed to 
 Heaven for mercy, and I hope they found it ; they prayed
 
 THE EEPEAL YEAR, 245 
 
 to the English for humanity, and Cromwell slaughtered 
 them. I tell you this : three hundred women, the grace 
 and beauty and virtue of Wexford, were slaughtered by 
 the English ruffians sacred heaven ! " He went on then 
 to assure his hearers that " the ruffianly Saxon paper, 
 the Times, in the number received by me to-day, presumes 
 to threaten us again with such a scene." One would like 
 to see the copy of the Times which contained such a 
 threat, or, indeed, any words that could be tortured into 
 a semblance of any such hideous meaning. But the great 
 agitator, when he found that he had excited enough the 
 horror of his audience, proceeded to reassure them by the 
 means of all others most objectionable and dangerous at 
 such a time. " I am not imaginative," he said, " when I 
 talk of the possibility of such scenes anew ; but yet I as- 
 sert that there is no danger to our women now, for the men 
 of Ireland would die to the last in their defence." Here 
 the whole meeting broke into a storm of impasssioned 
 cheering. " Ay," the orator exclaimed, when the storm 
 found a momentary hush, " we were a paltry remnant 
 then ; we are millions now." At Mullaghmast, O'Connell 
 made an impassioned allusion to the massacre of Irish 
 chieftains, said to have taken place on that very spot in 
 the reign of Queen Elizabeth. "Three hundred and 
 ninety Irish chiefs perished here ! They came, confiding 
 in Saxon honor, relying on the protection of the Queen, 
 to a friendly conference. In the midst of revelry, in the 
 cheerful light of the banquet house, they were surrounded 
 and butchered. None returned save one. Their wives 
 were widows, their children fatherless. In their home- 
 steads was heard the shrill shriek of despair the cry of 
 bitter agony. Oh, Saxon cruelty, how it cheers my heart 
 to think that you dare not attempt such a deed again ! " 
 It is not necessary to point out what the effect of such 
 descriptions and such allusions must have been upon an
 
 246 A UISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 excitable and an ignorant peasant audience on men who 
 were ready to believe in all sincerity that England only 
 wanted the opportunity to re-enact, in the reign of Queen 
 Victoria, the scenes of Elizabeth's or Cromwell's day. 
 
 The late Lord Lytton has given, in his poem " St. Ste- 
 phens," a picturesque description of one of these meetings, 
 and of the effect produced upon himself by O'Connell's 
 eloquence. " Once to my sight," he says, " the giant thus 
 was given ; walled by wide air and roofed by boundless 
 heaven." He describes " the human ocean " lying spread 
 out at the giant's feet ; its " wave on wave " flowing 
 " into space away." Not unnaturally, Lord Lytton 
 thought, " no clarion could have sent its sound even to 
 the centre" of that crowd. 
 
 " And as I thought, rose the sonorous swell 
 As from some church tower swings the silvery bell ; 
 Aloft and clear from airy tide to tide, 
 It glided easy as a bird may glide. 
 To the last verge of that vast audience sent, 
 It played with each wild passion as it went ; 
 Now stirred the uproar now the murmur stilled, 
 And sobs or laughter answered as it willed. 
 Then did I know what spells of infinite choice 
 To rouse or lull has the sweet human voice. 
 Then did I learn to seize the sudden clew 
 To the grand troublous life antique to view, 
 Under the rock-stand of Demosthenes, 
 Unstable Athens heave her noisy seas." 
 
 The crowds who attended the monster meetings came 
 in a sort of military order and with a certain parade of 
 military discipline. At the meeting held on the Hill of 
 Tara, where O'Connell stood beside the stone said to have 
 been used for the coronation of the ancient monarchs of 
 Ireland, it is declared, on the authority of careful and un- 
 sympathetic witnesses, that a quarter of a million of people 
 must have been present. The Government naturally felt
 
 THE REPEAL YEAK, 247 
 
 that there was a very considerable danger in the massing 
 together of such vast crowds of men in something like 
 military array and under the absolute leadership of one 
 man, who openly avowed that he had called them together 
 to show England what was the strength her statesmen 
 would have to fear if they continued to deny Repeal to 
 his demand. It is certain now that O'Connell did not at 
 any time mean to employ force for the attainment of his 
 ends. But it is equally certain that he wished the Eng- 
 lish Government to see that he had the command of an 
 immense number of men, and probably even to believe 
 that he would, if needs were, hurl them in rebellion upon 
 England if ever she should be embarrassed with a foreign 
 war. It is certain, too, that many of O'Connell's most 
 ardent admirers, especially among the young men, were 
 fully convinced that some day or other their leader would 
 call on them to fight, and were much disappointed when 
 they found that he had no such intention. The Govern- 
 ment at last resolved to interfere. A meeting was an- 
 nounced to be held at Clontarf on Sunday, October 8th, 
 1843. Clontarf is near Dublin, and is famous in Irish his- 
 tory as the scene of a great victory of the Irish over their 
 Danish invaders. It was intended that this meeting 
 should surpass in numbers and in earnestness the assem- 
 blage at Tara. On the very day before the 8th the Lord- 
 lieutenant issued a proclamation prohibiting the meeting 
 as " calculated to excite reasonable and well-grounded 
 apprehensions," in that its object was "to accomplish 
 alterations in the laws and constitutions of the realm by 
 intimidation and the demonstration of physical force." 
 O'Connell's power over the people was never shown more 
 effectively than in the control which at that critical 
 moment he was still able to exercise. The populations 
 were already coming in to Clontarf in streams from all 
 the country round when the proclamation of the Lord-
 
 248 A UISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 lieutenant was issued. No doubt the Irish Government 
 ran a terrible risk when they delayed so long the issue of 
 their proclamation. With the people already assembling 
 in such masses, the risk of a collision with the police and 
 the soldiery, and of a consequent massacre, is something 
 still shocking to contemplate. It is not surprising, per- 
 haps, if O'Connell and many of his followers made it a 
 charge against the Government that they intended to 
 bring about such a collision in order to make an example 
 of some of the Repealers, and thus strike terror through 
 the country. Some sort of collision would almost undoubt- 
 edly have occurred but for the promptitude of O'Connell 
 himself. He at once issued a proclamation of his own to 
 which the populations were likely to pay far more atten- 
 tion than they would to anything coming from Dublin 
 Castle. O'Connell declared that the orders of the Lord- 
 lieutenant must be obeyed ; that the meeting must not 
 take place; and that the people must return to their 
 homes. The " uncrowned king," as some of his admirers 
 loved to call him, was obeyed, and no meeting was held. 
 From that moment, however, the great power of the 
 Repeal agitation was gone. The Government had accom- 
 plished far more by their proclamation than they could 
 possibly have imagined at the time. They had, without 
 knowing it, compelled O'Connell to show his hand. It 
 was now made clear that he did not intend to have resort 
 to force. From that hour there was virtually a schism be- 
 tween the elder Repealers and the younger. The young 
 and fiery followers of the great agitator lost all faith in 
 him. It would in any case have been impossible to main- 
 tain for any very long time the state of national tension 
 in which Ireland had been kept. It must soon come 
 either to a climax or to an anti-climax. It came to an anti- 
 climax. All the imposing demonstrations of physical 
 strength lost their value when it was made positively
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 249 
 
 known that they were only demonstrations, and that 
 nothing was ever to come of them. The eye of an atten- 
 tive foreigner was then fixed on Ireland and on O'Con- 
 nell ; the eye of one destined to play a part in the politi- 
 cal history of our time which none other has surpassed. 
 Count Cavour had not long returned to his own country 
 from a visit made with the express purpose of studying 
 the politics and the general condition of England and Ire- 
 land. He wrote to a friend about the crisis then passing 
 in Ireland. " When one is at a distance," he said, " from 
 the theatre of events, it is easy to make prophecies which 
 have already been contradicted by facts. But according 
 to my view O'Connell's fate is sealed. On the first vigor- 
 ous demonstration of his opponents he has drawn back ; 
 from that moment he has ceased to be dangerous." 
 Cavour was perfectly right. It was never again possible 
 to bring the Irish people up to the pitch of enthusiasm 
 which O'Connell had wrought them to before the sup- 
 pression of the Clontarf meeting; and before long the 
 Irish national movement had split in two. 
 
 The Government at once proceeded to the prosecution 
 of O'Connell and some of his principal associates. Daniel 
 O'Connell himself, his son John, the late Sir John Gray, 
 and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, were the most conspicuous 
 of those against whom the prosecution was directed. 
 They were charged with conspiring to raise and excite 
 disaffection among her Majesty's subjects, to excite them 
 to hatred and contempt of the Government and Constitu- 
 tion of the realm. The trial was, in many ways, a sin- 
 gularly unfortunate proceeding. The Government prose- 
 cutor objected to all the Catholics whose names were 
 called as jurors. An error of the sheriffs in the construc- 
 tion of the jury-lists had already reduced by a consider- 
 able number the roll of Catholics entitled to serve on 
 juries. It therefore happened that the greatest of Irish
 
 250 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Catholics, the representative Catholic of his day, the 
 principal agent in the work of carrying Catholic Emanci- 
 pation, was tried by a jury composed exclusively of Prot- 
 estants. It has only to be added that this was done 
 in the metropolis of a country essentially Catholic; a 
 country five-sixths of whose people were Catholics ; and 
 on a question affecting indirectly, if not directly, the 
 whole position and claims of Catholics. The trial was 
 long. O'Connell defended himself; and his speech was 
 universally regarded as wanting the power that had made 
 his defence of others so effective in former days. It was 
 for the most part a sober and somewhat heavy argument 
 to prove that Ireland had lost instead of gained by her 
 union with England. The jury found O'Connell guilty, 
 along with most of his associates, and he was sentenced 
 to twelve months' imprisonment and a fine of 2000. 
 The others received lighter sentences. O'Connell appealed 
 to the House of Lords against the sentence. In the mean- 
 time he issued a proclamation to the Irish people com- 
 manding them to keep perfectly quiet and not to commit 
 any offence against the law. " Every man," said one of 
 his proclamations, " who is guilty of the slightest breach 
 of the peace is an enemy of me and of Ireland." The 
 Irish people took him at his word, and remained perfectly 
 quiet. 
 
 O'Connell and his principal associates were committed 
 to Richmond Prison, in Dublin. The trial had been de- 
 layed in various ways, and the sentence was not pro- 
 nounced until May 24th, 1844. The appeal to the House 
 of Lords we may pass over intermediate stages of pro- 
 cedure was heard in the following September. Five law 
 lords were present. The Lord Chancellor (Lord Lynd- 
 hurst) and Lord Brougham were of opinion that the sen- 
 tence of the court below should be affirmed. Lord Denman, 
 Lord Cottenham, and Lord Campbell were of the opposite
 
 THE REPEAL TEAR. 251 
 
 opinion. Lord Denman, in particular, condemned the 
 manner in which the jury-lists had been prepared. Some 
 of his words on the occasion became memorable, and 
 passed into a sort of proverbial expression. Such prac- 
 tices, he said, would make of the law " a mockery, a de- 
 lusion, and a snare." A strange and memorable scene 
 followed. The constitution of the House of Lords then, 
 and for a long time after, made no difference between law 
 lords and others in voting on a question of appeal. As a 
 matter of practice and of fairness the lay peers hardly 
 ever interfered in the voting on an appeal. But they had 
 an undoubted right to do so ; and it is even certain that 
 in one or two peculiar cases they had exercised the right. 
 If the lay lords were to vote in this instance, the fate of 
 O'Connell and his companions could not be doubtful. 
 O'Connell had always been the bitter enemy of the House 
 of Lords. He had vehemently denounced its authority, 
 its practices, and its leading members. Nor, if the lay 
 peers had voted and confirmed the judgment of the court 
 below, could it have been positively said that an injustice 
 was done by their interference. The majority of the 
 judges on the writ of error had approved the judgment of 
 the court below. In the House of Lords itself the Lord 
 Chancellor and Lord Brougham were of opinion that the 
 judgment ought to be sustained. There would, therefore, 
 have been some ground for maintaining that the sub- 
 stantial justice of the case had been met by the action of 
 the lay peers. On the other hand, it would have afforded 
 a ground for a positive outcry in Ireland if a question 
 purely of law had been decided by the votes of lay peers 
 against their bitter enemy. One peer, Lord "Wharncliffe, 
 made a timely appeal to the better judgment and feeling 
 of his brethren. He urged them not to take a course 
 which might allow any one to say that political or personal 
 feeling had prevailed in a judicial decision of the House
 
 252 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of Lords. The appeal had its effect. A moment before 
 one lay peer at least had openly declared that he would 
 insist on his right to vote. When the Lord Chancellor 
 was about to put the question in the first Distance, to as- 
 certain hi the usual way whether a division would be 
 necessary, several lay peers seemed as if they were de- 
 termined to vote. But the appeal of Lord Wharncliffe 
 settled the matter. All the lay peers at once withdrew, 
 and left the matter according to the usual course in the 
 hands of the law lords. The majority of these being 
 against the judgment of the court below, it was accord- 
 ingly reversed, and O'Connell and his associates were set 
 at liberty. The propriety of a lay peer voting on a ques- 
 tion of judicial appeal was never raised again so long as 
 the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords was still 
 exercised in the old and now obsolete fashion. 
 
 Nothing could well have been more satisfactory and 
 more fortunate in its results than the conduct of the 
 House of Lords. The effect upon the mind of the Irish 
 people would have been deplorable if it had been seen that 
 O'Connell was convicted by a jury on which there were 
 no Roman Catholics, and that the sentence was confirmed, 
 not by a judicial but by a strictly political vote of the 
 House of Lords. As it was, the influence of the decision 
 which proved that even in the assembly most bitterly de- 
 nounced by O'Connell he could receive fair play, was in 
 the highest degree satisfactory. It cannot be doubted 
 that it did something to weaken the force of O'Connell's 
 own denunciations of Saxon treachery and wrong-doing. 
 The influence of O'Connell was never the same after the 
 triaL Many causes combined to bring about this result. 
 Most writers ascribe it, above all, to the trial itself, and 
 the evidence it afforded that the English Government were 
 strong enough to prosecute and punish even O'Connell if 
 he provoked them too far. It is somewhat surprising to
 
 THE REPEAL YEAE. 253 
 
 find intelligent men like Mr. Green, the author of " A 
 Short History of the English People," countenancing such 
 a belief. If the House of Lords had, by the votes of the 
 lay peers, confirmed the sentence on O'Connell, he would 
 have come out of his prison at the expiration of his period 
 of sentence more popular and more powerful than ever. 
 Had his strength and faculty of agitation lasted, he might 
 have agitated thenceforth with more effect than ever. If 
 the Clontarf meeting had not disclosed to a large section 
 of his followers that his policy, after all, was only to be 
 one of talk, he might have come out of. prison just the 
 man he had been, the leader of all classes of Catholics 
 and Nationalists. But the real blow given to O'Connell's 
 popularity was given by O'Connell himself. The moment 
 it was made clear that nothing was to be done but agitate, 
 and that all the monster meetings, the crowds and ban- 
 ners and bands of music, the marshalling and marching 
 and reviewing, meant nothing more than Father Mathew's 
 temperance meetings meant that moment all the youth 
 of the movement fell off from O'Connell. The young men 
 were very silly, as after-events proved. O'Connell was 
 far more wise, and had an infinitely better estimate of the 
 strength of England than they had. But it is certain that 
 the young men were disgusted with the kind of gigantic 
 sham which the great agitator seemed to have been con- 
 ducting for so long a time. It would have been impossible 
 to keep up forever such an excitement as that which got 
 together the monster meetings. Such heat cannot be 
 brought up to the burning-point and kept there at will. 
 A reaction was inevitable. O'Connell was getting old, 
 and had lived a life of work and wear-and-tear enough to 
 break down 'even his constitution of iron. He had kept a 
 great part of his own followers in heart, as he had kept 
 the Government in alarm, by leaving it doubtful whether 
 he would not, in the end, make an appeal to the reserve
 
 254 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of physical force which he so often boasted of having at 
 his back. "When the whole secret was out, he ceased to 
 be an object of fear to the one, and of enthusiasm to the 
 other. It was neither the Lord-lieutenant's proclamation 
 nor the prosecution by the Government that impaired the 
 influence of O'Connell. It was O'Connell's own procla- 
 mation, declaring for submission to the law, that de- 
 throned him. From that moment the political monarch 
 had to dispute with rebels for his crown ; and the crown 
 fell off iii the struggle, like that which Uhland tells of in 
 the pretty poem. 
 
 For the Clontarf meeting had been the climax. There 
 was all manner of national rejoicing when the decision 
 of the House of Lords set O'Connell and his fellow-prison- 
 ers free. There were illuminations and banquets and meet- 
 ings and triumphal processions, renewed declarations of 
 allegiance to the great leader, and renewed protestations 
 on his part that Repeal was coming. But his reign was 
 over. His death may as well be recorded here as later. 
 His health broke down ; and the disputes hi which he be- 
 came engaged with the Young Irelanders, dividing his 
 party into two hostile camps, were a grevious burden to 
 him. In Lord Beaconsfield's Life of Lord George Bentinck, 
 a very touching description is given of the last speech 
 made by O'Connell in Parliament. It was on April 3d, 
 1846 : " His appearance," says Mr. Disraeli, " was of great 
 debility, and the tones of his voice were very still. His 
 words, indeed, only reached those who were immediately 
 around him, and the ministers sitting on the other side 
 of the green table, and listening with that interest and 
 respectful attention which became the occasion." O'Con- 
 nell spoke for nearly two hours. " It was a strange and 
 touching spectacle to those who remembered the form of 
 colossal energy and the clear and thrilling tones that had 
 once startled, disturbed, and controlled senates. ... To
 
 THE REPEAL YEAR. 255 
 
 the House, generally, it was a performance in dumb show : 
 a feeble old man muttering before a table ; but respect for 
 the great Parliamentary personage kept all as orderly as 
 if the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhetoric ; and 
 though not an accent reached the gallery, means were taken 
 that next morning the country should not lose the last, and 
 not the least interesting, of the speeches of one who had 
 so long occupied and agitated the mind of nations." 
 
 O'Connell became seized with a profound melancholy. 
 Only one desire seemed left to him, the desire to close his 
 stormy career in Rome. The Eternal City is the capital, 
 the shrine, the Mecca of the Church to which O'Connell 
 was undoubtedly devoted with all his heart. He longed 
 to lie down in the shadow of the dome of St. Peter's 
 and rest there, and there die. His youth had been wild 
 in more ways than one, and he had long been under the 
 influence of a profound penitence. He had killed a man 
 in a duel, and was through all his after-life haunted by re- 
 gret for the deed, although it was really forced on him, 
 and he had acted only as any other man of his time would 
 have acted in such conditions. But now, in his old and 
 sinking days, all the errors of his youth and his strong 
 manhood came back upon him, and he longed to steep the 
 painful memories in the sacred influences of Rome. He 
 hurried to Italy at a time when the prospect of the fam- 
 ine darkening down upon his country cast an additional 
 shadow across his outward path. He reached Genoa, and 
 he went no farther. His strength wholly failed him there, 
 and he died, still far from Rome, on May 15th, 1847. The 
 close of his career was a mournful collapse ; it was like the 
 sudden crumbling in of some stately and commanding 
 tower. The other day, it seemed, he filled a space of almost 
 unequalled breadth and height in the political landscape ; 
 and now he is already gone. " Even with a thought the 
 rackdislimbs, and makes it indistinct, as water is hi water."
 
 256 A HISTORY OF OLR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 
 
 SOME important steps in the progress of what may be 
 described as social legislation are part of the history of 
 Peel's Government. The Act of Parliament which pro- 
 hibited absolutely the employment of women and girls in 
 mines and collieries was rendered unavoidable by the fear- 
 ful exposures made through the instrumentality of a 
 commission appointed to inquire into the whole subject. 
 This commission was appointed on the motion of the then 
 Lord Ashley, since better known as the Earl of Shafts- 
 bury, a man who during the whole of a long career has 
 always devoted himself sometimes wisely and success- 
 fully, sometimes indiscreetly and to little purpose, always 
 with disinterested and benevolent intention to the task 
 of brightening the lives and lightening the burdens of the 
 working-classes and the poor. The commission found 
 many hideous evils arising from the employment of women 
 and girls underground, and Lord Ashley made such 
 effective use of their disclosures that he encountered very 
 little opposition when he came to propose restrictive legis- 
 lation. In some of the coal-mines women were literally 
 employed as beasts of burden. "Where the seam of coal 
 was too narrow to allow them to stand upright, they had 
 to crawl back and forward on all-fours for fourteen or 
 sixteen hours a day, dragging the trucks laden with coals. 
 The trucks were generally fastened to a chain which passed
 
 PEEVS ADMINISTRATION. 257 
 
 between the legs of the unfortunate women, and was then 
 connected with a belt which was strapped around their 
 naked waists. Their only clothing often consisted of an 
 old pair of trousers made of sacking ; and they were un- 
 covered from the waist up uncovered, that is to say, ex- 
 cept for the grime and filth that collected and clotted 
 around them. All manner of hideous diseases were gen- 
 erated in these unsexed bodies. Unsexed almost literally 
 some of them became ; for their chests were often hard 
 and flat as those of men ; and not a few of them lost all 
 reproductive power a happy condition, truly, under the 
 circumstances, where women who bore children only went 
 up to the higher air for a week during their confinement, 
 and were then back at their work again. It would be 
 superfluous to say that the immorality engendered by such 
 a state of things was in exact keeping with the other evils 
 which it brought about. Lord Ashley had the happiness 
 and the honor of putting a stop to this infamous sort of 
 labor forever by the Act of 1842, which declared that, after 
 a certain limited period, no woman or girl whatever should 
 be employed in mines and collieries. 
 
 Lord Ashley was less completely successful in his en- 
 deavor to secure a ten hours' limitation for the daily labor 
 of women and young persons in factories. By a vigorous 
 annual agitation on the general subject of factory labor, 
 in which Lord Ashley had followed in the footsteps of Mr. 
 Michael Thomas Sadler, he brought the Government up 
 to the point of undertaking legislation on the subject. 
 They first introduced a bill which combined a limitation 
 of the labor of children in factories with a plan for com- 
 pulsory education among the children. The educational 
 clauses of the bill had to be abandoned in consequence of 
 a somewhat narrow-minded opposition among the Dissen- 
 ters, who feared that too much advantage was given to the 
 Church. Afterward the Government brought in another 
 
 17
 
 258 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 bill, which became, in the end, the Factories Act of 1844. 
 It was during the passing of this measure that Lord 
 Ashley tried unsuccessfully to introduce his ten hours' 
 limit. The bill diminished the working hours of children 
 under thirteen years of age, and fixed them at six and a 
 half hours each day ; extended somewhat the time during 
 which they were to be under daily instruction, and did 
 a good many other useful and wholesome things. The 
 principle of legislative interference to protect youthful 
 workers in factories had been already established by the 
 Act of 1833, and Lord Ashley's agitation only obtained for 
 it a somewhat extended application. It has since that 
 time again and again received further extension ; and in 
 this time, as in the former, there is a constant controversy 
 going on as to whether its principles ought not to be so 
 extended as to guard in almost every way the labor of 
 adult women, and even of adult men. The controversy 
 during Lord Ashley's agitation was always warm and 
 often impassioned. Many thoroughly benevolent men 
 and women could not bring themselves to believe that any 
 satisfactory and permanent results could come of a legisla- 
 tive interference with what might be called the freedom 
 of contract between employers and employed. They 
 argued that it was idle to say the interference was only 
 made or sought in the case of women and boys ; for if the 
 women and boys stop off working, they pointed out, the 
 men must perforce in most cases stop off working too. 
 Some of the public men afterward most justly popular 
 among the English artisan classes were opposed to the 
 measure on the ground that it was a heedless attempt to 
 interfere with fixed economic laws. It was urged, too, 
 and with much semblance of justice, that the interference 
 of the state for the protection or the compulsory educa- 
 tion of children in factories would have been much better 
 employed, and was far more loudly called for, in the case
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 259 
 
 of the children employed in agricultural labor. The lot 
 of a factory child, it was contended, is infinitely better in 
 most respects than that of the poor little creature who is 
 employed in hallooing at the crows on a farm. The mill- 
 hand is well cared for, well paid, well able to care for him- 
 self and his wife and his family, it was argued ; but what 
 of the miserable Giles Scroggins of Dorsetshire or Somer- 
 setshire, who never has more in all his life than just 
 enough to keep body and soul together ; and for whom at 
 the close, the work-house is the only haven of rest ? Why 
 not legislate for him at least for his wife and children ? 
 Neither point requires much consideration from us 
 at present. We have to recognize historical facts ; and 
 it is certain that this country has made up its mind that 
 for the present and for a long time to come, Parlia- 
 ment will interfere in whatever way seems good to 
 it with the conditions on which labor is carried on. 
 There has been, indeed, a very marked advance or 
 retrogression, whichever men may please to call it, in 
 public opinion since the ten hours' agitation. At that 
 time compulsory education and the principles of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's Irish Land Act would have seemed alike impossible 
 to most persons in this country. The practical mind of 
 the Englishman carries to an extreme the dislike and 
 contempt for what the French call les principes in politics. 
 Therefore we oscillate a good deal, the pendulum swinging 
 now very far in the direction of non-interference with 
 individual action, and now still farther in the direction 
 of universal interference and regulation what was once 
 humorously described as grandmotherly legislation. 
 With our recent experiences we can only be surprised 
 that a few years ago there was such a repugnance to the 
 modest amount of interference with individual rights 
 which Lord Ashley's extremest proposals would have 
 sought to introduce. As regards the other point, it is cer-
 
 260 A III STORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tain that Parliament will atone time or another do for the 
 children in the fields something very like that which it 
 has done for the children in the factories. It is enough 
 for us to know that practically the factory legislation has 
 worked very well ; and that the non-interference in the 
 fields is a far heavier responsibility on the conscience of 
 Parliament than interference in the factories. 
 
 Many other things done by Sir Robert Peel's Govern- 
 ment aroused bitter controversy and agitation. In one or 
 two remarkable instances the ministerial policy went near 
 to producing that discord in the Conservative party which 
 we shall presently see break out into passion and schism 
 when Peel came to deal with the Corn-laws. There was, 
 for example, the grant to the Roman Catholic College of 
 Maynooth, a college for the education specially of young 
 men who sought to enter the ranks of the priesthood. 
 The grant was not a new thing. Since before the Act of 
 Union a grant had been made for the college. The Gov- 
 ernment of Sir Robert Peel only proposed to make that 
 which was insufficient sufficient ; to enable the college to 
 be kept hi repair, and to accomplish the purpose for which 
 it was founded. As Macaulay put it, there was no more 
 question of principle involved than there would be in the 
 sacrifice of a pound instead of a pennyweight on some 
 particular altar. Yet the ministerial proposition called up 
 a very tempest of clamorous bigotry all over the country. 
 "What Macaulay described hi fierce scorn as " the bray of 
 Exeter Hall " was heard resounding every day and night. 
 Peel carried his measure, although nearly half his own 
 party hi the House of Commons voted against it on the 
 second reading. The whole controversy has little interest 
 now. Perhaps it will be found to live in the memory of 
 many persons, chiefly because of the quarrel it caused be- 
 tween Macaulay and his Edinburgh constituents, and of 
 the annual motion for the withdrawal of the grant which
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 261 
 
 was so long afterward one of the regular bores of the 
 House of Commons. Many of us can well remember the 
 venerable form of the late Mr. Spooner as year after year 
 he addressed an apathetic, scanty, and half-amused audi- 
 ence, pottering over his papers by the light of two can- 
 dles specially placed for his convenience on the table 
 in front of the Speaker, and endeavoring in vain to arouse 
 England to serious attention on the subject of the awful 
 fate she was preparing for herself by her toleration of 
 the principles of Rome. The Maynooth grant was 
 abolished, indeed, not long after Mr. Spooner's death; but 
 the manner of its abolition would have given him less 
 comfort even than its introduction. It was abolished 
 when Mr. Gladstone's Government abolished the State 
 Church in Ireland. 
 
 Another of Peel's measures which aroused much clamor 
 on both sides was that for the establishment of what were 
 afterward called the " godless colleges " in Ireland. 
 O'Connell has often had the credit of applying this nick- 
 name to the new colleges ; but it was, in fact, from the 
 extremest of all no-popery men, Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 
 that the expression came. It was, indeed, from Sir Robert 
 Inglis's side that the first note sounded of opposition to 
 the scheme, although O'Connell afterward took it vigor- 
 ously up, and the Pope and the Irish bishops condemned 
 the colleges. 
 
 There was objection within the ministry, as well as 
 without. Mr. Gladstone, who had been doing admirable 
 work, first as Vice-president, and afterward as President, 
 of the Board of Trade, and who had supported the Queen's 
 colleges scheme by voice and vote, resigned his office be- 
 cause of the Maynooth grant. He acted, perhaps, with a 
 too sensitive chivalry. He had written a work, as all the 
 world knows, on the relation of Church and State, and he 
 did not think the views expressed in that book left him
 
 262 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 free to co-operate the ministerial measure. Some staid 
 politicians were shocked ; many more smiled ; not a few 
 sneered. The public in general applauded the spirit of 
 disinterestedness which dictated the young statesman's 
 act. 
 
 The proposal of the Government was to establish in 
 Ireland three colleges one in Cork, the second in Belfast, 
 and the third in Galway and to affiliate these to a new 
 university, to be called the " Queen's University in Ire- 
 land." The teaching in these colleges was to be purely 
 secular. Nothing could be more admirable than the in- 
 tentions of Peel and his colleagues. Nor could it be 
 denied that there might have been good seeming hope for 
 a plan which thus proposed to open a sort of neutral 
 ground in the educational controversy. But from both 
 sides of the House and from the extreme party hi each 
 Church came an equally fierce denunciation of the proposal 
 to separate secular from religious education. Nor, surely, 
 could the claim of the Irish Catholics be said even by the 
 warmest advocate of undenominational education to have 
 no reason on its side. The small minority of Protestants 
 in Ireland had their college and their university estab- 
 lished as a distinctively Protestant institution. Why 
 should not the great majority who were Catholics ask for 
 something of the same kind for themselves ? Peel carried 
 his measure ; but the controversy has gone on ever since, 
 and we have yet to see whether the scheme is a success 
 or a failure. 
 
 One small instalment of justice to a much-injured and 
 long-suffering religious body was accomplished without 
 any trouble by Sir Robert Peel's Government. This was 
 the bill for removing the test by which Jews were ex- 
 cluded from certain municipal offices. A Jew might be 
 high-sheriff of a county, or sheriff of London, but with an 
 inconsistency which was as ridiculous as it was narrow-
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 263 
 
 minded, he was prevented from becoming a mayor, an 
 alderman, or even a member of the Common Council. The 
 oath which had to be taken included the words " on the 
 true faith of a Christian." Lord Lyndhurst, the Lord 
 Chancellor, introduced a measure to get rid of this absurd 
 anomaly ; and the House of Lords, who had firmly re- 
 jected similar proposals of relief before, passed it without 
 any difficulty. It was, of course, passed by the House of 
 Commons, which had done its best to introduce the reform 
 in previous sessions, and without success. 
 
 The Bank Charter Act, separating the issue from the 
 banking department of the Bank of England, limiting the 
 issue of notes to a fixed amount of securities, and requir- 
 ing the whole of the further circulation to be on a basis 
 of bullion, and prohibiting the formation of any new banks 
 of issue, is a characteristic and an important measure of 
 Peel's Government. To Peel, too, we owe the establishment 
 of the income-tax on its present basis a doubtful boon. 
 The copyright question was, at least, advanced a stage. 
 Railways were regulated. The railway mania and railway 
 panic also belong to this active period. The country went 
 wild with railway speculations. The South Sea scheme was 
 hardly more of a bubble, or hardly burst more suddenly 
 or disastrously. The vulgar and flashy successes of one 
 or two lucky adventurers turned the heads of the whole 
 community. For a time it seemed to be a national article 
 of faith that the capacity of the country to absorb new 
 railway schemes and make them profitable was unlimited, 
 and that to make a fortune one had only to take shares in 
 anything. 
 
 An odd feature of the time was the outbreak of what 
 were called the Rebecca riots in Wales. These riots arose 
 out of the anger and impatience of the people at the great 
 increase of toll-bars and tolls on the public roads. Some 
 one, it was supposed, had hit upon a passage hi Genesis
 
 204 A IIISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 which supplies a motto for their grievance and their com- 
 plaint. " And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her . . . 
 let thy seed possess the gate of those of which hate them." 
 They set about, accordingly, to possess very effectually 
 the gates of those which hated them. Mobs assembled 
 every night, destroyed turnpikes, and dispersed. They 
 met with little molestation in most cases for awhile. 
 The mobs were always led by a man in woman's clothes, 
 supposed to represent the typical Rebecca. As the dis- 
 turbances went on, it was found that no easier mode of 
 disguise could be got than a woman's clothes, and, there- 
 fore, in many of the riots petticoats might almost be said 
 to be the uniform of the insurgent force. Night after 
 night for months these midnight musterings took place. 
 Rebecca and her daughters became the terror of many 
 regions. As the work went on it became more serious. 
 Rebecca and her daughters grew bold. There were con- 
 flicts with the police and with the soldiers. It is to be 
 feared that men and even women died for Rebecca. At 
 last the Government succeeded in putting down the riots, 
 and had the wisdom to appoint a commission to inquire 
 into the cause of so much disturbance ; and the commis- 
 sion, as will readily be imagined, found that there were 
 genuine grievances at the bottom of the popular excite- 
 ment. The farmers and the laborers were poor ; the tolls 
 were seriously oppressive. The Government dealt lightly 
 with most of the rioters who had been captured, and in- 
 troduced measures which removed the grievances most 
 seriously complained of. Rebecca and her daughters were 
 heard of no more. They had made out their case, and 
 done in their wild mumming way something of a good 
 work. Only a short time before the rioters would have 
 been shot down, and the grievances would have been al- 
 lowed to stand. Rebecca and her short career mark an ad- 
 vancement in the political and social history of England.
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 265 
 
 Sir James Graham, the Home-secretary, brought him- 
 self and the Government into some trouble by the manner 
 in which he made use of the power invested in the Ad- 
 ministration for the opening of private letters. Mr. Dun- 
 combe, the Radical member for Finsbury, presented a 
 petition from Joseph Mazzini and others complaining that 
 letters addressed to them had been opened in the Post-office. 
 Many of Mazzini's friends, and perhaps Mazzini himself, 
 believed that the contents of these letters had been com- 
 municated to the Sardinian and Austrian Governments, 
 and that, as a result, men who were supposed to be im- 
 plicated in projects of insurrection on the Continent had 
 actually been arrested and put to death. Sir James 
 Graham did not deny that he had issued a warrant au- 
 thorizing the opening of some of Mazzini's letters ; but he 
 contended that the right to open letters had been specially 
 reserved to the Government on its responsibility, that it 
 had been always exercised, but by him with special cau- 
 tion and moderation ; and that it would be impossible for 
 any Government absolutely to deprive itself of such a 
 right. The public excitement was at first very great ; 
 but it soon subsided. The reports of Parliamentary com- 
 mittees appointed by the two Houses showed that all 
 Governments had exercised the right, but naturally with 
 decreasing frequency and greater caution of late years ; 
 and that there was no chance now of its being seriously 
 abused. No one, not even Thomas Carlyle, who had writ- 
 ten to the Times in generous indignation at the opening 
 of Mazzini's letters, went so far as to say that such a right 
 should never be exercised. Carlyle admitted that he 
 would tolerate the practice " when some new Gunpowder 
 Plot may be in the wind, s,ome double-dyed high-treason 
 or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise." 
 In the particular case of Mazzini it seemed an odious trick, 
 and every one was ashamed of it. Such a feeling was the
 
 266 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 surest guard against abuse for the future, and the matter 
 was allowed to drop. The minister is to be pitied who is 
 compelled even by legitimate necessity to have recourse 
 to such an expedient ; he would be despised now by every 
 decent man if he turned to it without such justification. 
 Many years had to pass away before Sir James Graham 
 was free from innuendoes and attacks on the ground that 
 he had 'tampered with the correspondence of an exile. 
 One remark, on the other hand, it is right to make. An 
 exile is sheltered in a country like England, on the as- 
 sumption that he does not involve her hi responsibility 
 and danger by using her protection as a shield behind 
 which to contrive plots and organize insurrections against 
 foreign Governments. It is certain that Mazzini did make 
 use of the shelter England gave him for such a purpose. 
 It would hi the end be to the heavy injury of all fugi- 
 tives from despotic rule if to shelter them brought such 
 consequences on the countries that offered them a home. 
 The Peel Administration was made memorable by many 
 remarkable events at home as well as abroad. It had, as 
 we have seen, inherited wars and brought them to a close : 
 it had wars of its own. Scinde was annexed by Lord 
 Ellenborough hi consequence of the disputes which had 
 arisen between us and the Ameers, whom we accused of 
 having broken faith with us. They were said to be in 
 correspondence with our enemies, which may possibly 
 have been true, and to have failed to pay up our tribute, 
 which was very likely. Anyhow we found occasion for 
 an attack on Scinde ; and the result was the total defeat 
 of the Princes and their army, and the annexation of the 
 territory. Sir Charles Napier won a splendid victory 
 splendid, that is, in a military sense over an enemy out- 
 numbering him by more than twelve to one at the battle of 
 Meeanee ; and Scinde was ours. Peel and his colleagues 
 accepted the annexation. None of them liked it ; but none
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 267 
 
 saw how it could be undone. There was nothing to be 
 proud of in the matter, except the courage of our soldiers, 
 and the genius of Sir Charles Napier, one of the most bril- 
 liant, daring, successful, eccentric, and self-conceited cap- 
 tains who had ever fought in the service of England since 
 the days of Peterborough. Later on, the Sikhs invaded 
 our territory by crossing the Sutlej in great force. Sir 
 Hugh Gough, afterward Lord Gough, fought several fierce 
 battles with them before he could conquer them ; and even 
 then they were only conquered for the time. 
 
 We were at one moment apparently on the very verge 
 of what must have proved a far more serious war much 
 nearer home, in consequence of the dispute that arose 
 between this country and France about Tahiti and Queen 
 Pomare. Queen Pomare was sovereign of the island of 
 Tahiti, hi the South Pacific, the Otaheite of Captain Cook. 
 She was a pupil of some of our missionaries, and was very 
 friendly to England and its people. She had been in- 
 duced or compelled to put herself and her dominion under 
 the protection of France ; a step which was highly dis- 
 pleasing to her subjects. Some ill-feeling toward the 
 French residents of the island was shown ; and the French 
 admiral, who had induced or compelled the Queen to put 
 herself under French protection, now suddenly appeared 
 off the coast, and called on her to hoist the French flag 
 above her own. She refused; and he instantly effected a 
 landing on the island, pulled down her flag, raised that of 
 France in its place, and proclaimed that the island was 
 French territory. The French admiral appears to have 
 been a hot-headed, thoughtless sort of man, the Commo- 
 dore Wilkes of his day. His act was at once disavowed 
 by the French Government, and condemned in strong 
 terms by M. Guizot. But Queen Pomare had appealed to 
 the Queen of England for assistance. " Do not cast me 
 away, my friend, " she said ; " I run to you for refuge, to
 
 268 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 be covered under your great shadow, the same that af- 
 forded relief to my fathers by your fathers, who are now 
 dead, and whose kingdoms have descended to us, the 
 weaker vessels." A large party in France allowed them- 
 selves to become inflamed with the idea that British in- 
 trigue was at the bottom of the Tahiti people's dislike to 
 the protectorate of France, and that England wanted to 
 get Queen Pomare's dominions for herself. They cried 
 out, therefore, that to take down the flag of France from 
 its place in Tahiti would be to insult the dignity of the 
 French nation, and to insult it at the instance of England. 
 The cry was echoed hi the shrillest tones by a great num- 
 ber of French newspapers. Where the flag of France has 
 once been hoisted, they screamed, it must never be taken 
 down ; which is about equivalent to saying that if a man's 
 officious servant carries off the property of some one else, 
 and gives it to his master, the master's dignity is lowered 
 by his consenting to hand it back to its owner. In the 
 face of this clamor the French Government, although they 
 disavowed any share in the filibustering of their admiral, 
 did not show themselves in great haste to undo what he 
 had done. Possibly they found themselves in something 
 of the same difficulty as the English Government in regard 
 to the annexation of Scinde. They could not, perhaps, 
 with great safety to themselves have ventured to be honest 
 all at once ; and in any case they did not want to give up 
 the protectorate of Tahiti. While the more hot-headed 
 on both sides of the English Channel were thus snarling 
 at each other, the difficulty was immensely complicated 
 by the seizure of a missionary named Pritchard, who had 
 been our consul in the island up to the deposition of 
 Pornare. A French sentinel had been attacked, or was 
 said to have been attacked, in the night, and in con- 
 sequence the French commandant seized Pritchard hi 
 reprisaj, declaring him to be " the only mover and insti-
 
 PEEL'S ADMINISTRATION. 269 
 
 gator of disturbances among the natives." Pritchard 
 was flung into prison, and only released to be expelled 
 from the island. He came home to England with his 
 story ; and his arrival was the signal for an outburst of 
 indignation all over the country. Sir Robert Peel and 
 Lord Aberdeen alike stigmatized the treatment of Prit- 
 chard as a gross and intolerable outrage ; and satisfaction 
 was demanded of the French Government. The King and 
 M. Guizot were both willing that full justice should be 
 done, and both anxious to avoid any occasion of ill-feel- 
 ing with England. The King had lately been receiving, 
 with effusive show of affection, a visit from our Queen in 
 France, and was about to return it. But so hot was pop- 
 ular passion on both sides, that it would have needed 
 stronger and juster natures than those of the King and 
 his minister to venture at once on doing the right thing. 
 It was on the last day of the session of 1844, September 
 5th, that Sir Robert Peel was able to announce that the 
 French Government had agreed to compensate Pritchard 
 for his sufferings and losses. Queen Pomare was nomi- 
 nally restored to power, but the French protection proved 
 as stringent as if it were a sovereign rule. She might as 
 well have pulled down her flag, for all the sovereign right 
 it secured to her. She died thirty-four years after, and 
 her death recalled to the memory of the English public 
 the long-forgotten fact that she had once so nearly been 
 the cause of a war between England and France. 
 
 The Ashburton Treaty and the Oregon Treaty belong 
 alike to the history of Peel's Administration. The Ash- 
 burton Treaty bears date August 9th, 1842, and arranges 
 finally the north-western boundary between the British 
 Provinces of North America and the United States. For 
 many years the want of any clear and settled understand- 
 ing as to the boundary line between Canada and the State of 
 Maine had been a source of some disturbance and of much
 
 270 A HISTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 controversy. Arbitration between England and the United 
 States had been tried and failed, both parties declining 
 the award. Sir Robert Peel sent out Lord Ashburton, for- 
 merly Mr. Baring, as plenipotentiary, to Washington, in 
 1842, and by his intelligent exertions an arrangement was 
 come to which appears to have given mutual satisfaction 
 ever since, despite of the sinister prophesy ings of Lord 
 Palmerston at the time. The Oregon question was more 
 complicated, and was the source of a longer controversy. 
 More than once the dispute about the boundary line in the 
 Oregon region had very nearly become an occasion for 
 war between England and the United States. In Can- 
 ning's time there was a crisis during which, to quote the 
 words of an English statesman, war could have been 
 brought about by the holding up of a finger. The ques- 
 tion in dispute was as to the boundary line between Eng- 
 lish and American territory west of the Rocky Mountains. 
 It had seemed a matter of little importance at one time, 
 when the country west of the Rocky Mountains was re- 
 garded by most persons as little better than a desert idle. 
 But when the vast capacities and the splendid future of 
 the Pacific slope began to be recognized, and the im- 
 portance to us of some station and harbor there came to 
 be more and more evident, the dispute naturally swelled 
 into a question of vital interest to both nations. In 1818 
 an attempt at arrangement was made, but failed. The 
 two Governments then agreed to leave the disputed regions 
 to joint occupation for ten years, after which the subject 
 was to be opened again. When the end of the first term 
 came near, Canning did his best to bring about a settle- 
 ment, but failed. The dispute involved the ownership of 
 the mouth of the Columbia River, and of the noble island 
 which bears the name of Vancouver, off the shore of 
 British Columbia. The joint occupancy was renewed for 
 an indefinite time ; but in 1843 the President of the United
 
 PEEL' 8 ADMINISTRATION, 271 
 
 States somewhat peremptorily called for a final settlement 
 of the boundary. The question was eagerly taken up by 
 excitable politicians in the American House of Represent- 
 atives. For more than two years the Oregon question 
 became a party cry in America. With a large proportion 
 of the American public, including, of course, nearly all 
 citizens of Irish birth or extraction, any President would 
 have been popular beyond measure who had forced a war 
 on England. Calmer and wiser councils prevailed, how- 
 ever, on both sides. Lord Aberdeen, our Foreign Secre- 
 tary, was especially moderate and conciliatory. He offered 
 a compromise which was at last accepted. On June 15th, 
 1864, the Oregon Treaty settled the question for that time 
 at least; the dividing line was to be "the forty-ninth 
 degree of latitude, from the Rocky Mountains west to the 
 middle of the channel separating Vancouver's Island 
 from the main-land ; thence southerly through the mid- 
 dle of the channel and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific. " 
 The channel and straits were to be free, as also the great 
 northern branch of the Columbia River. In other words, 
 Vancouver's Island remained to Great Britain, and the 
 free navigation of the Columbia River was secured. We 
 have said that the question was settled, " for that time ; " 
 because an important part of it came up again for settle- 
 ment many years after. The commissioners appointed to 
 determine that portion of the boundary which was to run 
 southerly through the middle of the channel were unable 
 to come to any agreement on the subject, and the diver- 
 gence of the claims made on one side and the other con- 
 stituted a new question, which became a part of the 
 famous Treaty of Washington in 1871, and was finally 
 settled by the arbitration of the Emperor of Germany. 
 But it is much to the honor of the Peel Administration 
 that a dispute which had for years been charged with 
 possibilities of war, and had become a stock subject of
 
 272 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 political agitation in America, should have been so fur 
 settled as to be removed forever after out of the category 
 of disputes which suggest an appeal to arms. This was 
 one of the last acts of Peel's Government, and it was not 
 the least of the great things he had done. We have 
 soon to tell how it came about that it was one of his 
 latest triumphs ; and how an Administration which had 
 come into power with such splendid promise, and had ac- 
 complished so much in such various fields of legislation, 
 was brought so suddenly to a fall. The story is one of 
 the most remarkable and important chapters in the his- 
 tory of English politics and parties. 
 
 During Peel's time we catch a last glimpse of the 
 famous Arctic navigator, Sir John Franklin. lie sailed 
 on the expedition which was doomed to be his last, on 
 May 26th, 1845, with his two vessels, Erebus and Terror. 
 Not much more is heard of him as among the living. We 
 may say of him as Carlyle says of La Perouse, " The brave 
 navigator goes and returns not ; the seekers search far 
 seas for him in vain ; only some mournful, mysterious 
 shadow of him hovers long in all heads and hearts. "
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 273 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 FEW chapters of political history in modern times have 
 given occasion for more controversy than that which con- 
 tains the story of Sir Robert Peel's Administration in its 
 dealing with the Corn-laws. Told in the briefest form, the 
 story is that Peel came into office in 1841 to maintain the 
 Corn-laws, and that in 1846 he repealed them. The con- 
 troversy as to the wisdom or unwisdom of repealing the 
 Corn-laws has long since come to an end. They who were 
 the uncompromising opponents of Free-trade at that time 
 are proud to call themselves its uncompromising zealots 
 now. Indeed, there is no more chance of a reaction against 
 Free-trade in England than there is of a reaction against 
 the rule of three. But the controversy still exists, and 
 will probably always be in dispute, as to the conduct of 
 Sir Robert Peel. 
 
 The Melbourne Ministry fell, as we have seen, in conse- 
 quence of a direct vote of want of confidence moved by 
 their leading opponent, and the return of a majority hos- 
 tile to them at the general election that followed. The 
 vote of want of confidence was levelled against their 
 financial policy, especially against Lord John Russell's 
 proposal to substitute a fixed duty of eight shillings for 
 Peel's sliding scale. Sir Robert Peel came into office, and 
 he introduced a reorganized scheme of a sliding scale, 
 reducing the duties and improving the system, but main- 
 
 18
 
 274 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 taining the principle. Lord John Russell proposed an 
 amendment declaring that the House of Commons, " con- 
 sidering the evils which have been caused by the present 
 Corn-laws, and especially by the fluctuation of the grad- 
 uated or sliding scale, is not prepared to adopt the measure 
 of her Majesty's Government, which is founded on the 
 same principles, and is likely to be attended by similar re- 
 sults." The amendment was rejected by a large majority, 
 no less than one hundred and twenty-three. But the ques- 
 tion between Free-trade and Protection was even more 
 distinctly raised. Mr. Villiers proposed another amend- 
 ment declaring for the entire abolition of all duties on 
 grain. Only ninety votes were given for the amendment, 
 while three hundred and ninety- three were recorded 
 against it. Sir Robert Peel's Government, therefore, came 
 into power distinctly pledged to uphold the principle of 
 protection for home-grown grain. Four years after this 
 Sir Robert Peel^ proposed the total abolition, of the corn 
 duties. For this he was denounced by some members of 
 his party in language more fierce and unmeasured than 
 ever since has been applied to any leading statesman. 
 Mr. Gladstone was never assailed by the stanchest sup- 
 porter of the Irish Church in words so vituperative as 
 those which rated Sir Robert Peel for his supposed apos- 
 tasy. One eminent person, at least, made his first fame as 
 a Parliamentary orator by his denunciations of the great 
 minister whom he had previously eulogized and sup- 
 ported. 
 
 " The history of agricultural distress," it has been well 
 observed, " is the history of agricultural abundance." 
 This looks at first sight a paradox ; but nothing can in 
 reality be more plain and less paradoxical. " Whenever," 
 to follow out the passage, " Providence, through the bless- 
 ing of genial seasons, fills the nation's stores with plen- 
 teousness, then, and then only, has the cry of rum to the
 
 FREE-TRADE AND TUE LEAGUE. 275 
 
 cultivator been proclaimed as the one great evil for legisla- 
 tion to repress." This is, indeed, the very meaning of 
 the principle of protection. When the commodity which 
 the protected interest has to dispose of is so abundant as 
 to be easily attained by the common body of consumers, 
 then, of course, the protected interest is injured in its par- 
 ticular way of making money, and expects the State to do 
 something to secure it in the principal advantage of its 
 monopoly. The greater quantity of grain a good harvest 
 brings for the benefit of all the people, the less the price 
 the corn-grower can charge for it. His interest as a mon- 
 opolist is always and inevitably opposed to the interest 
 of the community. 
 
 But it is easy even now, when we have almost forgotten 
 the days of protection, to see that the corn-grower is not 
 likely either to recognize or to admit this conflict of inter- 
 ests between his protection and the public welfare. Apart 
 from the natural tendency of every man to think that 
 that which does him good must do good to the community, 
 there was, undoubtedly, something very fascinating in 
 the theory of protection. It had a charming give and 
 take, live and let live, air about it. " You give me a little 
 more than the market price for my corn, and don't you 
 see I shall be able to buy all the more of your cloth and 
 tea and sugar, or to pay you the higher rent for your land ?" 
 Such a compact seems reasonable and tempting. Almost 
 up to our own time the legislation of the country was in 
 the hands of the classes who had more to do with the 
 growing of corn and the ownership of land than with the 
 making of cotton and the working of machinery. The 
 great object of legislation and of social compacts of what- 
 ever kind seemed to be to keep the rents of the land- 
 owners and the prices of the farmers up to a comfortable 
 standard. It is not particularly to the discredit of the 
 landlords and the farmers that this was so. We have
 
 276 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Been, in later times, how every class in succession has 
 resisted the movement of the principle of Free-trade when 
 it came to be applied to its own particular interests. The 
 paper manufacturers liked it as little in 1860, as the land- 
 lords and farmers had done fifteen years earlier. "When 
 the cup comes to be commended to the lips of each in- 
 terest in turn, we always find that it is received as a poi- 
 soned chalice, and taken with much shuddering and pas- 
 sionate protestation. The particular advantage possessed 
 by vested interests in the Corn-laws was that for a long 
 time the landlords possessed all the legislative power and 
 all the prestige as well. There was a certain reverence 
 and sanctity about the ownership of land, with its hered- 
 itary descent and its patriarchal dignities, which the 
 manufacture of paper could not pretend to claim. 
 
 If it really were true that the legitimate incomes or the 
 legitimate influence of the landlord class in England went 
 down in any way because of the repeal of the Corn-laws, 
 it would have to be admitted that the landlords, like the 
 aristocrats before the French Revolution, had done some- 
 thing themselves to encourage the growth of new and dis- 
 turbing ideas. Before the Revolution, free thought and 
 the equality and brotherhood of man were beginning to be 
 pet doctrines among the French nobles and among their 
 wives and daughters. It was the whim of the hour to 
 talk Rousseau, and to affect indifference to rank, and a 
 general faith hi a good time coming of equality and 
 brotherhood. In something of the same fashion the aris- 
 tocracy of England were for some time before the repeal 
 of the Corn-laws illustrating a sort of revival of patriar- 
 chal ideas about the duties of property. The influence 
 was stirring everywhere. Oxford was beginning to busy 
 itself in the revival of the olden influence of the Church. 
 The Young England party, as they were then called, 
 were ardent to restore the good old days when the
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 277 
 
 noble was the father of the poor and the chief of his 
 neighborhood. All manner of pretty whimsies were 
 caught up with this ruling idea to give them an appear- 
 ance of earnest purpose. The young landlord exhibited 
 himself in the attitude of a protector, patron, and friend 
 to all his tenants. Doles were formally given at stated 
 hours to all who would come for them to the castle gate. 
 Young noblemen played cricket with the peasants on their 
 estate, and the Saturnian Age was believed by a good 
 many persons to be returning for the express benefit of 
 Old, or rather of Young, England. There was something 
 like a party being formed in Parliament for the realiza- 
 tion of Young England's idyllic purposes. It comprised 
 among its numbers several more or less gifted youths of 
 rank, who were full of enthusiasm and poetic aspirations 
 and nonsense ; and it had the encouragement and support 
 of one man of genius, who had no natural connection with 
 the English aristocracy, but who was afterward destined 
 to be the successful leader of the Conservative and aristo- 
 cratic party ; to be its savior when it was all but down in 
 the dust ; to guide it to victory, and make it once more, 
 for the time at least, supreme in the political life of the 
 country. This brilliant champion of Conservatism has 
 often spoken of the repeal of the Corn-laws as the fall of 
 the landlord class in England. If the landlords fell, it 
 must be said of them, as has been fairly said of many a 
 dynasty, that they never deserved better, on the whole, 
 than just at the time when the blow struck them down. 
 
 The famous Corn-law of 1815 was a copy of the Corn- 
 law of 1670. The former measure imposed a duty on the 
 importation of foreign grain which amounted to prohibi- 
 tion. Wheat might be exported upon the payment of one 
 shilling per quarter customs duty ; but importation was 
 practically prohibited until the price of wheat had reached 
 eighty shillings a quarter. The Corn-law of 1815 was
 
 278 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 hurried through Parliament, absolutely closing the ports 
 against the importation of foreign grain until the price of 
 our home-grown grain had reached the magic figure of 
 eighty shillings a quarter. It was hurried through, de- 
 spite the most earnest petitions from the commercial and 
 manufacturing classes. A great deal of popular disturb- 
 ance attended the passing of the measure. There were 
 riots in London, and the houses of several of the support- 
 ers of the bill were attacked. Incendiary fires blazed in 
 many parts of the country. In the Isle of Ely there were 
 riots which lasted for two days and two nights, and the 
 aid of the military had to be called in to suppress them. 
 Five persons were hanged as the result of these disturb- 
 ances. One might excuse a demagogue who compared 
 the event to the suppression of some of the food riots in 
 France just before the Revolution, of which we only read 
 that the people the poor, that is to say turned out de- 
 manding bread, and the ringleaders were immediately 
 hanged, and there was an end of the matter. After the 
 Corn-law of 1815, thus ominously introduced, there were 
 Sliding-scale Acts, having for their business to establish 
 a varying system of duty, so that, according as the price 
 of home-produced wheat rose to a certain height, the duty 
 on imported wheat sank in proportion. The principle of 
 all these measures was the same. It was founded on the 
 assumption that the corn grew for the benefit of the 
 grower first of all ; and that until he had been secured in 
 a handsome profit the public at large had no right to any 
 reduction in the cost of food. When the harvest was a 
 good one, and the golden grain was plenty, then the soul 
 of the grower was afraid, and he called out to Parliament 
 to protect him against the calamity of having to sell his 
 corn any cheaper than in years of famine. He did not see 
 all the time that if the prosperity of the country in gen- 
 eral was enchanced, he too must come to benefit by it.
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 279 
 
 Naturally it was in places like Manchester that the 
 fallacy of all this theory was first commonly perceived 
 and most warmly resented. The Manchester manufac- 
 turers saw that the customers for their goods were to be 
 found in all parts of the world ; and they knew that at 
 every turn they were hampered in their dealings with the 
 customers by the system of protective duties. They 
 wanted to sell their goods wherever they could find buyers, 
 and they chafed at any barrier between them and the sale. 
 Manchester, from the time of its first having Parliament- 
 ary representation only a few years before the founda- 
 tion of the Anti- Corn-law League had always spoken 
 out for Free-trade. The fascinating sophism which had 
 such charms for other communities, that by paying more 
 than was actually necessary for everything all round, 
 Dick enriched Tom, while Tom was at the same time en- 
 riching Dick, had no charms for the intelligence and the 
 practical experience of Manchester. The close of the year 
 1836 was a period of stagnant trade and general depres- 
 sion, arising, in some parts of the country, to actual and 
 severe suffering. Some members of Parliament and other 
 influential men were stricken with the idea, which it does 
 not seem to have required much strength of observation 
 to foster, that it could not be for the advantage of the 
 country in general to have the price of bread very high at 
 a time when wages were very low and work was scarce. 
 A movement against the Corn-laws began in London. An 
 Anti-Corn-law Association on a small scale was formed. 
 Its list of members bore the names of more than twenty 
 members of Parliament, and for a time the society had 
 a look of vigor about it. It came to nothing, however. 
 London has never been found an effective nursery of agi- 
 tation. It is too large to have any central interest or 
 source of action. It is too dependent, socially and econom- 
 ically, on the patronage of the higher and wealthier
 
 280 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 classes. London has never been to England what Paris 
 has been to France. It has hardly ever made or repre- 
 sented thoroughly the public opinion of England during 
 any great crisis. A new centre of operations soon had 
 to be sought, and various causes combined to make Lan- 
 cashire the proper place. In the year 1838 the town of 
 Bolton-le-Moors, in Lancashire, was the victim of a terri- 
 ble commercial crisis. Thirty out of the fifty manufac- 
 turing establishments which the town contained were 
 closed ; nearly a fourth of all the houses of business were 
 closed and actually deserted ; and more than five thousand 
 workmen were without homes or means of subsistence. 
 All the intelligence and energy of Lancashire was roused. 
 One obvious guarantee against starvation was cheap bread, 
 and cheap bread meant, of course, the abolition of the 
 Corn-laws, for these laws were constructed on the prin- 
 ciple that it was necessary to keep bread dear. A meeting 
 was held hi Manchester to consider measures necessary 
 to be adopted for bringing about the complete repeal of 
 these laws. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce 
 adopted a petition to Parliament against the Corn-laws. 
 The Anti-Corn-law agitation had been fairly launched. 
 
 From that time it grew, and grew in importance and 
 strength. Meetings were held in various towns of Eng- 
 land and Scotland. Associations were formed everywhere 
 to co-operate with the movement, which had its head- 
 quarters in Manchester. In Newall's Buildings, Market 
 Street, Manchester, the work of the League was really 
 done for years. The leaders of the movement gave up 
 their time day by day to its service. The League had to 
 encounter a great deal of rather fierce opposition from the 
 Chartists, who loudly proclaimed that the whole move- 
 ment was only meant to entrap them once more into an 
 alliance with the middle classes and the employers, as in 
 the case of the Reform Bill, in order that when they had
 
 FREE-TRADE AND TUE LEAGUE. 281 
 
 been made the cat's-paw again they might again be thrown 
 contemptuously aside. On the other hand, the League 
 had from the first the cordial co-operation of Daniel 
 O'Comiell, who became one of their principal orators when 
 they held meetings in the metropolis. They issued pam- 
 phlets by hundreds of thousands, and sent lecturers all 
 over the country explaining the principles of Free-trade. 
 A gigantic propaganda of Free-trade opinions was called 
 into existence. Money was raised by the holding of bazars 
 in Manchester and in London, and by calling for subscrip- 
 tions. A bazar in Manchester brought in ten thousand 
 pounds ; one in London raised rather more than double 
 that sum, not including the subscriptions that were con- 
 tributed. A Free-trade Hall was built in Manchester. 
 This building had an interesting history full of good omen 
 for the cause. The ground on which the hall was erected 
 was the property of Mr. Cobden, and was placed by him 
 at the disposal of the League. That ground was the scene 
 of what was known in Manchester as the Massacre of 
 Peterloo. On August 16th, 1819, a meeting of Manchester 
 Reformers was held on that spot, which was dispersed by 
 an attack of soldiers and militia, with the loss of many 
 lives. The memory of that day rankled in the hearts of 
 the Manchester Liberals for long after, and perhaps no 
 better means could be found for purifying the ground 
 from the stain and the shame of such bloodshed than its 
 dedication by the modern apostle of peace and Free-trade 
 as a site whereon to build a hall sacred to the promulga- 
 tion of his favorite doctrines. 
 
 The times were peculiarly favorable to the new sort of 
 propaganda which came into being with the Anti-Corn-law 
 League. A few years before such an agitation would 
 hardly have found the means of making its influence felt 
 all over the country. The very reduction of the cost of 
 postage alone must have facilitated its labors to an extent
 
 282 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 beyond calculation. The inundation of the country with 
 pamphlets, tracts, and reports of speeches would have 
 been scarcely possible under the old system, and would in 
 any case have swallowed up a far larger amount of money 
 than even the League with its ample resources would have 
 been able to supply. In all parts of the country railways 
 were being opened, and these enabled the lecturers of the 
 League to hasten from town to town and to keep the cause 
 always alive in the popular mind. All these advantages 
 and many others might, however, have proved of little 
 avail if the League had not from the first been in the hands 
 of men who seemed as if they came by special appoint- 
 ment to do its work. Great as the work was which the 
 League did, it will be remembered in England almost as 
 much because of the men who won the success as on 
 account of the success itself. 
 
 The nominal leader of the Free-trade party in Parlia- 
 ment was for many years Mr. Charles Villiers, a man of 
 aristocratic family and surroundings, of remarkable 
 ability, and of the steadiest fidelity to the cause he had un- 
 dertaken. Nothing is a more familiar phenomenon in the 
 history of English political agitation than the aristocrat 
 who assumes the popular cause and cries out for the 
 " rights " of the " unenfranchised millions." But it was 
 something new to find a man of Mr. Villiers's class devot- 
 ing himself to a cause so entirely practical and business- 
 like as that of the repeal of the Corn-laws. Mr. Villiers 
 brought forward for several successive sessions in the 
 House of Commons a motion in favor of the total repeal 
 of the Corn-laws. His eloquence and his argumentative 
 power served the great purpose of drawing the attention 
 of the country to the whole question, and making con- 
 verts to the principle he advocated. The House of Com- 
 mons has always of late years been the best platform from 
 which to address the country. In political agitation it
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 283 
 
 has thus been made to prepare the way for the schemes 
 of legislation which it has itself always begun by repro- 
 bating. But Mr. Villiers might have gone on for all his 
 life dividing the House of Commons on the question of 
 Free-trade, without getting much nearer to his object, if 
 it were not for the manner in which the cause was taken 
 up by the country, and more particularly by the great 
 manufacturing towns of the North. Until the passing of 
 Lord Grey's Reform Bill these towns had no representa- 
 tion in Parliament. They seemed destined after that 
 event to make up for their long exclusion from represent- 
 ative influence by taking the government of the country 
 into their own hands. Of late years they have lost some 
 of their relative influence. They have not now all the 
 power that for no inconsiderable time they undoubtedly 
 possessed. The reforms they chiefly aimed at have been 
 carried, and the spirit which in times of stress and struggle 
 kept their populations almost of one mind has less neces- 
 sity of existence now. Manchester, Birmingham, and 
 Leeds are no whit less important to the life of the nation 
 now than they were before Free-trade. But their suprem- 
 acy does not exist now as it did then. At that time it 
 was town against country ; Manchester representing the 
 town, and the whole Conservative (at one period almost 
 the whole land-owning) body representing the country. 
 The Manchester school, as it was called, then and for long 
 after had some teachers and leaders who were of them- 
 selves capable of making any school powerful and re- 
 spected. With the Manchester school began a new kind 
 of popular agitation. Up to that time agitation meant 
 appeal to passion, and lived by provoking passion. Its 
 cause might be good or bad, but the way of promoting it 
 was the same. The Manchester school introduced the 
 agitation which appealed to reason and argument only ; 
 which stirred men's hearts with figures of arithmetic,
 
 234 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 rather than figures of speech, and which converted mob 
 meetings to political economy. 
 
 The real leader of the movement was Mr. Richard Cob- 
 den. Mr. Cobden was a man belonging to the yeoman 
 class. He had received but a moderate education. His 
 father dying while the great Free-trader was still young, 
 Richard Cobden was taken in charge by an uncle, who 
 had a wholesale warehouse in the City of London, and 
 who gave him employment there. Cobden afterward 
 became a partner in a Manchester printed-cotton factory ; 
 and he travelled occasionally on the commercial business 
 of this establishment. He had a great liking for travel ; 
 but not by any means as the ordinary tourist travels ; 
 the interest of Cobden was not in scenery, or in art, or in 
 ruins, but in men. He studied the condition of countries 
 with a view to the manner in which it affected the men 
 and women of the present, and through them was likely 
 to effect the future. On everything that he saw he 
 turned a quick and intelligent eye ; and he saw for him- 
 self and thought for himself. Wherever he went he 
 wanted to learn something. He had in abundance that 
 peculiar faculty which some great men of widely differ- 
 ent stamp from him and from each other have possessed ; 
 of which Goethe frankly boasted, and which Mirabeau 
 had more largely than he was always willing to acknowl- 
 edge; the faculty which exacts from every one with 
 whom its owner comes into contact some contribution to 
 his stock of information and to his advantage. Cobden 
 could learn something from everybody. It is doubtful 
 whether he ever came even into momentary acquaintance 
 with any one whom he did not compel to yield him some- 
 thing in the way of information. He travelled very 
 widely for a time, when travelling was more difficult 
 work than it is at present. He made himself familiar 
 with most of the countries of Europe, with many parts of
 
 FREE-TEADE AND THE LEAGUE. 285 
 
 the East, and, what was then a rarer accomplishment, 
 with the United States and Canada. He did not make 
 the familiar grand tour, and then dismiss the places he 
 had seen from his active memory. He studied them, and 
 visited many of them again to compare early with later 
 impressions. This was in itself .an education of the high- 
 est value for the career he proposed to pursue. When he 
 was about thirty years of age he began to acquire a cer- 
 tain reputation as the author of pamphlets directed 
 against some of the pet doctrines of old-fashioned states- 
 manship the balance of power in Europe ; the necessity 
 of maintaining a State Church in Ireland; the import- 
 ance of allowing no European quarrel to go on without 
 England's intervention; and similar dogmas. Mr. Cob- 
 den's opinions then were very much as they continued to 
 the day of his death. He seemed to have come to the 
 maturity of his convictions all at once, and to have passed 
 through no further change either of growth or of decay. 
 But whatever might be said then or now of the doctrines 
 he maintained, there could be only one opinion as to the 
 skill and force which upheld them with pen as well as 
 tongue. The tongue; however, was his best weapon. If 
 oratory were a business and not an art that is, if its test 
 were its success rather than its form then it might be 
 contended reasonably enough that Mr. Cobden was one 
 of the greatest orators England has ever known. Noth- 
 ing could exceed the persuasiveness of his style. His man- 
 ner was simple, sweet, and earnest. It was persuasive, 
 but it had not the sort of persuasiveness which is merely a 
 better kind of plausibility. It persuaded by convincing. 
 It was transparently sincere. The light of its convic- 
 tions shone all through it. It aimed at the reason and 
 the judgment of the listener, and seemed to be convinc- 
 ing him to his own interest against his prejudices. Cob- 
 den's style was almost exclusively conversational ; but he
 
 286 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 had a clear, well-toned voice, with a quiet, unassuming 
 power in it which enabled him to make his words heard 
 distinctly and without effort all through the great meet- 
 ings he had often to address. His speeches were full of 
 variety. He illustrated every argument by something 
 drawn from his personal observation or from reading, and 
 his illustrations were always striking, appropriate, and 
 interesting. He had a large amount of bright and win- 
 ning humor, and he spoke the simplest and purest Eng- 
 lish. He never used an unnecessary sentence, or failed 
 for a single moment to make his meaning clear. Many 
 strong opponents of Mr. Cobden's opinions confessed, 
 even during his lifetime, that they sometimes found with 
 dismay their most cherished convictions crumbling away 
 beneath his flow of easy argument. In the stormy times 
 of national passion Mr. Cobden was less powerful. When 
 the question was one to be settled by the rules that 
 govern man's substantial interests, or even by the stand- 
 ing rules, if such an expression may be allowed, of mor- 
 ality, then Cobden was unequalled. So long as the con- 
 troversy could be settled after this fashion " I will show 
 you that in such a course you are acting injuriously to 
 your own interests ; " or " You are doing what a fair and 
 just man ought not to do " so long as argument of that 
 kind could sway the conduct of men, then there was no 
 one who could convince as Cobden could. But when the 
 hour and mood of passion came, and a man or a nation 
 said, " I do not care any longer whether this is for my 
 interest or not I don't care whether you call it right or 
 wrong this way my instincts drive me, and this way I 
 am going" then Mr. Cobden's teaching, the very per- 
 fection as it was of common-sense and fair play, was out 
 of season. It could not answer feeling with feeling. It 
 was not able to " overcrow," in the word of Shakspeare 
 and Spencer, one emotion by another. The defect of Mr.
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE, 287 
 
 Cobden's style of mind and temper is fitly illustrated in 
 the deficiency of his method of argument. His sort of 
 education, his modes of observation, his way of turning 
 travel to account, all went together to make him the man 
 he was. The apostle of common-sense and fair dealing, 
 he had no sympathy with the passions of men ; he did 
 not understand them ; they passed for nothing in his cal- 
 culations. His judgment of men and of nations was 
 based far too much on his knowledge of his own motives 
 and character. He knew that in any given case he could 
 always trust himself to act the part of a just and prudent 
 man ; and he assumed that all the world could be gov- 
 erned by the rules of prudence and of equity. History 
 had little interest for him, except as it testified to man's 
 advancement and steady progress, and furnished argu- 
 ments to show that men prospered by liberty, peace, and 
 just dealings with their neighbors. He cared little or 
 nothing for mere sentiments. Even where these had their 
 root in some human tendency that was noble in itself, he 
 did not reverence them if they seemed to stand in the 
 way of men's acting peacefully and prudently. He did 
 not see why the mere idea of nationality, for example, 
 should induce people to disturb themselves by insurrec- 
 tions and wars, so long as they were tolerably well gov- 
 erned, and allowed to exist in peace and to make an 
 honest living. Thus he never represented more than 
 half the English character. He was always out of 
 sympathy with his countrymen on some great political 
 question. 
 
 But he seemed as if he were designed by nature to con- 
 duct to success such an agitation as that against the Corn- 
 laws. He found some colleagues who were worthy of him 
 His chief companion in the campaign was Mr. Bright. Mr 
 Bright's fame is not so completely bound up with the 
 repeal of the Corn-laws, or even with the extension of the
 
 288 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 suffrage, as that of Mr. Cobden. If Mr. Bright had been 
 on the wrong side of every cause he pleaded; if his agita- 
 tion had been as conspicuous for failure as it was for 
 success, he would still be famous among English public 
 men. He was what Mr. Cobden was not, an orator of the 
 very highest class. It is doubtful whether English public 
 life has ever produced a man who possessed more of the 
 qualifications of a great orator than Mr. Bright. lie had 
 a commanding presence ; not, indeed, the stately and 
 colossal form of O'Connell, but a massive figure, a large 
 head, a handsome and expressive face. His voice was 
 powerful, resonant, clear, with a peculiar vibration in it 
 which lent unspeakable effect to any passages of pathos 
 or of scorn. His style of speaking was exactly what a 
 conventional demagogue's ought not to be. It was pure 
 to austerity ; it was stripped of all superfluous ornament. 
 It never gushed or foamed. It never allowed itself to be 
 mastered by passion. The first peculiarity that struck 
 the. listener was its superb self-restraint. The orator at 
 his most powerful passages appeared as if he were rather 
 keeping in his strength than taxing it with effort. His 
 voice was, for the most part, calm and measured ; he hardly 
 ever indulged in much gesticulation. He never, under the 
 pressure of whatever emotion, shouted or stormed. The 
 fire of his eloquence was a white-heat, intense, consuming, 
 but never sparkling or sputtering. He had an admirable 
 gift of humor and a keen ironical power. He had read few 
 books, but of those he read he was a master. The English 
 Bible and Milton were his chief studies. His style was 
 probably formed, for the most part, on the Bible ; for 
 although he may have moulded his general way of think- 
 ing and his simple, strong morality on the lessons he found 
 in Milton, his mere language bore little trace of Milton's 
 stately classicism with its Hellenized and Latinized ter- 
 minology, but was above all things Saxon and simple.
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 289 
 
 Bright was a man of the middle-class. His family were 
 Quakers of a somewhat austere mould. They were manu- 
 facturers of carpets in Rochdale, Lancashire, and had 
 made considerable money in their business. John Bright, 
 therefore, was raised above the temptations which often 
 beset the eloquent young man who takes up a democratic 
 cause in a country like ours ; and, as our public opinion 
 goes, it probably was to his advantage, when first he 
 made his appearance in Parliament, that he was well 
 known to be a man of some means, and not a clever and 
 needy adventurer. 
 
 Mr. Bright himself has given an interesting account of 
 his first meeting with Mr. Cobden : 
 
 " The first time I became acquainted with Mr. Cobden 
 was in connection with the great question of education. 
 I went over to Manchester to call upon him and invite 
 him to come to Rochdale to speak at a meeting about to 
 be held in the school-room of the Baptist Chapel in West 
 Street. I found him in his counting-house. I told him 
 what I wanted ; his countenance lighted up with pleasure 
 to find that others were working in the same cause. He, 
 without hesitation, agreed to come. He came, and he 
 spoke ; and though he was then so young a speaker, yet 
 the qualities of his speech were such as remained with 
 him so long as he was able to speak at all clearness, 
 logic, a conversational eloquence, a persuasiveness which, 
 when combined with the absolute truth there was in his 
 eye and in his countenance, became a power it was almost 
 impossible to resist." 
 
 Still more remarkable is the description Mr. Bright has 
 given of Cobden's first appeal to him to join in the agita- 
 tion for the repeal of the Corn-laws : 
 
 " I was in Leamington, and Mr. Cobden called on me. 
 I was then hi the depths of grief I may almost say of 
 despair for the light and sunshine of my house had been 
 
 19
 
 290 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 extinguished. All that was left on earth of ray young 
 wife, except, the memory of a sainted life and a too brief 
 happiness, was lying still and cold in the chamber above 
 us. Mr. Cobden called on me as his friend and addressed 
 me, as you may suppose, with words of condolence. 
 After a time he looked up and said : ' There are thou- 
 sands and thousands of homes in England at this moment 
 where wives and mothers and children are dying of 
 hunger. Now, when the first paroxysm of your grief is 
 passed, I would advise you to come with me, and we will 
 never rest until the Corn-laws are repealed.' " 
 
 The invitation thus given was cordially accepted, and 
 from that time dates the almost unique fellowship of these 
 two men, who worked together in the closest brother- 
 hood, who loved each other as not all brothers do, who 
 were associated so closely in the public mind that until 
 Cobden's death the name of one was scarcely ever men- 
 tioned without that of the other. There was something 
 positively romantic about their mutual attachment. Each 
 led a noble life ; each was in his own way a man of genius ; 
 each was simple and strong. Rivalry between them would 
 have been impossible, although they were every day being 
 compared and contrasted by both friendly and unfriendly 
 critics. Their gifts were admirably suited to make them 
 powerful allies. Each had something that the other 
 wanted. Bright had not Cobden's winning persuasive- 
 ness nor his surprising ease and force of argument. But 
 Cobden had not anything like his companion's oratorical 
 power. He had not the tones of scorn, of pathos, of 
 humor, and of passion. The two together made a genuine 
 power in the House of Commons and on the platform. 
 Mr. Kinglake, who is as little in sympathy with the general 
 political opinions of Cobden and Bright as any man well 
 could be, has borne admirable testimony to their argu- 
 mentative power and to their influence over the House of
 
 FEEE-TEADE AND THE LEAGUE. 291 
 
 Commons : " These two orators had shown with what a 
 strength, with what a masterly skill, with what patience, 
 with what a high courage, they could carry a scientific 
 truth through the storms of politics. They had shown 
 that they could arouse and govern the assenting thousands 
 who listened to them with delight that they could bend 
 the House of Commons that they could press their creed 
 upon a Prime-minister, and put upon his mind so hard a 
 stress, that after awhile he felt it to be a torture and a 
 violence to his reason to have to make a stand against 
 them. Nay, more. Each of these gifted men had proved 
 that he could go bravely into the midst of angry opponents, 
 could show them their fallacies one by one, destroy their 
 favorite theories before their very faces, and triumphantly 
 argue them down." It was, indeed, a scientific truth 
 which, in the first instance, Cobden and Bright undertook 
 to force upon the recognition of a Parliament composed in 
 great measure of the very men who were taught to believe 
 that their own personal and class interests were bound up 
 with the maintenance of the existing economical creed. 
 Those who hold that because it was a scientific truth the 
 task of its advocates ought to have been easy, will do well 
 to observe the success of the resistance which has been thus 
 far offered to it in almost every country but England alone. 
 These men had many assistants and lieutenants well 
 worthy to act with them and under them. Mr. W. J. Fox, 
 for instance, a Unitarian minister of great popularity 
 and remarkable eloquence, seemed at one time almost 
 to divide public admiration as an orator with Mr. Cobden 
 and Mr. Bright. Mr. Milner Gibson, who had been a 
 Tory, went over to the movement, and gave it the assist- 
 ance of trained Parliamentary knowledge and very con- 
 siderable debating skill. In the Lancashire towns the 
 League had the advantage of being officered for the most 
 part, by shrewd and sound men of business, who gave
 
 292 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 their time as freely as they gave their money to the ad- 
 vancement of the cause. It is curious to compare the 
 manner in which the Anti-Corn-law agitation was con- 
 ducted with the manner in which the contemporary agita- 
 tion in Ireland for the repeal of the Union was carried on. 
 In England the agitation was based on the most strictly 
 business principles. The leaders spoke and acted as if 
 the League itself were some great commercial firm, which 
 was bound, above all things, to fulfil its promises and 
 keep to the letter as well as the spirit of its engagements. 
 There was no boasting ; there was no exaggeration; there 
 were no appeals to passion ; no romantic rousings of sen- 
 timental emotion. The system of the agitation was as 
 clear, straightforward, and business-like as its purpose. 
 In Ireland there were monster meetings, with all manner 
 of dramatic and theatric effects with rhetorical exagger- 
 ation, and vehement appeal to passion and to ancient 
 memory of suffering. The cause was kept up from day to 
 day by assurances of near success so positive that it is 
 sometimes hard to believe those who made them could 
 themselves have been deceived by them. No doubt the 
 difference will be described by many as the mere result 
 of the difference between the one cause and the other ; 
 between the agitation for Free-trade, clear, tangible, and 
 practical, and that for repeal of the Union, with its 
 shadowy object and its visionary impulses. But a bet- 
 ter explanation of the difference will be found in the 
 different natures to which an appeal had to be made. It 
 is not by any means certain that O'ConnelPs cause was 
 a mere shadow ; nor will it appear, if we study the criti- 
 cism of the time, that the guides of public opinion who 
 pronounced the repeal agitation absurd and ludicrous had 
 any better words at first for the movement against the 
 Corn-law. Cobden and Bright on the one side, O'Connell 
 on the other, knew the audiences they had to address. It
 
 FEEE-TEADE AND TUE LEAGUE. 293 
 
 would have been impossible to stir the blood of the Lan- 
 cashire artisan by means of the appeals which went to the 
 very heart of the dreamy, sentimental, impassioned Celt 
 of the South of Ireland. The Munster peasant would 
 have understood little of such clear, penetrating, business- 
 like argument as that by which Cobden and Bright en- 
 forced their doctrines. Had O'Connell's cause been as 
 practical and its success been as immediately attainable as 
 that of the Anti-Corn-law League, the great Irish agitator 
 would still have had to address his followers in a differ- 
 ent tone of appeal. " All men are not alike," says the 
 Norman butler to the Flemish soldier in Scott's "Be- 
 trothed:" "that which will but warm your Flemish 
 hearts will put wildfire into Norman brains ; and what 
 may only encourage your countrymen to man the walls, 
 will make ours fly over the battlements." The most im- 
 passioned Celt, however, will admit that in the Anti-Corn- 
 law movement of Cobden and Bright, with its rigid truth- 
 fulness and its strict proportion between capacity and 
 promise, there was an entirely new dignity lent to popu- 
 lar agitation which raised it to the condition of statesman- 
 ship in the rough. The Reform agitation in England had 
 not been conducted without some exaggeration, much ap- 
 peal to passion, and some not by any means indistinct 
 allusion to the reserve of popular force which might be 
 called into action if legislators and peers proved insensible 
 to argument. The era of the Anti-Corn-law movement 
 was a new epoch altogether in English political controversy. 
 The League, however, successful as it might be 
 throughout the country, had its great work to do in Par- 
 liament. The Free-trade leaders must have found their 
 hearts sink within them when they came sometimes to 
 confront that fortress of traditions and of vested rights. 
 Even after the change made in favor of manufacturing 
 and middle-class interests by the Reform Bill, the House
 
 294 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of Commons was still composed, as to nine-tenths of its 
 whole number, by representatives of the landlords. The 
 entire House of Lords then was constituted of the owners 
 of land. All tradition, all prestige, all the dignity of 
 aristocratic institutions, seemed to be naturally arrayed 
 against the new movement, conducted as it was by manu- 
 facturers and traders for the benefit, seemingly, of trade 
 and those whom it employed. The artisan population, 
 who might have been formidable as a disturbing element, 
 were, on the whole, rather against the Free-traders than 
 for them. Nearly all the great official leaders had to be 
 converted to the doctrines of Free-trade. Many of the 
 Whigs were willing enough to admit the case of Free- 
 trade as the young Scotch lady mentioned by Sydney 
 Smith admitted the case of love, " in the abstract ; " but 
 they could not recognize the possibility of applying it in 
 the complicated financial conditions of an artificial system 
 like ours. Some of the Whigs were in favor of a fixed 
 duty in place of the existing sliding-scale. The leaders 
 of the movement had, indeed, to resist a very dangerous 
 temptation coming from statesmen who professed to be 
 in accordance with them as to the mere principle of 
 protection, but who were always endeavoring to persuade 
 them that they had better accept any decent compromise, 
 and not push their demands to extremes. The witty peer 
 who in a former generation answered an advocate of 
 moderate reform by asking him what he thought of 
 moderate chastity, might have had many opportunities, if 
 he had been engaged in the Free-trade movement, of 
 turning his epigram to account. 
 
 Mr. Macaulay, for instance, wrote to the electors of 
 Edinburgh to remonstrate with them on what he con- 
 sidered their fanatical and uncompromising adherence to 
 the principle of Free-trade. "In my opinion," Mr. 
 Macaulay wrote to his constituents, " you are all wrong
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 295 
 
 not because you think all protection bad, for I think so 
 too ; not even because you avow your opinion and attempt 
 to propagate it, for I have always done the same, and 
 shall do the same ; but because, being in a situation 
 where your only hope is in a compromise, you refuse to 
 hear of compromise ; because, being in a situation where 
 every person who will go a step with you on the right 
 road ought to be cordially welcomed, you drive from you 
 those who are willing and desirous to go with you 
 half-way. To this policy I will be no party. I will not 
 abandon those with whom I have hitherto acted, and 
 without whose help I am confident that no great improve- 
 ment can be effected, for an object purely selfish." It 
 had not occurred to Mr. Macaulay that any party but the 
 "VVhigs could bring in any measure of fiscal or other 
 reform worth the having; and, indeed, he probably 
 thought it would be something like an act of ingratitude 
 amounting to a species of sacrilege to accepted reform 
 from any hands but those of its recognized Whig patrons. 
 The Anti-Corn-law agitation introduced a game of politics 
 into England which astonished and considerably discom- 
 fited steady-going politicians like Macaulay. The League 
 men did not profess to be bound by any indefeasible bond 
 of allegiance to the Whig party. They were prepared to 
 co-operate with any party whatever which would under- 
 take to abolish the Corn-laws. Their agitation would 
 have done some good in this way, if in no other sense. 
 It introduced a more robust and independent spirit into 
 political life. It is almost ludicrous sometimes to read 
 the diatribes of supporters of Lord Melbourne's Govern- 
 ment, for example, against any one who should presume 
 to think that any object hi the mind of a true patriot, or 
 at least of a true Liberal, could equal hi importance that 
 of keeping the Melbourne Ministry hi power. Great 
 reforms have been made by Conservative governments
 
 296 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in our own days, because the new political temper which 
 was growing up in England refused to affirm that the 
 patent of reform rested in the possession of any particular 
 party, and that if the holders of the monopoly did not 
 find it convenient, or were not in the humor to use it any 
 further just then, no one else must venture to interfere in 
 the matter, or to undertake the duty which they had 
 declined to perform. At the time that Macaulay wrote 
 his letter however, it had not entered into the mind of 
 any "Whig to believe it possible that the repeal of the 
 Corn-laws was to be the work of a great Conservative 
 minister, done at the bidding of two Radical politicians. 
 
 It is a significant fact that the Anti-Corn-law League 
 were not in the least discouraged by the accession of Sir 
 Robert Peel to power. To them the fixed duty proposed 
 by Lord John Russell was as objectionable as Peel's slid- 
 ing-scale. Their hopes seem rather to have gone up than 
 gone down when the minister came into power whose 
 adherents, unlike those of Lord John Russell, were ab- 
 solutely against the very principle of Free-trade. It is of 
 some importance, in estimating the morality of the course 
 pursued by Peel, to observe the opinion formed of his pro- 
 fessions and his probable purposes by the shrewd men 
 who led the Anti-Corn-law League. The grand charge 
 against Peel is that he betrayed his party ; that he induced 
 them to continue their allegiance to him on the promise 
 that he would never concede the principle of Free-trade ; 
 and that he used his power to establish Free-trade when 
 the time came to choose between it and a surrender of 
 office. Now it is certain that the League always regarded 
 Sir Robert Peel as a Free-trader in heart; as one who 
 fully admitted the principle of Free-trade, but who did 
 not see his way just then to deprive the agricultural in- 
 terest of the protection on which they had for so many 
 years been allowed and encouraged to lean. In the de-
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 297 
 
 bate after the general election of 1841 the debate which 
 turned out the Melbourne Ministry Mr. Cobden, then for 
 the first time a member of the House of Commons, said : 
 "I am a Free-trader; I call myself neither Whig nor 
 Tory. I am proud to acknowledge the virtue of the Whig 
 Ministry in coming out from the ranks of the monopolists 
 and advancing three parts out of four in my own direc- 
 tion. Yet if the right honorable baronet opposite (Sir R. 
 Peel) advances one step farther, I will be the first to meet 
 him half-way and shake hands with him." Some years 
 later Mr. Cobden said, at Birmingham, " There can be no 
 doubt that Sir Robert Peel is at heart as good a Free- 
 trader as I am. He has told us so in the House of Com- 
 mons again and again ; nor do I doubt that Sir Robert 
 Peel has in his inmost heart the desire to be the man who 
 shall carry out the principles of Free-trade in this country." 
 Sir Robert Peel had, indeed, as Mr. Cobden said, again and 
 again in Parliament expressed his conviction as to the 
 general truth of the principles of Free-trade. In 1842, he 
 declared it to be utterly beyond the power of Parliament, 
 and a mere delusion, to say that by any duty, fixed or 
 otherwise, a certain price could be guaranteed to the pro- 
 ducer. In the same year he expressed his belief that " on 
 the general principle of Free- trade there is now no great 
 difference of opinion, and that all agree in the general 
 rule that we should buy in the cheapest and sell in the 
 dearest market." This expression of opinion called forth 
 an ironical cheer from the benches of opposition. Peel 
 knew well what the cheer was meant to convey. He 
 knew it meant to ask him why, then, he did not allow the 
 country to buy its grain in the cheapest market. He 
 promptly added " I know the meaning of that cheer. I 
 do not wish to raise a discussion on the Corn-laws or the 
 Sugar Duties, which I contend, however, are exceptions 
 to the general rule, and I will not go into that question
 
 298 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 now." The press of the day, whether for or against Peel, 
 commented upon his declarations and his measures as in- 
 dicating clearly that the bent of his mind was toward 
 Free-trade even in grain. At all events, he had reached 
 that mental condition when he regarded the case of grain, 
 like that of sugar, as a necessary exception, for the time, 
 to the operation of a general rule. 
 
 It ought to have been obvious that if exceptional cir- 
 cumstances should arise, pulling more strongly in the 
 direction of the League, Sir Robert Peel's own explicit 
 declarations must bind him to recognize the necessity of 
 applying the Free-trade principles even to corn. "Sir 
 Robert Peel," says his cousin, Sir Laurence Peel, in a 
 sketch of the life and character of the great statesman, 
 "had been, as I have said, always a Free-trader. The 
 questions to which he had declined to apply those prin- 
 ciples had been viewed by him as exceptional. The Corn- 
 law had been so treated by many able exponents of the 
 principles of Free-trade." Sir Robert Peel himself has 
 left it on record that during the discussions on the Corn- 
 law of 1842 he was more than once pressed to give a 
 guarantee, " so far as a minister could give it," that the 
 amount of protection established by that law should be 
 permanently adhered to ; " but although I did not then 
 contemplate the necessity for further change, I uniformly 
 refused to fetter the discretion of the Government by any 
 such assurances as those that were required of me." It 
 is evident that the condition of Sir Robert Peel's opinions 
 was, even as far back as 1842, something very different 
 indeed from that of the ordinary county member or 
 pledged Protectionist, and that Peel had done all he could 
 to make this clear to his party. A minister who, in 1842, 
 refused to fetter the discretion of his Government in deal- 
 ing with the protection of home-grown grain ought not, 
 on the face of things, to be accused of violating his
 
 FREE-TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 299 
 
 pledges and betraying his party, if, four years later, 
 under the pressure of extraordinary circumstances, he 
 made up his mind to the abolition of such a protection. 
 Let us test this in a manner that will be familiar to our 
 own time. Suppose a Prime-minister is pressed by some 
 of his own party to give the House of Commons a guaran- 
 tee, " so far as a minister could give it," that the prin- 
 ciple of the State Church Establishment in England shall 
 be permanently adhered to. He declines to fetter the 
 discretion of the Government in the future. Is it not 
 evident that such an answer would be taken by nine out 
 often of his listeners to be ominous of some change to 
 the Established Church? If four years after the same 
 minister were to propose to disestablish the Church, he 
 might be denounced and he might even be execrated, but 
 no one could fairly accuse him of Laving violated his 
 pledge and betrayed his party. 
 
 The country party, however, did not understand Sir 
 Robert Peel as their opponents and his assuredly under- 
 stood him. They did not at this time believe in the pos- 
 sibility of any change. Free- trade was to them little more 
 than an abstraction. They did not much care who 
 preached it out of Parliament. They were convinced 
 that the state of things they saw around them when they 
 were boys would continue to the end. They looked on 
 Mr. Villiers and his annual motion in favor of Free-trade 
 very much as a stout old Tory of later times might regard 
 the annual motion for woman suffrage. Both parties in 
 the House that is to say, both of the parties from whom 
 ministers were taken alike set themselves against the 
 introduction of any such measure. The supporters of it 
 were, with one exception, not men of family and rank. It 
 was agitated for a good deal out-of-doors, but agitation 
 had not up to that time succeeded in making much way 
 even with a reformed Parliament. The country party
 
 300 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 observed that some men among the two leading sets 
 went farther in favor of the abstract principle than 
 others : but it did not seem to them that that really 
 affected the practical question very much. In 1842 Mr. 
 Disraeli himself was one of those who stood up for the 
 Free-trade principle, and insisted that it had been rather 
 the inherited principle of the Conservatives than of the 
 Whigs. Country gentlemen did not, therefore, greatly 
 concern themselves about the practical work doing in 
 Manchester, or the professions of abstract opinion so 
 often made in Parliament. They did not see that the 
 mind of their leader was avowedly in a progressive con- 
 dition on the subject of Free-trade. Because they could 
 not bring themselves to question for a moment the prin- 
 ciple of protection for home-grown grain, they made up 
 their minds that it was a principle as sacred with him. 
 Against that conviction no evidence could prevail. It 
 was with them a point of conscience and honor ; it would 
 have seemed an insult to their leader to believe even his 
 own words, if these seemed to say that it was a mere 
 question of expediency, convenience, and time with him. 
 
 Perhaps it would have been better if Sir Robert Peel 
 had devoted himself more directly to what Mr. Disraeli 
 afterward called educating his party. Perhaps if he had 
 made it part of his duty as a leader to prepare the minds 
 of his followers for the fact that protection for gram, 
 having ceased to be tenable as an economic principle, 
 would possibly some day have to be given up as a practice, 
 he might have taken his party along with him. He might 
 have been able to show them, as the events have shown 
 them since, that the introduction of free corn would be a 
 blessing to the population of England in general, and 
 would do nothing but good for the landed interest as well. 
 The influence of Peel at that time, and indeed all through 
 his administration up to the introduction of his Free-trade
 
 FREE-TRADE AND TUE LEAGUE. 301 
 
 measures, was limitless, so far as his party were con- 
 cerned, lie could have done anything with them. In- 
 deed, we find no evidence so clear to prove that Peel had 
 not in 1842 made up his mind to the introduction of Free- 
 trade as the fact that he did not at once begin to educate 
 his party to it. This is to be regretted. The measure 
 might have been passed by common accord. There is 
 something not altogether without pathetic influence in 
 the thought of that country party whom Peel had led so 
 long, and who adored him so thoroughly, turning away 
 from him and against him, and mournfully seeking another 
 leader. There is something pathetic in the thought that, 
 rightly or wrongly, they should have believed themselves 
 betrayed by their chief. But Peel, to begin with, was 
 a reserved, cold, somewhat awkward man. He was not 
 effusive ; he did not pour out his emotions and reveal 
 all his changes of opinion in bursts of confidence even to 
 his habitual associates. He brooded over these things in 
 his own mind ; he gave such expression to them in open 
 debate as any passing occasion seemed strictly to call for ; 
 and he assumed, perhaps, that the gradual changes oper- 
 ating in his views when thus expressed were understood 
 by his followers. Above all, it is probable that Peel him- 
 self did not see until almost the last moment that the 
 time had actually come when the principle of protection 
 must give way to other and more weighty claims. In his 
 speech announcing his intended legislation in 1846, Sir 
 Robert Peel, with a proud frankness which was character- 
 istic of him, denied that his altered course of action was 
 due exclusively to the failure of the potato crop and the 
 dread of famine in Ireland. " I will not," he said " with- 
 hold the homage which is due to the progress of reason 
 and of truth by denying that my opinions on the subject 
 of Protection have undergone a change. ... I will not 
 direct the course of the vessel by observations taken in
 
 302 A niSTOEY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 1842." But it is probable that if the Irish famine had not 
 threatened, the moment for introducing the new legisla- 
 tion might have been indefinitely postponed. The pros- 
 pects of the Anti-Corn-law League did not look by any 
 means bright when the session preceding the introduction 
 of the Free-trade legislation came to an end. The number 
 of votes that the League could count on in Parliament did 
 not much exceed that which the advocates of Home Rule 
 have been able to reckon up in our day. Nothing in 1843 
 or in the earlier part of 1845 pointed to any immediate 
 necessity for Sir Robert Peel's testing the progress of his 
 own convictions by reducing them into the shape of prac- 
 tical action. It is, therefore, not hard to understand how 
 even a far-seeing and conscientious statesman, busy with 
 the practical work of each day, might have put off taking 
 definite counsel with himself as to the introduction of 
 measures for which just then there seemed no special 
 necessity, and which could hardly be introduced without 
 bitter controversy.
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEKS HAND. 303 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 
 
 WE see how the two great parties of the state stood 
 with regard to this question of Free-trade. The Whigs 
 were steadily gravitating toward it. Their leaders did 
 not quite see their way to accept it as a principle of prac- 
 tical statesmanship, but it was evident that their accept- 
 ance of it was only a question of time, and of no long 
 time. The leader of the Tory party was heing drawn day 
 by day more in the same direction. Both leaders, Russell 
 and Peel, had gone so far as to admit the general principle 
 of Free-trade. Peel had contended that grain was, in 
 England, a necessary exception ; Russell was not of 
 opinion that the time had come when it could be treated 
 otherwise than as an exception. The Free-trade party, 
 small, indeed, in its Parliamentary force, but daily grow- 
 ing more and more powerful with the country, would take 
 nothing from either leader but Free-trade sans phrase ; 
 and would take that from either leader without regard to 
 partisan considerations. It is evident to any one who 
 knows anything of the working of our system of govern- 
 ment by party, that this must soon have ended in one or 
 other of the two great ruling parties forming an alliance 
 with the Free-traders. If unforeseen events had not inter- 
 posed, it is probable that conviction would first have 
 fastened on the minds of the Whigs, and that they would 
 have had the honor of abolishing the Corn-laws. They
 
 304 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 were out of office, and did not seem likely to get back 
 soon to it by their own power, and the Free-trade party 
 would have come in time to be a very desirable ally. It 
 would be idle to pretend to doubt that the convictions of 
 political parties are hastened on a good deal under our 
 system by the yearning of those who are out of office to 
 get the better of those who are in. Statesmen in England 
 are converted as Henry of Navarre became Catholic : we 
 do not say that they actually change their opinions for 
 the sake of making themselves eligible for power, but a 
 change which has been growing up imperceptibly, and 
 which might otherwise have taken a long time to declare 
 itself, is stimulated thus to confess itself and come out 
 into the light. But in the case of the Anti-Corn-law agi- 
 tation, an event over which political parties had no control 
 intervened to spur the intent of the Prime-minister. Mr. 
 Bright, many years after, when pronouncing the eulogy 
 of his dead friend Cobden, described what happened in a 
 fine sentence : " Famine itself, against which we had 
 warred, joined us." In the autumn of 1845 the potato rot 
 began in Ireland. 
 
 The vast majority of the working population of Ireland 
 were known to depend absolutely on the potato for subsist- 
 ence. In the northern province, where the population 
 were of Scotch extraction, the oatmeal, the brose of their 
 ancestors, still supplied the staple of their food; but in the 
 southern and western provinces a large proportion of the 
 peasantry actually lived on the potato, and the potato 
 alone. In these districts whole generations grew up, lived, 
 married, and passed away, without having ever tasted 
 flesh meat. It was evident, then, that a failure in the 
 potato crop would be equivalent to famine. Many of the 
 laboring class received little or no money wages. They 
 lived on what was called the " cottier tenant system ; " 
 that is to say, a man worked for a land-owner on condition
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 305 
 
 of getting the use of a little scrap of land for himself, on 
 which to grow potatoes to be the sole food of himself and 
 his family. The news came, in the autumn of 1845, that 
 the long continuance of sunless wet and cold had im- 
 perilled, if not already destroyed, the food of a people. 
 
 The cabinet of Sir Robert Peel held hasty meetings 
 closely following each other. People began to ask 
 whether Parliament was about to be called together, and 
 whether the Government had resolved on a bold policy. 
 The Anti-Corn-law League were clamoring for the opening 
 of the ports. The Prime-minister himself was strongly 
 in favor of such a course. He urged upon his colleagues 
 that all restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn 
 should be suspended either by an Order in Council, or by 
 calling Parliament together and recommending such a 
 measure from the throne. It is now known that in offer- 
 ing this advice to his colleagues Peel accompanied it with 
 the expression of a doubt as to whether it would ever be 
 possible to restore the restrictions that had once been 
 suspended. Indeed, this doubt must have filled every 
 mind. The League were openly declaring that one reason 
 why they called for the opening of the ports was that, 
 once opened, they never could be closed again. The doubt 
 was enough for some of the colleagues of Sir Robert Peel. 
 It seems marvellous now how responsible statesmen could 
 struggle for the retention of restrictions which were so 
 unpopular and indefensible that if they were once sus- 
 pended, under the pressure of no matter what exceptional 
 necessity, they never could be reimposed. The Duke of 
 Wellington and Lord Stanley, however, opposed the idea 
 of opening the ports, and the proposal fell through. The 
 Cabinet merely resolved on appointing a commission, con- 
 sisting of the heads of departments in Ireland, to take 
 some steps to guard against a sudden outbreak of famine, 
 and the thought of an autumnal session was abandoned. 
 
 20
 
 806 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel himself has thus tersely described the 
 manner in which his proposals were received: "The 
 cabinet by a very considerable majority declined giving 
 its assent to the proposals which I thus made to them. 
 They were supported by only three members of the cabinet 
 the Earl of Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and Mr. 
 Sidney Herbert. The other members of the cabinet, some 
 on the ground of objection to the principle of the measures 
 recommended, others upon the ground that there was not 
 yet sufficient evidence of the necessity for them, withheld 
 their sanction." 
 
 The great cry all through Ireland was for the opening 
 of the ports. The Mansion House Relief Committee of 
 Dublin issued a series of resolutions declaring their con- 
 viction, from the most undeniable evidence, that consider- 
 ably more than one-third of the entire potato crop in Ire- 
 land had been already destroyed by the disease, and that 
 the disease had not ceased its ravages, but on the contrary 
 was daily expanding more and more. "Xo reasonable 
 conjecture can be formed," the resolutions went on to 
 state, " with respect to the limit of its effects short of the 
 destruction of the entire remaining crop ; " and the docu- 
 ment concluded with a denunciation of the ministry for 
 not opening the ports or calling Parliament together before 
 the usual time for its assembling. 
 
 Two or three days after the issue of these resolutions 
 Lord John Russell wrote a letter from Edinburgh to his 
 constituents, the electors of the City of London a letter 
 which is one of the historical documents of the reign. It 
 announced his unqualified conversion to the principles of 
 the Anti-Corn-law League. The failure of the potato crop 
 was, of course, the immediate occasion of this letter. 
 " Indecision and procrastination," Lord John Russell wrote, 
 " may produce a state of suffering which it is frightful to 
 contemplate It is no longer worth while to con-
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 307 
 
 tend for a fixed duty. In 1841 the Free-trade party would 
 have agreed to a duty of 85. per quarter on wheat, and after 
 a lapse of years this duty might have been further re- 
 duced, and ultimately abolished. But the imposition of 
 any duty at present, without a provision for its extinction 
 within a short period, would but prolong a contest already 
 sufficiently fruitful of animosity and discontent." Lord 
 John Russell then invited a general understanding, to put 
 an end to a system " which has been proved to be the blight 
 of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter 
 division among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mor- 
 tality, and crime among the people." Then the writer 
 added a significant remark to the effect that the Govern- 
 ment appeared to be waiting for some excuse to give up 
 the present Corn-law, and urging the people to afford 
 them all the excuse they could desire, " by petition, by 
 address, by remonstrance." 
 
 Peel himself has told us in his Memoirs what was the 
 effect which this letter produced upon his own councils. 
 It " could not," he points out, " fail to exercise a very 
 material influence on the public mind, and on the subject- 
 matter of our deliberations in the cabinet. It justified 
 the conclusion that the Whig party was prepared to unite 
 with the Anti-Corn-law League in demanding the total re- 
 peal of the Corn-laws." Peel would not consent now to 
 propose simply an opening of the ports. It would seem, 
 he thought, a mere submission, to accept the minimum of 
 the terms ordered by the Whig leader. That would have 
 been well enough when he first recommended it to his 
 cabinet; and if it could then have been offered to the 
 country as the spontaneous movement of a united ministry, 
 it would have been becoming of the emergency and of the 
 men. But to do this now would be futile ; would seem 
 like trifling with the question. Sir Robert Peel, therefore^ 
 recommended to his cabinet an early meeting of Parlia-
 
 308 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ment with the view of bringing forward some measure 
 equivalent to a speedy repeal of the Corn-laws. 
 
 The recommendation was wise : it was, indeed, indispen- 
 sable. Yet it is hard to think that an impartial posterity 
 will form a very lofty estimate of the wisdom with which 
 the counsels of the two great English parties were guided 
 in this momentous emergency. Neither Whigs nor Tories 
 appear to have formed a judgment because of facts or prin- 
 ciples, but only in deference to the political necessities of 
 the hour. Sir Robert Peel himself denied that it was the 
 resistless hand of famine in Ireland which had brought him 
 to his resolve that the Corn-laws ought to be abolished. He 
 grew into the conviction that they were bad in principle. 
 Lord John Russell had long been growing into the same 
 conviction. Yet the League had been left to divide with 
 but small numbers against overwhelming majorities made 
 up of both parties, until the very session before Peel pro- 
 posed to repeal the Corn-laws. Lord Beaconsfleld, indeed, 
 indulges in something like exaggeration when he says, hi 
 his " Life of Lord George Bentinck," that the close of the 
 session of 1845 found the League nearly reduced to silence. 
 But it is not untrue that, as he says, " the Manchester con- 
 federates seemed to be least in favor with Parliament and 
 the country on the very eve of their triumph." " They 
 lost at the same time elections and the ear of the House ; 
 and the cause of total and immediate repeal seemed in a 
 not less hopeless position than when, under circumstances 
 of infinite difficulty, it was first and solely upheld by the 
 terse eloquence and vivid perception of Charles Villiers." 
 Lord Beaconsfield certainly ought to know what cause 
 had and what had not the ear of the House of Commons 
 at that time ; and yet we venture to doubt, even after his 
 assurance, whether the League and its speakers had in 
 any way found their hold on the attention of Parliament 
 diminishing. But the loss of elections is beyond dispute.
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL 1 8 HAND. 309 
 
 It is a fact alluded to in the very letter from Lord John 
 Russell which was creating so much commotion. " It is 
 not to be denied," Lord John Russell writes, " that many 
 elections for cities and towns in 1841, and some in 1845, 
 appear to favor the assertion that Free-trade is not popular 
 with the great mass of the community." This is, from 
 whatever cause, a very common phenomenon in our polit- 
 ical history. A movement which began with the promise 
 of sweeping all before it seems after awhile to lose its 
 force, and is supposed by many observers to be now only 
 the work and the care of a few earnest and fanatical men. 
 Suddenly it is taken up by a minister of commanding in- 
 fluence, and the bore or the crotchet of one Parliament is 
 the great party controversy of a second, and the accom- 
 plished triumph of a third. In this instance it is beyond 
 dispute that the League seemed to be somewhat losing in 
 strength and influence just on the eve of its complete 
 triumph. He must, indeed, be the very optimist of Par- 
 liamentary government who upholds the manner of Free- 
 trade's final adoption as absolutely satisfactory, and as 
 reflecting nothing but credit upon the counsels of our two 
 great political parties. Such a well-contented personage 
 might be fairly asked to explain why a system of protec- 
 tive taxation, beginning to be regarded by all thoughtful 
 statesmen as bad in itself, should never be examined with 
 a view to its repeal until the force of a great emergency 
 and the rival biddings of party leaders came to render its 
 repeal inevitable. The Corn-laws, as all the world now 
 admits, were a cruel burden to the poor and the working- 
 class of England. They were justly described by Lord 
 John Russell as " the blight of commerce, the bane of 
 agriculture, the source of bitter division among classes ; 
 the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among 
 the people." All this was independent of the sudden and 
 ephemeral calamity of the potato rot, which at the time
 
 310 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 when Lord John Russell wrote that letter did not threaten 
 to become nearly so fatal as it is afterward proved to be. 
 One cannot help asking how long would the Corn-laws 
 have been suffered thus to blight commerce and agri- 
 culture, to cause division among classes, and to produce 
 penury, mortality, and crime among the people, if the 
 potato rot in Ireland had not rendered it necessary to 
 do something without delay ? 
 
 The potato rot, however, inspired the writing of 
 Lord John Russell's letter ; and Lord John Russell's 
 letter inspired Sir Robert Peel with the conviction that 
 something must be done. Most of his colleagues were 
 inclined to go with him this time. A cabinet council 
 was held on November 25th, almost immediately after 
 the publication of Lord John Russell's letter. At that 
 council Sir Robert Peel recommended the summoning 
 of Parliament with a view to instant measures to combat 
 the famine in Ireland, but with a view also to some 
 announcement of legislation intended to pave the way 
 for the repeal of the Corn-laws. Lord Stanley still hesi- 
 tated, and asked time to consider his decision. The Duke 
 of Wellington was unchanged in his private opinion that 
 the Corn-laws ought to be maintained ; but he declared 
 with a blunt simplicity that his only object in public life 
 was " to support Sir Robert Peel's administration of the 
 Government for the Queen." " A good government for 
 the country, " said the sturdy and simple old hero, " is 
 more important than Corn-laws or any other considera- 
 tion. " One may smile at this notion of a good Govern- 
 ment without reference to the quality of the legislation it 
 introduces ; it reminds one a little of the celebrated study 
 of history without reference to time or place. But the 
 Duke acted strictly up to his principles of duty, and he 
 declared that if Sir Robert Peel considered the repeal of 
 the Corn-laws to bejiot right or necessary for the welfare
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 311 
 
 of England, but requisite for the maintenance of Sir Robert 
 Peel's position " in Parliament and in the public view," 
 he should thoroughly support the proposal. Lord Stanley, 
 however, was not to be changed in the end. He took time 
 to consider, and seems really to have tried his best to per- 
 suade himself that he could fall in with the new position 
 which the Premier had assumed. Meanwhile the most 
 excited condition of public feeling prevailed throughout 
 London and the country generally. The Times news- 
 paper came out on December 4th with the announcement 
 that the ministry had made up its mind, and that the 
 Royal speech at the commencement of the session would 
 recommend an immediate consideration of the Corn-laws 
 preparatory to their total repeal. It would be hardly 
 possible to exaggerate the excitement caused by this 
 startling piece of news. It was indignantly and in un- 
 qualified terms declared a falsehood by the ministerial 
 prints. Long arguments were gone into to prove that 
 even if the fact announced were true, it could not possibly 
 have been known to the Times. In Disraeli's " Coningsby " 
 Mr. Rigby gives the clearest and most convincing reasons 
 to prove, first, that Lord Spencer could not be dead, as 
 report said he was ; and next, that even if he were dead, 
 the fact could not possibly be known to those who took on 
 themselves to announce it. He is hardly silenced even by 
 the assurance of a great duke that he is one of Lord 
 Spencer's executors, and that Lord Spencer is certainly 
 dead. So the announcement in the Times was fiercely 
 and pedantically argued against. "It can't be true;" 
 " the Times could not get to know of it ; " " it must be a 
 cabinet secret if it were true ; " " nobody outside the cab- 
 inet could possibly know of it ; " " if any one outside the 
 cabinet could get to know of it, it would not be the Times ; " 
 it would be this, that, or the other person or journal ; and 
 so forth. Long after it had been made certain, beyond
 
 312 A IIISTORr OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 even Mr. Rigby's power of disputation, that the announce- 
 ment was true so far as the resolve of the Prime-minister 
 was concerned, people continued to argue and controvert 
 as to the manner in which the Times became possessed of 
 the secret. The general conclusion come to among the 
 knowing was that the blandishments of a gifted and 
 beautiful lady with a dash of political intrigue in her had 
 somehow extorted the secret from a young and handsome 
 member of the cabinet, and that she had communicated 
 it to the Times. It is not impossible that this may have 
 been the true explanation. It was believed in by a great 
 many persons who might have been in a position to judge 
 of the probabilities. On the other hand, there was surely 
 signs and tokens enough by which a shrewd politician 
 might have guessed what was to come without any in- 
 tervention of petticoat diplomacy. It seems odd now that 
 people should then have distressed themselves so much 
 by conjectures as to the source of the information when 
 once it was made certain that the information itself was 
 substantially true. This it undoubtedly was, although it 
 did not tell all the truth, and could not foretell. For 
 there was an ordeal yet to be gone through before the 
 Prime-minister could put his plans into operation. On 
 December 4th the Times made the announcement. On 
 the 6th, having been passionately contradicted, it re- 
 peated the assertion. " We adhere to our original an- 
 nouncement that Parliament will meet early in January, 
 and that a repeal of the Corn-laws will be proposed in 
 one House by Sir R. Peel, and in the other by the Duke 
 of Wellington." But, in the meantime, the opposition in 
 the cabinet had proved itself unmanageable. Lord Stan- 
 ley and the Duke of Buccleuch intimated to the Prime- 
 minister that they could not be parties to any measure 
 involving the ultimate repeal of the Corn-laws. Sir Robert 
 Peel did not believe that he could carry out his project
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL 1 S HAND. 313 
 
 satisfactorily under such circumstances, and he therefore 
 hastened to tender his resignation to the Queen. " The 
 other members of the cabinet, without exception, I believe " 
 these are Sir Robert Peel's own words " concurred in 
 this opinion ; and under these circumstances I consider 
 it to be my duty to tender my resignation to her Majesty. 
 On the 5th of December I repaired to Osborne, Isle of 
 Wight, and humbly solicited her Majesty to relieve me 
 from duties which I felt I could no longer discharge with 
 advantage to her Majesty's service." The very day after 
 the Times made its famous announcement, the very day 
 before the Times repeated it, the Prime-minister who was 
 to propose the repeal of the Corn-laws went out of office. 
 Quern dixere chaos ! Apparently chaos had come again. 
 Lord John Russell was sent for from Edinburgh. His 
 letter had, without any such purpose on his part, written 
 him up as the man to take Sir Robert Peel's place. Lord 
 John Russell came to London, and did his best to cope 
 with the many difficulties of the situation. His party 
 were not very strong in the country, and they had not a 
 majority in the House of Commons. He very naturally 
 endeavored to obtain from Peel a pledge that he would 
 support the immediate and complete repeal of the Corn- 
 laws. Peel, writing to the Queen, " humbly expresses his 
 regret that he does not feel it to be consistent with his 
 duty to enter upon the consideration of this important 
 question in Parliament fettered by a previous engagement 
 of the nature of that required of him." The position of 
 Lord John Russell was awkward. He had been forced 
 into it because one or two of Sir Robert Peel's colleagues 
 would not consent to adopt the policy of their chief. 
 But the very fact of so stubborn an opposition from a man 
 of Lord Stanley's influence showed clearly enough that the 
 passing of Free-trade measures was not to be effected 
 without stern resistance from the country party. The
 
 814 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 whole risk and burden had seemingly been thrown en 
 Lord John Russell ; and now Sir Robert Peel would not 
 even pledge himself to unconditional support of the very 
 policy which was understood to be his own. Lord John 
 Russell showed, even then, his characteristic courage. 
 lie resolved to form a ministry without a Parliamentary 
 majority. He was not, however, fated to try the ordeal. 
 Lord Grey, who was a few months before Lord Howick, 
 and who had just succeeded to the title of his father (the 
 stately Charles Earl Grey, the pupil of Fox, and chief of 
 the cabinet which passed the Reform Bill and abolished 
 slavery) Lord Grey felt a strong objection to the foreign 
 policy of Lord Palmerston, and these two could not get 
 on in one ministry, as it was part of Lord John Russell's 
 plan that they should do. Lord Grey also was strongly 
 of opinion that a seat in the cabinet ought to be offered 
 to Mr. Cobden ; but other great Whigs could not bring 
 themselves to any larger sacrifice to justice and common- 
 sense than a suggestion that the office of Vice-president 
 of the Board of Trade should be tendered to the leader 
 of the Free-trade movement. Mr. Macaulay describes the 
 events hi a letter to the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. 
 " All our plans were frustrated by Lord Grey, who ob- 
 jected to Lord Palmerston being Foreign Secretary. I 
 hope that the public interests will not suffer. Sir Robert 
 Peel must now undertake the settlement of the question. 
 It is certain that he can settle it. It is by no means cer- 
 tain that we could have done so. For we shall to a man 
 support him ; and a large proportion of those who are 
 now in office would have refused to support us." One 
 passage in Macaulay's letter will be read with peculiar in- 
 terest. " From the first," he says, " I told Lord John 
 Russell that I stipulated for one thing only total and 
 immediate repeal of the Corn-laws ; that my objections to 
 gradual abolition were insurmountable ; but that if he de-
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL 1 8 HAND. 315 
 
 clared for total and immediate repeal I would be as to all 
 other matters absolutely in his hands ; that I would take 
 any office, or no office, just as suited him best ; and that 
 he should never be disturbed by any personal pretensions 
 or jealousies on my part." No one can doubt Macaulay's 
 sincerity and singleness of purpose. But it is surprising 
 to note the change that the agitation of little more than 
 two years has made in his opinions on the subject of 
 a policy of immediate and unconditional abolition. In 
 February, 1843, he was pointing out to the electors of 
 Edinburgh the unwisdom of refusing a compromise, and 
 in December, 1845, he is writing to Edinburgh to say that 
 the one only thing for which he must stipulate was 
 total and immediate repeal. The Anti-Corn-law League 
 might well be satisfied with the propagandist work they 
 had done. The League itself looked on very composedly 
 during these little altercations and embarrassments of 
 parties. They knew well enough now that let who would 
 take power, he must carry out their policy. At a meet- 
 ing of the League, which was held in Covent Garden 
 Theatre on the 17th of this memorable month, and while 
 the negotiations were still going on, Mr. Cobden declared 
 that he and his friends had not striven to keep one party 
 in or another out of office. " We have worked with but 
 one principle and one object in view ; and if we maintain 
 that principle for but six months more, we shall attain to 
 that state which I have so long and so anxiously desired, 
 when the League shall be dissolved into its primitive 
 elements by the triumph of its principles." 
 
 Lord John Russell found it impossible to form a min- 
 istry. He signified his failure to the Queen. Probably, 
 having done the best he could, he was not particularly 
 distressed to find that his efforts were ineffectual. The 
 Queen had to send for Sir Robert Peel to Windsor, and 
 tell him that she must require him to withdraw his resig-
 
 316 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 nation and to remain in her service. Sir Robert of course 
 could only comply. The Queen offered to give him some 
 time to enter into communication with his colleagues, 
 but Sir Robert very wisely thought that he could speak 
 with much greater authority if he were to invite them to 
 support him in an effort on which he was determined, 
 and which he had positively undertaken to make. He, 
 therefore, returned from Windsor on the evening of De- 
 cember 20th, " having resumed all the functions of First 
 Minister of the Crown." The Duke of Buccleuch with- 
 drew his opposition to the policy which Peel was now 
 to carry out ; but Lord Stanley remained firm. The place 
 of the latter was taken as Secretary of State for the Colo- 
 nies by Mr. Gladstone, who, however, curiously enough, 
 remained without a seat in Parliament during the eventful 
 session that was now to come. Mr. Gladstone had sat 
 for the borough of Newark, but that borough being under 
 the influence of the Duke of Newcastle, who had with- 
 drawn his support from the ministry, he did not invite 
 re-election, but remained without a seat hi the House of 
 Commons for some months. Sir Robert Peel then, to use 
 his own words in a letter to the Princess de Lieven, re- 
 sumed power " with greater means of rendering public 
 service than I should have had if I had not relinquished 
 it." He felt, he said, " like a man restored to life after 
 his funeral service had been preached." 
 
 Parliament was summoned to meet in January. In the 
 meantime it was easily seen how the Protectionists and 
 the Tories of the extreme order generally would regard 
 the proposals of Sir Robert Peel. Protectionist meetings 
 were held in various parts of the country, and they were 
 all but unanimous in condemning by anticipation the 
 policy of the restored Premier. Resolutions were passed 
 at many of these meetings expressing an equal disbelief 
 in the Prime-minister and hi the famine. The utmost
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL? 8 HAND. 317 
 
 indignation was expressed at the idea of there being any 
 famine in prospect which could cause any departure from 
 the principles which secured to the farmers a certain fixed 
 price for their grain, or at least prevented the price from 
 falling below what they considered a paying amount. Not 
 less absurd than the protestations that there would be no 
 famine were some of the remedies which were suggested 
 for it if it should insist on coming in. The Duke of Nor- 
 folk of that time made himself particularly conspicuous 
 by a beneficent suggestion which he offered to a distressed 
 population. He went about recommending a curry powder 
 of his own device as a charm against hunger. 
 
 Parliament met. The opening day was January 22d, 
 1846. The Queen in person opened the session, and the 
 speech from the throne said a good deal about the condi- 
 tion of Ireland and the failure of the potato crop. The 
 speech contained one significant sentence. " I have had," 
 her Majesty was made to say, " great satisfaction in giv- 
 ing my assent to the measures which you have presented 
 to me from time to time, calculated to extend commerce 
 and to stimulate domestic skill and industry, by the repeal 
 of prohibitive and the relaxation of protective duties. I 
 recommend you to take into your early consideration 
 whether the principle on which you have acted may not 
 with advantage be yet more extensively applied." Before 
 the address in reply to the speech from the throne was 
 moved, Sir Robert Peel gave notice of the intention of the 
 Government on the earliest possible day to submit to the 
 consideration of the House measures connected with the 
 commercial and financial affairs of the country. 
 
 There are few scenes more animated and exciting than 
 that presented by the House of Commons on some night 
 when a great debate is expected, or when some moment- 
 ous announcement is to be made. A common thrill seems 
 to tremble all through the assembly, as a breath of wind
 
 318 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 runs across the sea. The House appears for the moment 
 to be one body, pervaded by one expectation. The minis- 
 terial benches, the front benches of opposition, are oc- 
 cupied by the men of political renown and of historic 
 name. The benches everywhere else are crowded to their 
 utmost capacity. Members who cannot get seats on 
 such an occasion a goodly number stand below the bar 
 or have to dispose themselves along the side galleries. 
 The celebrities are not confined to the Treasury benches 
 or those of the leaders of opposition. Here and there, 
 among the independent members and below the gangway 
 on both sides, are seen men of influence and renown. At 
 the opening of Parliament in 1846 this was especially to 
 be observed. The rising fame of the Free-trade leaders 
 made them almost like a third great party in the House 
 of Commons. The strangers' gallery, the Speaker's gal- 
 lery, on such a night are crowded to excess. The eye 
 surveys the whole House and sees no vacant place. In 
 the very hum of conversation that runs along the benches 
 there is a tone of profound anxiety. The minister who 
 has to face that House and make the announcement for 
 which all are waiting in a most feverish anxiety is a man 
 to be envied by the ambitious. This time there was a 
 curiosity about everything. What was the minister about 
 to announce ? When and in what fashion would he an- 
 nounce it ? Would the Whig leaders speak before the 
 ministerial announcement ? Would the Free-traders ? 
 What voice would first hint to the expectant Commons 
 the course which political events were destined to take ? 
 The moving of an address to the throne is always a formal 
 piece of business. It would be hardly possible for Cicero 
 or Burke to be very interesting when performing such a 
 task. On the other hand, it is an excellent chance for a 
 young beginner. He finds the house in a sort of contempt- 
 uously indulgent mood, prepared to welcome the slightest
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 319 
 
 evidence of any capacity of speech above the dullest medi- 
 ocrity. He can hardly say anything absurd or offensive 
 unless he goes absolutely out of his way to make a fool of 
 himself ; and, on the other hand he can easily say his little 
 nothings in a graceful way, and receive grateful applause, 
 accordingly, from an assembly which counts on being 
 bored, and feels doubly indebted to the speaker who is 
 even in the slightest degree an agreeable disappointment. 
 On this particular occasion, however, the duty of the pro- 
 poser and seconder of the address was made specially 
 trying by the fact that they had to interfere with merely 
 formal utterances between an eager House and an ex- 
 citing announcement. A certain piquancy was lent, how- 
 ever, to the performance of the duty by the fact, which 
 the speeches made evident beyond the possibility of mis- 
 take, that the proposer of the address knew quite well 
 what the Government were about to do, and that the 
 seconder knew nothing whatever. 
 
 Now the formal task is done. The address has been 
 moved and seconded. The Speaker puts the question that 
 the address be adopted. Now is the time for debate, if 
 debate there is to be. On such occasions there is always 
 some discussion, but it is commonly as mere a piece of 
 formality as the address itself. It is understood that the 
 leader of opposition will say something meaning next to 
 nothing ; that two or three men will grumble vaguely at 
 the ministry ; that the leader of the House will reply ; and 
 then the affair is all over. But on this occasion it was 
 certain that some momentous announcement would have 
 to be made ; and the question was when it would come. 
 Perhaps no one expected exactly what did happen. Noth- 
 ing can be more unusual than for the leader of the 
 House to open the debate on such an occasion ; and Sir 
 Robert Peel was usually somewhat of a formalist, who 
 kept to the regular ways in all that pertained to the busi-
 
 820 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ness of the House. No eyes of expectation were turned, 
 therefore, to the ministerial bench at the moment after 
 the formal putting of the question by the Speaker. It 
 was rather expected that Lord John Russell, or perhaps 
 Mr. Cobden, would rise. But a surprised murmur run- 
 ning through all parts of the House soon told those who 
 could not see the Treasury bench that something unusual 
 had happened ; and in a moment the voice of the Prime- 
 minister was heard that marvellous voice of which Lord 
 Beaconsfleld says that it had not in his time any equal in 
 the House, "unless we except the thrilling tones of 
 O'Connell " and it was known that the great explanation 
 was coming at once. 
 
 The explanation even now, however, was somewhat de- 
 ferred. The Prime-minister showed a deliberate inten- 
 tion, it might have been thought, not to come to the point 
 at once. He went into long and labored explanations of 
 the manner in which his mind had been brought into a 
 change on the subject of Free-trade and Protection ; and 
 he gave exhaustive calculations to show that the reduction 
 of duty was constantly followed by expansion of the 
 revenue, and even a maintenance of high prices. The 
 duties on glass, the duties on flax, the prices of salt pork 
 and domestic lard, the contract price of salt beef for the 
 navy these and many other such topics were discussed 
 at great length and with elaborate fulness of detail in the 
 hearing of an eager House anxious only, for that night, 
 to know whether or not the minister meant to introduce 
 the principle of Free-trade. Peel, however, made it clear 
 enough that he had become a complete convert to the 
 doctrines of the Manchester school, and that, in his 
 opinion, the time had come when that protection which 
 he had taken office to maintain must forever be aban- 
 doned. One sentence at the close of his speech was made 
 the occasion of much labored criticism and some severe
 
 FAMINE FORCES PEEL'S HAND. 321 
 
 accusation. It was that in which Peel declared that he 
 found it "no easy task to insure the harmonious and 
 united action of an ancient monarchy, a proud aristocracy, 
 and a reformed House of Commons." 
 
 The explanation was over. The House of Commons 
 were left rather to infer than to understand what the 
 Government proposed to do. Lord John Russell entered 
 into some personal explanations relating to his endeavor 
 to form a ministry, and the causes of its failure. These 
 have not much interest for a later time. It might have 
 seemed that the work of the night was done. It was 
 evident that the ministerial policy could not be discussed 
 then ; for, in fact, it had not been announced. The 
 House knew that the Prime-minister was a convert to 
 the principles of Free-trade ; but that was all that any one 
 could be said to know except those who were in the 
 secrets of the cabinet. There appeared, therefore, noth- 
 ing for it but to wait until the time should come for the 
 formal announcement and the full discussion of the 
 Government measures. Suddenly, however, a new and 
 striking figure intervened in the languishing debate, and 
 filled the House of Commons with a fresh life. There is 
 not often to be found in our Parliamentary history an ex- 
 ample like this of a sudden turn given to a whole career 
 by a timely speech. The member who rose to comment 
 on the explanation of Sir Robert Peel had been for many 
 years in the House of Commons. This was his tenth 
 session. He had spoken often in each session. He had 
 made many bold attempts to win a name in Parliament, 
 and hitherto his political career had been simply a 
 failure. From the hour when he spoke this speech it 
 was one long, unbroken, brilliant success. 
 
 21
 
 322 A 1IISTORT OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MB. DISRAELI. 
 
 THE speaker who rose into such sudden prominence 
 and something like the position of a party leader was one 
 of the most remarkable men the politics of the reign have 
 produced. Perhaps, if the word remarkable were to be 
 used in its most strict sense, and without particular 
 reference to praise, it would be just to describe him as 
 emphatically the most remarkable man that the political 
 controversies of the present reign have called into power. 
 Mr. Disraeli entered the House of Commons as Conserva- 
 tive member for Maidstone in 1837. He was then about 
 thirty-two years of age. He had previously made re- 
 peated and unsuccessful attempts to get a seat in Parlia- 
 ment. He began his political career as an advanced 
 Liberal, and had come out under the auspices of Daniel 
 O'Connell and Joseph Hume. He had described himself as 
 one who desired to fight the battle of the people, and who 
 was supported by neither of the aristocratic parties. He 
 failed again and again, and apparently he began to think 
 that it would be a wiser thing to look for the support of 
 one or other of the aristocratic parties. He had before this 
 given indications of remarkable literary talent, if indeed 
 it might not be called genius. His novel, "Vivian Grey," 
 published when he was in his twenty-third year, was 
 suffused with extravagance, affectation, and mere animal 
 spirits ; but it was full of the evidences of a fresh and 
 brilliant ability. The son of a distinguished literary
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 323 
 
 man, Mr. Disraeli had probably at that time only a young 
 literary man's notions of politics. It is not necessary to 
 charge him with deliberate inconsistency because from hav- 
 ing been a Radical of the most advanced views he became 
 by an easy leap a romantic Tory. It is not likely that at 
 the beginning of his career he had any very clear ideas 
 in connection with the words Tory or Radical. lie wrote 
 a letter to Mr. W. J. Fox, already described as an eminent 
 Unitarian minister and rising politician, in which he 
 declared that his forte was sedition. Most clever young 
 men who are not born to fortune, and who feel drawn 
 into political life, fancy too that their forte is sedition. 
 When young Disraeli found that sedition and even ad- 
 vanced Radicalism did not do much to get him into 
 Parliament, he probably began to ask himself whether his 
 Liberal convictions were so deeply rooted as to call for the 
 sacrifice of a career. He thought the question over, and 
 doubtless found himself crystallizing fast into an advocate 
 of the established order of things. In a purely personal 
 light this was a fortunate conclusion for the ambitious 
 young politician. He could not then have anticipated 
 the extraordinary change which was to be wrought in 
 the destiny and the composition of the Tory party by the 
 eloquence, the arguments, and the influence of two men 
 who at that time were almost absolutely unknown. Mr. 
 Cobden stood for the first time as a candidate for a seat 
 in Parliament in the year that saw Mr. Disraeli elected 
 for the first time, and Mr. Cobden was unsuccessful. 
 Cobden had to wait four years before he found his way 
 into the House of Commons; Bright did not become a 
 member of Parliament until some two years later still. It 
 was, however, the Anti-Corn-law agitation which, by 
 conquering Peel and making him its advocate, brought 
 about the memorable split in the Conservative party, and 
 carried away from the cause of the country squires nearly
 
 324 A 1IISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 all the men of talent who had hitherto been with them. 
 A new or middle party of so-called Peelites was formed. 
 Graham, Gladstone, Sidney Herbert, Cardwell, and other 
 men of equal mark or promise, joined it, and the country 
 party was left to seek for leadership in the earnest spirit 
 and very moderate talents of Lord George Ben ti nek. Mr. 
 Disraeli then found his chance. His genius was such 
 that it must have made a way for him anywhere and in 
 spite of any competition ; but it is not too much to say 
 that his career of political advancement might have been 
 very different if, in place of finding himself the only man 
 of first-class ability in the party to which he had attached 
 himself, he had been a member of a party which had 
 Palmerston and Russell and Gladstone and Graham for its 
 captains, and Cobden and Bright for its habitual sup- 
 porters. 
 
 This, however, could not have been in Mr. Disraeli's 
 thoughts when he changed from Radicalism to Conserva- 
 tism. No trace of the progress of conversion can be found 
 in his speeches or his writings. It is not unreasonable to 
 infer that he took up Radicalism at the beginning because 
 it looked the most picturesque and romantic thing to do, 
 and that only as he found it fail to answer his personal 
 object did it occur to him that he had, after all, more affin- 
 ity with the cause of the country gentlemen. The repu- 
 tation he had made for himself before his going into Par- 
 liament was of a nature rather calculated to retard than 
 to advance a political career. He was looked upon almost 
 universally as an eccentric and audacious adventurer, 
 who was kept from being dangerous by the affectations 
 and absurdities of his conduct. He dressed in the extrem- 
 est style of preposterous foppery ; he talked a blending 
 of cynicism and sentiment ; he had made the most reck- 
 less statements ; his boasting was almost outrageous ; his 
 rhetoric of abuse was, even in that free-spoken time,
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 325 
 
 astonishingly vigorous and unrestrained. Even his liter- 
 ary efforts did not then receive anything like the appreci- 
 ation they have obtained since. At that time they were 
 regarded rather as audacious whimsicalities, the fantastic 
 freaks of a clever youth, than as genuine works of a cer- 
 tain kind of art. Even when he did get into the House 
 of Commons, his first experience there was little calcu- 
 lated to give him much hope of success. Reading over 
 this first speech now, it seems hard to understand why it 
 should have excited so much laughter and derision ; why 
 it should have called forth nothing but laughter and deri- 
 sion. It is a clever speech, full of point and odd conceits ; 
 very like in style arid structure many of the speeches 
 which in later years won for the same orator the applause 
 of the House of Commons. But Mr. Disraeli's reputation 
 had preceded him into the House. Up to this time his 
 life had been, says an unfriendly but not an unjust critic, 
 " an almost uninterrupted career of follies and defeats." 
 The House was probably in a humor to find the speech 
 ridiculous because the general impression was that the 
 man himself was ridiculous. Mr. Disraeli's appearance, 
 too, no doubt, contributed something to the contemptu- 
 ous opinion which was formed of him on his first attempt 
 to address the assembly which he afterward came to rule. 
 He is described by an observer as having been attired " in 
 a bottle-green frock-coat and a waistcoat of white, of the 
 Dick Swiveller pattern, the front of which exhibited a 
 net-work of glittering chains ; large fancy- pattern panta- 
 loons, and a black tie, above which no shirt-collar was 
 visible, completed the outward man. A countenance 
 lividly pale, set out by a pair of intensely black eyes, and 
 a broad but not very high forehead, overhung by cluster- 
 ing ringlets of coal-black hair, which, combed away from 
 the right temple, fell in bunches of well-oiled small 
 ringlets over his left cheek." His manner was intensely
 
 326 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 theatric; his gestures were wild and extravagant. In all 
 this there is not much, however, to surprise those who 
 knew Mr. Disraeli in his greater days. His style was 
 always extravagant ; his rhetoric constantly degenerated 
 into vulgarity ; his whole manner was that of the typical 
 foreigner whom English people regard as the illustration 
 of all that is vehement and unquiet. But whatever the 
 cause, it is certain that on the occasion of his first attempt 
 Mr. Disraeli made not merely a failure, but even a ludi- 
 crous failure. One who heard the debate thus describes 
 the manner in which, baffled by the persistent laughter 
 and other interruptions of the noisy House, the orator 
 withdrew from the discussion, defeated but not dis- 
 couraged. " At last, losing his temper, which until now 
 he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he paused in 
 the midst of a sentence, and looking the Liberals indig- 
 nantly in the face, raised his hands, and, opening his 
 mouth as widely as its dimensions would admit, said, in 
 a remarkably loud and almost terrific tone, *I have 
 begun, several times, many things, and I have often suc- 
 ceeded at last ; ay, sir, and though I sit down now, the 
 time will come when you will hear me.' " This final pre- 
 diction is so like what a manufacturer of biography would 
 make up for a hero, and is so like what was actually said 
 hi one or two other remarkable instances, that a reader 
 might be excused for doubting its authenticity in this 
 case. But nothing can be more certain than the fact that 
 Mr. Disraeli did bring to a close his maiden speech in the 
 House of Commons with this bold prediction. The words 
 are to be found in the reports published next morning in 
 all the daily papers of the metropolis. 
 
 It was thus that Mr. Disraeli began his career as a Par- 
 liamentary orator. It is a curious fact that on that occa- 
 sion almost the only one of his hearers who seems to have 
 admired the speech was Sir Robert Peel. It is by bis
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 327 
 
 philippic against Peel that Disraeli is now about to con- 
 vince the House of Commons that the man they laughed 
 at before is a great Parliamentary orator. 
 
 Disraeli was not in the least discouraged by his first 
 failure. A few days after it he spoke again, and he spoke 
 three or four times more during his first session. But he 
 had learned some wisdom by rough experience, and he did 
 not make his oratorical flights so long or so ambitious as 
 that first attempt. Then he seemed after awhile, as he 
 grew more familiar with the House, to go in for being 
 paradoxical ; for making himself always conspicuous ; for 
 taking up positions and expounding political creeds which 
 other men would have avoided. It is very difficult to get 
 any clear idea of what his opinions were about this period 
 of his career, if he had any political opinions at all. Our 
 impression is that he really had no opinions at that time ; 
 that he was only in quest of opinions. He spoke on sub- 
 jects of which it was evident that he knew nothing, and 
 sometimes he managed, by the sheer force of a strong 
 intelligence, to discern the absurdity of economic sophis- 
 tries which had baffled men of far greater experience, and 
 which, indeed, to judge from his personal declarations 
 and political conduct afterward, he allowed before long 
 to baffle and bewilder himself. More often, however, he 
 talked with a grandiose and oracular vagueness which 
 seemed to imply that he alone of all men saw into the 
 very heart of the question, but that he of all men must 
 not yet reveal what he saw. At his best of times Mr. 
 Disraeli was an example of that class of being whom Mac- 
 aulay declares to be so rare that Lord Chatham appears 
 to him almost a solitary illustration of it " a great man 
 of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding 
 spirit, without simplicity of character." What Macaulay 
 goes on to say of Chatham will bear quotation too. " lie 
 was an actor in the closet, an actor at council, an actor in
 
 828 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Parliament ; and even in private society he could not lay 
 aside his theatrical tones and attitudes." Mr. Disraeli was 
 at one period of his career so affected that he positively 
 affected affectation. Yet he was a man of undoubted 
 genius ; he had a spirit that never quailed under stress 
 of any circumstances, however disheartening; he com- 
 manded as scarcely any statesman since Chatham himself 
 has been able to do ; and it would be unjust and absurd 
 to deny to a man gifted with qualities like these the pos- 
 session of a lofty nature. 
 
 For some time Mr. Disraeli then seemed resolved to 
 make himself remarkable to be talked about. lie suc- 
 ceeded admirably. He was talked about. All the political 
 and satirical journals of the day had a great deal to say 
 about him. He is not spoken of in terms of praise as a 
 rule ; neither has he much praise to shower about him. 
 Any one who looks back to the political controversies of 
 that time will be astounded at the language which Mr. 
 Disraeli addresses to his opponents of the press, and which 
 his opponents addressed to him. In some cases it is no 
 exaggeration to say that a squabble between two Billings- 
 gate fish- women hi our day would have good chance of 
 ending without the use of words and phrases so coarse as 
 those which then passed between this brilliant literary 
 man and some of his assailants. We have all read the 
 history of the controversy between him and O'Connell, and 
 the savage ferocity of the language with which O'Connell 
 denounced him as " a miscreant," as " a wretch," " a liar," 
 " whose life is a living lie ; " and, finally, as " the heir-at- 
 law of the blasphemous thief who died impenitent on the 
 Cross." Mr. Disraeli begins his reply by describing him- 
 self as one of those who " will not be insulted even by a 
 Yahoo without chastising it; " and afterward, in a letter 
 to one of Mr. O'Connell's sons, declares his desire to 
 express " the utter scorn in which I hold his [Mr. O'Con-
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 329 
 
 nell's] character, and the disgust with which his conduct 
 inspires me ; " and informs the son that " I shall take 
 every opportunity of holding your father's name up to 
 public contempt, and I fervently pray that you or some 
 one of your blood may attempt to avenge the inextin- 
 guishable hatred with which I shall pursue his existence." 
 In reading of a controversy like this between two public 
 men, we seem to be transported back to an age having 
 absolutely nothing in common with our own. It appears 
 almost impossible to believe that men still active in politi- 
 cal life were active in political life then. Yet this is not 
 the most astonishing specimen of the sort of controversy 
 in which Mr. Disraeli became engaged in his younger 
 days. Nothing, perhaps, that the political literature of 
 the time preserves could exceed the ferocity of his con- 
 troversial duel with O'Connell ; but there are many sam- 
 ples of the rhetoric of abuse to be found in the journals 
 of the time which would far less bear exposure to the 
 gaze of the fastidious public of our day. The duelling 
 system survived then and for long after, and Mr. Disraeli 
 always professed himself ready to sustain with his pistol 
 anything that his lips might have given utterance to, 
 even in the reckless heat of controversy. The social 
 temper which in our time insists that the first duty of a 
 gentleman is to apologize for an unjust or offensive 
 expression used in debate, was unknown then. Perhaps 
 it could hardly exist to any great extent in the com- 
 pany of the duelling system. When a man's withdrawal 
 of an offensive expression might be imputed to a want of 
 physical courage, the courtesy which impels a gentle- 
 man to atone for a wrong is not likely to triumph very 
 often over the fear of being accounted a coward. If any 
 one doubts the superiority of manners as well as of 
 morals which comes of our milder ways, he has only to 
 read a few specimens of the controversies of Mr. Disraeli's
 
 830 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 earlier days, when men who aspired to be considered great 
 political leaders thought it not unbecoming to call names 
 like a costermonger, and to swagger like Bobadil or the 
 Copper Captain. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli kept himself well up to the level of his 
 time in the calling of names and the swaggering ; but he 
 was making himself remarkable in political controversy 
 as well. In the House of Commons he began to be 
 regarded as a dangerous adversary in debate. He was 
 wonderfully ready with retort and sarcasm. But during 
 all the earlier part of his career he was thought of only 
 as a free lance. He had praised Peel when Peel said some- 
 thing that suited him, or when to praise Peel seemed 
 likely to wound some one else. But it was during the 
 debates on the abolition of the Corn-laws that he first 
 rose to the fame of a great debater and a powerful Parlia- 
 mentary orator. We use the words Parliamentary orator 
 with the purpose of conveying a special qualification. He 
 is a great Parliamentary orator who can employ the kind 
 of eloquence and argument which tells most readily on 
 Parliament. But it must not be supposed that the great 
 Parliamentary orator is necessarily a great orator in the 
 wider sense. Some of the men who made the greatest 
 successes as Parliamentary orators have failed to win any 
 genuine reputations as orators of the broader and higher 
 school. The fame of Charles Townshend's " champagne 
 speech " has vanished, evanescent almost as the bubbles 
 from which it derived its inspiration and its name. No 
 one now reads many even of the fragments preserved for 
 us of those speeches of Sheridan which those who heard 
 them declared to have surpassed all ancient and modern 
 eloquence. The House of Commons often found Burke 
 dull, and the speeches of Burke have passed into English 
 literature secure of a perpetual place there. Mr. Disraeli 
 never succeeded in being more than a Parliamentary
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 831 
 
 orator, and probably would not have cared to be anything 
 more. But even at this comparatively early date, and 
 while he had still the reputation of being a whimsical, 
 self-confident, and feather-headed adventurer, he soon 
 won for himself the name of one who could hold his own 
 in retort and in sarcasm against any antagonist. The 
 days cf the more elaborate oratory were going by, and 
 the time was coming when the pungent epigram, the 
 sparkling paradox, the rattling attack, the vivid repartee, 
 would count for the most attractive part of eloquence with 
 the House of Commons. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli was exactly the man to succeed under the 
 new conditions of Parliamentary eloquence. Hitherto he 
 had wanted a cause to inspire and justify audacity, and 
 on which to employ with effect his remarkable resources 
 of sarcasm and rhetoric. Hitherto he had addressed an 
 audience out of sympathy with him for the most part. 
 Now he was about to become the spokesman of a large 
 body of men who, chafing and almost choking with wrath, 
 were not capable of speaking effectively for themselves. 
 Mr. Disraeli did, therefore, the very wisest thing he could 
 do when he launched at once into a savage personal attack 
 upon Sir Robert Peel. This speech abounds in passages 
 of audaciously powerful sarcasm. " I am not one of the 
 converts," Mr. Disraeli said. " I am perhaps a member of 
 a fallen party. To the opinions which I have expressed 
 in this House in favor of Protection I still adhere. They 
 sent me to this House, and if I had relinquished them I 
 should have relinquished my seat also." That was the 
 key-note of the speech. He denounced Sir Robert Peel, 
 not for having changed his opinions, but for having re- 
 tained a position which enabled him to betray his party. 
 He compared Peel to the Lord High- Admiral of the Turk- 
 ish fleet, who, at a great warlike crisis, when he was 
 placed at the head of the finest armament that ever left
 
 332 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the Dardanelles since the days of Solyman the Great, 
 steered at once for the enemy's port, and when arraigned 
 as a traitor, said that he really saw no use in prolonging 
 a hopeless struggle, and that he had accepted the com- 
 mand of the fleet only to put the Sultan out of pain by 
 bringing the struggle to a close at once. " Well do we 
 remember, on this side of the House not, perhaps, with- 
 out a blush the efforts we made to raise him to the bench 
 where he now sits. "Who does not remember the sacred 
 cause of Protection for which sovereigns were thwarted, 
 Parliament dissolved, and a nation taken in ? " "I belong 
 to a party which can triumph no more, for we have noth- 
 ing left on our side except the constituencies which we 
 have not betrayed." He denounced Peel as " a man who 
 never originates an idea ; a watcher of the atmosphere ; 
 a man who takes his observations, and when he finds the 
 wind in a particular quarter trims his sails to suit it ; " 
 and he declared that " such a man may be a powerful 
 minister, but he is no more a great statesman than the 
 man who gets up behind a carriage is a great whip." 
 
 " The opportune," says Mr. Disraeli himself in his " Lord 
 George Bentinck," " in a popular assembly has sometimes 
 more success than the weightiest efforts of research and 
 reason." He is alluding to this very speech, of which he 
 says, with perhaps a superfluous modesty, that " it was 
 the long-constrained passion of the House that now found 
 a vent, far more than the sallies of the speaker, that 
 changed the frigid silence of this senate into excitement 
 and tumult." The speech was indeed opportune. But it 
 was opportune in a far larger sense than as a timely phi- 
 lippic rattling up an exhausted and disappointed House. 
 That moment when Disraeli rose was the very turning- 
 point of the fortunes of his party. There was genius, 
 there was positive statesmanship, in seizing so boldly and 
 so adroitly on the moment. It would have been a great
 
 ME. DISRAELI. 333 
 
 thing gained for Peel if he could have got through that 
 first night without any alarm-note of opposition from his 
 own side. The habits of Parliamentary discipline are 
 very clinging. They are hard to tear away. Every im- 
 pulse of association and training protests against the very 
 effort to rend them asunder. A once powerful minister 
 exercises a control over his long obedient followers some- 
 what like that of the heart of the Bruce in the fine old 
 Scottish story. Those who once followed will still obey 
 the name and the symbol even when the actual power to 
 lead is gone forever. If one other night's habitude had 
 been added to the long discipline that bound his party to 
 Peel, if they had allowed themselves to listen to that 
 declaration of the session's first night without murmur, 
 perhaps they might never have rebelled. Mr. Disraeli 
 drew together into one focus all the rays of their gather- 
 ing anger against Peel, and made them light into a flame. 
 He showed the genius of the born leader by stepping forth 
 at the critical moment and giving the word of command. 
 From that hour Mr. Disraeli was the real leader of the 
 Tory squires ; from that moment his voice gave the word 
 of command to the Tory party. There was peculiar 
 courage, too, in the part he took. He must have known 
 that he was open to one retort from Peel that might have 
 crushed a less confident man. It was well known that 
 when Peel was coming into power Disraeli expected to be 
 offered a place of some kind in the ministry, and would 
 have accepted it. Mr. Disraeli afterward explained, when 
 Peel made allusion to the fact, that he never had put him- 
 self directly forward as a candidate for office ; but there 
 had undoubtedly been some negotiation going forward 
 which was conducted on Mr. Disraeli's side by some one 
 who supposed he was doing what Disraeli would like to 
 have done ; and Peel had not taken any hint, and would 
 not in any way avail himself of Disraeli's services. Dis-
 
 334 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 raeli must have known that when he attacked Peel, the 
 latter would hardly fail to make use of this obvious retort ; 
 but he felt little daunted on that score. He could have 
 made a fair enough defence of his consistency in any case, 
 but he knew very well that what the indignant Tories 
 wanted just then was not a man who had been uniformly 
 consistent, but one who could attack Sir Robert Peel 
 without scruple and with effect. Disraeli made his own 
 career by the course he took on that memorable night, 
 and he also made a new career for the Tory party. 
 
 Now that he had proved himself so brilliant a spadassin 
 in this debate, men began to remember that he had dealt 
 trenchant blows before. Many of his sentences attacking 
 Peel, which have passed into familiar quotation almost 
 like proverbs, were spoken in 1845. He had accused the 
 great minister of having borrowed his tactics from the 
 Whigs. " The right honorable gentleman caught the 
 Whigs bathing, and he walked away with their clothes. 
 He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal 
 position, and he is himself a strict conservative of their 
 garments." " I look on the right-honorable gentleman as 
 a man who has tamed the shrew of Liberalism by her 
 own tactics. He is the political Petruchio who has outbid 
 you all." " If the right-honorable gentleman would only 
 stick to quotation instead of having recourse to obloquy, 
 he may rely upon it he would find it a safer weapon. It 
 is one he always wields with the hand of a master, and 
 when he does appeal to any authority in prose or verse, 
 he is sure to be successful, partly because he seldom 
 quotes a passage that has not already received the meed 
 of Parliamentary approbation." We can all readily under- 
 stand how such a hit as the last would tell in the case of 
 an orator like Peel, who had the old-fashioned way of 
 Introducing long quotations from approved classic authors 
 into his speeches, and who not unfrequently introduced
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 335 
 
 citations which were received with all the better welcome 
 by the House because of the familiarity of their language. 
 More fierce and cutting was the reference to Canning, 
 with whom Peel had quarrelled, and the implied contrast 
 of Canning with Peel. Sir Robert had cited against Dis- 
 raeli Canning's famous lines praying to be saved from a 
 " candid friend." Disraeli seized the opportunity thus 
 given. "The name of Canning is one," he said, " never 
 to be mentioned, I am sure, in this House without emotion. 
 We all admire his genius ; we all, or at least most of us, 
 deplore his untimely end ; and we all sympathize with 
 him in his severe struggle with supreme prejudice and 
 sublime mediocrity, with inveterate foes and with candid 
 friends." The phrase " sublime mediocrity " had a mar- 
 vellous effect. As a hostile description of Peel's character 
 it had enough of seeming truth about it to tell most effect- 
 ively alike on friends and enemies of the great leader. 
 A friend, or even an impartial enemy, would not indeed 
 admit that it accurately described Peel's intellect and 
 position; but as a stroke of personal satire it touched 
 nearly enough the characteristics of its object to impress 
 itself at once as a master-hit on the minds of all who 
 caught its instant purpose. The words remained in use 
 long after the controversy and its occasion had passed 
 away ; and it was allowed that an unfriendly and bitter 
 critic could hardly have found a phrase more suited to its 
 ungenial purpose or more likely to connect itself at once 
 in the public mind with the name of him who was its 
 object. Mr. Disraeli did not, in fact, greatly admire Can- 
 ning. He has left a very disparaging criticism of Canning 
 as an orator in one of his novels. On the other hand, he 
 has shown in his " Life of Lord George Bentinck " that he 
 could do full justice to some of the greatest qualities of 
 Sir Robert Peel. But at the moment of his attacking 
 Peel and crying up Canning he was only concerned to
 
 336 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 disparage the one, and it was on this account that he 
 eulogized the other. The famous sentence, too, in which 
 he declared that a Conservative Government was an 
 r, " organized hypocrisy," was spoken during the debates of 
 the session of 1845, before the explanation of the minister 
 on the subject of Free-trade. All these brilliant things 
 men now began to recall. Looking back from this dis- 
 tance of time, we can see well enough that Mr. Disraeli 
 had displayed his peculiar genius long before the House 
 of Commons took the pains to recognize it. From the 
 night of the opening of the session of 1846 it was never 
 questioned. Thenceforward he was really the mouth- 
 piece and the sense-carrier of his party. For some time 
 to come, indeed, his nominal post might have seemed to 
 be only that of its bravo. The country gentlemen who 
 cheered to the echo his fierce attacks on Peel during the 
 debates of the session of 1846, had probably not the 
 slightest suspicion that the daring rhetorician who was 
 so savagely revenging them on their now hated leader 
 was a man of as cool a judgment, as long a head, and as 
 complete a capacity for the control of a party as any poli- 
 tician who for generations had appeared in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 One immediate effect of the turn thus given by Dis- 
 raeli's timely intervention in the debate was the forma- 
 tion of a Protection party in the House of Commons. 
 The leadership of this perilous adventure was intrusted 
 to Lord George Bentinck, a sporting nobleman of ener- 
 getic character, great tenacity of purpose and conviction, 
 and a not inconsiderable aptitude for politics, which had 
 hitherto had no opportunity for either exercising or dis- 
 playing itself. Lord George Bentinck had sat in eight 
 Parliaments without taking part in any great debate. 
 When he -was suddenly drawn into the leadership of the 
 Protection party in the House of Commons, he gave him-
 
 ME. DISRAELI. 337 
 
 self up to it entirely. He had at first only joined the 
 party as one of its organizers ; but he showed himself in 
 many respects well fitted for the leadership, and the 
 choice of leaders was in any case very limited. When 
 once he had accepted the position, he was unwearying in 
 his attention to its duties ; and, indeed, up to the moment 
 of his sudden and premature death he never allowed him- 
 self any relaxation from the cares it imposed on him. 
 Mr. Disraeli, in his " Life of Lord George Bentinck," has 
 indeed overrated, with the pardonable extravagance of 
 friendship, the intellectual gifts of his leader. Bentinck's 
 abilities were hardly even of the second class ; and the 
 amount of knowledge which he brought to bear on the 
 questions he discussed with so much earnestness and en- 
 ergy was often and of necessity little better than mere 
 cram. But in Parliament the essential qualities of a 
 leader are not great powers of intellect. A man of cool 
 head, good temper, firm will, and capacity for appreciating 
 the serviceable qualities of other men, may always, pro- 
 vided that he has high birth and great social influence, 
 make a very successful leader, even though he be want- 
 ing altogether in the higher attributes of eloquence and 
 statesmanship. It may be doubtful whether, on the 
 whole, great eloquence and genius are necessary at all to 
 the leader of a party in Parliament in times not specially 
 troublous. Bentinck had patience, energy, good-humor, 
 and considerable appreciation of the characters of men. 
 If he had a bad voice, was a poor speaker, talked absolute 
 nonsense about protective duties and sugar and guano, ana 
 made up absurd calculations to prove impossibilities and 
 paradoxes, he at least always spoke in full faith, and was 
 only the more necessary to his party because he could hon- 
 estly continue to believe in the old doctrines, no matter what 
 political economy and hard facts might say to the contrary. 
 Tlie secession was, therefore, hi full course of organiza- 
 
 22
 
 338 -4 IIISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tion. On January 27th Sir Robert Peel came forward to 
 explain his financial policy. It is almost superfluous to 
 say that the most intense anxiety prevailed all over the 
 country, and that the House was crowded. An incident 
 of the night, which then created a profound sensation, 
 would not be worth noticing now but for the evidence it 
 gives of the bitterness with which the Protection party 
 were filled, and of the curiously bad taste of which gen- 
 tlemen of position and education can be guilty under the 
 inspiration of a blind fanaticism. There is something 
 ludicrous in the pompous tone, as of righteous indigna- 
 tion deliberately repressed, with which Mr. Disraeli, in 
 his " Life of Bentinck," announces the event. The pro- 
 ceedings in the House of Commons, he says, " were ush- 
 ered in by a startling occurrence." What was this por- 
 tentous preliminary? "His Royal Highness the Prince 
 Consort, attended by the Master of the Horse, appeared 
 and took his seat in the body of the House to listen to 
 the statement of the First Minister." In other words, 
 there was to be a statement of great importance and a 
 debate of profound interest, and the husband of the Queen 
 was anxious to be a listener. The Prince Consort did 
 not understand that because he had married the Queen 
 he was therefore to be precluded from hearing a discus- 
 sion in the House of Commons. The poorest man and 
 the greatest man in the land were alike free to occupy a 
 seat in one of the galleries of the House, and it is not to 
 be wondered at if the Prince Consort fancied that he too 
 might listen to a debate without unhinging the British 
 Constitution. Lord George Bentinck and the Protec- 
 tionists were aflame with indignation. They saw in the 
 quiet presence of the intelligent gentleman who came to 
 listen to the discussion an attempt to overawe the Com- 
 mons and compel them to bend to the will of the Crown. 
 It is not easy to read without a feeling of shame tHe ab-
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 339 
 
 surd and unseemly comments which were made upon this 
 harmless incident. The Queen herself has given an ex- 
 planation of the Prince's visit which is straightforward 
 and dignified. " The Prince merely went, as the Prince 
 of Wales and the Queen's other sons do, for once, to hear 
 a fine debate, which is so useful to all princes." " But 
 this," the Queen adds, " he naturally felt unable to do 
 again." 
 
 The Prime-minister announced his policy. His object 
 was to abandon the sliding-scale altogether ; but for the 
 present he intended to impose a duty of ten shillings a 
 quarter on corn when the price of it was under forty- 
 eight shillings a quarter; to reduce that duty by one 
 shilling for every shilling of rise in price until it reached 
 fifty-three shillings a quarter, when the duty should fall 
 to four shillings. This arrangement was, however, only 
 to hold good for three years, at the end of which time 
 protective duties on grain were to be wholly abandoned. 
 Peel explained that he intended gradually to apply the 
 principle of Free-trade to manufactures and every de- 
 scription of produce, bearing in mind the necessity of 
 providing for the expenditure of the country, and of 
 smoothing away some of the difficulties which a sudden 
 withdrawal of protection might cause. The differential 
 duties on sugar, which were professedly intended to pro- 
 tect the growers of free sugars against the competition of 
 those who cultivated sugar by the use of slave labor, 
 were to be diminished, but not abolished. The duties on 
 the importation of foreign cattle were to be at once re- 
 moved. In order to compensate the agricultural inter- 
 ests for the gradual withdrawal of protective duties, there 
 were to be some readjustments of local burdens. We 
 need not dwell much on this part of the explanation. 
 We are familiar in late years with the ingenious man- 
 ner in which the principle of the readjustment of local
 
 340 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 burdens is worked in the hope of conciliating the agri- 
 cultural interests. These readjustments are not usually 
 received with any great gratitude or attended by any par- 
 ticular success. In this instance Sir Robert Peel could 
 hardly have laid much serious stress on them. If the 
 land-owners and farmers had really any just ground of 
 complaint hi the abolition of protection, the salve which 
 was applied to their wound would scarcely have caused 
 them to forget its pains. The important part of the ex- 
 planation, so far as history is concerned, consisted in the 
 fact that Peel proclaimed himself an absolute convert to 
 the Free-trade principle, and that the introduction of the 
 principle into all departments of our commercial legisla- 
 tion was, according to his intention, to be a mere question 
 of time and convenience. The struggle was to be be- 
 tween Protection and Free-trade. 
 
 Not that the proposals of the ministry wholly satisfied 
 the professed Free-traders. These latter would have 
 enforced, if they could, an immediate application of the 
 principle without the interval of three years, and the 
 devices and shifts which were to be put in operation dur- 
 ing that middle time. But of course, although they pressed 
 their protest in the form of an amendment, they had no 
 idea of not taking what they could get when the amend- 
 ment failed to secure the approval of the majority. The 
 Protectionist amendment amounted to a distinct proposal 
 that the policy of the Government be absolutely rejected 
 by the House. The debate lasted for twelve nights, and 
 at the end the Protectionists had 240 votes against 337 
 given on behalf of the policy of the Government. The 
 majority of 97 was not quite so large as the Government 
 had anticipated; and the result was to encourage the 
 Protectionists in their plans of opposition. The oppor- 
 tunities of obstruction were many. The majority just 
 mentioned was merely in favor of going into committee
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 341 
 
 of the whole House to consider the existing Customs and 
 Corn Acts ; but every single financial scheme which the 
 minister had to propose must be introduced, debated, and 
 carried, if it was to be carried, as a separate bill. We shall 
 not ask our readers to follow us into the details of these 
 long discussions. They were not important ; they were 
 often not dignified. They more frequently concerned 
 themselves about the conduct and personal consistency of 
 the minister than about the merits of his policy. The 
 arguments in favor of Protection, which doubtless seemed 
 effective to the country gentlemen then, seem like the 
 prattle of children now. There were, indeed, some ex- 
 citing passages in the debates. For these the House was 
 mainly indebted to the rhetoric of Mr. Disraeli. That 
 indefatigable and somewhat reckless champion occupied 
 himself with incessant attacks on the Prime-minister. 
 He described Peel as " a trader on other people's intelli- 
 X' gence ; a political burglar of other men's ideas. " " The 
 occupants of the Treasury bench," he said, were " political 
 peddlers, who had bought their party in the cheapest 
 market and sold it in the dearest." This was strong 
 language. But it was, after all, more justifiable than the 
 attempt Mr. Disraeli made to revive an old and bitter con- 
 troversy between Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cobden, which, 
 for the sake of the former, had better have been forgotten. 
 Three years before, Mr. Edward Drummond, private secre- 
 tary of Sir Robert Peel, was shot by an assassin. There 
 could be no doubt that the victim had been mistaken for 
 the Prime-minister himself. The assassin turned out to 
 be a lunatic, and as such was found not guilty of the 
 murder, and was consigned to a lunatic asylum. The 
 event naturally had a profound effect on Sir Robert Peel ; 
 and during one of the debates on Free-trade, Mr. Cobden 
 happening to say that he would hold the Prime-minister 
 responsible for the condition of the country, Peel, in an
 
 342 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 extraordinary burst of excitement, interpreted the words 
 as a threat to expose him to the attack of an assassin. 
 Nothing could be more painfully absurd ; and nothing 
 could better show the unreasoning and discreditable hatred 
 of the Tories at that time for any one who opposed the 
 policy of Peel, than the fact that they actually cheered 
 their leader again and again when he made this passionate 
 and half-frenzied charge on one of the purest and noblest 
 men who ever sat in the English Parliament. Peel soon 
 recovered his senses. He saw the error of which he had 
 been guilty, and regretted it ; and it ought to have been 
 consigned to forgetfulness ; but Mr. Disraeli, in repelling 
 a charge made against him of indulging in unjustifiable 
 personalities, revived the whole story, and reminded the 
 House of Commons that the Prime-minister had charged 
 the leader of the Free-trade League with inciting assassins 
 to murder him. This unjustifiable attempt to rekindle an 
 old quarrel had, however, no other effect than to draw 
 from Sir Robert Peel a renewed expression of apology for 
 the charge he had made against Mr. Cobden, "in the 
 course of a heated debate, when I put an erroneous con- 
 struction on some expressions used by the honorable 
 member for Stockport." Mr. Cobden declared that the 
 explanation made by Peel was entirely satisfactory, and 
 expressed his hope that no one on either side of the House 
 would attempt to revive the subject or make further allu- 
 sion to it. 
 
 The Government prevailed. It would be superfluous 
 to go into any details as to the progress of the Corn Bill. 
 Enough to say that the third reading of the bill passed 
 the House of Commons on May 15th, by a majority of 98 
 votes. The bill was at once sent up to the House of Lords, 
 and, by means chiefly of the earnest advice of the Duke 
 of Wellington, was carried through that House without 
 much serious opposition. But June 25th, the day when
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 343 
 
 the bill was read for a third time in the House of Lords, 
 was a memorable day in the Parliamentary annals of 
 England. It was the fall of the ministry who had carried 
 to success the greatest piece of legislation that had been 
 introduced since Lord Grey's Reform Bill. 
 
 A Coercion Bill for Ireland was the measure which 
 brought this catastrophe on the Government of Sir Robert 
 Peel. While the Corn Bill was yet passing through the 
 House of Commons, the Government felt called upon, in 
 consequence of the condition of crime and outrage in Ire- 
 land, to introduce a Coercion Bill. Lord George Bentinck 
 at first gave the measure his support ; but during the 
 Whitsuntide recess he changed his views. He now de- 
 clared that he had only supported the bill on the assur- 
 ance of the Government that it was absolutely necessary 
 for the safety of life in Ireland, and that as the Government 
 had not pressed it on in advance of every other measure 
 especially, no doubt, of the Corn Bill he could not believe 
 that it was really a matter of imminent necessity ; and 
 that, furthermore, he had no longer any confidence in the 
 Government, and could not trust them with extraor- 
 dinary powers. In truth, the bill was placing the Govern- 
 ment in a serious difficulty. All the Irish followers of 
 O'Connell would, of course, oppose the coercion measure. 
 The Whigs, when out of office, have usually made it a 
 rule to oppose coercion bills if they do not come accom- 
 panied with some promises of legislative reform and con- 
 cession. The English Radical members, Mr. Cobden and 
 his followers, were almost sure to oppose it. Under these 
 circumstances, it seemed probable enough that if the 
 Protectionists joined with the other opponents of the 
 Coercion Bill, the Government must be defeated. The 
 temptation was too great. As Mr. Disraeli himself can- 
 didly says of his party, " Vengeance had succeeded in most 
 breasts to the more sanguine sentiment. The field was
 
 344 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 lost, but at any rate there should be retribution for those 
 who had betrayed it." The question with many of the 
 indignant Protectionists was, as Mr. Disraeli himself puts 
 it, " How was Sir Robert Peel to be turned out ? " It 
 soon became evident that he could be turned out by those 
 who detested him and longed for vengeance voting against 
 him on the Coercion Bill. This was done. The fiercer 
 Protectionists voted with the Free-traders, the Whigs, 
 and the Irish Catholic and Liberal members, and, after a 
 debate of much bitterness and passion, the division on the 
 second reading of the Coercion Bill took place on Thurs- 
 day, June 25th, and the ministry were left in a minority 
 of 73. Two hundred and nineteen votes only were given 
 for the second reading of the bill, and 292 against it. 
 Some eighty of the Protectionists followed Lord George 
 Bentinck into the lobby to vote against the bill, and their 
 votes settled the question. Mr. Disraeli has given a some- 
 what pompous description of the scene " as the Protec- 
 tionists passed in defile before the minister to the hostile 
 lobby." " Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat" cries 
 the hero of the ^Eneid, as he plunges his sword into the 
 heart of his rival. " Protection kills you ; not your Coer- 
 cion Bill," the irreconcilable Protectionists might have 
 said as they trooped past the ministry. Chance had put 
 within their grasp the means of vengeance, and they had 
 seized it, and made successful use of it. The Peel Min- 
 istry had fallen in its very hour of triumph. 
 
 Three days after Sir Robert Peel announced his resigna- 
 tion of office. His speech " was considered one of glori- 
 fication and pique," says Mr. Disraeli. It does not so im- 
 press most readers. It appears to have been full of dig- 
 nity, and of emotion, not usual with Peel, but not surely, 
 under the circumstances, incompatible with dignity. It 
 contained that often-quoted tribute to the services of a 
 former opponent, in which Peel declared that " the name
 
 MR. DISEAELL 345 
 
 which ought to be and which will he associated with the suc- 
 cess of these measures is the name of the man who, acting, 
 I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has advo- 
 cated their cause with untiring energy, and with appeals 
 to reason enforced by an eloquence the more to be admired 
 because it is unaffected and unadorned the name of 
 Richard Cobden." An added effect was given to this well- 
 deserved panegyric by the little irregularity which the 
 Prime-minister committed when he mentioned in debate 
 a member by name. The closing sentence of the speech 
 was eloquent and touching. Many would censure him, 
 Peel said ; his name would perhaps be execrated by the 
 monopolist, who would maintain protection for his own 
 individual benefit ; " but it may be that I shall leave a 
 name sometimes remembered with expressions of good- 
 will in those places which are the abode of men whose lot 
 it is to labor and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of 
 their brow a name remembered with expressions of good- 
 will when they shall recreate their exhausted strength 
 with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is 
 no longer leavened with a sense of injustice." 
 
 The great minister fell. So great a success followed by 
 so sudden and complete a fall is hardly recorded in the 
 Parliamentary history of our modern times. Peel had 
 crushed O'Connell and carried Free-trade, and O'Connell 
 and the Protectionists had life enough yet to pull him 
 down. He is as a conqueror who, having won the great 
 victory of his life, is struck by a hostile hand hi some by- 
 way as he passes home to enjoy his triumph. 
 
 '
 
 340 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, AND FOREIGN INTRIGUE. 
 
 LORD JOHN RUSSELL succeeded Sir Robert Peel as First 
 Lord of the Treasury ; Lord Palmerston became Foreign 
 Secretary ; Sir Charles Wood was Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer ; Lord Grey took charge of the Colonies ; and Sir 
 George Grey was Home Secretary. Mr. Macaulay accepted 
 the office of Paymaster-general, with a seat in the cabinet, 
 a distinction not usually given to the occupant of that 
 office. The ministry was not particularly strong in ad- 
 ministrative talent. The Premier and the Foreign Secre- 
 tary were the only members of the cabinet who could be 
 called statesmen of the first class ; and even Lord Palm- 
 erston had not as yet won more than a somewhat doubt- 
 ful kind of fame, and was looked upon as a man quite as 
 likely to do mischief as good to any ministry of which he 
 might happen to form a part. Lord Grey then and since 
 only succeeded somehow in missing the career of a lead- 
 ing statesman. He had great talents and some origi- 
 nality ; he was independent and bold. But his independ- 
 ence degenerated too often into impracticability and even 
 eccentricity ; and he was, in fact, a politician with whom 
 ordinary men could not work. Sir Charles Wood, the 
 new Chancellor of the Exchequer, had solid sense and ex- 
 cellent administrative capacity, but he was about as bad 
 a public speaker as ever addressed the House of Commons. 
 His budget speeches were often made so unintelligible by
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 347 
 
 defective manner and delivery that they might almost as 
 well have been spoken in a foreign language. Sir George 
 Grey was a speaker of fearful fluency, and a respectable 
 administrator of the second or third class. He was as 
 plodding in administration as he was precipitate of speech. 
 
 " Peel," wrote Lord Palmerston. to a friend a short time 
 after the formation of the new ministry, " seems to have 
 made up his mind that for a year or two he cannot hope 
 to form a party, and that he must give people a certain 
 time to forget the events of last year ; in the mean while, 
 it is evident that he does not wish that any other Govern- 
 ment should be formed out of the people on his side of the 
 House, because of that Government he would not be a 
 member. For these reasons, and also because he sincerely 
 thinks it best that we should, for the present, remain in, 
 he gives us very cordial support, as far as he can, without 
 losing his independent position. Graham, who sits up 
 under his old pillar, and never comes down to Peel's bench 
 even for personal communication, seems to keep himself 
 aloof from everybody, and to hold himself free to act ac- 
 cording to circumstances ; but as yet he is not considered 
 as the head of any party. George Bentinck has entirely 
 broken down as a candidate for ministerial position ; and 
 thus we are left masters of the field, not only on account 
 of our own merits, which, though we say it ourselves, are 
 great, but by virtue of the absence of any efficient compet- 
 itors." Palmerston's humorous estimate of the state of 
 affairs was accurate. The new ministry was safe enough, 
 because there was no party in a condition to compete 
 with it. 
 
 The position of the Government of Lord John Russell 
 was not one to be envied. The Irish famine occupied all 
 attention, and soon seemed to be an evil too great for any 
 ministry to deal with. The failure of the potato was an 
 overwhelming disaster for a people almost wholly agri-
 
 348 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 cultural and a peasantry long accustomed to live upon 
 that root alone. Ireland contains very few large towns ; 
 when the names of four or five are mentioned the list is 
 done with, and we have to come to mere villages. The 
 country has hardly any manufactures except that of linen 
 in the northern province. In the south and west the 
 people live by agriculture alone. The cottier system, 
 which prevailed almost universally in three of the four 
 provinces, was an arrangement by which a man obtained 
 in return for his labor a right to cultivate a little patch 
 of ground, just enough to supply him with food for the 
 scanty maintenance of his family. The great landlords 
 were for the most part absentees ; the smaller landlords 
 were often deeply in debt, and were, therefore, compelled 
 to screw every possible penny of rent out of their tenants- 
 at-will. They had not, however, even that regularity and 
 order in their exactions that might at least have forced 
 upon the tenants some habits of forethought and exact- 
 ness. There was a sort of understanding that the rent 
 was always to be somewhat in arrear ; the supposed kind- 
 ness of a landlord consisted in his allowing the indebted- 
 ness to increase more liberally than others of his class 
 would do. There was a demoralizing slatternliness in 
 the whole system. It was almost certain that if a tenant, 
 by greatly increased industry and good fortune, made the 
 land which he held more valuable than before, his rent 
 would at once be increased. On the other hand, it was 
 held an act of tyranny to dispossess him so long as he 
 made even any fair promise of paying up. There was, 
 therefore, a thoroughly vicious system established all 
 round, demoralizing alike to the landlord and the tenant. 
 Underlying all the relations of landlord and tenant hi 
 Ireland were two great facts. The occupation of land was 
 virtually a necessity of life to the Irish tenant. That is 
 the first fact. The second is that the land system under
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 349 
 
 which Ireland was placed was one entirely foreign to the 
 traditions, the ideas, one might say the very genius, of the 
 Irish people. Whether the system introduced by con- 
 quest and confiscation was better than the old one or not 
 does not in the slightest degree affect the working of this 
 fact on the relations between the landlord and the tenant 
 in Ireland. No one will be able to understand the whole 
 meaning and bearing of the long land struggle in Ireland 
 who does not clearly get into his mind the fact that, 
 rightly or wrongly, the Irish peasant regarded the right 
 to have a bit of land, his share, exactly as other peoples 
 regard the right to live. It was in his mind something 
 elementary and self-evident. He could not be loyal to, he 
 could not even understand, any system which did not 
 secure that to him. According to Michelet, the land is 
 the French peasant's mistress. It was the Irish peasant's 
 life. 
 
 The Irish peasant, with his wife and his family, lived 
 on the potato. Hardly in any country coming within 
 the pale of civilization was there to be found a whole 
 peasant population dependent for their living on one 
 single root. When the potato failed in 1845 the life- 
 system of the people seemed to have given way. At first 
 it was not thought that the failure must necessarily be 
 anything more than partial. But it soon began to appear 
 that for at least two seasons the whole food of the peasant 
 population and of the poor in towns was absolutely gone. 
 Lord John Russell's Government pottered with the diffi- 
 culty rather than encountered it. In their excuse it has 
 to be said, of course, that the calamity they had to meet 
 was unprecedented, and that it must have tried the 
 resources of the most energetic and foreseeing statesman- 
 ship. Still, the fact remains that the measures of the 
 Government were at first utterly inadequate to the occa- 
 sion, and that afterward some of them were even calcu-
 
 350 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 lated to make bad worse. Not a county in Ireland wholly 
 escaped the potato disease, and many of the southern and 
 western counties were soon in actual famine. A peculiar 
 form of fever famine-fever it was called began to show 
 itself everywhere. A terrible dysentery set in as well. 
 In some districts the people died in hundreds daily from 
 fever, dysentery, or sheer starvation. The districts of 
 Skibbereen, Skull, Westport, and other places obtained a 
 ghastly supremacy in misery. In some of these districts 
 the parochial authorities at last declined to put the rate- 
 payers to the expense of coffins for the too frequent dead. 
 The coroners declared it impossible to keep on holding 
 inquests. There was no time for all the ceremonies of 
 that kind that would have to be gone through if they 
 made any pretence at keeping up the system of ordinary 
 seasons. In other places where the formula was still kept 
 up the juries added to their verdicts of death by starva- 
 tion some charge of wilful murder against Lord John Rus- 
 sell, or the Lord-lieutenant, or some other official whose 
 supposed neglect was set down as the cause of the death. 
 Unfortunately the Government had to show an immense 
 activity in the introduction of coercion bills and other 
 repressive measures. It would have been impossible that 
 in such a country as Ireland a famine of that gigantic 
 kind should set in without bringing crimes of violence 
 along with it. The peasantry had always hated the land 
 tenure system; they had always been told, not surely 
 without justice, that it was at the bottom of all their 
 miseries ; they were now under the firm conviction that 
 the Government could have saved them if it would. 
 "What wonder, then, if there were bread riots and agra- 
 rian disturbances ? Who can now wonder, that being so, 
 that the Government introduced exceptional measures of 
 repression ? But it certainly had a grim and a disheart- 
 ening effect on the spirits of the Irish people when it
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 351 
 
 seemed as if the Government could only potter and palter 
 with famine, but could be earnest and energetic when 
 devising coercion bills. 
 
 Whatever might be said of the Government, no one could 
 doubt the good- will of the English people. In every great 
 English community, from the metropolis downward, sub- 
 scription lists were opened, and the most liberal contribu- 
 tions poured in. In Liverpool, for example, a great num- 
 ber of the merchants of the place put down a thousand 
 pounds each. The Quakers of England sent over a dele- 
 gation of their number to the specially famine-stricken 
 districts of Ireland to administer relief. Many other sects 
 and bodies followed the example. National Relief Asso- 
 ciations were specially formed in England. Relief, indeed, 
 began to be poured in from all countries. The United 
 States employed some of their war vessels to send gifts of 
 grain and other food to the starving places. In one Irish 
 seaport the joybells of the town were kept ringing all day 
 in honor of the arrival of one of these grain-laden vessels 
 a mournfully significant form of rejoicing, surely. One 
 of the national writers said at the time that the misery of 
 Ireland touched " even the heart of the Turk at the far 
 Dardanelles, and he sent her in pity the alms of a beggar." 
 It was true that from Turkey, as from most other coun- 
 tries, had come some contribution toward the relief of 
 Irish distress. At the same time there were some very 
 foolish performances gone through in Dublin under the 
 sanction and patronage of the Lord-lieutenant the solemn 
 " inauguration, " as it would be called by a certain class 
 of writers now, of a public soup-kitchen, devised and man- 
 aged by the fashionable French cook, M. Soyer, for the 
 purpose of showing the Irish people what remarkably sus- 
 taining potage might be made out of the thinnest and 
 cheapest materials. This exposition would have been well 
 enough in a quiet and practical way, but performed as a
 
 352 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 grand national ceremony of regeneration, under the patron- 
 age of the Viceroy, and with accompaniment of brass- 
 bands and pageantry, it had a remarkably foolish and 
 even offensive aspect. The performance was resented 
 bitterly by many of the impatient young spirits of the 
 national party in Dublin. 
 
 Meanwhile the misery went on deepening and broaden- 
 ing. It was far too great to be effectually encountered by 
 subscriptions, however generous; and the Government, 
 meaning to do the best they could, were practically at 
 their wits' end. The starving peasants streamed into the 
 nearest considerable town hoping for relief there, arid 
 found too often that there the very sources of charity 
 were dried up. Many, very many, thus disappointed, 
 merely lay down on the pavement and died there. Along 
 the country roads one met everywhere groups of gaunt, 
 dim-eyed wretches clad in miserable old sacking, and 
 wandering aimlessly with some vague idea of finding food, 
 as the boy in the fable hoped to find the gold where the 
 rainbow touched the earth. Many remained in their 
 empty hovels, and took death there when he came. In 
 some regions the country seemed unpeopled for miles. A 
 fervid national writer declared that the impression made 
 on him by the aspect of the country then was that of " one 
 silent, vast dissolution." Allowing for rhetoric, there was 
 not much exaggeration in the words. Certainly the Ire- 
 land of tradition was dissolved in the operation of that 
 famine. The old system gave way utterly. The landlord- 
 ism of the days before the famine never revived in its 
 former strength and its peculiar ways. For the landlord 
 class there came out of the famine the Encumbered Es- 
 tates Court ; for the small farmer and peasant class there 
 floated up the American emigrant ship. 
 
 Acts and even conspiracies of violence, as we have said, 
 began to be not uncommon throughout the country and
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 353 
 
 in the cities. One peculiar symptom of the time was the 
 glass-breaking mania that set in throughout the towns of 
 the south and west. It is, perhaps, not quite reasonable 
 to call it a mania, for it had melancholy method in it. 
 The workhouses were overcrowded, and the authorities 
 could not receive there or feed there one-fourth of the 
 applicants who besieged them. Suddenly it seemed to 
 occur to the minds of many of famine's victims that there 
 were the prisons for which one might qualify himself, and 
 to which, after qualification, he could not be denied admit- 
 tance. The idea was simple : go into a town, smash 
 deliberately the windows of a shop, and some days of a 
 jail and of substantial food must follow. The plan became 
 a favorite. Especially was it adopted by young girls and 
 women. After a time the puzzled magistrates resolved 
 to put an end to this device by refusing to inflict the pun- 
 ishment which these unfortunate creatures sought as a 
 refuge and a comfort. One early result of the famine and 
 the general breakdown of property is too significant to be 
 allowed to pass unnoticed. Some of the landlords had 
 been living for a long time on a baseless system, on a credit 
 which the failure of the crops brought to a crushing test. 
 Not a few of these were utterly broken. They could 
 maintain their houses and halls no longer, and often were 
 only too happy to let them to the poor-law guardians to 
 be used as extra workhouses. In the near neighborhood 
 of many a distressed country town the great house of the 
 local magnate thus became a receptacle for the pauper- 
 ism which could not find a refuge in the overcrowded 
 asylums which the poor-law system had already provided. 
 The lion and the lizard, says the Persian poet, keep the 
 halls where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep. The pauper 
 devoured his scanty dole of Indian meal porridge in the 
 hall where his landlord had gloried and drunk deep. 
 When the famine was over and its results came to be
 
 354 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 estimated, it was found that Ireland had lost about two 
 millions of her population. She had come down from 
 eight millions to six. This was the combined effect of 
 starvation, of the various diseases that followed in its path 
 gleaning where it had failed to gather, and of emigration. 
 Long after all the direct effects of the failure of the potato 
 had ceased, the population still continued steadily to 
 decrease. The Irish peasant had in fact had his eyes 
 turned, as Mr. Bright afterward expressed it, toward the 
 setting sun, and for long years the stream of emigration 
 westward never abated in its volume. A new Ireland 
 began to grow up across the Atlantic. In every great city 
 of the United States the Irish element began to form a 
 considerable constituent of the population. From New 
 York to San Francisco, from St. Paul, Minnesota, to New 
 Orleans, the Irish accent is heard in every street, and the 
 Irish voter comes to the polling-booth ready, far too heed- 
 lessly, to vote for any politician who will tell him that 
 America loves the green flag and hates the Saxon. 
 
 Terrible as the immediate effects of the famine were, it 
 is impossible for any friend of Ireland to say that, on the 
 whole, it did not bring much good with it. It first applied 
 the scourge which was to drive out of the land a thoroughly 
 vicious and rotten system. It first called the attention of 
 English statesmen irresistibly to the fact that the system 
 was bad to its heart's core, and that nothing good could 
 come of it. It roused the attention of the humble Irish- 
 man, too often inclined to put up with everything in the 
 lazy spirit of a Neapolitan or a fatalist, to the fact that 
 there was for him too a world elsewhere. The famine 
 had, indeed many a bloody after-birth, but it gave to the 
 world a new Ireland. 
 
 The Government, as it may be supposed, had hard work 
 to do all this time. They had the best intentions toward 
 Ireland, and were always, indeed, announcing that they
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 355 
 
 had found out some new way of dealing with the distress, 
 and modifying or withdrawing old plans. They adopted 
 measures from time to time to expend large sums in some- 
 thing like systematic employment for the poor in Ireland ; 
 they modified the Irish Poor-laws ; they agreed at length 
 to suspend temporarily the Corn-laws and the Navigation 
 Laws, so far as these related to the importation of grain. 
 A tremendous commercial panic, causing the fall of great 
 houses, especially in the corn trade, all over the country, 
 called for the suspension of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, 
 and the measures of the ministers were, for the most part, 
 treated considerately and loyally by Sir Robert Peel ; but 
 a new opposition had formed itself under the nominal 
 guidance of Lord George Bentinck, and the real inspiration 
 of Mr. Disraeli. Lord George Bentinck brought in a bill 
 to make a grant of sixteen millions to be expended as an 
 advance on the construction and completion of Irish rail- 
 ways. This proposal was naturally very welcome to 
 many in Ireland. It had a lavish and showy air about 
 it ; and Lord George Bentinck talked grandiosely in his 
 speech about the readiness with which he, the Saxon, 
 would, if his measure were carried, answer with his head 
 for the loyalty of the Irish people. But it soon began to 
 appear that the scheme was not so much a question of the 
 Irish people as of certain moneyed classes who might be 
 helped along at the expense of the English and the Irish 
 people. Lord George Bentinck certainly had no other 
 than a direct and single-minded purpose to do good to 
 Ireland ; but his measure would have been a failure if it 
 had been carried. It was fairly open in some respects to 
 the criticism of Mr. Roebuck, that it proposed to relieve 
 Irish landlordism of its responsibilities at the expense of 
 the British tax-payer. The measure was rejected. Lord 
 George Bentinck was able to worry the ministry some- 
 what effectively when they introduced a measure to reduce
 
 356 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 gradually the differential duties on sugar for a few years, 
 and then replace these duties by a fixed and uniform rate. 
 This was, in short, a proposal to apply the principle of 
 Free-trade, instead of that of Protection, to sugar. The 
 protective principle had, in this case, however, a certain 
 fascination about it, even for independent minds ; for an 
 exceptional protection had been retained by Sir Robert 
 Peel in order to enable the planters in our colonies to 
 compensate themselves for the loss they might suffer in 
 the transition from slavery to free labor. Lord George 
 Bentinck, therefore, proposed an amendment to the reso- 
 lutions of the Government, declaring it unjust and impol- 
 itic to reduce the duty on foreign slave-grown sugar, as 
 tending to check the advance of production by British 
 free labor, and to give a great additional stimulus to slave 
 labor. Many sincere and independent opponents of 
 slavery, Lord Brougham in the House of Lords among 
 them, were caught by this view of the question. Lord 
 George and his brilliant lieutenant at one time appeared 
 as if they were likely to carry their point in the Commons. 
 But it was announced that if the resolutions of the Govern- 
 ment were defeated ministers would resign, and there 
 was no one to take their place. Peel could no.t return to 
 power ; and the time was far distant yet when Mr. Dis- 
 raeli could form a ministry. The opposition crumbled 
 away, therefore, and the Government measures were 
 carried. Lord George Bentinck made himself for awhile 
 the champion of the West India sugar-producing interest. 
 He was a man who threw himself with enormous energy 
 into any work he -undertook ; and he had got up the case 
 of the West India planters with all the enthusiasm that 
 inspired him hi his more congenial pursuits as one of the 
 principal men on the turf. The alliance between him and 
 Mr. Disraeli is curious. The two men, one would think, 
 could have had absolutely nothing in common. Mr.
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 357 
 
 Disraeli knew nothing about horses and racing. Lord 
 George Bentinck could not possibly have understood, not 
 to say sympathized with, many of the leading ideas of his 
 lieutenant. Yet Bentinck had evidently formed a just 
 estimate of Disraeli's political genius ; and Disraeli saw 
 that in Bentinck were many of the special qualities which 
 go to make a powerful party leader in England. Time 
 has amply justified, and more than justified, Bentinck's 
 convictions as to Disraeli; Bentinck's premature death 
 leaves Disraeli's estimate of him an untested speculation. 
 There were troubles abroad as well as at home for the 
 Government. Almost immediately on their coming into 
 office, the project of the Spanish marriages, concocted 
 between King Louis Philippe and his minister, M. Guizot, 
 disturbed for a time, and very seriously, the good under- 
 standing between England and France. It might, so far 
 as this country was concerned, have had much graver 
 consequences, but for the fact that it bore its bitter fruit 
 so soon for the dynasty of Louis Philippe, and helped to 
 put a new ruler on the throne of France. It is only as it 
 affected the friendly feeling between this country and 
 France that the question of the Spanish marriages has a 
 place in such a work as this ; but at one time it seemed 
 likely enough to bring about consequences which would link 
 it closely and directly with the history of England. The 
 ambition of the French minister and his master was to 
 bring the throne of Spain in some way under the direct in- 
 fluence of France. Such a scheme had again and again been 
 at the heart of French rulers and statesmen, and it had 
 always failed. At least it had always brought with it 
 jealousy, hostility, and war. Louis Philippe and his 
 minister were untaught by the lessons of the past. The 
 young Queen Isabella of Spain was unmarried, and of 
 course a high degree of public anxiety existed in Europe 
 as to her choice of a husband. No delusion can be more
 
 358 A UISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 profound or more often exposed than that which inspires 
 ambitious princes and enterprising statesmen to imagine 
 that they can control nations by the influence of dynastic 
 alliances. In every European war we see princes closely 
 connected by marriage in arms against each other. The 
 great political forces which bring nations into the field of 
 battle are not to be charmed into submission by the rub- 
 bing of a princess's wedding-ring. But a certain class of 
 statesman, a man of the order who in ordinary life would 
 be called too clever by half, is always intriguing about 
 royal marriages, as if thus he alone could hold in his 
 hands the destinies of nations. 
 
 In an evil hour for themselves and their fame, Louis 
 Philippe and his minister believed that they could obtain 
 a virtual ownership of Spain by an ingenious marriage 
 scheme. There was at one time a project, talked of rather 
 than actually entertained, of marrying the young Queen 
 of Spain and her sister to the Due d'Aumale and the Due 
 de Montpensier, both sons of Louis Philippe. But this 
 would have been too daring a venture on the part of the 
 King of the French. Apart from any objections to be 
 entertained by other states, it was certain that England 
 could not "view with indifference," as the diplomatic 
 phrase goes, the prospect of a son of the French King 
 occupying the throne of Spain. It may be said that after 
 all it was of little concern to England who married the 
 Queen of Spain. Spain was nothing to us. It would not 
 follow that Spam must be the tool of France because 
 the Spanish Queen married a son of the French King, any 
 more than it was certain in a former day that Austria 
 must link herself with the fortunes of the great Napoleon 
 because he had married an Austrian princess. Probably 
 it would have been well if England had concerned herself 
 in nowise with the domestic affairs of Spain, and had 
 allowed Louis Philippe to spin what ignoble plots he
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 359 
 
 pleased, if the Spanish people themselves had not wit 
 enough to see through and power enough to counteract 
 them. At a later period France brought on herself a 
 terrible war and a crushing defeat because her Emperor 
 chose to believe, or allowed himself to be persuaded into 
 believing, that the security of France would be threatened 
 if a Prussian prince were called to the throne of Spain. 
 The Prussian prince did not ascend that throne ; but the 
 war between France and Prussia went on ; France was 
 defeated; and after a little the Spanish people themselves 
 got rid of the prince whom they had consented to accept 
 hi place of the obnoxious Prussian. If the French Em- 
 peror had not interfered, it is only too probable that the 
 Prussian prince would have gone to Madrid, reigned there 
 for a few unstable and tremulous months, and then have 
 been quietly sent back to his own countr} r . But at the 
 time of Louis Philippe's intrigues about the Spanish 
 marriages the statesmen of England were by no means 
 disposed to take a cool and philosophic view of things. 
 The idea of non-intervention had scarcely come up then, 
 and the English minister who was chiefly concerned in 
 foreign affairs was about the lust man in the world to 
 admit that anything could go on in Europe or elsewhere 
 in which England was not entitled to express an opinion, 
 and to make her influence felt. The marriage, therefore, 
 of the young Queen of Spain had been long a subject of 
 anxious consideration in the councils of the English 
 Government. Louis Philippe knew very well that he 
 could not venture to marry one of his sons to the young 
 Isabella. But he and his minister devised a scheme for 
 securing to themselves and their policy the same effect in 
 another way. They contrived that the Queen and her 
 sister should be married at the same time the Queen to 
 her cousin, Don Francisco d'Assis, Duke of Cadiz ; and 
 her sister to the Duke de Montpensier, Louis Philippe's
 
 360 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 son. There was reason to expect that the Queen, if mar- 
 ried to Don Francisco, would have no children, and that 
 the wife of Louis Philippe's son, or some of her children, 
 would come to the throne of Spain. 
 
 On the moral guilt of a plot like this it would be super- 
 fluous to dwell. Nothing in the history of the perversions 
 of human conscience and judgment can be more extraor- 
 dinary than the fact that a man like M. Guizot should have 
 been its inspiring influence. It came with a double shock 
 upon the Queen of England and her ministers, because 
 they had every reason to think that Louis Philippe had 
 bound himself by a solemn promise to discourage any 
 such policy. When the Queen paid her visit to Louis 
 Philippe at Eu, the King made the most distinct and the 
 most spontaneous promise on the subject both to her 
 Majesty and to Lord Aberdeen. The Queen's own journal 
 says : " The King told Lord Aberdeen as well as me he 
 never would hear of Montpensier's marriage with the 
 Infanta of Spain which they are in a great fright about 
 in England until it was no longer a political question, 
 which would be when the Queen is married and has 
 children." The King's own defence of himself afterward, 
 in a letter intended to be a reply to one written to his 
 daughter, the Queen of the Belgians, by Queen Victoria, 
 admits the fact. " I shall tell you precisely," he says, 
 ' in what consists the deviation on my side. Simply in 
 my having arranged for the marriage of the Due de 
 Montpensier, not before the marriage of the Queen of 
 Spain, for she is to be married to the Due de Cadiz at 
 the very moment when my son is married to the Infanta, 
 but before the Queen has a child. That is the whole 
 deviation, nothing more, nothing less." This was surely 
 deviation enough from the King's promise to justify any 
 charge of bad faith that could be made. The whole ques- 
 tion was one of succession. The objection of England and
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 361 
 
 other Powers was, from first to last, an objection to any 
 arrangement which might leave the succession to one of 
 Louis Philippe's children or grand-children. For this 
 reason the King had given his word to Queen Victoria 
 that he would not hear of his son's marriage with Isa- 
 bella's sister until the difficulty about the succession had 
 been removed by Isabella herself being married and having 
 a child. Such an agreement was absolutely broken when 
 the King arranged for the marriage of his son to the 
 sister of Queen Isabella at the same time as Isabella's 
 own marriage, and when, therefore, it was not certain 
 that the young Queen would have any children. The 
 political question the question of succession remained 
 then open as before. All the objections that England 
 and other Powers had to the marriage of the Due de 
 Montpensier stood out as strong as ever. It was a 
 question of the birth of a child, and no child was born. 
 The breach of faith was made infinitely more grave by 
 the fact that in the public opinion of Europe, Louis 
 Philippe was set down as having brought about the 
 marriage of the Queen of Spain with her cousin Don 
 Francisco in the hope and belief that the union would be 
 barren of issue, and that the wife of his son would stand 
 on the next step of the throne. 
 
 The excuse which Louis Philippe put forward to palliate 
 what he called his " deviation " from the promise to the 
 Queen was not of a nature calculated to allay the ill-feel- 
 ing which his policy had aroused in England. He pleaded 
 in substance that he had reason to believe in an intended 
 piece of treachery on the part of the English Govern- 
 ment, the consequences of which, if it were successful, 
 would have been injurious to his policy, and the discovery 
 of which, therefore, released him from his promise. He 
 had found out, as he declared, that there was an intention 
 on the part of England to put forward, as a candidate for
 
 SG2 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the hand of Queen Isabella, Prince Leopold of Coburg, 
 a cousin of Prince Albert. There was so little justifica- 
 tion for any such suspicion that it hardly seemed possible 
 a man of Louis Philippe's shrewdness can really have 
 entertained it. The English Government had always 
 steadfastly declined to give any support whatever to the 
 candidature of this young prince. Lord Aberdeen, who 
 was then Foreign Secretary, had always taken his stand 
 on the broad principle that the marriage of the Queen of 
 Spain was the business of Isabella herself and of the 
 Spanish people ; and that so'long as that Queen and that 
 people were satisfied, and the interests of England were 
 in nowise involved, the Government of Queen Victoria 
 would interfere in no manner. The candidature of 
 Prince Leopold had been, in the first instance, a project 
 of the Dowager Queen of Spain, Christina, a woman of 
 intriguing character, on whose political probity no great 
 reliance could be placed. The English Government had 
 in the most decided and practical manner proved that 
 they took no share in the plans of Queen Christina, and 
 had no sympathy with them. But while the whole 
 negotiations were going on, the defeat of Sir Robert 
 Peel's Ministry brought Lord Palmerston into the Foreign 
 Office in place of Lord Aberdeen. The very name of 
 Palmerston produced on Louis Philippe and his minister 
 the effect vulgarly said to be wrought on a bull by the 
 display of a red rag. Louis Philippe treasured hi bitter 
 memory the unexpected success which Palmerston had 
 won from him in regard to Turkey and Egypt. At that 
 time, and especially in the court of Louis Philippe, for- 
 eign politics were looked upon as the field in which the 
 ministers of great Powers contended against each other 
 with brag and trickery and subtle arts of all kinds ; the 
 plain principles of integrity and truthful dealing did not 
 seem to be regarded as properly belonging to the rules of
 
 FAMINE, COMMEECIAL TROUBLE, ETC. 363 
 
 the game. Louis Philippe probably believed in good faith 
 that the return of Lord Palmerston to the Foreign Office 
 must mean the renewed activity of treacherous plans 
 against himself. This, at least, is the only assumption 
 on which we can explain the King's conduct, if we do not 
 wish to believe that he put forward excuses and pretexts 
 which were wilful in their falsehood. Louis Philippe 
 seized on some words in a despatch of Lord Palmerston's, 
 in which the candidature of Prince Leopold was simply 
 mentioned as a matter of fact ; declared that these words 
 showed that the English Government had at last openly 
 adopted that candidature, professed himself relieved from 
 all previous engagements, and at once hurried on the 
 marriage between Queen Isabella and her cousin, and 
 that of his own son with Isabella's sister. On October 
 10th, 1846, the double marriage took place at Madrid; and 
 on February 5th following, M. Guizot told the French 
 Chambers that the Spanish marriages constituted the first 
 great thing France had accomplished completely single- 
 handed in Europe since 1830. 
 
 Every one knows what a failure this scheme proved, so 
 far as the objects of Louis Philippe and his minister were 
 concerned. Queen Isabella had children ; JVIontpensier's 
 wife did not come to the throne; and the dynasty of 
 Louis Philippe fell before long, its fall undoubtedly 
 hastened by the position of utter isolation and distrust 
 in which it was placed by the scheme of the Spanish 
 marriages and the feeling which it provoked in Europe. 
 The fact with which we have to deal, however, is that 
 the friendship between England and France, from which 
 so many happy results seemed likely to come to Europe 
 and the cause of free government, was necessarily inter- 
 rupted. It would have been impossible to trust any 
 longer to Louis Philippe. The Queen herself entered into 
 a correspondence with his daughter, the Queen of the
 
 8G4 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES 
 
 Belgians, in which she expressed in the clearest and most 
 emphatic manner her opinion of the treachery with which 
 England had been encountered, and suggested plainly 
 enough her sense of the moral wrong involved in such 
 ignoble policy. The whole transaction is but another 
 and a most striking condemnation of that odious creed, 
 for a long time tolerated in state-craft, that there is one 
 moral code for private life and another for the world of 
 politics. A man who in private affairs should act as 
 Louis Philippe and M. Guizot acted would be justly con- 
 sidered infamous. It is impossible to suppose that M. 
 Guizot, at least, could have so acted in private life. M. 
 Guizot was a Protestant of a peculiarly austere type, who 
 professed to make religious duty his guide in all things, 
 and who doubtless did make it so .in all his dealings as a 
 private citizen. But it is only too evident that he believed 
 the policy of states to allow of other principles than those 
 of Christian morality. He allowed himself to be gov- 
 erned by the odious delusion that the interests of a state 
 can be advanced and ought to be pursued by means which 
 an ordinary man of decent character would scorn to em- 
 ploy for any object in private life. A man of any high 
 principle would not employ such arts in private life to 
 save all his earthly possessions, and his life and the lives 
 of his wife and children. Any one who will take the 
 trouble to think over the whole of this plot for it can be 
 called by no other name over the ignoble object which 
 it had in view, the base means by which it was carried 
 out, the ruthless disregard for the inclinations, the affec- 
 tions, the happiness, and the morality of its principal 
 victims ; and will then think of it as carried on in private 
 life in order to come at the reversion of some young and 
 helpless girl's inheritance, will perhaps find it hard to 
 understand how the shame can be any the less because 
 the principal plotter was a king, and the victims were a 
 queen and a nation.
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 365 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 THE year 1848 was an era in the modern history of Eu- 
 rope. It was the year of unfulfilled revolution. The fall 
 of the dynasty of Louis Philippe may be said to have set 
 the revolutionary tide flowing. The event in France had 
 long been anticipated by keen-eyed observers. There are 
 many predictions, delivered and recorded before the revo- 
 lution was yet near, which show that it ought not to have 
 taken the world by surprise. The reign of the Bourgeois 
 King was unsuited in its good and in its bad qualities 
 alike to the genius and the temper of the French people. 
 The people of France have defects enough which friends 
 and enemies are ready to point out to them ; but it can 
 hardly be denied that they like at least the appearance of 
 a certain splendor and magnanimity in their systems of 
 government. This is, indeed, one of their weaknesses. 
 It lays them open to the allurements of any brilliant 
 adventurer, like the First Napoleon or the Third, who can 
 promise them national greatness and glory at the expense 
 perhaps of domestic liberty. But it makes them peculi- 
 arly intolerant of anything mean and sordid in a system 
 or a ruler. There are peoples, no doubt, who could be 
 persuaded, and wisely persuaded, to put up with a good 
 deal of the ignoble and the shabby in their foreign policy 
 for the sake of domestic comfort and tranquillity. But 
 the French people are always impatient of anything like
 
 36G A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 meanness in their rulers, and the government of Louis 
 Philippe was especially mean. Its foreign policy was 
 treacherous ; its diplomatists were commissioned to act 
 as tricksters ; the word of a French minister at a foreign 
 court began to be regarded as on a level of credibility with 
 a dicer's oath. The home policy of the King was narrow- 
 minded and repressive enough ; but a man who played 
 upon the national weakness more wisely might have per- 
 suaded his people to be content with defects at home for 
 the sake of prestige abroad. From the hour when it be- 
 came apparent in France that the nation was not respected 
 abroad, the fall of the dynasty was only a matter of time 
 and change. The terrible story of the De Praslin family 
 helped to bring about the catastrophe ; the alternate weak- 
 ness and obstinacy of the Government forced it on ; and 
 the King's own lack of decision made it impossible that 
 when the trial had come it could end in any way but 
 one. 
 
 Louis Philippe fled to England, and his flight was the 
 signal for long pent-up fires to break out all over Europe. 
 Revolution soon was aflame over nearly all the courts and 
 capitals of the Continent. Revolution is like an epidemic ; 
 it finds out the weak places in systems. The two Euro- 
 pean countries which, being tried by it, stood it best, were 
 England and Belgium. In the latter country the King 
 made frank appeal to his people, and told them that if 
 they wished to be rid of him he was quite willing to go. 
 Language of this kind is new in the mouths of sovereigns ; 
 and the Belgians are a people well able to appreciate it. 
 They declared for their King, and the shock of the revolu- 
 tion passed harmlessly away. In England and Ireland the 
 effect of the events in France was instantly made man- 
 ifest. The Chartist agitation at once came to a head. 
 Some of the Chartist leaders called out for the dismissal 
 of the ministry, the dissolution of the Parliament, the
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 367 
 
 Charter and " no surrender." A national convention of 
 Chartists began its sittings in London to arrange for a 
 monster demonstration on April 10th. Some of the 
 speakers openly declared that the people were now quite 
 ready to fight for their Charter. Others, more cautious, 
 advised that no step should be taken against the law until 
 at least it was quite certain that the people were stronger 
 than the upholders of the existing laws. Nearly all the 
 leading Chartists spoke of the revolution in France as an 
 example offered in good time to the English people ; and 
 it is somewhat curious to observe how it was assumed in 
 the most evident good faith that what we may call the 
 wage-receiving portion of the population of these islands 
 constitutes exclusively the English people. What the 
 educated, the wealthy, the owners of land, the proprietors, 
 of factories, the ministers of the different denominations, 
 the authors of books, the painters of pictures, the bench, 
 the bar, the army, the navy, the medical profession what 
 all these or any of them might think with regard to any 
 proposed constitutional changes was accounted a matter 
 in nowise affecting the resolve of the English " people." 
 The moderate men among the Chartists themselves were 
 soon unable to secure a hearing ; and the word of order 
 went round among the body, that " the English people " 
 must have the Charter or a Republic. What had been 
 done in France enthusiasts fancied might well be done in 
 England. 
 
 It was determined to present a monster petition to the 
 House of Commons demanding the Charter, and, in fact, 
 offering a last chance to Parliament to yield quietly to the 
 demand. The petition was to be presented by a deputa- 
 tion who were to be conducted by a vast procession up to 
 the doors of the House. The procession was to be formed 
 on Kennington Common, the space then unenclosed which 
 is now Kennington Park, on the south side of London.
 
 368 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 There the Chartists were to be addressed by their still 
 trusted leader, Feargus O'Connor, and they were to march 
 in military order to present their petition. The object 
 undoubtedly was to make such a parade of physical force 
 as should overawe the Legislature and the Government, 
 and demonstrate the impossibility of refusing a demand 
 backed by such a reserve of power. The idea was taken 
 from O'Connell's policy in the monster meetings ; but 
 there were many of the Chartists who hoped for some- 
 thing more than a mere demonstration of physical force, 
 and who would have been heartily glad if some untimely 
 or unreasonable interference on the part of the authorities 
 had led to a collision. A strong faith still survived at 
 that day in what was grandiosely called the might of 
 earnest numbers. Ardent young Chartists who belonged 
 to the time of life when anything seems possible to the 
 brave and faithful, and when facts and examples count 
 for nothing unless they favor one's own views, fully 
 believed that it needed but the firing of the first shot, 
 " the sparkle of the first sword drawn," to give success to 
 the arms, though but the bare arms, of the people, and to 
 inaugurate the reign of liberty. Therefore, however dif- 
 ferently and harmlessly events may have turned out, we 
 may be certain that there went to the rendezvous at Ken- 
 nington Common, on that April 10th, many hundreds of 
 ignorant and excitable young men who desired nothing so 
 much as a collision with the police and the military, and 
 the reign of liberty to follow. The proposed procession 
 was declared illegal, and all peaceful and loyal subjects 
 were warned not to take any part in it. But this was 
 exactly what the more ardent among the Chartists 
 expected and desired to see. They were rejoiced that 
 the Government had proclaimed the procession unlawful. 
 Was not that the proper occasion for resolute patriots to 
 show that they represented a cause above despotic law ?
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 3G9 
 
 Was not that the very opportunity offered to them to 
 prove that the people were more mighty than their rulers, 
 and that the rulers must obey or abdicate ? Was not the 
 whole sequence of proceedings thus far exactly after the 
 pattern of the French Revolution? The people resolve 
 that they will have a certain demonstration in a certain 
 way ; the oligarchical Government declare that they shall 
 not do so ; the people persevere, and of course the next 
 thing must be that the Government falls, exactly as in 
 Paris. When poor Dick Swiveller, in Dickens's story, is 
 recovering from his fever, he looks forth of his miserable 
 bed and makes up his mind that he is under the influence 
 of some such magic spell as he has become familiar with 
 in the "Arabian Nights." His poverty-stricken little 
 nurse claps her thin hands with joy to see him alive ; and 
 Dick makes up his mind that the clapping of the hands is 
 the sign understood of all who read Eastern romance, and 
 that next must appear at the princess's summons the row 
 of slaves with jars of jewels on their heads. Poor Dick, 
 reasoning from his experiences in the " Arabian Nights," 
 was not one whit more astray than enthusiastic Chartists 
 reasoning for the sequence of English politics from the 
 evidence of what had happened in France. The slaves 
 with the jars of jewels on their heads were just as likely 
 to follow the clap of the poor girl's hands, as the events 
 that had followed a popular demonstration in Paris to 
 follow a popular demonstration in London. To begin 
 with, the Chartists did not represent any such power in 
 London as the Liberal deputies of the French Chamber 
 did in Paris. In the next place, London does not govern 
 England, and in our time, at least, never did. In the 
 third place, the English Government knew perfectly well 
 that they were strong in the general support of the nation, 
 and were not likely to yield for a single moment to the 
 hesitation which sealed the fate of the French monarchy. 
 
 24
 
 370 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 The Chartists fell to disputing among themselves very 
 much as O'Connell's Repealers had done. Some were for 
 disobeying the orders of the authorities and having the 
 procession, and provoking rather than avoiding a collision. 
 At a meeting of the Chartist Convention held the night 
 before the demonstration, " the eve of Liberty," as some 
 of the orators eloquently termed it, a considerable number 
 were for going armed to Kennington Common. Feargus 
 O'Connor had, however, sense enough still left to throw 
 the weight of his influence against such an insane pro- 
 ceeding, and to insist that the demonstration must show 
 itself to be, as it was from the first proclaimed to be, a 
 strictly pacific proceeding. This was the parting of the 
 ways hi the Chartist as it had been in the Repeal agita- 
 tion. The more ardent spirits at once withdrew from the 
 organization. Those who might even at the very last have 
 done mischief if they had remained part of the movement, 
 withdrew from it ; and Chartism was left to be represented 
 by an open-air meeting and a petition to Parliament, like 
 all the other demonstrations that the metropolis had seen 
 to pass, hardly heeded, across the field of politics. But 
 the public at large was not aware that the fangs of Chart- 
 ism had been drawn before it was let loose to play on 
 Kennington Common that memorable 10th of April. 
 London awoke in great alarm that day. The Chartists 
 in their most sanguine moments never ascribed to them- 
 selves half the strength that honest alarmists of the bour- 
 geois class were ready that morning to ascribe to them. 
 The wildest rumors were spread abroad in many parts of 
 the metropolis. Long before the Chartists had got to- 
 gether on Kennington Common at all, various remote 
 quarters of London were filled with horrifying reports of 
 encounters between the insurgents and the police or the 
 military, in which the Chartists invariably had the better, 
 and as a result of which they were marching in full force
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 371 
 
 to the particular district where the momentary panic pre- 
 vailed. London is worse off than most cities in such a 
 time of alarm. It is too large for true accounts of things 
 rapidly to diffuse themselves. In April, 1848, the street 
 telegraph was not in use for carrying news through cities, 
 and the rapidly succeeding editions of the cheap papers 
 were as yet unknown. In various quarters of London, 
 therefore, the citizen was left through the greater part of 
 the day to all the agonies of doubt and uncertainty. 
 
 There was no lack, however, of public precautions against 
 an outbreak of armed Chartists. The Duke of Welling- 
 ton took charge of all the arrangements for guarding the 
 public buildings and defending the metropolis generally. 
 lie acted with extreme caution, and told several influen- 
 tial persons that the troops were in readiness everywhere, 
 but that they would not be seen unless an occasion actually 
 rose for calling on their services. The coolness and 
 presence of mind of the stern old soldier are well illus- 
 trated in the fact that to several persons of influence and 
 authority who came to him with suggestions for the defence 
 of this place or that, his almost invariable answer was 
 " done already," or " done two hours ago," or something 
 of the kind. A vast number of Londoners enrolled them- 
 selves as special constables for the maintenance of law 
 and order. Nearly two hundred thousand persons, it is 
 said, were sworn in for this purpose ; and it will always 
 be told as an odd incident of that famous scare, that the 
 Prince Louis Napoleon, then living in London, was one of 
 those who volunteered to bear arms in the preservation of 
 order. Not a long time was to pass away before the most 
 lawless outrage on the order and life of a peaceful city 
 was to be perpetrated by the special command of the man 
 who was so ready to lend the saving aid of his constable's 
 staff to protect English society against some poor hundreds 
 or thousands of Engh'sh working-men.
 
 372 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 The crisis, however, luckily proved not to stand in need 
 of such saviors of society. The Chartist demonstration 
 was a wretched failure. The separation of the Chartists 
 who wanted force from those who wanted orderly proceed- 
 ings reduced the project to nothing. The meeting on 
 Kennington Common, so far from being a gathering of 
 half a million of men, was not a larger concourse than a 
 temperance demonstration had often drawn together on 
 the same spot. Some twenty or twenty-five thousand 
 persons were on Kennington Common, of whom at least 
 half were said to be mere lookers-on, come to see what 
 was to happen, and caring nothing whatever about the 
 People's Charter. The procession was not formed, O'Con- 
 nor himself strongly insisting on obedience to the orders 
 of the authorities. There were speeches of the usual kind 
 by O'Connor and others ; and the opportunity was made 
 available by some of the more extreme, and consequently 
 disappointed Chartists, to express in very vehement lan- 
 guage their not unreasonable conviction that the leaders of 
 the convention were humbugs. The whole affair, in truth 
 was an absurd anachronism. The lovers of law and order 
 could have desired nothing better than that it should 
 thus come forth in the light of day and show itself. The 
 clap of the hand was given, but the slaves with the jars 
 of jewels did not appear. It is not that the demands of 
 the Chartists were anachronisms or absurdities. We have 
 already shown that many of them were just and reason- 
 able, and that all came within the fair scope of political 
 argument. The anachronism was in the idea that the 
 display of physical force could any longer be needed or 
 be allowed to settle a political controversy in England. 
 The absurdity was in the notion that the wage-receiving 
 classes, and they alone, are " the people of England." 
 
 The great Chartist petition itself, which was to have 
 made so profound an impression on the House of Com-
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. -J73 
 
 mons, proved as utter a failure as the demonstration on 
 Kennington Common. Mr. O'Connor, in presenting this 
 portentous document, boasted that it would be found to 
 have five million seven hundred thousand signatures in 
 round numbers. The calculation was made in very round 
 numbers indeed. The Committee on Public Petitions 
 were requested to make a minute examination of the docu- 
 ment, and to report to the House of Commons. The com- 
 mittee called in the service of a little army of law-station- 
 ers' clerks, and went to work to analyze the signatures. 
 They found, to begin with, that the whole number of 
 signatures, genuine or otherwise, fell short of two mill- 
 ions. But that was not all. The committee found in 
 many cases that whole sheets of the petition were signed 
 by the one hand, and that eight per cent, of the signatures 
 were those of women. It did not need much investiga- 
 tion to prove that a large proportion of the signatures 
 were not genuine. The name of the Queen, of Prince 
 Albert, of the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
 John Russell, Colonel Sibthorp, and various other public 
 personages, appeared again and again on the Chartist roll. 
 Some of these eminent persons would appear to have car- 
 ried their zeal for the People's Charter so far as to keep 
 signing their names untiringly all over the petition. A 
 large number of yet stranger allies would seem to have 
 been drawn to the cause of the Charter. " Cheeks the 
 Marine " was a personage very familiar at that time to 
 the readers of Captain Marryat's sea stories; and the 
 name of that mythical hero appeared with bewildering 
 iteration in the petition. So did " Davy Jones ; " so did 
 various persons describing themselves as Pugnose, Flat- 
 nose, Wooden-legs, and by other such epithets acknowl- 
 edging curious personal defects. We need not describe 
 the laughter and scorn which these revelations produced. 
 There really was not anything very marvellous in the dis-
 
 374 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 covery. The petition was got up in great haste and with 
 almost utter carelessness. Its sheets used to be sent any- 
 where, and left lying about anywhere, on a chance of 
 obtaining signatures. The temptation to school-boys and 
 practical jokers of all kinds was irresistible. Wherever 
 there was a mischievous hand that could get hold of a 
 pen, there was some name of a royal personage or some 
 Cheeks the Marine at once added to the muster-roll of the 
 Chartists. As a matter of fact, almost all large popular 
 petitions are found to have some such buffooneries mixed 
 up with their serious business. The Committee on Peti- 
 tions have on several occasions had reason to draw atten- 
 tion to the obviously fictitious nature of signatures 
 appended to such documents. The petitions in favor of 
 O'Connell's movement used to lie at the doors of chapels 
 all the Sunday long in Ireland, with pen and ink ready 
 for all who approved to sign ; and it was many a time the 
 favorite amusement of school-boys to scrawl down the 
 most grotesque names and nonsensical imitations of 
 names. But the Chartist petition had been so loudly 
 boasted of, and the whole Chartist movement had created 
 such a scare, that the delight of the public generally at 
 any discovery that threw both into ridicule was over- 
 whelming. It was made certain that the number of genu- 
 ine signatures was ridiculously below the estimate formed 
 by the Chartist leaders ; and the agitation, after terrify- 
 ing respectability for a long time, suddenly showed itself 
 as a thing only to be laughed at. The laughter was sten- 
 torian and overwhelming. The very fact that the petition 
 contained so many absurdities was in itself an evidence 
 of the sincerity of those who presented it. It was not 
 likely that they would have furnished their enemies with 
 so easy and tempting a way of turning them into ridicule, 
 if they had known or suspected that there was any lack 
 of genuineness in the signatures, or that they would have
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 375 
 
 provided so ready a means of decrying their truthfulness 
 as to claim five millions of names for a document which 
 they knew to have less than two millions. The Chartist 
 leaders in all their doings showed a want of accurate 
 calculation, and of the frame of mind which desires or 
 appreciates such accuracy. The famous petition was only 
 one other example of their habitual weakness. It did not 
 bear testimony against their good faith. 
 
 The effect, however, of this unlucky petition on the 
 English public mind was decisive. From that day Chart- 
 ism never presented itself to the ordinary middle-class 
 Englishman as anything but an object of ridicule. The 
 terror of the agitation was gone. There were efforts made 
 again and again during the year by some of the more 
 earnest and extreme of the Chartist leaders to renew the 
 strength of the agitation. The outbreak of the Young 
 Ireland movement found many sympathizers among the 
 English Chartists, more especially in its earlier stages ; 
 and some of the Chartists in London and other great Eng- 
 lish cities endeavored to light up the fire of their agitation 
 again by the help of some brands caught up from the pile 
 of disaffection which Mitchel and Meagher were setting 
 ablaze in Dublin. A monster gathering of Chartists was 
 announced for "Whit-Monday, June 12th, and again the 
 metropolis was thrown into a momentary alarm, very dif- 
 ferent in strength, however, from that of the famous 10th 
 of April. Again precautions were taken by the military 
 authorities against the possible rising of an insurrection- 
 ary mob. Nothing came of this last gasp of Chartism. 
 The Times of the following day remarked that there was 
 absolutely nothing to record, " nothing except the blankest 
 expectation, the most miserable gaping, gossiping, and 
 grumbling of disappointed listeners ; the standing about, 
 the roaming to and fro, the dispersing and the sneaking 
 home of some poor simpletons who had wandered forth in
 
 376 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the hope of some miraculous crisis in their affairs." It is 
 impossible not to pity those who were thus deceived ; not 
 to feel some regret for the earnestness, the hope, the igno- 
 rant, passionate energy which were thrown away. 
 
 Nor can we feel only surprise and contempt for those 
 who imagined that the Charter and the rule of what was 
 called in their jargon " the people " would do something to 
 regenerate their miserable lot. They had at least seen 
 that up to that time Parliament had done little for them. 
 There had been a Parliament of aristocrats and landlords, 
 and it had for generations troubled itself little about the 
 class from whom Chartism was recruited. The sceptre 
 of legislative power had passed into the hands of a Parlia- 
 ment made up in great measure of the wealthy middle 
 ranks, and it had thus far shown no inclination to distress 
 itself overmuch about them. Almost every single measure 
 Parliament has passed to do any good for the wages- 
 receiving classes and the poor generally has been passed 
 since the time when the Chartists began to be a power. 
 Our Corn-laws' repeal, our factory acts, our sanitary 
 legislation, our measures referring to the homes of the 
 poor all these have been the work of later times than 
 those which engendered the Chartist movement. It is 
 easy to imagine a Chartist replying, in the early days of 
 the movement, to some grave remonstrances from wise 
 legislators. He might say, " You tell me I am mad to 
 think the Charter can do anything for me and my class. 
 But can you tell me what else ever has done, or tried to 
 do, any good for them ? You think I am a crazy person, 
 because I believe that a popular Parliament could make 
 anything of the task of government. I ask you what have 
 you and your like made of it already ? Things are well 
 enough, no doubt, for you and your class, a pitiful mi- 
 nority ; but they could not be any worse for us, and we 
 might make them better, so far as the great majority are
 
 CHAETISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 377 
 
 concerned. We may fairly crave a trial for our experi- 
 ment. No matter how wild and absurd it may seem, it 
 could not turn out for the majority any worse than your 
 scheme has done." It would not have been very easy 
 then to answer a speaker who took this line of argument. 
 In truth there was, as we have already insisted, grievance 
 enough to excuse the Chartist agitation, and hope enough 
 in the scheme the Chartists proposed to warrant its fair 
 discussion. Such movements are never to be regarded 
 by sensible persons as the work merely of knaves and 
 dupes. 
 
 Chartism bubbled and sputtered a little yet in some of 
 the provincial towns, and even in London. There were 
 Chartist riots in Ashton, Lancashire, and an affray with 
 the police, and the killing, before the affray, it is painful 
 to have to say, of one policeman. There were Chartists 
 arrested in Manchester on the charge of preparing insur- 
 rectionary movements. In two or three public-houses in 
 London some Chartist juntas were arrested, and the police 
 believed they had got evidence of a projected rising to 
 take in the whole of the metropolis. It is not impossible 
 that some wild and frantic schemes of the kind were talked 
 of and partly hatched by some of the disappointed fanatics 
 of the movement. Some of them were fiery and ignorant 
 enough for anything ; and throughout this memorable 
 year thrones and systems kept toppling down all over 
 Europe in a manner that might well have led feather- 
 headed agitators to fancy that nothing was stable, and that 
 in England, too, the whistle of a few conspirators might 
 bring about a transformation scene. All this folly came 
 to nothing but a few arrests and a few not heavy sen- 
 tences. Among those tried in London on charges of sedi- 
 tion merely was Mr. Ernest Jones, who was sentenced to 
 two years' imprisonment. Mr. Jones has been already 
 spoken of as a man of position and of high culture; a
 
 378 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 poet whose verses sometimes might almost claim for their 
 author the possession of genius. He was an orator whose 
 speeches then and after obtained the enthusiastic admira- 
 tion of John Bright. He belonged rather to the school of 
 revolutionists which established itself as Young Ireland, 
 than to the class of the poor Fussells and Cuffeys and 
 uneducated working-men who made up the foremost ranks 
 of the aggressive Chartist movement in its later period. 
 He might have had a brilliant and a useful career. He out- 
 lived the Chartist era ; lived to return to peaceful agita- 
 tion, to hold public controversy with the eccentric and 
 clever Professor Blackie, of Edinburgh, on the relative 
 advantages of republicanism and monarchy, and to stand 
 for a Parliamentary borough at the general election of 
 1868; and then his career was closed by death. The close 
 was sadly premature even then. He had plunged irnma- 
 turely into politics, and although a whole generation had 
 passed away since his debut, he was but a young man com- 
 paratively when the last scene came. 
 
 Here comes, not inappropriately, to an end the history 
 of English Chartism. It died of publicity ; of exposure 
 to the air ; of the Anti-Corn-law League ; of the evident 
 tendency of the time to settle all questions by reason, 
 argument, and majorities; of growing education; of a 
 strengthening sense of duty among all the more influen- 
 tial classes. When Sir John Campbell spoke its obituary 
 years before, as we have seen, he treated it as simply a 
 monster killed by the just severity of the law. Ten years' 
 experience taught the English public to be wiser than 
 Sir John Campbell. Chartism did not die of its own ex- 
 cesses ; it became an anachronism ; no one wanted it any 
 more. All that was sound in its claims asserted itself, 
 and was in time conceded. But its active or aggressive 
 influence ceased with 1848. The history of the reign of 
 Queen Victoria has not any further to concern itself about
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 379 
 
 Chartism. Not since that year has there been serious 
 talk or thought of any agitation asserting its claims by the 
 use or even the display of armed force in England. 
 
 The spirit of the time had, meanwhile, made itself felt 
 in a different way in Ireland. For some months before 
 the beginning of the year the Young Ireland party had 
 been established as a rival association to the Repealers 
 who still believed in the policy of O'Connell. It was in- 
 evitable that O'Connell's agitation should beget some such 
 movement. The great agitator had brought the tempera- 
 ment of the younger men of his party up to a fever 
 heat, and it was out of the question that all that heat 
 should subside in the veins of young collegians and school- 
 boys at the precise moment when the leader found that 
 he had been going too far, and gave the word for peace 
 and retreat. The influence of O'Connell had been waning 
 for a time before his death. It was a personal influence 
 depending on his eloquence and his power, and these of 
 course had gone down with his personal decay. The 
 Nation newspaper, which was conducted and written for 
 by some rising young men of high culture and remarkable 
 talent, had long been writing in a style of romantic and 
 sentimental nationalism which could hardly give much 
 satisfaction to or derive much satisfaction from the some- 
 what cunning and trickish agitation which O'Connell had 
 set going. The Nation and the clever youths who wrote 
 for it were all for nationalism of the Hellenic or French 
 type, and were disposed to laugh at constitutional agita- 
 tion, and to chafe against the influence of the priests. 
 The famine had created an immense amount of unreason- 
 able but certainly not unnatural indignation against the 
 Government, who were accused of having paltered with 
 the agony and danger of the time, and having clung to 
 the letter of the doctrines of political economy when death 
 was invading Ireland in full force. The Young Ireland
 
 380 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 party had received a new support by the adhesion of Mr. 
 William Smith O'Brien to their ranks. Mr. O'Brien was 
 a man of considerable influence in Ireland. He had large 
 property and high rank. He was connected with or re- 
 lated to many aristocratic families. His brother was Lord 
 Inchiquin ; the title of the marquisate of Thomond was 
 in the family. He was undoubtedly descended from the 
 famous Irish hero and king, Brian Boru, and was almost 
 inordinately proud of his claims of long descent. He had 
 the highest personal character and the finest sense of 
 honor ; but his capacity for leadership of any movement 
 was very slender. A poor speaker, with little more than 
 an ordinary country gentleman's share of intellect, O'Brien 
 was a well-meaning but weak and vain man, whose head 
 at last became almost turned by the homage which his 
 followers and the Irish people generally paid to him. He 
 was, in short, a sort of Lafayette manque ; under the hap- 
 piest auspices he could never have been more than a suc- 
 cessful Lafayette. But his adhesion to the cause of Young 
 Ireland gave the movement a decided impulse. His rank, 
 his legendary descent, his undoubted chivalry of charac- 
 ter and purity of purpose, lent a romantic interest to his 
 appearance as the recognized leader, or at least the figure- 
 head, of the Young Irelanders. 
 
 Smith O'Brien was a man of more mature years than 
 most of his companions in the movement. He was some 
 forty-three or four years of age when he took the leader- 
 ship of the movement. Thomas Francis Meagher, the most 
 brilliant orator of the party, a man who under other con- 
 ditions might have risen to great distinction in public life, 
 was then only about two or three and twenty. Mitchel 
 and Duff y, who were regarded as elders among the Young 
 Irelanders, were perhaps each some thirty years of age. 
 There were many men, more or less prominent in the 
 movement, who were still younger than Meagher. One
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 381 
 
 of these, who afterward rose to some distinction in 
 America, and is long since dead, wrote a poem about the 
 time when the Young Ireland movement was at its height, 
 in which he commemorated sadly his attainment of his 
 eighteenth year, and deplored that, at an age when Chat- 
 terton was mighty and Keats had glimpses into spirit- 
 land the age of eighteen, to wit he, this young Irish 
 patriot, had yet accomplished nothing for his native 
 country. Most of his companions sympathized fully with 
 him, and thought his impatience natural and reasonable. 
 The young Ireland agitation was at first a sort of college 
 debating society movement, and it never became really 
 national. It was composed for the most part of young 
 journalists, young scholars, amateur litterateurs, poets, 
 en hcrbe, orators moulded on the finest patterns of Athens 
 and the French Revolution, and aspiring youths of the 
 Cherubino time of life, who were ambitious of distinction 
 as heroes in the eyes of young ladies. Among the recog- 
 nized leaders of the party there was hardly one in want 
 of money. Some of them were young men of fortune, or 
 at least the sons of wealthy parents. Not many of the 
 dangerous revolutionary elements were to be found among 
 these clever, respectable, and precocious youths. The 
 Young Ireland movement was as absolutely unlike the 
 Chartist movement in England as any political agitation 
 could be unlike another. Unreal and unlucky as the 
 Chartist movement proved to be, its ranks were recruited 
 by genuine passion and genuine misery. 
 
 Before the death of O'Connell the formal secession of 
 the Young Ireland party from the regular Repealers had 
 taken place. It arose out of an attempt of O'Connell to 
 force upon the whole body a declaration condemning the 
 use of physical force of the sword, as it was grandiosely 
 called in any patriotic movement whatever. It was in 
 itself a sign of O'Connell's failing powers and judgment
 
 382 A UISTOllY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 that he expected to get a body of men about the age of 
 Meagher to make a formal declaration against the weapon 
 of Leonidas and Miltiades, and all the other heroes dear to 
 classically-instructed youth. Meagher declaimed against 
 the idea in a burst of poetic rhetoric which made his fol- 
 lowers believe that a new Grattan of bolder style was 
 coming up to recall the manhood of Ireland that had been 
 banished by the agitation of O'Connell and the priests. " I 
 am not one of these tame moralists," the young orator ex- 
 claimed, " who say that liberty is not worth one drop of 
 blood. . . . Against this miserable maxim the noblest 
 virtue that has saved and sanctified humanity appears in 
 judgment. From the blue waters of the Bay of Salamis ; 
 from the valley over which the sun stood still and lit the 
 Israelite to victory ; from the cathedral in which the sword 
 of Poland has been sheathed in the shroud of Kosciusko ; 
 from the convent of St. Isidore, where the fiery hand that 
 rent the ensign of St. George upon the plains of Ulster 
 has mouldered into dust ; from the sands of the desert, 
 where the wild genius of the Algerine so long has scared 
 the eagle of the Pyrenees ; from the ducal palace in this 
 kingdom, where the memory of the gallant and seditious 
 Geraldine enhances more than royal favor the splendor of 
 his race ; from the solitary grave within this mute city 
 which a dying bequest has left without an epitaph oh ! 
 from every spot where heroism has had a sacrifice or a 
 triumph, a voice breaks in upon the cringing crowd that 
 cherishes this maxim, crying, Away with it away with 
 it!" 
 
 The reader will probably think that a generation of 
 young men might have enjoyed as much as they could 
 get of this sparkling declamation without much harm 
 being done thereby to the cause of order. Only a crowd 
 of well-educated young Irishmen fresh from college, and 
 with the teaching of their country's history which the
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 383 
 
 Nation was pouring out weekly in prose and poetry, could 
 possibly have understood all its historical allusions. 
 No harm, indeed, would have come of this graceful and 
 poetic movement were it not for events which the Young 
 Ireland party had no share in bringing about. 
 
 The Continental revolutions of the year 1848 suddenly 
 converted the movement from a literary and poetical 
 organization into a rebellious conspiracy. The fever of 
 that wild epoch spread itself at once over Ireland. When 
 crowns were going down everywhere, what wonder if 
 Hellenic Young Irelandism believed that the moment had 
 come when the crown of the Saxon invader too was des- 
 tined to fall ? The French Revolution and the flight of 
 Louis Philippe set Ireland in a rapture of hope and rebel- 
 lious joy. Lamartine became the hero of the hour. A 
 copy of his showy, superficial " Girondists " was in the 
 hand of every true Young Irelander. Meagher was at 
 once declared to be the Vergniaud of the Irish revolution. 
 Smith O'Brien was called upon to become its Lafayette. 
 A deputation of Young Irelanders, with O'Brien and 
 Meagher at their head, waited upon Lamartine, and were 
 received by him with a cool good-sense which made Eng- 
 lishmen greatly respect his judgment and prudence, but 
 which much disconcerted the hopes of the Young Ire- 
 landers. Many of these latter appear to have taken in 
 their most literal sense some words of Lamartine's about 
 the sympathy of the new French Republic with the strug- 
 gles of oppressed nationalities, and to have fancied that 
 the Republic would seriously consider the propriety of 
 going to war with England at the request of a few young 
 men from Ireland, headed by a country gentleman and 
 member of Parliament. In the mean time a fresh and a 
 stronger influence than that of O'Brien or Meagher had 
 arisen in Young Irelandism. Young Ireland itself now 
 split into two sections, one for immediate action, the other
 
 384 A HISTORY OF (B OWN TIMES. 
 
 for caution and delay. The party of action acknowledged 
 the leadership of John Mitchel. The organ of this section 
 was the newspaper started by Mitchel in opposition to 
 the Nation, which had grown too slow for him. The new 
 journal was called the United Irishman, and in a short 
 time it had completely distanced the Nation in popularity 
 and in circulation. The deliberate policy of the United 
 Irishman was to force the hand first of the Government 
 and then of the Irish people. Mitchel had made up his 
 mind so to rouse the passion of the people as to compel 
 the Government to take steps for the prevention of rebel- 
 lion by the arrest of some of the leaders. Then Mitchel 
 calculated upon the populace rising to defend or rescue 
 their heroes and then the game would be afoot ; Ireland 
 would be entered in rebellion ; and the rest would be for 
 fate to decide. 
 
 This looks now a very wild and hopeless scheme. So, 
 of course, it proved itself to be. But it did not appear so 
 hopeless at the time, even to cool heads. At least it may 
 be called the only scheme which had the slightest chance 
 of success ; we do not say of success in establishing the 
 independence of Ireland, which Mitchel sought for, but in 
 setting a genuine rebellion afoot. Mitchel was the one 
 formidable man among the rebels of '48. He was the 
 one man who distinctly knew what he wanted, and was 
 prepared to run- any risk to get it. He was cast in the 
 very mould of the genuine revolutionist, and under dif- 
 ferent circumstances might have played a formidable 
 part. He came from the northern part of the island, and 
 was a Protestant Dissenter. It is a fact worthy of note 
 that all the really formidable rebels Ireland has produced 
 in modern times, from Wolfe Tone to Mitchel, have been 
 Protestants. Mitchel was a man of great literary talent ; 
 indeed a man of something like genius. He wrote a clear, 
 bold, incisive prose, keen in its scorn and satire, going
 
 CHARTISM AN: YOUNG IEELAND. 385 
 
 directly to the heart of its purpose. As mere prose, 
 some of it is worth reading even to-day for its cutting force 
 and pitiless irony. Mitchel issued in his paper week after 
 week a challenge to the Government to prosecute him. 
 He poured out the most fiery sedition, and used every incen- 
 tive that words could supply to rouse a hot-headed people 
 to arms, or an impatient Government to some act of severe 
 repression. Mitchel was quite ready to make a sacrifice of 
 himself if it were necessary. It is possible enough that he 
 had persuaded himself into the belief that a rising in Ireland 
 against the Government might be successful. But there 
 is good reason to think that he would have been quite 
 satisfied if he could have stirred up by any process a gen- 
 uine and sanguinary insurrection, which would have read 
 well in the papers, and redeemed the Irish Nationalists 
 from what he considered the disgrace of never having 
 shown that they knew how to die for their cause. 
 He kept on urging the people to prepare for warlike 
 effort, and every week's United Irishman contained long 
 descriptions of how to make pikes and how to use them ; 
 how to cast bullets, how to make the streets as danger- 
 ous for the hoofs of cavalry horses as Bruce made the 
 field of Bannockburn. Some of the recipes, if we may 
 call them so, were of a peculiarly ferocious kind. The 
 use of vitriol was recommended among other destructive 
 agencies. A feeling of detestation was not unnaturally 
 aroused against Mitchel, even in the minds of many who 
 sympathized with his general opinions ; and those whom 
 we may call the Girondists of the party somewhat shrank 
 from him, and would gladly have been rid of him. It is 
 true that the most ferocious of these vitriolic articles 
 were not written by him ; nor did he know of the famous 
 recommendation about the throwing of vitriol until it ap- 
 peared in print. He was, however, justly and properly 
 as well as technically responsible for all that appeared in 
 
 25
 
 386 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 a paper started with such a purpose as that of the United 
 Irishman, and it is not even certain that he would have 
 disapproved of the vitriol-throwing recommendation if he 
 had known of it in time. He never disavowed it, nor 
 took any pains to show that it was not his own. The 
 fact that he was not its author is, therefore, only men- 
 tioned here as a matter more or less interesting, and not 
 at all as any excuse for MitchePs general style of news- 
 paper war-making. He was a fanatic, clever and fearless ; 
 he would neither have asked quarter nor given it ; and, 
 undoubtedly, if Ireland had had many men of his desper- 
 ate resolve she would have been plunged into a bloody, 
 an obstinate, and a disastrous contest against the strength 
 of the British Government. 
 
 In the mean time th fit Government had to do something. 
 The Lord-lieutenant could not go on forever allowing a 
 newspaper to scream out appeals to rebellion, and to 
 publish every week minute descriptions of the easiest and 
 quickest way of killing off English soldiers. The existing 
 laws were not strong enough to deal with Mitchel and to 
 suppress his paper. It would have been of little account 
 to proceed against him under the ordinary laws which 
 condemned seditious speaking or writing. Prosecutions 
 were, in fact, set on foot against O'Brien, Meagher, and 
 Mitchel himself for ordinary offences of that kind ; but 
 the accused men got bail, and went on meantime speak- 
 ing and writing as before, and when the cases came to be 
 tried by a jury the Government failed to obtain a convic- 
 tion. The Government, therefore, brought in a bill for 
 the better security of the Crown and Government, making 
 all written incitement to insurrection or resistance to the 
 law felony, punishable with transportation. This meas- 
 ure was passed rapidly through all its stages. It en- 
 abled the Government to suppress newspapers like the 
 United Irishman, and to keep in prison without bail,
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 387 
 
 while awaiting trial, any one charged with an offence 
 under the new Act. Mitchel soon gave the authorities an 
 opportunity of testing the efficacy of the Act in his per- 
 son. He repeated his incitements to insurrection, was 
 arrested and thrown into prison. The climax of the ex- 
 citement in Ireland was reached when Mitchel's trial 
 came on. There can be little doubt that he was filled 
 with a strong hope that his followers would attempt to 
 rescue him. He wrote from his cell that he could hear 
 around the walls of his prison every night the tramp of 
 hundreds of sympathizers, "felons in heart and soul." 
 The Government, for their part, were in full expectation 
 that some sort of rising would take place. For the time, 
 Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and all the other Young Ire- 
 landers were thrown into the shade, and the eyes of the 
 whole country were turned upon Mitchel's cell. Had 
 there been another Mitchel out-of-doors, as fearless and 
 reckless as the Mitchel in the prison, a sanguinary out- 
 break would probably have taken place. But the leaders 
 of the movement outside were by no means clear in their 
 own minds as to the course they ought to pursue. Many 
 of them were well satisfied of the hopelessness and folly 
 of any rebellious movement, and nearly all were quite 
 aware that, in any case, the country just then was wholly 
 unprepared for anything of the kind. Not a few had a 
 shrewd suspicion that the movement never had taken any 
 real hold on the heart of the country. Some were jealous 
 of Mitchel's sudden popularity, and in their secret hearts 
 were disposed to curse him for the trouble he had brought 
 on them. But they could not attempt to give open utter- 
 ance to such a sentiment. Mitchel's boldness and resolve 
 had placed them at a sad disadvantage. He had that 
 superiority of influence over them that downright deter- 
 mination always gives a man over colleagues who do not 
 quite know what they would have. One thing, however,
 
 388 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 they could do ; and that they did. They discouraged any 
 idea of an attempt to rescue Mitchel. His trial came on. 
 He was found guilty. He made a short but powerful and 
 impassioned speech from the dock ; he was sentenced to 
 fourteen years' transportation; he was hurried under 
 an escort of cavalry through the streets of Dublin, put 
 on board a ship of war, and in a few hours was on his 
 way to Bermuda. Dublin remained perfectly quiet ; the 
 country outside hardly knew what was happening until 
 Mitchel was well on his way, and far-seeing persons 
 smiled to themselves and said the danger was all over. 
 
 So, indeed, it proved to be. The remainder of the pro- 
 ceedings partook rather of the nature of burlesque. The 
 Young Ireland leaders became more demonstrative than 
 ever. The Nation newspaper now went in openly for 
 rebellion, but rebellion at some unnamed tune, and when 
 Ireland should be ready to meet the Saxon. It seemed to 
 be assumed that the Saxon, with a characteristic love of 
 fair-play, would let his foes make all the preparations they 
 pleased without any interference, and that when they an- 
 nounced themselves ready, then, but not until then, would 
 he come forth to fight with them. Smith O'Brien went 
 about the country holding reviews of the " Confederates," 
 as the Young Irelanders called themselves. The Govern- 
 ment, however, showed a contempt for the rules of fair- 
 play, suspended the Habeas Corpus Act hi Ireland, and 
 issued warrants for the arrest of Smith O'Brien, Meagher, 
 and other Confederate leaders. The Young Irelanders 
 received the news of this unchivalric proceeding with an 
 outburst of anger and surprise which was evidently gen- 
 uine. They had clearly made up their minds that they 
 were to go on playing at preparation for rebellion as long 
 as they liked to keep up the game. They were completely 
 puzzled by the new condition of things. It was not very 
 clear what Leonidas or Vergniaud would have done under
 
 CHAETISM AND YOUNG IEELANJ). 389 
 
 such circumstances ; it was certain that if they were all 
 arrested the country would not stir hand or foot on their 
 behalf. Some of the principal leaders, therefore Smith 
 O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, and others left Dublin and 
 went down into the country. It is not certain even yet 
 whether they had any clear purpose of rebellion at first. 
 It seems probable that they thought of evading arrest for 
 awhile, and trying meantime if the country was ready to 
 follow them into an armed movement. They held a series 
 of gatherings which might be described as meetings of agi- 
 tators, or marshallings of rebels, according as one was 
 pleased to interpret their purpose. But this sort of thing 
 very soon drifted into rebellion. The principal body of the 
 followers of Smith O'Brien came into collision with the 
 police at a place called Ballingarry, in Tipperary. They 
 attacked a small force of police, who took refuge in the 
 cottage of a poor widow named Cormack. The police held 
 the house as a besieged fort, and the rebels attacked them 
 from the famous cabbage-garden outside. The police fired 
 a few volleys. The rebels fired, with what wretched 
 muskets and rifles they possessed, but without harming a 
 single policeman. After a few of them had been killed or 
 wounded it never was perfectly certain that any were 
 actually killed the rebel army dispersed, and the rebellion 
 was all over. In a few days after, poor Smith O'Brien 
 was taken quietly at the railway station in Thurles, Tip- 
 perary. He was calmly buying a ticket for Limerick when 
 he was recognized. He made no resistance whatever, and 
 seemed to regard the whole mummery as at an end. He 
 accepted his fate with the composure of a gentleman, and, 
 indeed, in all the part which was left for him to play he 
 bore himself with dignity. It is but justice to an unfortu- 
 nate gentleman to say that some reports which were rather 
 ignobly set abroad about his having showed a lack of per- 
 sonal courage in the Ballingarry affray were, as all will
 
 390 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 readily believe, quite untrue. Some of the police deposed 
 that during the fight, if fight it could be called, poor 
 O'Brien exposed his life with entire recklessness. One 
 policeman said he could have shot him easily at several 
 periods of the little drama, but he felt reluctant to be the 
 slayer of the misguided descendant of the Irish kings. 
 It af terward appeared, also, that any little chance of carry- 
 ing on any manner of rebellion was put a stop toby Smith 
 O'Brien's own resolution that his rebels must not seize 
 the private property of any one. He insisted that his 
 rebellion must pay its way, and the funds were soon out. 
 The Confederate leader woke from a dream when he saw 
 his followers dispersing after the first volley or two from 
 the police. From that moment he behaved like a dignified 
 gentleman, equal to the fate he had brought upon him. 
 
 Meagher and two of his companions were arrested a few 
 days after, as they were wandering hopelessly and aim- 
 lessly through the mountains of Tipperary. The prison- 
 ers were brought for trial before a special commission 
 held at Clonmel, in Tipperary, in the following September. 
 Smith O'Brien was the first put on trial, and he was 
 found guilty. He said a few words with grave and digni- 
 fied composure, simply declaring that he had endeavored 
 to do his duty to his native country, and that he was 
 prepared to abide the consequences. He was sentenced 
 to death after the old form in cases of high-treason to 
 be hanged, beheaded, and quartered. Meagher was after- 
 ward found guilty. Great commiseration was felt for him. 
 His youth and his eloquence made all men and women 
 pity him. His father was a wealthy man who had had a 
 respected career in Parliament; and there had seemed 
 at one time to be a bright and happy life before young 
 Meagher. The short address in which Meagher vindicated 
 his actions, when called upon to show cause why sentence 
 of death should not be passed upon him, was full of manly
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 391 
 
 and pathetic eloquence. He had nothing, he said to re- 
 tract or ask pardon for. " I am not here to crave with 
 faltering lip the life I have consecrated to the independ- 
 ence of my country. ... I offer to my country, as some 
 proof of the sincerity with which I have thought and 
 spoken and struggled for her, the life of a young heart. 
 ... The history of Ireland explains my crime, and justi- 
 fies it. ... Even here, where the shadows of death sur- 
 round me, and from which I see my early grave opening 
 for me in no consecrated soil, the hope which beckoned 
 me forth on that perilous sea whereon I have been wrecked, 
 animates, consoles, enraptures me. No, I do not despair 
 of my poor old country, her peace, her liberty, her 
 glory. " 
 
 Meagher was sentenced to death with the same hideous 
 formularies as those which had been observed in the case 
 of Smith O'Brien. No one, however, really believed for a 
 moment that such a sentence was likely to be carried out 
 in the reign of Queen Victoria. The sentence of death was 
 changed into one of transportation for life. Nor was even 
 this carried out. The convicts were all sent to Australia, 
 and a few years after Mitchel contrived to make his es- 
 cape, followed by Meagher. The manner of escape was 
 at least of doubtful credit to the prisoners, for they were 
 placed under parole, and a very nice question was raised 
 as to whether they had not broken their parole by the 
 attempt to escape. It was a nice question, which in the 
 case of men of very delicate sense of honor could, one 
 would think, hardly have arisen at all. The point in 
 Mitchel's case was, that he actually went to the police 
 court within whose jurisdiction he was, formally and pub- 
 licly announced to the magistrate that he withdrew his 
 parole, and invited the magistrate to arrest him then and 
 there. But the magistrate was unprepared for his coming, 
 and was quite thrown off his guard. Mitchel was armed,
 
 392 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and so was a friend who accompanied him, and who had 
 planned and carried out the escape. They had horses 
 waiting at the door, and when they saw that the magis- 
 trate did not know what to do, they left the court, mounted 
 the horses, and rode away. It was contended by Mitchel 
 and by his companion, Mr. P. J. Smyth (afterward a dis- 
 tinguished member of Parliament), that they had fulfilled 
 all the conditions required by the parole, and had formally 
 and honorably withdrawn it. One is only surprised how 
 men of honor could thus puzzle and deceive themselves. 
 The understood condition of a parole is that a man who 
 intends to withdraw it shall place himself before his cap- 
 tors in exactly the same condition as he was when on his 
 pledged word of honor they allowed him a comparative 
 liberty. It is evident that a prisoner would never be 
 allowed to go at large on parole if he were to make use of 
 his liberty to arrange all the conditions of an escape, and, 
 when everything was ready, take his captors by surprise, 
 tell them he was no longer bound by the conditions of the 
 pledge, and that they might keep him if they could. This 
 was the view taken by Smith O'Brien, who declined to 
 have anything to do with any plot for escape while he was 
 on parole. The advisers of the Crown recommended 
 that a conditional pardon should be given to the gallant 
 and unfortunate gentleman who had behaved in so honor- 
 able a manner. Smith O'Brien received a pardon on con- 
 dition of his not returning to these islands ; but this con- 
 dition was withdrawn after a tiem, and he came back to 
 Ireland. He died quietly hi Wales, in 1864. Mitchel 
 settled for awhile in Richmond, Virginia, and became an 
 ardent advocate of slavery and an impassioned champion 
 of the Southern rebellion. He returned to the North after 
 the rebellion, and more lately came to Ireland, where, 
 owing to some defect in the criminal law, he could not be 
 arrested, his time of penal servitude having expired,
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 393 
 
 although he had not served it. He was still a hero with a 
 certain class of the people ; he was put up as a candidate 
 for an Irish county, and elected. He was not allowed to 
 enter the House of Commons, however ; the election was 
 declared void, and a new writ was issued. He was elected 
 again, and some turmoil was expected, when suddenly 
 Mitchel, who had long been in sinking health, was with- 
 drawn from the controversy by death. He should have 
 died before. The later years of his life were only an anti- 
 climax. His attitude in the dock in 1848 had something 
 of dignity and heroism in it, and even the stanchest 
 enemies of his cause admired him. He had undoubtedly 
 great literary ability, and if he had never reappeared in 
 politics the world would have thought that a really bril- 
 liant light had been prematurely extinguished. Meagher 
 served in the army of the Federal States when the war 
 broke out, and showed much of the soldier's spirit and 
 capacity. His end was premature and inglorious. He 
 fell from the deck of a steamer one night ; it was dark, 
 and there was a strong current running ; help came too 
 late. A false step, a dark night, and the muddy waters 
 of the Missouri closed the career that had opened with so 
 much promise of brightness. 
 
 Many of the conspicuous Young Irelanders rose to some 
 distinction. Charles Gavan Duffy, the editor of the Na- 
 tion, who was twice put on his trial after the failure of the 
 insurrection, but whom the jury would not on either occa- 
 sion convict, became a member of the House of Commons, 
 and afterwards emigrated to the colony of Victoria. He 
 rose to be Prime-minister there, and received knighthood 
 and a pension. Thomas Darcy M'Gee, another prominent 
 rebel, went to the United States, and thence to Canada, 
 where he rose to be a minister of the Crown. He was 
 one of the most loyal supporters of the British connec- 
 tion. His untimely death by the hand of an assassin was
 
 394 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 lamented in England as well as in the colony he had served 
 so well. Some of the young Irelanders remained in the 
 United States and won repute ; others returned to Eng- 
 land, and of these not a few entered the House of Com- 
 mons and were respected there, the follies of their youth 
 quite forgotten by their colleagues, even if not disowned 
 by themselves. A remarkable illustration of the spirit of 
 fairness that generally pervades the House of Commons 
 is found in the fact that every one there respected John 
 Martin, who to the day of his death avowed himself, in 
 Parliament and out of it, a consistent and unrepentant 
 opponent of British rule in Ireland. He was respected 
 because of the purity of his character and the transparent 
 sincerity of his purpose. Martin had been devoted to 
 Mitchel in his lifetime, and he died a few days after Mit- 
 chel's death. 
 
 The Young Ireland movement came and vanished like 
 a shadow. It never had any reality or substance in it. 
 It was a literary and poetic inspiration altogether. It 
 never took the slightest hold of the peasantry. It hardly 
 touched any men of mature years. It was a rather pretty 
 playing at rebellion. It was an imitation of the French 
 Revolution, as the Girondists imitated the patriots of 
 Greece and Rome. But it might, perhaps, have had a 
 chance of doing memorable mischief if the policy of the 
 one only man in the business who really was in earnest, 
 and was reckless, had been carried out. It is another 
 illustration of the fact, which O'Connell's movement had 
 exemplified before, that in Irish politics a climax cannot 
 be repeated or recalled. There is something fitful in all 
 Irish agitation. The national emotion can be wrought up 
 to a certain temperature; and if at that boiling-point 
 nothing is done, the heat suddenly goes out, and no blow- 
 ing of Cyclopean bellows can rekindle it. The Repeal 
 agitation was brought up to this point when the meeting
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND, 395 
 
 at Clontarf was convened ; the dispersal of the meeting 
 was the end of the whole agitation. With the Young 
 Ireland movement the trial of Mitchel formed the climax. 
 After that a wise legislator would have known that there 
 was nothing more to fear. Petion, the revolutionary 
 Mayor of Paris, knew that when it rained his partisans 
 could do nothing. There were, in 1848, observant Irish- 
 men who knew that after the Mitchel climax had been 
 reached the crowd would disperse, not to be collected 
 again for that time. 
 
 These two agitations, the Chartist and the Young Ire- 
 land, constituted what may be called our tribute to the 
 power of the insurrectionary spirit that was abroad over 
 Europe in 1848. In almost every other European State 
 revolution raised its head fiercely, and fought out its claims 
 in the very capital, under the eyes of bewildered royalty. 
 The whole of Italy, from the Alps to the Straits of Mes- 
 sina, and from Venice to Genoa, was thrown into convul- 
 sion ; " Our Italy " once again " shone o'er^ with civil 
 swords." There was insurrection in Berlin and in Vienna. 
 The Emperor had to fly from the latter city as the Pope 
 had fled from Rome. In Paris there came a Red Repub- 
 lican rising against a Republic that strove not to be Red, 
 and the rising was crushed by Cavaignac with a terrible 
 strenuousness that made some of the streets of Paris liter- 
 ally to run with blood. It was a grim foreshadowing of 
 the Commune of 1871. Another remarkable foreshadow- 
 ing of what was to come was seen in the fact that the 
 Prince Louis Napoleon, long an exile from France, had 
 been allowed to return to it, and at the close of the year, 
 in the passion for law and order at any price born of the 
 Red Republican excesses, had been elected President of 
 the French Republic. Hungary was in arms ; Spam was 
 in convulsion ; even Switzerland was not safe. Our con- 
 tribution to this general commotion was to be found in
 
 396 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the demonstration on Kennington Common, and the abor- 
 tive attempt at a rising near Ballingarry. There could 
 not possibly be a truer tribute to the solid strength of our 
 system. Not for one moment was the political constitu- 
 tion of England seriously endangered. Not for one hour 
 did the safety of our great communities require a call 
 upon the soldiers instead of upon the police. Not one 
 charge of cavalry was needed to put down the fiercest out- 
 burst of the rebellious spirit in England. Not one single 
 execution took place. The meaning of this is clear. It is 
 not that there were no grievances in our system calling 
 for redress. It is not that the existing institutions did 
 not bear heavily down on many classes. It is not that 
 our political or social system was so conspicuously better 
 than that of some European countries which were torn 
 and ploughed up by revolution. To imagine that we owed 
 our freedom from revolution to our freedom from serious 
 grievance, would be to misread altogether the lessons 
 offered to ^ur statesmen by that eventful year. We have 
 done the work of whole generations of Reformers in the 
 interval between this time and that. We have made 
 peaceful reforms, political, industrial, legal, since then, 
 which, if not to be had otherwise, would have justified 
 any appeal to revolution. There, however, we touch upon 
 the lesson of the time. Our political and constitutional 
 system rendered an appeal to force unnecessary and super- 
 fluous. No call to arms was needed to bring about any 
 reform that the common judgment of the country might 
 demand. Other peoples flew to arms because they were 
 driven by despair ; because there was no way in their 
 political constitution for the influence of public opinion 
 to make itself justly felt; because those who were in 
 power held it by the force of bayonets, and not of public 
 agreement. The results of the year were, on the whole, 
 unfavorable to popular liberty. The results of the year
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND 397 
 
 that followed were decidedly reactionary. The time had 
 not come, in 1848 or 1849, for Liberal principles to assert 
 themselves. Their "great deed," to quote some of the 
 words of our English poetess, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 
 " was too great." We in this country were saved alike 
 from the revolution and the reaction by the universal rec- 
 ognition of the fact, among all who gave themselves time 
 to think, that public opinion, being the ultimate ruling 
 power, was the only authority to which an appeal was 
 needed, and that in the end justice would be done. All 
 but the very wildest spirits could afford to wait ; and no 
 revolutionary movement is really dangerous which is only 
 the work of the wildest spirits.
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 2*66 
 
 PRINTED INU.S.A.
 
 A 000 882 643