univ . ill. i^iLrary 
 
 53 
 
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 UMVER8ITY OF ILUNOti 
 
 Number 57 . 
 
 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 
 
 Price, 20 Cts. 
 
 Mat 9, 1879. 
 
 Copyright, 1878, by Harpkr «fe Brothers. 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES 
 
 FROM THE ACCESSION OF QUEEN VICTORIA TO THE BERLIN CONGRESS. 
 
 BY 
 
 Justin McCarthy. 
 
 NUMBER I., CONTAINING VOLUMES I. AND II 
 
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 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE KING IS DEAD ! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN 
 
 Before half-past two o’clock on the more 
 ing of June 20, 1837, William IV. was lyinj 
 dead in Windsor Castle, while the messen 
 gers were already hurrying off to Reusing 
 ton Palace to bear to his successor her sum 
 mons to the throne. The illness of the Kin: 
 had been but short, and at one time, evei 
 after it had been pronounced alarming, i 
 seemed to take so hopeful a turn that th 
 physicians began to think it would pas 
 harmlessly away. But the King was an ok 
 man — was an old man even when he came t< 
 the throne, and when the dangerous symptom; 
 again exhibited themselves, their warnin' 
 was very soon followed by fulfilment. Thi 
 death of King William may be fairly re 
 garded as having closed an era of our his 
 tory. With him, we may believe, ended th< 
 reign of personal government in England 
 W ilham was indeed a constitutional king ii 
 more than mere name. He was to the bes 
 ot Ins lights a faithful representative of th< 
 constitutional principle. He was as far ir 
 advance of his two predecessors in under 
 standing and acceptance of the principle a: 
 ms successor has proved herself beyond him 
 Constitutional government has developed it 
 seit gaaually, as everything else has done ir 
 English politics. The written principle anc 
 code of its system it would be as vain to look 
 lor as tortile British Constitution itself. Kina 
 W imam still/ held to and exercised the rigid 
 o dismiss hit ministers when he pleased, and 
 
 I because he pleased. His father had held to 
 the right of maintaining favorite ministers in 
 defiance of repeated votes of the House of 
 Commons. 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 be- 
 lieve that the constitutional freedom of Eng- 
 land was outraged, or at least put in the ex- 
 tremest danger, if a sovereign were to dis- 
 miss a ministry at mere pleasure, or to retain 
 it in despite 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 undoubtedly characterized by some per- 
 sonal 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 them- 
 selves 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 Wil- 
 liam 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 dis- 
 
 obeyed orders, and at last it had been found 
 convenient to withdraw him from active ser- 
 vice altogether, and allow him to rise 
 through the successive ranks of his profes- 
 sion by a merely formal and technical pro- 
 cess 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 op- 
 position to some of the measures which were 
 especially desired by all the enlightenment of 
 the country. He was, for example, a deter- 
 mined opponent of the measures for the abo- 
 lition 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 prin- 
 ces which could not be heard in our day 
 even in the hottest debates of the more tur- 
 bulent House of Commons. But William 
 seems to have been one of the men whom in- 
 creased responsibility improves. He was far 
 better as a king than as a prince. He proved 
 that he was able at least to undestand that 
 first duty of a constitutional sovereign which, 
 to the last day of his active life, his father, 
 George III., never could be brought to com- 
 prehend — that the personal predilections and 
 prejudices 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 considera- 
 tion for the feelings of those around him. 
 When he awoke on June IS he remembered 
 
2 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 al- 
 ways sent him on that anniversary, 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 
 accordingly to take the wishes of his Maj- 
 esty. The Ring 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 w^y to those about 
 him, his direct language seeming 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 faithfid 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 coun- 
 try, whatever whimsical thoughts it may sug- 
 gest, 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 rea- 
 son that he leaves a blank not easily to be 
 filled. “ Young royal tarry-breeks” Wil- 
 liam had been jocularly 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 be- 
 come a stout sailor in whom a seafaring na- 
 tion might feel pride. He disappointed all 
 such expectations ; but it must be owned 
 that when responsibility came upon him he 
 disappointed expectation anew in a different 
 way, and was a better sovereign, more deserv- 
 ing of the complimentary title of patriot- 
 king, that even his friends would have ven- 
 tured to anticipate. 
 
 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 bestowed on the dead Bang 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 admira- 
 tion. 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 subordin- 
 ate his personal likings and dislikings to con- 
 siderations 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 pat- 
 riot-king. We have advanced a good deal 
 since that time, and we require somewhat 
 higher and more positive qualities in a sover- 
 eign 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 
 Ms early promise, 1 
 
 William IV. (third son of George III.) had 
 left no children 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 24, 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. 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. Prudence and economy were 
 inculcated on her as though she had been 
 born to be poor. One is not generally in- 
 clined to attach much importance to what 
 historians tell us of the education of contem- 
 porary 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 sensa- 
 tion. . . . 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 all rest their hopes on her.” 
 These words are an extract from a letter 
 written on July 4, 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- 
 possession. 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 re- 
 ceived the news of her accession to a throne. 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, 
 and the Lord Chamberlain, the Marquis of 
 Conyngham, left Windsor for Kensington 
 Palace, where the Princess Victoria had been 
 residing, 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 con- 
 siderable time before they could rouse the 
 porter at the gate ; they were again kept 
 waiting in the courtyard, then turned into 
 one of the lower rooms, where they seemed 
 forgotten by everybody. They rang the 
 bell, and desired that the attendant of the 
 Princess Victoria might be sent to inform 
 her Royal 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 nightgown and shawl, her night- 
 cap thrown off, and her hair falling upon 
 her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in 
 her eyes, but perfectly collected and digni- 
 fied.” The Prime Minister, Lord Mel- 
 bourne, was presently sent for, and a meet- 
 ing 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 councillors present. Mr. Gre- 
 ville, who was usually as little disposed to 
 record any enthusiastic admiration of royalty 
 and royal personages as Humboldt or Varn- 
 hagen von Ense could have been, has de- 
 scribed 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 Kensington 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 behavior, and certainly not 
 without justice. It was very extraordinary, 
 and something far beyond what was looked 
 for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, 
 and the ignorance of the world concerning 
 her, naturally excited intense curiosity 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, 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 with- 
 out any appearance of fear or embarrassment. 
 She was quite plainly dressed, and in mourn- 
 ing. 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 them- 
 selves ; 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 emotion which she 
 evinced. Her manner to them was very 
 graceful and engaging ; she kissed them 
 both, and rose from her chair and moved to- 
 wards 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 particular- 
 ly 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 occur- 
 red, and with perfect calmness and self-pos- 
 session, but at the same time with a graceful 
 modesty and propriety particularly interest- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 3 
 
 lie taken too implicitly except as to matters 
 which he actually saw, the young Queen had 
 been previously kept in such seclusion 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 acquaintance, none of the 
 attendants at Kensington, not even the 
 Duchess of Northumberland, her governess, 
 have any idea what she is or what she prom- 
 ises to be.” There was enough in the 
 court of the two sovereigns who went 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 tal- 
 ents ; William IV. was a Frederick William 
 of Prussia without the genius. The ordi- 
 nary manners of the society at the court of 
 either had a full flavor, to put it in the soft- 
 est way, such as a decent taproom would 
 hardly exhibit in a time like the present. No 
 one can read even the most favorable de- 
 scriptions given by contemporaries of the 
 manners of those two courts without feeling 
 grateful to the Dutchess of Kent for resolv- 
 ing that her daughter should see as little as 
 possible of their ways and their company. 
 
 It was remarked with some interest that 
 the Queen subscribed herself simply “ Vic- 
 toria,” and not, as had been expected, “ Al- 
 exandria Victoria.” Mr. Greville mentions 
 in his diary of December 24, 1819, that “ the 
 Duke of Kent gave the name of Alexandria 
 to his daughter in compliment to the Em- 
 peror 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 ambas- 
 sador, 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 Vic- 
 toria, around which no ungenial associations 
 of any kind hung at that time, and which can 
 have only grateful associations in the history 
 of this country 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 in the House of Lords when 
 she prorogued Parliament in person, and 
 even the gorgeous festival of her coronation, 
 which took place on June 28, in the follow- 
 ing year, 1838, may be passed over with a 
 mere word of record. It is worth mention- 
 ing, however, that at the coronation proces- 
 sion one of the most conspicuous figures was 
 that of Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, the 
 opponent of Moore and Wellington in the 
 Peninsula, the commander of the Old Guard 
 at Liitzen, and one of the strong arms of 
 Napoleon at Waterloo. Soult had been sent 
 as ambassador-extraordinary to represent the 
 French Government and people at the coro- 
 nation of Queen Victoria, and nothing could 
 exceed the enthusiasm with which he was re- 
 ceived by the crowds in the streets of Lon- 
 don 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 eyewitness, 
 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 suggested 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 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 de- 
 clared himself a warm champion of that alli- 
 ance. “ 1 fought the English down to Tou- 
 louse,” he said, “ when I fired the last can- 
 non in defence of the national independence ; 
 in the meantime I have been in London, and 
 France knows the reception which I had 
 there. The English themselves cried ‘ Vive 
 Soult !’ — they cried ‘ Soult for ever 1’ 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 parti- 
 san of the English alliance.” History is not 
 exclusively made by cabinets and professional 
 diplomatists. It is highly probable that the 
 cheers of a London crowd on the day of the 
 Queen’s coronation did something genuine 
 and substantial to restore the good feeling be- 
 tween this country and France, and efface 
 the bitter memories of Waterloo. 
 
 It is a fact well worthy of note, amid what- 
 ever records of court ceremonial and of polit- 
 ical change, that a few days after the acces- 
 sion of the Queen, Mr. Montefiore was elected 
 Sheriff of London, the first Jew who had 
 ever been chosen for that office ; aud that he 
 received knighthood at the hands of her 
 Majesty when she visited the City on the fol- 
 lowing Lord Mayor’s day. He was the first 
 Jew whom royalty had honored in this coun- 
 try 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 remarkable characteristics of the 
 reign of Queen Victoria, could hardly have 
 been more becomingly inaugurated than by 
 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 Kensing- 
 ton Palace was that of her eldest surviving 
 uncle, Ernest, Duke of Cumberland. The 
 fact may be taken as an excuse for introduc- 
 ing 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 togethei 
 in a manner seldom satisfactory to the Eng- 
 lish people. In the whole history of Eng- 
 land 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 instinctive 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 at- 
 tended the accession of Queen Victoria to the 
 throne ; some at least of these were associated 
 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 gen- 
 erations between this country and Hanover. 
 The connection was only personal, the suc- 
 cessive kings of England being also by suc- 
 cession 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 connec- 
 tion between England and Hanover had at 
 no time been a matter of gratification 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 inter- 
 ests 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, discov- 
 ered 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 de- 
 fects, and in the mouths of many his name 
 was the symbol of the darkest and fiercest 
 passions, and even crimes. Some of the pop- 
 ular 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, sel- 
 fish, overbearing, and quarrelsome. A man 
 with these qualities would usually be de- 
 scribed in fiction as at all events bluntly hon- 
 est and outspoken ; but the Duke of Cum- 
 berland was deceitful and treacherous. He 
 was outspoken in his abuse of those with 
 whom he quarrelled, and in his style of anec- 
 dote and jocular conversation ; but in no 
 other sense. The Duke of Wellington, 
 whom he hated, told Mr. Greville that he 
 once asked George IV. why the Duke of 
 Cumberland was so unpopular, 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 didoc 
 his accession to the throne of Hanover was 
 to abrogate the constitution which had beer, 
 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 ap- 
 pointed to office were more or less imbued 
 with these laudable principles. . . . But I 
 have cut the wings of this democracy.” II* 
 went indeed pretty vigorously to work, for 
 he dismissed from their offices seven of the 
 most distinguished professors of the Uni- 
 versity 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 cele- 
 brated historian and Shakespearian critic, at 
 that time professor of history and literature ; 
 Ewald, the orientalist and theologian ; Jacob 
 Grimm ; and Frederick Dahlmann, professor 
 of political science. Gervinus, Grimm, and 
 Dahlmann were not merely deprived of their 
 offices, but were actually sent into exile. 
 The exiles were accompanied across the fron- 
 tier by an immense concourse of students, 
 who gave them a triumphant Oeleit in true 
 student fashion, and converted what was 
 meant for degradation and punishment into 
 a procession of honor. The offence against 
 all rational principles of civil government in 
 
4 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 these arbitrary proceedings on the part of the 
 new King was the more flagrant because it 
 could nc t even be pretended that the pro- 
 fessors were interfering with political matters 
 outside tneir province, or that they were is- 
 suing manifestoes calculated to disturb the 
 public peace. The University of Gottingen 
 at that time sent a representative to the 
 Estates of the kingdom, and the protest to 
 which the seven professors attached their 
 names was addressed to the academical sen- 
 ate, and simply declared that they would take 
 no part in the ensuing election, because of 
 the suspension of the constitution. All this 
 led to somewhat serious disturbances in Han- 
 over, which it needed the employment of mil- 
 itary force to suppress. 
 
 It was felt in England that the mere depar- 
 ture 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 inconvenient, 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 hap- 
 pened 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 nothing 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 man- 
 ners 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 possibility of the 
 Tories attempting a revolution in favor of 
 the Hanoverian branch of the royal family ; 
 as 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- 
 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 cer- 
 tain Irish Roman Catholics respecting the 
 success of their warfare against Church and 
 State under the auspices 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 vis- 
 ionary 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 for- 
 feiture of the British crown.” On the other 
 hand, some of the Radical and more es- 
 pecially Irish papers talked in the plainest 
 terms of Tory plots to depose or even to as- 
 sassinate 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 
 ‘ ‘ live hundred thousand brave Irishmen to 
 defend the life, the honor, and the person 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 ab- 
 surd 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 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 big- 
 oted 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 Conserva- 
 tive dinner in Lancashire, a speaker de- 
 nounced the Queen and her ministers on the 
 same ground so vehemently, that the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief addressed a remonstrance to 
 some military officers who were among the 
 guests at this excited banquet, pointing out to 
 them the serious responsibility they incurred 
 by remaining in any assembly when such 
 language 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 feel- 
 ing. 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 everywhere, 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 un- 
 der which her Majesty came to the throne, 
 and partly for the mere purpose of illustrat- 
 ing the condition of the country and of polit- 
 ical education. There can be no doubt that 
 all over the country passion and ignorance 
 were at work to make the task of constitu- 
 tional 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 Sov- 
 ereign into some policy tending to the degra- 
 dation 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 in- 
 terests, position, and honor were absolutely 
 bound up with the success and the glory of 
 the State, the indignant and unreasoning To- 
 ries would be able to cite the very words of 
 so great and so sober-minded a statesman as 
 Sir Robert Peel, who in his famous speech 
 to the electors of Tamworth promised to res- 
 cue 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 succes- 
 sion, he might be invited with significant ex- 
 pression 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 consti- 
 tution of the country was then settled. We 
 know now very well that Sir Robert Peel and 
 
 Lord Durham were using the language of inno- 
 cent metaphor. Sir Robert Peel did not really 
 fear much the hoof of the ruthless democ- 
 racy ; Lord Durham did not actually expect 
 to be called upon at any terrible risk to him- 
 self to fight 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 suffi- 
 ciently impassioned words of responsible 
 statesmen like Sir Robert Peel and Lord Dur- 
 ham, 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 condition, and that it is easy to im- 
 agine a succession of events which might in 
 a moment have thrown it into utter confu- 
 sion At home and abroad things were look- 
 ing omnious 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 
 confidence in the virtue of monarchical rule. 
 The old plan of personal government had be- 
 come an anomaly, and the system of a gen- 
 uine 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 minis- 
 ters, 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 indispensable 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 ar- 
 rayed against each other. The cause of each 
 man’s class filled him with a positive fanat- 
 icism. He was not a mere selfish and grasp- 
 ing 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. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 STATESMEN AND PARTIES. 
 
 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, some- 
 what indolent nature ; fair and even gener- 
 ous towards his political opponents ; of the 
 most genial disposition towards his friends. 
 He was emphatically not a strong man. He 
 was not a man to make good grow where it 
 was not already growing, to adopt the expres- 
 sion 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 hus- 
 band was not a man to watch over any one’s 
 morals. He was a kindly counsellor to a 
 young Queen ; and happily 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, per- 
 sonal kindness and good nature apart, were 
 purely negative. He was unfortunately not 
 content even with the reputation for a sort of 
 indolent good nature wlficli he might have 
 well deserved. 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 5 
 
 one in whom no human affairs could call up 
 a gleam of interest. He became the fan- 
 faron 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 sensitive 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, study- 
 ing the question which he seemed to think 
 so unworthy of any attention ; and that so 
 far from being, like Horace, wholly absorb- 
 ed in his trifles, he was at very great pains to 
 keep up the appearance of a trifler. A bril- 
 liant critic has made a lively and amusing at- 
 tack on this alleged peculiarity. “ If the 
 truth must be told,” says Sydney Smith, 
 “ our viscount is somewhat of an impostor. 
 Everything about him seems to betoken care- 
 less 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 pastime ; 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 surprising, 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 politi- 
 cal roue. ’ ’ 
 
 Such a masquerading might perhaps have 
 been excusable, 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 
 well recognized strength and force of charac- 
 ter playing for the moment the part of an in- 
 dolent trifler. The contrast is charming in a 
 brilliant Prince Hal or such a Sardanapalus 
 as Byron drew. In our own time a consider- 
 able amount of the popularity of Lord Pal- 
 merston was inspired by the amusing antag- 
 onism betweenliis assumed levity and hiswell- 
 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 en- 
 counter the keen penetrating criticisms of 
 Lyndhurst or the vehement and remorseless 
 invectives of Brougham. Debates were then 
 conducted with a bitterness of personality un- 
 known, 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 at 
 tacks 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 Wellington 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 
 sovereign. “I have no small talk,” he 
 said, “and Peel has no manners.” It had 
 probably not occurred to the Duke of Wel- 
 lington to think that a woman could be capa- 
 ble of as sound a constitutional policy, and 
 could show as little regard for personal pre- 
 dilections in the business of government as 
 any man. All this, however, only tended to 
 embitter the feeling against the Whig Gov- 
 ernment. Lord Melbourne’s constant attend- 
 ance on the young Queen was regarded 
 
 with keen jealousy and dissatisfaction. Ac- 
 cording to some critics the Prime Minister 
 was endeavoring to inspire her with all his 
 own gay heedlessness of character and tem- 
 perament. According to others, Lord Mel- 
 bourne’s purpose was to make himself agree- 
 able and indispensable to the Queen ; to sur- 
 round her with his friends, relations, and 
 creatures, and thus to 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 po- 
 litical and personal heats and bitternesses of 
 the time. If Lord Melbourne had been a 
 French mayor of the palace, whose real ob- 
 ject 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 great- 
 er anger, fear, and jealousy. Since that time 
 we have all learned on the very best author- 
 ity that Lord Melbourne actually was him- 
 self the person to advise the Queen to show 
 some confidence in the Tories — to “ hold out 
 the olive branch a little to them,” as he ex- 
 pressed it. He does not appear to have been 
 greedy of power, or to have used any unfair 
 means of getting or keeping it. The charac- 
 ter of the young Sovereign seems to have im- 
 pressed him deeply. His real or affected 
 levity gave way to a genuine and lasting de- 
 sire to make her life as happy, and her reign 
 as successful, as he could. The Queen al- 
 ways 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 appearance under the influence 
 of one who either was or tried to be a mere 
 lounger. The deputations went away of- 
 fended and disgusted when Lord Melbourne 
 played with feathers or dandled sofa-cush- 
 ions in their presence. The almost fierce en- 
 ergy and strenuousness of a manlike Brough- 
 am showed in overwhelming contrast to the 
 happy-go-lucky airs and graces of the Pre- 
 mier. It is likely that there was quite as 
 much of affectation in the one case as in the 
 other ; but the affectation of a devouring zeal 
 for the public service told at least far better 
 than the other in the heat and stress of de- 
 bate. When the new reign began the Min- 
 istry 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 circumstances threw them 
 both for the moment into a chance alliance 
 against him. 
 
 One of these was Lord Brougham. No 
 stronger and stranger a figure than his is de- 
 scribed in the modern history of England. 
 He was gifted with the most varied and 
 striking talents, and with a capacity for labor 
 which sometimes 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 recrea- 
 tion to him. He might have been de- 
 scribed 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 under- 
 stood the business of the specialist better 
 than the specialist himself, liis vanity svas 
 overweening, and made him ridiculous almost 
 as often and as much as his genius made him 
 admired. The comic literature of more than a 
 generation had no subject more fruitful than 
 
 the vanity and restlessness of Lord Brough- 
 am. He was beyond doubt a great Parlia- 
 mentary orator. His style was too diffuse 
 and sometimes too uncouth to suit a day like 
 our own, when form counts for more than sub- 
 stance, 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 furi- 
 ous ; his gestures were singularly ungrace- 
 ful ; his manners were grotesque ; but of his 
 power over his hearers there could be no 
 doubt. That power remained with him un- 
 til 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 over- 
 whelming. He was not an orator of the 
 highest class : his speeches have not stood 
 the test of time. Apart from the circum- 
 stances 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 philosophi- 
 cal 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 an- 
 other 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-assert- 
 ing nature. He had during many years shown 
 himself an embodied influence, a living 
 speaking force in the promotion of great po- 
 litical 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 re- 
 form at home, of law reform, of popular ed- 
 ucation, of religious equality, he had worked 
 with indomitable zeal, with resistless pas- 
 sion, and with splendid success. But his 
 career passed through two remarkable chan- 
 ges 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 in 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 
 suddenly threw over Brougham. The com- 
 mon belief is that his eccentricities and his 
 almost savage temper made him intolerable 
 in a cabinet. It has been darkly hinted that 
 for a while 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 forgive 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 address- 
 
6 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ing 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 Par- 
 liamentary debaters of a time which has 
 known such men as Peel and Palmerston, 
 Gladstone and Disraeli, Bright and Cobden. 
 His style was singularly and even severely 
 clear, direct, and pure ; his manner was easy 
 and graceful ; his voice remarkably sweet 
 and strong. Nothing could have been in 
 greater contrast than his clear, correct, ner- 
 vous argument, and the impassioned invec- 
 tives and overwhelming strength of Brough- 
 am. Lyndhurst had, as has been said, an 
 immense capacity for work, when the work 
 had to be done ; but his natural tendency was 
 as distinctly towards indolence as Brough- 
 am’s was towards 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 w T ay ; 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 follow. As a keen 
 debater he was perhaps hardly ever excelled 
 in Parliament ; but he had neither the pas- 
 sion 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 de- 
 bater. 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 summoned at will 
 than those of the poet. 
 
 These two men were without any compari- 
 son 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 powder on the 
 bench of the Ministry. An able writer has 
 well remarked that the position of the Min- 
 istry in the House of Lords might be compar- 
 ed to that of a water-logged -wreck into which 
 enemies from all quarters are pouring their 
 broadsides. 
 
 The accession of the Queen made it necessary 
 that a new Parliament should be summoned. 
 The struggle between parties among the con- 
 stituencies was very animated, and was car- 
 ried on in some instances with a recourse 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. Somewhere about 
 this time, it may be remarked, the use of the 
 word “ Conservative” to describe the latter 
 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,” 
 come years before, he spoke of being de- 
 cidedly and conscientiously attached “ to 
 what is called the Tory, but which might 
 with more propriety be called the Conserva- 
 tive 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 be- 
 ginning to affect for their pai-ty. “ If that,” 
 he said, “ is the name that pisses them, if 
 they say that the old distinction of Whig and 
 Tory should no longer bo kept up. I am 
 ready, in opposition to their n- cue of Conser- 
 vative, to take the name of Reformer, and to 
 Stand by that opposition." 
 
 The Tories or Conservatives, then, had a 
 slight gain as the result of the appeal to the 
 country. The new Parliament on j 1 - as- 
 sembling seems to have gathered in the Com- 
 
 mons an unusually large number of gifted 
 and promising 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 
 historian of Greece, sat for the city of London. 
 The late Lord Lytton, then Mr. Edward Lyt- 
 ton Bulwer, had a seat, an advanced Radical 
 at that day. Mr. Disraeli came then into 
 Parliament for the first time. Charles Bul- 
 ler, full of high spirits, brilliant humor, and 
 the very inspiration of keen good sense, 
 seemed on the sure way to that career of re- 
 nown 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 moment 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 lite- 
 rary 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 Sec- 
 retary, hut 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 sur- 
 prise at the high opinion which persons who 
 knew Lord Palmerston intimately were 
 pleased to entertain as to his ability and his 
 capacity for work. Only those who knew 
 him very intimately indeed had any idea of 
 the capacity for governing Parliament and 
 the country which he was soon afterwards to 
 display. Sir Robert Peel was leader of the 
 Conservative party. Lord Stanley, the late 
 Lord Derby,' was still in the House of Com- 
 mons. He had not long before broken de- 
 finitively with the Whigs on the question of 
 the Irish ecclesiastical establishment, and had 
 passed over to that Conservative party of 
 which he afterwards became the most influ- 
 ential leader, and the most powerful Parlia- 
 mentary orator. O’Connell and Sheil repre- 
 sented the eloquence of the Irish national 
 party. Decidedly the House of Commons 
 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 mem- 
 bers of Parliament at that time, Mr. Cobden 
 and Mr. Bright. Mr. Cobden had come for- 
 ward as a candidate for the borough of 
 Stockport, but was not successful, aud 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 in the Parliament of 1837. 
 It is fair to say, therefore, that, except for 
 Cobden and Bright, the subsequent forty 
 years have added no first-class name to the 
 records of Parliamentary eloquence. 
 
 The Ministry' was not very strong in the 
 House of Commons. Its conditions, indeed, 
 hardly allowed it to feel itself strong even if it 
 had had more powerful representatives in 
 either house. Its adherents were but loosely 
 held together. The more ardent reformers 
 were disappointed with ministers ; the Free 
 Trade movement was rising into distinct bulk 
 and proportions, and threatened to be for- 
 midably 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 debat- 
 ing talent in the Commons any more than 
 in the Lords. Sir Robert Peel, the leader 
 of t he Opposition, was by far the mostpower- 
 ful man in the House of Common-. Add- 
 ed to his groat qualities as an administrator 
 and a Parliamentary debater, be had the vir- 
 tue, then very rare among Conservative states- 
 men, of being a sound and clear financier, 
 with a good grasp of the fundamental princi- 
 
 ples 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 ; lie threw out no genial glow to those 
 around him. He was by nature a reserved 
 and shy man, in whose manners 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 precipice 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 demonstrative- 
 ness 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 in- 
 fluence which broke the spell under which 
 his fine intellect seemed otherwise to lie im- 
 prisoned. 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 Commons, its ways 
 and its purposes alone. He went as near per- 
 haps to the rank of a great orator as any one 
 can go who is but little gifted with imagina- 
 tion. Oratory has been well described as the 
 fusion of reason and passion. Passion al- 
 ways carries something of the imaginative 
 along with it. Sir Robert Peel had little im- 
 agination, 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 il- 
 lustration drawn from hooks and from the 
 world of politics and commerce. He follow- 
 ed a difficult argument home to its utter con- 
 clusions ; and if it had in it any lurking al- 
 iacy he brought out the weakness into the 
 clearest light, often with a happy touch of 
 humor and quiet sarcasm. His speeches 
 might be described as the very perfection of 
 good sense and high principle clothed in the 
 most impressive language. But they were 
 something more peculiar than this, for they 
 were so constructed, in tlieir 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 inspiratior 
 of Parliament as the ballad-music of a coun 
 try tells of its scenery and its national sent! 
 ments. 
 
 Lord Stanley was a far more energetic 
 and impassioned speaker than Sir Rober: 
 Peel, and perhaps occasionally, in his late” 
 career, came now and then nearer to Iht 
 height of genuine oratory. But Lord Stan- 
 ley was little more than a splendid Parlia 
 mentary partisan, even when, long after 
 he was Prime Minister of England. He liac 
 very little indeed of that class of informa 
 tion which the modern world requires of its 
 statesmen and leaders. Of political econ- 
 omy, 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 merelj r 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 
 Creek and the Roman people, nor probably 
 did he at all appreciate the great difference 
 between the spirit of Roman and of Greek 
 civilization, lie had, in fact, what would 
 have been called at an earlier day an elegant 
 scholarship ; he had a considerable knowl- 
 edge of the politics of his time iu most Euro- 
 pean countries, an energetic intrepid spirit, 
 and with him, as Macaulay well said, the 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 7 
 
 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 dauntless 
 courage and confidence among his friends ; 
 for boundless self-conceit among his enemies. 
 Every one remembers Sydney Smith’s famous 
 illustrations of Lord John Russell’s unlim- 
 ited 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 political 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 im- 
 plores him not to “ think for an instant thy 
 country can spare such a light from her 
 darkening horizon as thou.” Later observ- 
 ers, 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 sar- 
 casm 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 
 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 re- 
 cesses of thought and of lore.” Allowing 
 for the exaggeration of friendship and poet- 
 ry, 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 swords- 
 manship 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 Government, 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 passion of actual warfare. 
 It has often happened that the two leading 
 opponents are men of intellectual and orator- 
 ical powers so fairly balanced that their fol- 
 lowers may well dispute among themselves 
 a3 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 many years Lord John Rus- 
 sell and Sir Robert Peel stood thus opposed. 
 They will often come into contrast and com- 
 parison 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 influence over the 
 House of Commons as that which his rival 
 long enjoyed. The heat of political passion af- 
 terwards induced a bitter critic to accuse Peel 
 of lack of originality 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 chil- 
 dren to suppose that nothing is original but 
 that which we make up, as the childish 
 phrase is, “out of our own heads.” Orig- 
 inality 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 statesmanship was in his 
 recognition that the time had come to put 
 into practical legislation the principles which 
 Cobden and Yilliers 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 faith- 
 fully to his creed ; he was one of its boldest 
 and keenest champions. He had great ad- 
 vantages 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 Parliament of Queen Victoria 
 assembled. He was still, in a manner, on 
 trial ; and even among his friends, perhaps 
 especially among his friends, there were whis- 
 pers that his confidence in himself was greater 
 than his capacity for leadership. 
 
 After the chiefs of Ministry and of Oppo- 
 sition, 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 
 foremost orators of the House at that time 
 was O’Connell’s impassioned lieutenant, 
 Richard Lalor Sheil. It is curious 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 Sheil’s eloquence in 
 terms of the highest praise, and disparages 
 Canning. It is but a short time since Mr. 
 Gladstone selected Sheil as one of three re- 
 markable illustrations of great success as a 
 speaker achieved in spite of serious defects 
 of voice and delivery ; the other two ex- 
 amples being Dr. Chalmers and Dr. New- 
 man. Mr. Gladstone described Sheil’s voice 
 as like nothing but the sound produced 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, “ 1 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 prepa- 
 ration, I believe, carried even to word3, with 
 a very vivid imagination and an enormous 
 power of language, ami 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 the v formed a great 
 Parliamentary picture ; and although it Is 
 row thirty-five years since I heard Mr. Sheil, 
 tny it 'ollection of him is just as vivid as if I 
 had b' cn listening to him to-day.” This 
 surely is a pi lure of a great orator, as Mr. 
 Gladstone say Sheil was. Nor is it easy to 
 understand how a man v. it bout being a great 
 orator could have persuaded two experts of 
 such very different schools, as Mr. Glad- 
 stone and Mr. Disraeli, that he deserved 
 such a name. Yet the after years have in » 
 
 curious but unmistakable way denied the 
 claims of Sheil. Perhaps it is because, if he 
 really was an orator, he was that and noth- 
 ing 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 repre- 
 sentative of England. He is worth mention- 
 ing 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 fami- 
 liar, and because his is one of the most bril- 
 liant illustrations of that career of Irish agita- 
 tor, which begins in stormy opposition to 
 English government, and subsides after a 
 while into meek recognition of its title and 
 adoption of its ministerial uniform. O’Con- 
 nell we have passed over for the present, be- 
 cause we shall hear of him again ; but of 
 Sheil it is not necessary that we should hear 
 any more. 
 
 This was evidently a remarkable Parlia- 
 ment, with Russell 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 comparatively new to public life, and Mr. 
 Disraeli to address the Commons for the first 
 time ; with Palmerston still unrecognized 
 and Stanley lately gone over to Conserva- 
 tism, itself the newest invented thing in 
 politics ; with Grote and Bulwer, and Joseph 
 Hume and Charles Buller ; and Ward and Vil- 
 liers, Sir Francis Burdett and Smith O’Brien, 
 and the Radical Alcibiades of Finsbury, 
 “ Tom” Duncombe. 
 
 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 
 20, 1837, and was to have been adjourned to 
 February 1, 1838 ; but the news which be- 
 gan to arrive from Canada was so alarming, 
 that the Ministry were compelled to change 
 their purpose and fix the reassembling of the 
 Houses for January 16. The disturbances 
 in Canada had already broken out into open 
 rebellion. 
 
 The condition of Canada was very peculiar. 
 Lower or Western 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 in many 
 of the towns of Lower Canada an old-fash- 
 ioned France, such as he had known other- 
 wise only in books that tell of France before 
 ’89. Nor is this only in small sequestered 
 towns and villages which the impulses of 
 modern 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 de- 
 scent, the visitor is more immediately con- 
 scious of the presence of what may be called 
 an old-fashioned Catholicism than he is ia 
 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 ig 
 further increased, the novelty of the sensa- 
 tions it produces in the visitor is made more 
 piquant, by the evidences he meets with every- 
 where, through its quaint and steepy streets, 
 and under its antiquated archways, of the ex- 
 istence of a society which has hardly in 
 France survived the Great Revolution. At 
 (he opening of Queen Victoria’s reign, the 
 laidiluted character of this French mediaeval- 
 ism was of course much more remarkable. 
 It would doubtless have exhibited itself 
 
8 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 quietly enough if it were absolutely undi- 
 luted. 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 commerce and 
 ambition, and desire for novelty and the ter- 
 ribly disturbing thing which unresting people 
 called progress, to rush on its wild path un- 
 heeded. But its neighbors and its newer citi- 
 zens were not disposed to allow Lower Can- 
 ada thus to rot itself in ease on the decaying 
 wharves of the St. Lawrence and the St. 
 Charles. In the large towns there were act- 
 ive traders from England and other coun- 
 tries, who were by no means content to put 
 up with old-world ways, and to let the mag- 
 nificent resources of the place run to waste. 
 Upper Canada, on the other hand, was all 
 new as to its population, and was full of the 
 modern desire for commercial activity. Up- 
 per 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 virtu- 
 ally 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, 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 possible a copy of 
 the institutions of England. When Canada 
 was ceded to England by France, as a con- 
 sequence of the victories of Wolfe, the pop- 
 ulation was nearly all in the lower province, 
 and therefore was nearly all of French origin. 
 Since the cession the growth of the popula- 
 tion of the other province had been surpris- 
 ingly rapid, and had been almost exclusively 
 the growth, as we have seen, of immigration 
 from Great Britain, one or two of the col- 
 onizing 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 
 appeared 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 devel- 
 oping 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 loy- 
 alty 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 government has all the difficulty 
 that the mother of a household has when, 
 with the best intentions and the most consci- 
 entious resolve to act impartially, she is call- 
 ed upon to manage her own children and the 
 children of her husband’s former marriage. 
 Every word she says, every resolve she is in- 
 duced to acknowledge, is liable to be re- 
 garded with jealousy and dissatisfaction on 
 the one side as well as on the other. “You 
 are doing everything to favor your own chil- 
 dren,” 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-see- 
 ing. 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, consisting 
 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 members 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 fruit- 
 ful source of disturbance aud ill-feeling. 
 
 When the two provinces were divided in 
 1791, the intention was that they should re- 
 main distinct in fact as well as in name. It 
 was hoped that Lower Canada would remain 
 altogether French, and that Upper Canada 
 would be exclusively 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 geogra- 
 phy. The one fact, that Upper Canada can 
 hardly be said to have any means of com- 
 munication with Europe and the whole East- 
 ern 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 instru- 
 ments 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 
 masters and patrons at home. The majority 
 in the legislative council constantly thwarted 
 the resolutions of the vast majority of the 
 popular assembly. Disputes arose as to the 
 voting of supplies. The Government re- 
 tained in their service officials whom the rep- 
 resentative assembly had condemned, and 
 insisted on the right to pay them their sala- 
 ries out of certain funds of the colony. The 
 representative assembly took to stopping the 
 supplies, and the Government claimed the 
 right to counteract this measure by appropri- 
 ating to the purpose such public moneys as 
 happened to be within their reach at the 
 time. The colony — for indeed on these sub- 
 jects 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 — de- 
 manded that the legislative council should be 
 made elective, and that the colonial govern- 
 ment 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 govern- 
 ment without the consent of the colonial rep- 
 resentation 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, aud whom we had taught to believe 
 in the representative form of government, 
 that their wishes would never count for any- 
 thing, 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 dis- 
 
 putes 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 report 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 sys- 
 tem 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 
 representative 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 governors ; intolerable composition of 
 the legislative council, which they insisted 
 ought to be elective ; illegal appropriation of 
 the public money ; and violent prorogation 
 of the provincial Parliament. 
 
 One of the leading men in the movement 
 which afterwards 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 hon- 
 orable character. He had represented Mon- 
 treal in the Representative Assembly of 
 Lower Canada, and he afterwards became 
 Speaker of the House. He made himself 
 leader of the movement to protest against the 
 policy of the governors, and that of the Gov- 
 ernment at home, by whom they were sus- 
 tained. 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 convening 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 in some 
 of these demonstrations ; Mr. Papineau him- 
 self was an officer of this force. Then the 
 governor issued warrants for the apprehen- 
 sion of many members of the popular As- 
 sembly on the charge of high treason. Some 
 of these at once left the country ; others 
 against whom warrants were issued were ar- 
 rested, and a sudden resistance was made by 
 their friends and supporters. Then, in the 
 manner familiar to all who have read any- 
 thing of the history of revolutionary move- 
 ments, the resistance to a capture of prison- 
 ers 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 sur- 
 prised, and the rebels obtained one or two 
 trifling advantages. But the commander-in- 
 chief at 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 somethin" 
 like desperation in one or two instances, and 
 there was, it must be said, a good deal of 
 blood shed. The disturbance, however, 
 after a while 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 dis- 
 posed 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 excitement kept 
 up from across the American frontier by 
 sympathizers with any republican movement ; 
 and there were some excitable persons in- 
 clined for revolutionary change in the prov- 
 ince itself whose zeal caught fire when the 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 9 
 
 flame broke out in Lower Canada. But it 
 seems to have been an exotic movement alto- 
 gether, 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 Fran- 
 cis, then Major, Head. He who had fought 
 at Waterloo, and seen much service besides, 
 was quietly performing the duties of Assist- 
 ant Poor Law Commissioner for the county 
 of Kent, when he was summoned, in 1835, 
 at a moment’s notice, to assume the gover- 
 norship of Upper Canada. When the rebel- 
 lion broke out in that province, Major Head 
 proved himself not merely equal to the oc- 
 casion, but boldly superior to it. He prompt- 
 ly 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 disturber to 
 think of shaking the loyalty of the province 
 under his control. He issued to rebellion in 
 
 f eneral a challenge not unlike that which 
 liakespeare’s Prince Harry offers to the 
 chiefs of the insurrection against Henry IV. 
 He invited it to come on and settle the con- 
 troversy 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 ex- 
 tinguished 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 in- 
 tervention of regular troops. The loyal col- 
 onists 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 impos- 
 ing. 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 as- 
 sert 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 Fran- 
 cis Head. It was suggested that if the fears 
 of many had been realized and the rebellion 
 had been aided by a large force of sympa- 
 thizers 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, cour- 
 age, and success were acknowledged by the 
 gift of a baronetcy ; and he obtained the ad- 
 miration not merely of those who approved 
 his policy, but even of many among those 
 who felt bound to condemn it. Perhaps it 
 may be mentioned that there were 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 
 commonplace and effective measures. 
 
 The news of the outbreaks m Canada cre- 
 ated a natural excitement in this country. 
 There was a very strong feeling 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 Ihe Parlia- 
 
 mentary 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 re- 
 marked that “ there was a Mr. Mackenzie as 
 there might be a Sir Robert Peel,” and cre- 
 ated some amusement by referring to the 
 declarations of Lord Chatham on the Amer- 
 ican Stamp Act, which he cited as the 
 opinions of " a Mr. Pitt.” Lord John Rus- 
 sell 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 rebellion, and to re- 
 model the constitution of both provinces. 
 The proposal met with a good deal of oppo- 
 sition at first on very different grounds. Mr. 
 Roebuck, who was then, as it happened, out 
 of Parliament, appeared as the agent and rep- 
 resentative of the province of Lower Canada, 
 and 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 Com- 
 mons, and then of the Lords, and opposed 
 the bill on the ground that it unjustly sus- 
 pended the constitution of Lower Canada in 
 consequence of disturbances provoked by the 
 intolerable oppression of the home Govern- 
 ment. 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, how- 
 ever, exceedingly argumentative and power- 
 ful 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 Government 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 commanding 
 ability and character to deal with the exist- 
 ing condition of things. There was an al- 
 most universal admission that the Govern- 
 ment 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 pol- 
 itics of a time which has even still some liv- 
 ing representatives. He belonged to one of 
 the oldest families in England. The Lamb- 
 tons had lived on their estate in the north, in 
 uninterrupted succession, since the Con- 
 quest. The male succession, it is stated, 
 never was interrupted since the twelfth cen- 
 tury. 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. Wil- 
 liam Henry Lambton, Lord Durham’s father, 
 was a staunch 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 regi- 
 
 ment of Hussars. 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 re- 
 former. 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 Parlia- 
 mentary 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 Dur- 
 ham became Lord Privy Seal. He is said to 
 have had an almost complete control over 
 Lord Grey. He had an impassioned and en- 
 ergetic nature, which sometimes drove him 
 into outbreaks of feeling which most of his 
 colleagues dreaded. Various highly colored 
 descriptions of stormy scenes between him 
 and his companions in office are given by 
 writers of the time. Lord Durham, his ene- 
 mies 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 in 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 oppo- 
 nents. He 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 teirible to the 
 stately Lord Grey, and to the easy-going col- 
 leagues who were by no means absolutely 
 eaten up by their zeal for reform. In the 
 powerful speech which he delivered in 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 le- 
 galized liberty. Lord Durham was especially 
 roused to anger by some observations made 
 in the debate of a previous night by the 
 Bishop of Exeter. He described the prelate’s 
 speech as an exhibition of “ coarse and viru- 
 lent invective, malignant and false insinua- 
 tion, the grossest perversions of historical 
 facts decked out with all the choicest flowers 
 of pamphleteering 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 he did not mean to defend his language 
 as the most elegant or graceful, but that it 
 exactly conveyed the ideas regarding the 
 bishop which he meant to express ; that he 
 believed the bishop’s speech to contain in- 
 sinuations 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. No one, 
 however, seemed disposed to encounter any 
 farther this impassioned adversary, and when 
 he had had his say, Lord Durham became 
 somewhat mollified, and endeavored to soft- 
 en the pain of the impression 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 for ever in the well known 
 picture by Lawrence.” 
 
 The whole of this incident, the fierce at- 
 tack and the sudden pathetic expression of 
 
10 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 commit- 
 tee was formed on Lord Durham’s sugges- 
 tion, consisting 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 in the programme of the Govern- 
 ment ; and it was indeed understood that at 
 one period of the discussions 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 carl. His in- 
 fluence over Lord Grey continued great, but 
 his differences of opinion with his former 
 colleagues — he had resigned his office — be- 
 came greater and greater every day. More 
 than once he had taken the public into his 
 confidence in his characteristic and heedless 
 way. He was sent on a mission to Russia, 
 perhaps to get him out of the way, and after- 
 wards he was made ambassador at the Rus- 
 sian court. In the interval between his mis- 
 sion and his formal appointment he had come 
 back to England and performed a series of 
 enterprises which in the homely and undig- 
 nified 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 
 W'ho thought the country had gone far 
 •enough, or much too far, in the recent polit- 
 ical 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 im- 
 pression, 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 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 jus- 
 tifying for ever 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 Eng- 
 land at that time to make his mission a suc- 
 cess — 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, waa 
 somewhat different from that which any one 
 expected. Lord Durham found out a new 
 alternative. 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 pol- 
 itics 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 
 curious 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 observers to have been as injuri- 
 ous to the colony as to the man. 
 
 Lord Durham arrived in Quebec at the 
 end of May, 1838. He at once issued a proc- 
 lamation, in style like that of a dictator. It 
 was not in any way unworthy of the occa- 
 sion, which especially called for the interven- 
 tion of a brave and enlightened dictatorship. 
 He declared that he would unsparingly pun- 
 ish any 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 con- 
 ditions of civilization. Unfortunately he had 
 hardly entered on his work of dictatorship 
 when he found that he was no longer a dic- 
 tator. In the passing of the Canada Bill 
 through Parliament the powers which he un- 
 derstood were to be conferred upon him had 
 been considerably reduced. Lord Durham 
 went to work, however, as if he were still in- 
 vested with absolute authority over all the laws 
 and conditions of the colony. A very Caesar 
 laying down the lines for the future govern- 
 ment 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 opportu- 
 nity of attack on himself and on the Govern- 
 ment to the enemies of both at home. Lord 
 Durham had hardly begun his work of re- 
 construction 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 secur- 
 ity of Lower Canada. He proclaimed a very 
 liberal amnesty, to which, however, there 
 were certain exceptions. The leaders of the 
 rebellious movement, Papineau and others, 
 who had escaped from the colony, were ex- 
 cluded 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 ac- 
 knowledgment 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 return to the colony 
 without permission, he proclaimed that they 
 should be deemed guilty of high treason and 
 condemned to suffer death. It needs no 
 learned legal argument to prove that this was 
 a proceeding not to be justified 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 col- 
 ony were to be liable to the punishment of 
 death. It is not a capital ‘offence by any of 
 the laws of England for even a transported 
 convict to break bounds and return to his 
 home. Ail 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 mo- 
 
 | ment supposed that he was acting in accord- 
 ance 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 it- 
 self ; 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 acquit- 
 ted. The authority of the Crown would 
 have been brought into greater contempt 
 than ever. So little faith had the colonists in 
 the impartial working of the ordinary law 
 in the governor’s hands, that the universal 
 impression in Lower Canada 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 amazement 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 ad- 
 mitted their connection with the rebellion, 
 and to prevent by the threat of a severe pen- 
 alty 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 excessive use 
 of power. The act which appointed him pre- 
 scribed that he should be advised by a coun- 
 cil, 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 predecessor, Sir J. Col- 
 borne ; a sort of provisional government put 
 together to supply for the moment the place 
 of the suspended political constitution. 
 This council Lord Durham set aside alto- 
 gether, and substituted for it one of his own 
 making, and composed chiefly of his secre- 
 taries 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 resolv- 
 ed to play the game which he honestly be- 
 lieved lie could play better than any one else. 
 He had in his mind, partly from the inspira- 
 tion of the gifted and well-instructed men 
 who accompanied and advised him, a plan 
 which he was firmly convinced would be the 
 j salvation of the colony. Events have proved 
 | that he was right. His disposal of the pris- 
 ■ oners was only a clearing of the decks for 
 the great action of remodelling the colony. 
 He did not allow a form of law to stand be- 
 tween him and his purpose. Indeed, as we 
 have already said, he regarded himself as a 
 dictator sent out to reconstruct a whole sys- 
 tem 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 principles re- 
 maining in force where the whole constitu- 
 tion 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 
 representative 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 im- 
 petuous and impatient spirit than that of 
 Lord Durham might have found a way of 
 
beginning his great reforms without provok- 
 ing such a storm of hostile criticism. He 
 was, it must always be remembered, a dicta- 
 tor who only strove to use his powers for the 
 restoration of liberty and constitutional gov- 
 ernment. His mode of disposing of his pris- 
 oners 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 ex- 
 ile ; to remove them from the colony, but 
 nothing more. He lent the weight of this 
 authority to the colonial Act, which pre- 
 scribed 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 unmeasured criticism at home. If 
 Lord Durham had been guilty 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 pro- 
 mulgated an ordinance which would enable 
 him to hang men without any trial or form 
 of trial. None of his opponents seemed to re- 
 member that whether his disposal of the pris- 
 oners was right or wrong, it was only a small 
 and incidental part of a great policy cover- 
 ing the readjustment of the whole political 
 and social system of a splendid colony. The 
 criticism went on as if the promulgation 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 Dur- 
 ham 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 what- 
 ever for himself, and did not even accept his 
 own personal travelling expenses. He after- 
 wards 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 expendi- 
 ture. 
 
 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 Min- 
 istry together. Many of the criticisms were 
 undoubtedly the conscientious protests of 
 men who saw danger in any departure from 
 the recognized principles of constitutional 
 law. Eminent judges and lawyers in the 
 House of Lords naturally looked above all 
 tilings to the proper administration of the 
 law as it existed. But it is hard to doubt 
 that political or personal enmity influenced 
 some of the attacks on Lord Durham’s con- 
 duct. 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 consistent. He had 
 opposed the Canada coercion from the be- 
 ginning, he said, and he opposed illegal at- 
 tempts to deal with Canada now. It seems 
 a little hard to understand how Lord Brough- 
 am could really have so far misunderstood 
 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 technical 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 tyran- 
 nical severity. Lord Brougham inveighed 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 ha- 
 tred to Lord Melbourne and the Ministry, and 
 even to Lord Durham himself. People said 
 that Brougham had a special reason for feel- 
 ing hostile to anything done by Lord Dur- 
 ham. 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 con- 
 tent with the changes that had been made, 
 but must demand that the Ministry should 
 rush forward into wild and extravagant en- 
 terprises. 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 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 in- 
 to retort a man notoriously indiscreet and in- 
 capable of self-restraint. It is not unfair to 
 the memory of so fierce and unsparing a po- 
 litical gladiator as Lord Brougham, to as 
 sume that when he felt called upon to 
 attack the Canadian policy of Lord Durham, 
 the recollection of the scene at the Edin 
 burgh 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 di- 
 rect attempt on the part of Lord Brougham 
 to reverse the policy of Lord Durham by an- 
 nouncing that they had determined to disal- 
 low the Quebec ordinances. Lord Durham 
 learned for the first time from an American 
 paper that the Government had abandoned 
 him. He at once announced his determina- 
 tion to give up his position and to return to 
 England. His letter announcing this resolve 
 crossed on the ocean the despatch from home 
 disallowing his ordinances. With character- 
 istic imprudence he issued a proclamation 
 from the Castle of St. Lewis, in the city of 
 Quebec, which was virtually an appeal to the 
 public feeling of the colony against the con- 
 duct of her Majesty’s Government. When 
 the news of this extraordinary proclamation 
 reached home, Lord Durham was called by 
 the Times newspaper, “ the Lord High Sedi- 
 tioner.” The representative 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 once sent out a despatch re- 
 moving him from his place as Governor of 
 British North America. 
 
 Lord Durham had not waited for the for- 
 mal recall. He returned to England a dis- 
 graced man. Yet even then there was 
 public spirit enough among the English peo- 
 ple to refuse to ratify any sentence of dis- 
 grace upon him. When he landed at Ply- 
 mouth, he was received with acclamations 
 by the population, although the Government 
 had prevented any of the official honor usu- 
 ally shown to returning governors from being 
 offered to him. Mr. John Stuart Mill has 
 claimed with modest firmness and with per- 
 fect justice a leading share in influencing 
 public opinion in favor of Lord Durham. 
 “ Lord Durham,” he says in his autobiogra- 
 phjq “ was bitterly attacked from all sides, 
 inveighed against by enemies, given up by 
 timid friends ; while those who would will- 
 
 11 
 
 ingly have defended him did not know 
 what to say. He appeared to be returning a 
 defeated and discredited man. I had fol- 
 lowed the Canadian events from the begin- 
 ning ; 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 as- 
 cribed the almost triumphal reception which 
 he met with on his arrival in England. I be- 
 lieve it to have been the word in season 
 which at a critical moment does much to de- 
 cide the result ; 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 to 
 colonial policy the cause was gained. Lord 
 Durham’s report, written by Charles Buffer, 
 partly under the inspiration of Wakefield, 
 began a new era ; its recommendations, ex- 
 tending to complete internal self-government, 
 were in fuff 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. 
 Miff has said, it laid the foundation of tha 
 political success and social prosperity not 
 only of Canada but of all the other important 
 colonies. After having explained in the most 
 exhaustive manner the causes of discontent 
 and backwardness in Canada, it went on to 
 recommend that the government of the col- 
 ony 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 Gov- 
 ernment’s interference being in such matters 
 as affect the relations of the colony with the 
 mother country, such as the constitution and 
 form of government, the regulation of foreign 
 relations and trade, and the disposal of the 
 public lands. Lord Durham proposed to es- 
 tablish a thoroughly good system of munici- 
 pal institutions ; to secure the independence 
 of the judges ; to make all provincial officers, 
 except the governor and his secretary, re- 
 sponsible to the colonial legislature ; and to 
 repeal all former legislation with respect to 
 the reserves of land for the clergy. Finally, 
 he proposed that the provinces of Canada 
 should be reunited politically^ and should be- 
 come one legislature, containing the represent- 
 atives of both races and of all districts. It 
 is significant that the report also recommend- 
 ed that in any act to be introduced for this 
 purpose, a provision should be made by 
 which all or any of the other North Ameri- 
 can 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 fed- 
 eration. 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 de- 
 tail the steps by which the Government 
 gradually introduced the recommendations of 
 Lord Durham to Parliament and carried 
 them to success. Lord Glenelg, one of the 
 feeblest and most apathetic of colonial secre- 
 taries, had retired from office, partly, no 
 doubt, because of the attacks in Parliament 
 
12 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 on his administration of Canadian affairs. 
 Ho was succeeded at the Colonial Office by 
 Lord Normanby, 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 Syden- 
 ham — best known as Mr. Charles Poulett 
 Thomson, one of the pioneers of free trade — 
 received Lord John Russell’s cordial co- 
 operation and support. Lord John Russell 
 introduced into the House of Commons a bill 
 which he described as intended to lay the 
 foundation of a permanent settlement 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 sput- 
 terings of the rebellion had also lingered after 
 Lord Durham’s return to this country, 
 and these for a short time had directed at- 
 tention away from the policy of reorganiza- 
 tion. In 1840, however, the Act was passed 
 which reunited Upper and Lower Canada on 
 the basis proposed by Lord Durham. Fur- 
 ther legislation disposed 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 suc- 
 cess 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 28, 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 
 mortification attending his Canadian mis- 
 sion had worn away his strength. His proud 
 and sensitive spirit could ill bear the contra- 
 dictions and humiliations that had been forced 
 upon him. His was an eager and a passion- 
 ate nature, full of that soma 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 justi- 
 fied and hear the reproaches turn into 
 cheers. But if Lord Durham’s personal 
 career was in any way a failure, his policy 
 for the Canadas was a splendid success. It 
 established the principles of colonial govern- 
 ment. There were undoubtedly defects in 
 the construction of the actual scheme which 
 Lord Durham initiated, and which Lord Syd- 
 enham, who died not long after him, in- 
 stituted. 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 afterwards 
 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 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. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SCIENCE AND SPEED. 
 
 The opening of the reign of Queen Vic- 
 toria coincided with the introduction of 
 many of the great discoveries and applica- 
 tions in science, industry, and commerce 
 which we consider specially representative 
 of modern civilization. A reign which saw 
 in its earlier years the application of the elec- 
 tric current to the task of transmitting mes- 
 sages, the first successful attempts to make 
 use of steam for the business of transatlan- 
 tic navigation, the general development of 
 the railway system all over these countries, 
 
 and 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 distinguished author has 
 lately inveighed against the spirit which 
 would rank such improvements as those just 
 mentioned with the genuine triumphs of the 
 human race, and lias gone so far as to insist 
 that there is nothing in any such which 
 might not be expected from the self-in- 
 terested contrivings of a very inferior ani- 
 mal nature. Amid the tendency to glorify 
 beyond measure the mere mechanical im- 
 provements of modern civilization, it is 
 natural that there should arise some angry 
 questioning, some fierce disparagement of ail 
 that it has done. There will always be na- 
 tures to which the philosophy of contempla- 
 tion must seem far nobler than the philoso- 
 phy which expresses itself in mechanical ac- 
 tion. It may, however, 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 opportunity, 
 and when at the highest point of their glory 
 as an artistic race, as eager for the applica- 
 tion of all scientific and mechanical contri- 
 vances to the business of life as the most 
 practical and boastful Manchester man or 
 Chicago man of our own day. W e shall after- 
 wards see that the reign of Queen Victoria 
 came to have a literature, an art, and a phi- 
 losophy 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 cen- 
 tury was less widely removed from the Eng- 
 lishman of the days of the Paston Letters than 
 we are removed from the ways of the eight- 
 eenth 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 ventilation were 
 equally elementary and simple. We see a 
 complete revolution in all these things. A 
 man of the present day suddenly thrust back 
 fifty years in life would find 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 philosoph- 
 ical 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 ear- 
 lier 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 cir- 
 cuit,” Professor Morse, the American elec- 
 
 trician, applied to Congress for aid in the 
 construction and carrying on of a small elec- 
 tric telegraph to convey messages a short dis- 
 tance, and made the application without suc- 
 cess. Id 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 
 experiments 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 
 through its whole length in 1838. The Liv- 
 erpool and Preston line was opened in the 
 same year. The Liverpool 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 unparallel- 
 ed, and to many an almost incredible, tri- 
 umph 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. 
 
 ‘ 1 The prospect of travelling from the me- 
 tropolis to Liverpool, a distance of 210 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 ex- 
 perience of the writer of this notice, that 
 about the commencement of the present cen- 
 tury 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 es- 
 tablished 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 ex- 
 periment in steam navigation which has been 
 the subject of much controversy among scien- 
 tific men. Ships of an enormous size, fur- 
 nished with steam power equal to the force 
 of 400 horses and upwards, will, before our 
 next volume shall be prepared, have proba- 
 bly decided the question whether this de- 
 scription of vessels can, in the present state 
 of our knowledge, profitably engage in Trans- 
 atlantic voyages. It is possible that these 
 attempts may fail, a result which is indeed 
 predicted by high authorities on this subject. 
 We are more sanguine 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 inventive genius will at no 
 very distant day render practicable and prof- 
 itable 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 ‘ ‘ Transat- 
 lantic 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 sev- 
 enteen days. The controversy as to the pos- 
 sibility of such voyages, which was settled 
 by the Great Western and the Sirius, had no 
 reference to the actual safety of such an ex- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 13 
 
 periment. 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 At- 
 lantic, 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 enter- 
 prise, 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 propul- 
 sion. 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 voyages between Holland and the 
 Dutch West Indian colonies as a packet ves- 
 sel in the service of that Government. In- 
 deed, 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 em- 
 ployed 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 Cunard line of steam- 
 ers was established. The steam communi- 
 cation between Liverpool and New York be- 
 came thenceforth as regular and as unvary- 
 ing 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 Liver- 
 pool. 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 arrayed as if on 
 parade for the admiration of the traveller who 
 lias hitherto been accustomed to the irregu- 
 lar and straggling arrangements of the docks 
 of London or of New York. 
 
 On July 5, 1839, an unusually late period 
 of the year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 brought forward his annual budget. The 
 most important part of the financial state- 
 ment, so far as later times are concerned, is 
 set out in a resolution proposed by the finance 
 minister, which perhaps represents the great- 
 est social improvement brought about by leg- 
 islation in modern times. The Chancellor 
 proposed a resolution declaring that “ it is 
 expedient to reduce the postage on letters to 
 one uniform rate of one penny charged upon 
 every letter of a weight to be hereafter fixed 
 bylaw ; Parliamentary privileges of franking 
 being abolished and official franking strictly 
 regulated ; this House pledging itself at the 
 same time to make good any deficiency of 
 revenue which may be occasioned 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 farthing. A letter from London to 
 Brighton cost eightpence ; to Aberdeen one 
 shilling and threepence halfpenny ; to Bel- 
 fast one shilling and fourpence. 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 of the Government had the privilege 
 of franking to an unlimited 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 consisted 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 let- 
 ters of the privileged and exempt. 
 
 The greatest grievances were felt every- 
 where because of this absurd system. It had 
 along with its other disadvantages that of 
 encouraging what may be called the smug- 
 gling of letters. Everywhere sprang up or- 
 ganizations for the illicit conveyance of cor- 
 respondence at lower rates than those im- 
 posed by the Government. The proprietors 
 of almost every kind of public conveyance 
 are said to have been engaged in this unlaw- 
 ful but certainly not very unnatural or un- 
 justifiable traffic. Five sixths of all the let- 
 ters 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 send- 
 ing 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, 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. (afterwards Sir Rowland) Hill is the 
 man to whom this country, and indeed all 
 civilization, owes the adoption 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 be- 
 longed 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 ad- 
 vocate of civil and religious liberty, and a 
 sort of celebrity in the Birmingham of his 
 day, where he took a bold and active part in 
 trying 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 re- 
 former 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 mathemat- 
 ics. His favorite amusement as a child was 
 to lie on the hearthrug and count up figures 
 by the hour together. As he grew up he be 
 came teacher of mathematics in his father’s 
 school. Afterwards he was appointed Secre- 
 tary to the South Australian Commission, and 
 rendered much valuable service in the organ- 
 ization 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 letter. 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 walk- 
 ing 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 re- 
 turned it, saying she could not pay the post- 
 age, which was a shilling. Hearing that the 
 letter was from her brother, Coleridge paid 
 the postage, in spite of the manifest unwilling- 
 ness 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 per- 
 sons would have remembered this incident 
 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 comprehensive scheme of reform. He put 
 it before the world early in 1837. The pub- 
 lic 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 practica- 
 bility.” 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 carried. 
 
 His proposal was therefore that the rates 
 of postage should be diminished to the mini- 
 mum ; 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 let- 
 ters the greater the return to the revenue. 
 He started on the assumption that the smaller 
 the charge the greater the profit. He there- 
 fore recommended the substitution of one 
 uniform charge of one penny the half -ounce, 
 without reference to the distance within the 
 limits of the United Kingdom which the let- 
 ter had to be carried. The Post Office 
 authorities were at first uncompromising in 
 their opposition to the scheme. The Post- 
 master-General, Lord Lichfield, said in the 
 
14 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 House of Lords, that of all the wild and ex- 
 travagant 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 peculiar- 
 ity of this argument. Because the change 
 would be so much welcomed by the public, 
 Lord Lichfield 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 accom- 
 modation to the population in general, that 
 the officials could not undertake the trouble 
 of carrying it into effect. Another Post 
 Office official, Colonei Maberley, was at all 
 events more liberal. “ My constant lan- 
 guage,” he said afterwards, “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 department, and by the Post 
 Olfice. The allegation, I have not the least 
 doubt, will be made at a subsequent period, 
 that this plan has failed in consequence of 
 the unwillingness of the Government to carry 
 it into fair execution. It is our duty as ser- 
 vants of the Government to take care that no 
 blame eventually shall fall on the Govern- 
 ment 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 fail- 
 ure for the scheme, when so vigorous and 
 untrammelled 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 unworthy 
 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 department. 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 un- 
 bearable loss of revenue. In Parliament Mr. 
 Wallace, whose name has been already men- 
 tioned, moved for a committee to inquire into 
 the whole subject, and especially to examine 
 the mode recommended for charging and col- 
 lecting postage in the pamphlet of Mr. Hill. 
 The committee gave the subject a very pa- 
 tient consideration, and at length made a re- 
 port recommending uniform charges and pre- 
 payment 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 fan- 
 cied that it was only to please his old and 
 excellent friend, Mr. Warburton, that the 
 Ministry gave way to the innovation. Pe- 
 titions from all the commercial communities 
 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 provide for the 
 almost immediate introduction of Mr. Hill’s 
 scheme, and for the abolition of the franking 
 system except 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 
 postage 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, how- 
 ever, was to be only a beginning ; for on 
 January 10, 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 Govern- 
 ment 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 Ire- 
 land was a little more than eighty-two mil- 
 lions, 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 let- 
 ters were delivered in the United Kingdom. 
 The population during the same time has not 
 nearly doubled itself. It has already been re- 
 marked that the principle of Sir Rowland 
 Hill’s reform has since been put into opera- 
 tion in every civilized country in the world. 
 It may be added that before long we shall in 
 all human probability see an inter-oceanic 
 postage established at a rate as low as people 
 sometimes thought Sir Rowland Hill a mad- 
 man for recommending as applicable to our 
 inland post. The time is not far distant 
 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 sug- 
 gested as profitable remuneration for carry- 
 ing a letter from London to the towns of Sus- 
 sex or Hertfordshire. The “ Penny Post,” 
 let it be said, is an older institution than that 
 which Sir Rowland Hill introduced. 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 Gov- 
 ernment some years after. An effort was 
 even made to set up a halfpenny post in Lon- 
 don, in opposition to the official penny post, 
 in 1708 ; but the Government soon crushed 
 this vexatious and intrusive 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 twopenny post, 
 and gradually made a distinction between 
 district and other postal systems, and con- 
 trived 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 Lon- 
 don. 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 modem 
 penny post only in name. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 CHARTISM. 
 
 It cannot, however, be said that all the 
 omens under which the new Queen’s reign 
 opened at home were as auspicious as the co- 
 incidences wnich made it contemporary with 
 the first chapters of these new and noble de- 
 velopments in the history of science and in- 
 vention. On the contrary, it began amid 
 many grim and unpromising conditions in 
 our social affairs. The winter of 1837-8 was 
 one of unusual severity and distress. There 
 would have been much discontent and grum- 
 bling in 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 un- 
 der 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 slight- 
 est justification for such a belief ; but it pre- 
 vailed among the working classes and the 
 poor very generally, and added to the suffer- 
 ings of genuine want the bitterness of imag- 
 inary wrong. Popular education was little 
 looked after ; so far as the State was con- 
 cerned, 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 of the case of Thom and his dis- 
 ciples as evidence of the extraordinary igno- 
 rance that prevailed. Thom was a broken- 
 down brewer, and in fact a madman, who 
 had for some time been going about in Can- 
 terbury and other parts of Kent bedizened in 
 fantastic costume, and styling himself at first 
 Sir William Courtenay, of Powderham Cas- 
 tle, Knight of Malta, King of Jerusalem, king 
 of the gypsy races, and we know not what 
 else. He announced himself as a great po- 
 litical reformer, and for awhile he succeeded 
 in getting many to believe in and support 
 him. He was afterwards confined for some 
 time in a lunatic asylum, and when he came 
 out he presented himself to th ignorant 
 peasantry in the character of a second Mes- 
 siah. He found many followers and be- 
 lievers 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 'he 
 new Poor Law, which was then popularly 
 hated and feared with an almost insane in- 
 tensity of feeling. Thom 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 sup- 
 porters, and undertook to lead them to an at- 
 tack on Canterbury. With his own hand he 
 shot dead a policeman who endeavored to 
 oppose his movements, exactly as a saviour of 
 society of bolder pretensions and greater suc- 
 cess did at Boulogne not long after. Two 
 companies of soldiers came out from Canter- 
 bury to disperse the rioters. The officer in 
 command was shot dead by Thom. Thom’s 
 followers then charged the unexpecting sol- 
 diers so fiercely that for a moment there was 
 some confusion ; but the second company 
 fired a volley which stretched Thom and 
 several of his adherents lifeless on the field. 
 That was an end of the rising. Several of 
 Thom's followers were afterwards tried for 
 murder, convicted, 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 preposter- 
 ous hero and saint, many of Thom’s disciples 
 believed that he would return from the grave 
 to carry out the promised work of his mis- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 15 
 
 sion. All this was lamentable, but could 
 hardly be regarded as specially characteristic 
 of the early years of the present reign. The 
 Thom 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 cul- 
 tured 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 opening of the present reign more seri- 
 ous 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 manifesto was adopted 
 there which afterwards came to be known as 
 the Chartist petition. With that moment 
 Chartism began to be one of the most dis- 
 turbing 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 his- 
 tory fully written. For ten years it agitated 
 England. It sometimes seemed to threaten 
 an actual uprising of all the proletaire against 
 what were then the political and social in- 
 stitutions 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 strong- 
 ly and naturally to whatever there was of 
 discontent 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 
 temporary 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 rea- 
 sonable 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 concessions could really 
 have satisfied these men. If the Charter had 
 been granted in 1838, they would no doubt 
 have been as dissatisfied as ever in 1839. 
 But the discontent of these poor creatures 
 would have brought with it little danger to 
 the State if it had not become part of the sup- 
 port 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 away. Vague dis- 
 content, however natural and excusable it 
 may be, is only formidable in politics when 
 it helps to swell the strength and the num- 
 bers of a crowd which calls for some reform 
 that can be made and is withheld. One of 
 the vulgarest fallacies of statecraft is to de- 
 clare that it is of no use granting the re- 
 forms which would satisfy reasonable de- 
 mands, 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 is the 
 lesson taught to statesmen by the Chartist 
 agitation. 
 
 A funeral oration over Chartism was pro- 
 nounced by Sir John Campbell, then Attor- 
 ney-General, afterwards Lord Chief Justice 
 Campbell, at a public dinner at Edinburgh 
 ou October 24, 1839. He spoke at some 
 
 length and with much complacency of Chart- 
 ism as an agitation which had passed away. 
 Some ten days afterwards occurred 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 declaration. Camp- 
 bell was indeed only a clever, shrewd lawyer 
 of the hard and narrow class. He never 
 made any pretension to statesmanship, or 
 even to great political knowledge ; 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 judgment than he 
 were at that time in the habit of disposing of 
 all inconvenient political problems. The At- 
 torney-General was aware that there had 
 been a few riots and a few arrests, and that 
 the law had been what he would call vindi- 
 cated ; and as he had no manner of sympa- 
 thy 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 underlying causes to explain if 
 not to excuse the agitation that just then be- 
 gan to disturb the country, and that con- 
 tinued to disturb it for so many years. Even 
 if he had 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 en- 
 ables a man to put himself for the moment 
 into the condition and mood of men entirely 
 unlike himself in feelings 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 sub- 
 stantial 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 con- 
 sideration of sensible legislators would con- 
 tinue 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 like- 
 ly the agitation could be put down by a few 
 prosecutions and a few arrests, and the cen- 
 sure of a prosperous Attorney-General. He 
 would have seen that Chartism 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 griev- 
 ances and evils. 
 
 We have in our time outlived the days 
 of political abstractions. The catch-words 
 which thrilled our forefathers 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 is meant by talking of “ the peo- 
 ple” 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 aristocracy. We seldom talk of 
 | “ liberty any one venturing to found a 
 
 theory cr even a declamation on some sup- 
 posed deprival of liberty would soon find 
 himself in the awkward position of being 
 called on to give a scientific definition of 
 what he understood liberty to be. He would 
 be as much puzzled as were certain English 
 workingmen, who. desiring to express to Mr. 
 John Stuart Mill their sympathy with what 
 they called in the slang of continental democ- 
 racy “ the Revolution,” were calmly bidden 
 by the great Liberal thinker to ask them- 
 selves what they meant by “ the Revolu- 
 tion,” 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 liv- 
 ing 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 con- 
 veyed any such idea. The phrase which Mr. 
 Mill so properly condemned when he found 
 it in the mouths of English workingmen 
 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 recogniza- 
 ble by the intelligence of all who heard it as 
 the name of Free Trade or of Ultramontanism 
 to men of our time. “The Revolution” 
 was the principle which was asserting all 
 over Europe the overthrow of the old abso- 
 lute power of kings, and it described it just 
 as well as any word could do. It is mean- 
 ingless 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 peo- 
 ple” and the “ rights of labor,” and all the 
 other grandiloquent phrases which seem to 
 us so 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 neces- 
 sarily and perhaps naturally a class measure. 
 It had done great things for the constitutional 
 system of England. It had averted a revo- 
 lution 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 de- 
 nial was the strong point of many of the lead- 
 ing 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 commu- 
 nities or interests he thinks fit to send in per- 
 sons 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 represen- 
 tation from thirty others ; it disposed of the 
 seats thus obtained by giving sixty-five ad- 
 ditional representatives to the counties, and 
 conferring the right of returning members on 
 Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, 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 represent- 
 atives to Parliament ; “ three niches in a 
 stone wall” sent two representatives to Par- 
 liament ; “ a park where no houses were to 
 be seen” sent two representatives to Parlia- 
 ment. The bill introduced a 10Z. household 
 qualification for boroughs, and extended the 
 county franchise to leaseholders and copy- 
 holders. But it left the working classes al- 
 most altogether out of the franchise. *Not 
 merely did it confer no political emancipa- 
 tion on them, but it took away in many 
 places the peculiar franchises which made the 
 
 t 
 
16 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 workingmen voters. There were communi- 
 ties — such, for example, as that of Preston, 
 in Lancashire — where the system of fran- 
 chise existing created something like univer- 
 sal suffrage. All this was smoothed away, if 
 such an expression may be used, by the Re- 
 form 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-mak- 
 ing power. The representation was divided 
 between the aristocracy and the middle class, 
 instead of being, as before, the exclusive pos- 
 session of the former. 
 
 The working class, in the opinion of many 
 of their ablest and most influential represent- 
 atives, were not merely left out but shoul- 
 dered 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 workingmen. 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 judg- 
 ment even of the aristocratic leaders of the 
 movement. What Richter calls the “ seed- 
 grains” of the revolutionary doctrines had 
 been blown abroad so widely that they rest- 
 ed 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 work- 
 ingmen of the country which, however 
 differently it may have been meant, certainly 
 sounded in their ears as if it were an intima- 
 tion that in the event of the bill being resist- 
 ed 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 proceed- 
 ings which were in preparation during the 
 Reform agitation. He talked with undis- 
 guised 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 instruc- 
 tive as a means of enabling us to understand 
 the feeling of soreness which remained in the 
 minds of large masses of the population when 
 after the passing of the Reform Bill thev 
 found themselves left out in the cold. 
 Rightly or wrongly they believed that their 
 strength had been kept in reserve or in ter- 
 rorem 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 ascend- 
 ed the throne, the working classes in all the 
 large towns were in a state of profound dis- 
 appointment and discontent, almost indeed 
 of disaffection. Chartism was beginning to 
 succeed to the Reform agitation. The lead- 
 ers who had come from the ranks of the aris- 
 tocracy had been discarded or had with- 
 drawn. In some cases they had withdrawn 
 in perfect good faith, believing sincerely that 
 they had done the work which they under- 
 took 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 been dropped down by a class 
 higher in the social scale, took up the popu- 
 lar leadership now. 
 
 Chartism may be said to have sprung de- 
 finitively 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 ad- 
 dress 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 ques- 
 tion. It was impossible that this declaration 
 should not be received 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 towards 
 those who helped him to carry it. A great 
 many outside Parliament not unnaturally re- 
 garded the refusal to go any farther as a 
 breach of faith towards 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 move- 
 ment any farther just then. In a country 
 like ours, where interests are so nicely bal- 
 anced, 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 least in- 
 telligible 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 workingmen. 
 At this conference the programme, or what 
 was always afterwards known as “ the Char- 
 ter,” 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 sec- 
 retary of the Workingmen’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 impor- 
 tant 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 gunpowder 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 in- 
 sisting on the franchise for women. The 
 second was Annual Parliaments. Vote by 
 Ballot was the third. Abolition of the Prop- 
 erty Qualification (then and for many years 
 after required for the election of a member 
 to Parliament) was the fourth. The Pay- 
 ment of Members was the fifth ; and the Di- 
 vision 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 abso- 
 lutely 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 part of our constitutional system. 
 The existing franchise may be virtually re- 
 garded as manhood suffrage. We have for 
 years been voting by means of a written pa- 
 per 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 digni- 
 
 fied to describe the fate that befell it. We 
 should rather say that it was extinguished by 
 its own absurdity and viciousness. It never 
 kept out of Parliament any person legally 
 disqualified, and it was the occasion of inces- 
 sant tricks and devices which would surely 
 have been counted disreputable and disgrace- 
 ful (to those who engaged in them, but that 
 the injustice and folly of the system generat- 
 ed 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 smug- 
 gled 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 objection- 
 able ; and that for yearly parliaments as em- 
 bodying 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 difficulty 
 any one engaged in their advocacy would find 
 just now would be in getting any considera- 
 ble body of listeners to take the slightest in- 
 terest in the argument either for or against 
 them. 
 
 The Chartists might be roughly divided 
 into three classes — the political Chartists, the 
 social Chartists, and the Chartists of vague 
 discontent who joined the movement 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 contro- 
 versy. The disciples of mere discontent nat- 
 urally swerved alternately to the side of those 
 leaders or sections who talked loudest and 
 fiercest against the law makers and the con- 
 stituted authorities. Chartism soon split it- 
 self into two general divisions — the moral 
 force and the physical force Chartism. Noth- 
 ing can be more unjust than to represent the 
 leaders and promoters of the movement as 
 mere factious and self-seeking demagogues. 
 Some of them were men of great ability and 
 eloquence ; some were impassioned young 
 poets drawn from the class whom Kingsley 
 has described in 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 movement 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 vacuous-eyed man was to be 
 seen of mornings wandering through the 
 arcades of Co vent 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 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 whicli 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 17 
 
 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 edu- 
 cation ; 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 elec- 
 tion. Thomas Cooper, the venerable poet of 
 Chartism, has given an amusing description, 
 in his autobiography, of Feargus O’Connor, 
 who was then his hero, leaping from a wag- 
 on 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 butch- 
 ers like ninepins.” “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 the rough human 
 billows, and he was fighting his way as be- 
 fore.” 
 
 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, impas- 
 sioned, full of poetic aspiration and no scant 
 measure of poetic inspiration as well. Henry 
 Vincent was a man of unimpeachable charac- 
 ter and of some ability, an effective popular 
 speaker, who has since maintained in a very 
 unpretending way a considerable reputa- 
 tion. 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 re- 
 garded as genius. His education was that of 
 a scholar and a gentleman. Many men of 
 education and ability were drawn into sym- 
 pathy if not into actual co-operation with the 
 Chartists by a conviction that some of their 
 claims were well-founded, and that the griev- 
 ances of the working classes, which were 
 terrible to contemplate, were such as a Par- 
 liament better representing all classes would 
 be able to remedy. Some of these men have 
 since made for themselves an honorable name 
 in 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 understand how 
 genuine was the poetic and political enthusi- 
 asm which was at the heart of the Chartist 
 movement, and how bitter was the suffering 
 which drove into its ranks so many thou- 
 sands of stout workingmen who, in a coun- 
 try 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 Elliott 
 to understand how the “ bread- tax” became 
 identified in the minds of the very best of the 
 working class, and identified justly, with the 
 system of political and economical 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 North 
 ern Star, owned and conducted by Feargus 
 O’Connor, was the most popular and influ- 
 ential of them ; but every great town had its 
 
 Chartist press. Meetings were held at which 
 sometimes very violent language was em- 
 ployed. It began to be the practice to hold 
 torchlight 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 formidable riot took 
 place in Birmingham, where the authorities 
 endeavored to put down a Chartist meeting. 
 Ebenezer Elliott and other sensible sympa- 
 thizers 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 imprison- 
 ment at Newport, in Wales, was the occasion 
 of an attempt at rescue which bore a very 
 close resemblance indeed to a scheme of or- 
 ganized 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 junction there, which was to be 
 two hours after midnight, to march into New- 
 port, attack the jail, and effect the release 
 of Vincent and other prisoners. The at- 
 tempt was to be under the chief command of 
 Mr. Frost, a trader of Newport, 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 No- 
 vember 4, 1839. There was some misunder- 
 standing and delay, as almost invariably hap- 
 pens in such enterprises, and the divisions of 
 the little army did not effect their junction 
 in time. When they entered Newport, they 
 found the authorities 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 enterprise was con- 
 cerned. 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 divisions 
 coming up to the enterprise all too late. 
 Nothing was more remarkable than the cour- 
 age shown by the mayor of Newport, the 
 magistrates, and the little body of soldiers. 
 The mayor, Mr. Phillips, received two gun- 
 shot wounds. Frost was arrested next day 
 along with some of his colleagues. They 
 were tried on June 6, 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 phys- 
 ical force Chartists had long been talking. 
 The Chartists appear at first to have num- 
 bered 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 
 misunderstanding had not taken place, and 
 they had arrived at 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, how- 
 ever, was commuted to one of transportation 
 for life. Even this was afterwards relaxed, 
 and when some years had passed away, and 
 Chartism had ceased to be a disturbing influ- 
 ence, Frost was allowed to return to Eng- 
 2 
 
 land, where he found that a Dew generation 
 had grown up, and that he was all but for- 
 gotten. In the meantime the Corn-Law agi- 
 tation had been successful ; the year of rev- 
 olutions had passed harmlessly over ; Fear- 
 gus O’Connor’s day was done. 
 
 But the trial and conviction of Frost, Wil- 
 liams, and Jones did not put a stop to the 
 Chartist agitation. On the contrary, that 
 agitation seemed rather to wax and strength- 
 en 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 newspa- 
 pers, until after the conviction of Frost and his 
 companions. 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 con- 
 victed and sentenced to terms of imprison- 
 ment. The imprisonment served rather to 
 make the Chartist leaders popular, and to ad- 
 vertise 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 sentence, and came out of durance. 
 He was a hero all over again, and his return 
 to public life was the signal for fresh demon- 
 strations of Chartism. At the general elec- 
 tion of 1841, the vast majority of the Chart- 
 ists, 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 Adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Wide and almost universal discontent 
 among the working classes in town and coun- 
 try 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 agri- 
 cultural districts the complaints against the 
 operation of the new Poor Law were vehe- 
 ment and passionate ; and although they 
 were unjust in principle and sustained by 
 monstrous exaggerations of statement, they 
 were not the less potent as recruiting agents 
 for Chartism. There was a profound dis- 
 trust 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 sup- 
 port among the poor artisans of the towns, 
 was regarded with deep disgust by some of 
 the Chartists, and with downright hostility by 
 others. A very temperate orator of the 
 Chartists put the feeling of himself and his 
 fellows in clear terms. “ We do not object 
 to the repeal of the Corn Laws, ’ ’ he said ; 
 “ on the contrary. When we get the Charter 
 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 Charter. 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 be- 
 lieved themselves abandoned by their natural 
 leaders. 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 feeling of many 
 of the fiercer spirits among the artisan Chart- 
 ists 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 
 
18 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 no more about thy Godclle 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 
 himself 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 po- 
 tato 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. W e need not fol- 
 low 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 
 agitation would never succeed until the work- 
 ing classes had proved themselves by their 
 self-control to be worthy of the gift of free- 
 dom. In other instances, as has been already 
 remarked, the disappointment and despair of 
 the people took the form of infidelity. There 
 were many riots and disturbances ; none, in- 
 deed, of soseeminglyrebelliousanatureasthat 
 of Frost and his companions, but many seri- 
 ous enough to spread great alarm and to fur- 
 nish fresh occasion for Government prosecu- 
 tions and imprisonments. Some of the pris- 
 oners 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 pur- 
 pose any Government could have supposed 
 the prison authorities were serving by the 
 unnecessary degradation and privation of 
 men who, whatever their errors, were con- 
 spicuously and transparently sincere and 
 honest. 
 
 It is clear that at that time the Chartists, 
 who represented 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 millionnaires 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 workingmen 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 themselves determined 
 to overthrow throne, altar, and all established 
 securities of society. An ignorant panic 
 prevailed on both sides. England was in- 
 deed divided then, as Mr. Disraeli’s novel 
 described it, into two nations, the rich and 
 the poor, in towns at least ; and each hated 
 and feared the other with all that unthinking 
 hate and fear which hostile nations are capa- 
 ble of showing even amid all the influences 
 of civilization. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 QUESTION DE JUPONS. 
 
 Meanwhile things were looking ill with 
 the Melbourne Ministry. Sir Robert Peel 
 was addressing great meetings of his fol- 
 lowers, and declaring with much show of 
 justice that he had created anew the Conser- 
 vative party. The position of the Whigs 
 would in any case have been difficult. Their 
 mandate, to use the French phrase, seemed 
 to be exhausted. They had no new thing to 
 propose. They came into power as reform- 
 ers, and now they had nothing to offer in the 
 
 way of reform. It may be taken as a cer- 
 tainty that in English politics reaction must 
 always follow advance. The Whigs must 
 just then have come in for the effects of re- 
 action. But they had more than that to con- 
 tend with. In our own time, Mr. Gladstone 
 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 clam- 
 oring against him on the ground that he had 
 made use of their strength to help him in car- 
 rying 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 de- 
 nounced them. Many 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 ad- 
 ding by some mistake or other to the difficul- 
 ties of their position. The Jamaica Bill put 
 them in great perplexity. This was a meas- 
 ure brought in on April 9, 1839, to make 
 temporary provision for the government of 
 the island of Jamaica, by setting aside the 
 House of Assembly for five years, and dur- 
 ing that time empowering the governor and 
 council with three salaried commissioners to 
 manage the affairs of the colony. In other 
 words, the Melbourne Ministry proposed to 
 suspend for five years the constitution of 
 Jamaica. No body of persons can he more 
 awkwardly placed than a Whig Ministry pro- 
 posing to set aside a constitutional govern- 
 ment 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 re- 
 turn to the old Tory policy of suspended 
 constitutions and absolute law ? When 
 Rabagas, 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 ad- 
 vising 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 
 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 ex- 
 cused ; but as human nature is made it was 
 not unnatural. On the other hand, some of 
 the Jamaica negroes were too ignorant to un- 
 derstand that they had acquired any rights ; 
 others were a little too clamorous in their as- 
 sertion. Many a planter worked his men 
 and whipped liia women just as before the 
 emancipation, and the victims did not under- 
 stand 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 generally 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 Government. The Assembly became 
 more insolent and offensive every day. A 
 bill, very necessary in itself, was passed by 
 the Imperial Parliament for the better regu- 
 lation of prisons in Jamaica, and the House 
 of Assembly refused to submit to any such 
 legislation. Under these circumstances the 
 Melbourne Ministry proposed the suspension 
 of the constitution of the island. The meas- 
 ure 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 proposed ; 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 discredited ; any- 
 body 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 de- 
 feat. The Ministry acknowledged it and re- 
 signed. 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 subse- 
 quent 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 Brobdingna- 
 gians, in order the better to impress him 
 with a clear idea of the logical beauty of con- 
 stitutional government. It was an entirely 
 new illustration of the old cherchez la femme 
 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 ap- 
 ply to Sir Robert Peel, for the reason that 
 the chief difficulties of a Conservative Gov- 
 ernment would be in the House of Commons. 
 The Queen sent for Peel, and when he came, 
 told him with a simple and girlish frankness 
 that she was sorry to have to part with her late 
 ministers, of whose conduct she entirely ap- 
 proved, but that she bowed to constitutional 
 usage. This must have been rather an as- 
 tonishing 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 
 happened to notice the composition of the 
 royal household as regarded the ladies most 
 closely in attendance on the 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 diffi- 
 culty 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 Mor- 
 peth, whom we can all remember as the ami- 
 able and accomplished Lord Carlisle of later 
 time, Irish Secretary. If certainly could not 
 be satisfactory for Peel to try to work a new 
 Irish policy while the closest household com- 
 panions of the Queen were the wife and sis- 
 ter 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 
 reasonableness of Peel’s request ; nor is it tQ 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 19 
 
 be supposed that the two ladies in question 
 could have desired to hold their places un- 
 der 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 differ- 
 ent idea. She thought he meant to insist, 
 as a matter of principle, upon the removal of 
 all her familiar attendants and household as- 
 sociates. Under this impression she consulted 
 Lord John Russell, who advised heron 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 contrary to usage and is 
 repugnant to her feelings.” Sir Robert Peel 
 held firm to his stipulation ; and the chance of 
 his then forming a Ministry was at an end. 
 Lord Melbourne and his colleagues had to he 
 recalled ; and at a Cabinet meeting they 
 adopted a minute declaring it reasonable 
 “ that the great offices of the Court and situ- 
 ations in the household held by members of 
 Parliament should be included in the political 
 arrangements made on a change in the Ad- 
 ministration ; 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 explanation 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 po- 
 sition in language of what now seems rather 
 ludicrous exaggeration. He treated this 
 question dejupons as if it were of the last im- 
 portance not alone to the honor of the Min- 
 istry, 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 minis- 
 ter 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 express consent, hold office in 
 immediate attendance on the Sovereign?” 
 “ Oh, no 1” he exclaimed, in an outburst of 
 indignant eloquence. “ I felt that it was im- 
 possible ; I could not consent to this. Feel- 
 ings 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 
 minister of England.” This high-flown lan- 
 guage seems oddly out of place on the lips 
 of a statesman w r ho of all his contemporaries 
 was the least apt to indulge in bursts of over- 
 wrought sentiment. Lord Melbourne, on the 
 other hand, defended his action in the House 
 of Lords in language of equal exaggeration. 
 “ I resume office,’ ’ he said, “ unequivocally 
 and solely for this reason, that I will not de- 
 sert my Sovereign in a situation of difficulty 
 and distress, especially 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 con- 
 stant 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 con- 
 sult 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 lan- 
 guage of praise and delight, as he dwelt upon 
 the decision of the Queen, and called upon 
 the Powers above to bless “ the young crea- 
 ture — that creature of only nineteen, as pure 
 
 as she is exalted,” who consulted 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.” 
 Feargus O’Connor went a good deal further, 
 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 put- 
 ting her out of the way and placing “the 
 bloody Cumberland ” on the throne in her 
 stead. In O’Connell’s case, no mystery was 
 made of the fact that he believed the ladies 
 actually surrounding 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’Con- 
 nor, 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 ra- 
 tional beings, it had the firm acceptance of 
 large masses of people throughout the coun- 
 try, who persisted in seeing in Peel’s plead- 
 ings 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 violent- 
 ly 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 Mel- 
 bourne and his colleagues. He insisted that 
 Lord Melbourne had sacrificed Liberal prin- 
 ciples and the interests of the country to the 
 private feelings of the Sovereign. “ I 
 thought,” he declared in a burst of eloquent 
 passion, “ that we belonged to a country in 
 which the government by the Crown and the 
 wisdom of Parliament was everything, and 
 the personal 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 un- 
 redeemed ; 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 unconstitutional, 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 impor- 
 tant measure, had been brought forward. 
 The Government staked their existence upon 
 it. They were not able to carry it ; they 
 therefore conceived they had lost the confi- 
 dence 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 under- 
 stood 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 pre- 
 cedent on such a question, seeing that since 
 the principle of ministerial responsibility had 
 come to be recognized among us in its gen- 
 uine 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 question, it 
 may be said at once, was afterwards 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 retire- 
 ment, “ of their own accord,” of any ladies 
 who were so closely related to the leaders of 
 Opposition as to render their presence incon- 
 venient. 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 ; and now that they were 
 back again in office, they could not avoid try- 
 ing 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 pleas- 
 ure. The bedchamber question in fact had 
 thrown Jamaica out of perspective. The un- 
 fortunate 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, how- 
 ever, that Lord Melbourne and his colleagues 
 deserved the savage censure of Lord Brough- 
 am 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 Com- 
 mons. 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 Uni- 
 versity Bill in 1873. Mr. Gladstone re- 
 signed ; or rather tendered his resignation ; 
 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 existing House of 
 Commons ; and as the conditions under 
 which he was willing to undertake the duty 
 were not conveniently attainable, the nego- 
 tiation came to an end. The Queen sent 
 again for Mr. Gladstone, who consented to 
 resume his place as Prime Minister. If Lord 
 Melbourne returned to office with the knowl- 
 edge 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 Ministry without the remotest hope of be- 
 ing able to carry his Irish University meas- 
 ure. No one ever found fault with Mr. Glad- 
 stone 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 gov- 
 ernment, 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 
 Government were prejudiced in the public 
 mind by these events, and by the attacks for 
 which they gave so large an opportunity. 
 The feeling in some parts of the country was 
 still sentimentally with the Queen. At many 
 a dinner table it became the fashion to drink 
 the health of her Majesty with a punning ad- 
 
20 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 dition, 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 sovereign of 
 spirit who “ would not let her belles be 
 peeled.” But the Ministry were almost uni- 
 versally 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 oc- 
 curred almost immediately, tended further to 
 arouse a feeling of dislike to the Whigs. 
 This melancholy event does not need any 
 lengthened comment. A young lady who 
 belonged to the household of the Duchess of 
 Kent fell under an unfounded, but in the cir- 
 cumstances not wholly unreasonable, sus- 
 picion. It was the classic story of Calisto, 
 Diana’s unhappy nymph, reversed. Lady 
 Flora was proved to be innocent ; but her 
 death, imminent probably in any case from 
 the disease 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 mat- 
 ter. The Ministry certainly do not appear to 
 have done anything for which they could 
 fairly be reproached. No one can be sur- 
 prised that those who surrounded the Queen 
 and the Duchess of Kent should have taken 
 some pains to inquire into the truth or false- 
 hood of scandalous rumors, for which there 
 might have appeared to be some obvious jus- 
 tification. 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 nat- 
 ural complaints of her mother were so loud 
 and impassioned, that the ministers who had 
 to answer the mother’s appeals were un- 
 avoidably placed in an invidious and a pain- 
 ful position. The demands of the Marchion- 
 ess of Hastings for redress were unreasonable. 
 They endeavored to make out the existence 
 of a cruel conspiracy against Lady Flora, 
 and called for the peremptory dismissal and 
 disgrace of the eminent court physician, who 
 had merely performed a most painful duty, 
 and whose report had been the especial 
 means of establishing the injustice of the sus- 
 picions 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 unprec- 
 edented and objectionable, that even the re- 
 spect due to your ladyship’s sex, rank, fam- 
 ily, and character would not justify me in 
 more, if indeed it authorizes so much, than 
 acknowledging that letter for the sole pur- 
 pose 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 bedchamber. 
 The death of Lady Flora Hastings happened 
 soon after it. It is not strictly in logical pro- 
 priety that such events, or their rapid succes- 
 sion, should tend to bring into disrepute the 
 Ministry who can only be regarded 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 control. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE QUEEN’S MARRIAGE. 
 
 On January 16, 1840, the Queen, opening 
 Parliament in person, announced her inten- 
 tion to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of 
 Saxe-Coburg-Gotha — a step which she trust- 
 ed would be “ conducive to the interests of 
 my people as well as to my own domestic 
 happiness.” In the discussion which fol- 
 lowed in the House of Commons, Sir Robert 
 Peel observed that her Majesty had “the 
 singular good fortune to be able to gratify 
 her private feelings, while she performs her 
 public duty, and to obtain the best guaran- 
 
 tee for happiness by contracting an alliance 
 founded on affection.” Peel spoke the sim- 
 ple 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 consider- 
 ations. 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 Augus- 
 tus 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 
 26, 1819. The Court historian notices with 
 pardonable complacency the “ remarkable 
 coincidence” — easily explained, surely — that 
 the same accoucheuse , Madame Siebold, assist- 
 ed 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 Victoria 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 fa- 
 ther to England, and made the personal ac- 
 quaintance of the Princess, and she seems at 
 once to have been drawn towards 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 suffi- 
 cient to ensure your forgiveness. Albert has 
 completely 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 hand- 
 some, graceful and gifted. In princes, as we 
 know, a small measure of beauty and accom- 
 plishment suffices to throw courtiers and 
 court ladies into transports of admiration ; 
 but had Prince Albert been the son of a farm- 
 er or a butler, he must have been admired 
 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 Ger- 
 many a system of education seldom aimed at 
 being lotus, teres atque rotundus. He had be- 
 gun 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 in 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 even- 
 ings, of art and poetry and genial communion 
 with Nature. He was made happy by the 
 
 songs of birds, and delighted in 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 de- 
 voted himself at once to what he conscien- 
 tiously 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 mat- 
 ter how sweet, every indulgence of sentiment 
 or amusement that in any way threatened to 
 interfere with the steadfast performance of 
 the part be had assigned to himself. No man 
 ever devoted himself more faithfully to the 
 difficult duties of a high and a new situation, 
 or kept more strictly to his resolve. It was 
 no task to him to be a tender husband and a 
 loving father. This was a part 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 10, 1840. The re- 
 ception 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 politics. 
 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 Reformation 
 had been conspicuously Protestant. “ There 
 has not,” Prince Albert himself wrote to the 
 Queen on December 7, 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 for- 
 feiting the crown, would be regarded as a 
 sufficient guarantee that when they announc- 
 ed the Queen’s approaching marriage it must 
 be a marriage with a Protestant. All this 
 assumption, however reasonable and na- 
 tural, did not find warrant in the events 
 that actually took place. It would have been 
 better of course if the Government had as- 
 sumed that Parliament and the public gener- 
 ally 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 fore- 
 seeing Leopold, King of the Belgians, had 
 recommended that the fact should be specifi- 
 cally 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 Prot- 
 estantism would be superfluous ; and nei- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 21 
 
 tlier in the declaration to the Privy Council, 
 nor in 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 alter- 
 cation 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 “ Protes- 
 tant” in the announcements in order that 
 they might not offend their Irish and Catho- 
 lic 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 con- 
 gratulatory address to the Queen, and he 
 carried his point, although Lord Melbourne 
 held to the opinion that the word was un- 
 necessary in describing a Prince who was 
 not only a Protestant but descended from the 
 most Protestant family in Europe. The lack 
 of judgment and tact on the part of the Min- 
 istry 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 naturalization of the Prince ; but it 
 contained a clause to give him precedence 
 for life “ next after her Majesty, in Parlia- 
 ment or elsewhere, as her Majesty might 
 think proper.” A great deal of objection 
 was raised by the Duke of Wellington and 
 Lord Brougham to this clause ou its own 
 merits ; but, as was natural, the objections 
 were infinitely aggravated by the singular 
 want of judgment, and even of common pro- 
 priety, which could introduce a clause con- 
 ferring on the Sovereign powers so large and 
 so new into a mere naturalization bill, with- 
 out 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 prece- 
 dence to be dealt with by Royal prerogative. 
 Both the great political parties concurred 
 without further difficulty in an arrangement 
 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 w.ould 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 sys- 
 tem is built up of precedents, should agree at 
 once and without demur to every new ar- 
 rangement which it might seem convenient 
 to a Ministry to make in a hurry. Yet an- 
 other 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 settle- 
 ment of an annuity on the Prince. In for- 
 mer cases — that, for example, of Queen Char- 
 lotte, Queen Adelaide, and Prince Leopold 
 on his marriage with the Princess Charlotte 
 — the annuity granted had been 50,000?. It 
 so happened, however, that the settlement to 
 be made on Prince Albert came in times 
 of great industrial and commercial distress. 
 The days had gone by when economy in the 
 House of Commons was looked upon as an 
 ignoble principle, 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. Par- 
 liament was beginning to feel more thor- 
 oughly 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 taxpayer with magnanimous indiffer- 
 ence. It was therefore absurd on the part of 
 the Ministry to suppose that because great 
 sums of money had been voted without ques- 
 tion on former occasions, they would be 
 voted without question now. It is quite pos- 
 sible that the whole matter might have been 
 settled 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 connect- 
 ed with the Sovereign is concerned, it is now 
 understood that the gift shall come with the 
 full concurrence of both parties in Parlia- 
 ment. 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 al- 
 most incredible folly to bring forward their 
 proposal without having invited in any way 
 the concurrence of the Opposition. They 
 introduced the proposal without discretion ; 
 th§y conducted the discussion on it without 
 temper. They answered the most reasonable 
 objections with imputations of want of loy- 
 alty ; and they gave some excuse for the sus- 
 picion that they wished to provoke the Op- 
 position into some expression that might 
 make them odious to the Queen aud the 
 Prince. Mr. Hume, the economist, proposed 
 that the annuity be reduced from 50,000?. to 
 21,000?. This was negatived. Thereupon 
 Colonel Sibthorp, a once famous Tory fanat- 
 ic of the most eccentric manners and opin- 
 ions, proposed that the sum be 30,000?., and 
 he received the support of Sir Robert Peel 
 and other eminent members of the Oppo- 
 sition ; and the amendment was carried. 
 
 These were not auspicious incidents to pre- 
 lude 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 com- 
 prehended that there was nothing personal to 
 himself in any objections which the House 
 of Commons might have made to the pro- 
 posals of the Ministry. The question of pre- 
 cedence was very easily settled when it came 
 to be discussed in reasonable fashion ; al- 
 though 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 nam- 
 ed Regent, following the precedent which 
 had been adopted in the instance of the Prin- 
 cess Charlotte and Prince Leopold. The 
 Duke of Sussex, uncle of the Queen, alone 
 dissented in the House of Lords, and record- 
 ed his protest against the proposal. The pass- 
 ing of this bill was naturally regarded as of 
 much importance to Prince Albert. It gave 
 him to some extent the status iu the country 
 which he had not had before. It also proved 
 that the Prince himself had risen in the esti- 
 mation 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 position as the husband of the Queen of a 
 constitutional country. His own idea of his 
 duty was that he should be the private secre- 
 tary and unofficial counsellor of the Queen. 
 To this purpose he devoted himself unswer- 
 vingly. Outside that part of his duties, he 
 constituted himself a sort of minister with- 
 out 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 culture of art, and the pro- 
 
 motion of industrial science. Yet it was long 
 before he was thoroughly understood by the 
 country. It was long before he became in 
 any degree popular ; and it may be doubted 
 whether he ever was thoroughly and gener- 
 ally popular. Not perhaps until his untime- 
 ly death did the country find out how entire- 
 ly 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 ordi- 
 nary observers as possessing none but nega- 
 tive virtues. 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 chill- 
 ing. It is not only Mr. Pendennis who con- 
 ceals his gentleness under a shy and pomp- 
 ous demeanor. 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 Stock- 
 mar, was not the man best calculated 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 summaries 
 for constant reference and guidance. But 
 this was not in the beginning the cause of any 
 coldness towards 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 
 Englishman was to be so far unworthy of 
 confidence. He was not made to shine in 
 commonplace society. He could talk admir- 
 ably 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 improvements 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 thor- 
 oughly appreciated, and that a considerable 
 and very influential section of society was al- 
 ways 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 the substitution of 
 some system of courts of honorable arbitra- 
 tion to supersede the barbaric recourse to the 
 decision 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 services ; 
 and there were undoubtedly many practical 
 difficulties in the way of making such a sys- 
 tem 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 discrediting the odious 
 practice of the duel. It is carrying courtly 
 politeness too far to attribute the total disap- 
 pearance of the duelling system, as one biog- 
 rapher 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 towards so 
 great an object. But nothing cau testify 
 more strikingly to the rapid growth of a gen- 
 uine civilization in Queen Victoria’s reign 
 than the utter discontinuance of the duelling 
 system. When the Queen came to the 
 
22 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 po- 
 litical controversies. It was an episode of 
 most contested elections. It was often re- 
 sorted 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 bank- 
 ruptcy. 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 period had been vis- 
 ited 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 anachron- 
 ism as an ordeal by touch or a witch-burn- 
 ing. 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 wt s part of the growth of education 
 and of civilization ; of the strengthening and 
 broadening influence of the press, the plat- 
 form, 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 proper to say some- 
 thing of them, although not one possessed 
 the slightest political importance, or could be 
 said to illustrate anything more than sheer 
 lunacy, or that morbid vanity and thirst for 
 notoriety that is nearly akin to genuine mad- 
 ness. The first attempt was made on June 
 10, 1840, by Edward Oxford, a potboy of 
 seventeen, who fired two shots at the Queen 
 as she was driving up Constitution Hill with 
 Prince Albert. Oxford fired both shots de- 
 liberately enough, but happily missed in 
 each case. He proved to have been an ab- 
 surd 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 “ Young England, ” having among 
 its other objects the assassination of royal 
 personages. It is not an uninteresting illus- 
 tration 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 Orange- 
 men, and declared that the object was to as- 
 sassinate 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 some- 
 thing 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 unsatisfactory. Mr. Theodore Martin, 
 in his “Life of the Prince Consort,” ex- 
 presses 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 Ox- 
 ford himself, on being told of the similar at- 
 tempts 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 philosophic 
 opinion of the half-crazy young potboy, 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 execu- 
 tion of one fanatic was a safe protection 
 against the murderous fanaticism of another. 
 
 On May 30, 1842, a man named John 
 Francis, son of a machinist in Drury Lane, 
 fired a pistol at the Queen as 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 car- 
 riage, which fortunately was driving at a 
 very rapid rate. The Queen showed great 
 composure. She was in some measure pre- 
 pared for the attempt, for it seems certain 
 that the same man had on the previous even- 
 ing 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 as- 
 pect, 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 noto- 
 rious. Her Majesty herself was anxious 
 that the death sentence should not be carried 
 into effect, and it was finally commuted 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 Buckingham 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 pow- 
 der, 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 commuta- 
 tion of the capital sentence in the case of 
 Francis is not evidence that the leniency in 
 the former instance was the cause of the at- 
 tempt made in the latter. But it was made 
 clear, and the fact is recorded on the author- 
 ity of Prince Albert himself, that Bean had 
 announced his determination to make the at- 
 tempt 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 husband 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 herself showed how thoroughly 
 she understood the significance of all that had 
 happened, when she declared, according 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 martyrdom had something 
 fascinating in it to morbid vanity or crazy 
 fanaticism, 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 trans- 
 portation for seven years, or by imprison- 
 ment for a term not exceeding three years, 
 “ the culprit to be publicly or privately 
 whipped as often and 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 19, 
 1849, and was sentenced to seven years’ 
 transportation. A man named Robert Pate, 
 once a lieutenant of hussars, struck het 
 Majesty on the face with a stick as she was 
 leaving the Duke of Cambridge’s residence 
 in her carriage on May 27, 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 29, 1872, a lad of seventeen, namec 
 Arthur O’Connor, presented a pistol at the 
 Queen as she was entering Buckingham Pal- 
 ace after a drive. The pistol, however, proved 
 to be unloaded — an antique and useless or 
 harmless weapon, with a flint lock 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 irre- 
 sponsible for his actions or incapable of un- 
 derstanding the penalty they involved, and 
 he was sentenced to twelve months’ impris- 
 onment and a whipping. We have hurried 
 over many years for the purpose of complet- 
 ing 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 made on the life of a sovereign 
 which, however we may condemn and repro- 
 bate 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 op- 
 portunity 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 monu- 
 ments. 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 sympa- 
 thy 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 sov- 
 ereigns who, well-meaning enough, had yet 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 23 
 
 scarcely understood constitutional govern- 
 ment, and there were wild rumors of reac- 
 tion this way and revolution that way. It 
 might have fomented a feeling of distrust 
 and dissatisfaction if the people had seen any 
 disposition on the part of those in authority 
 to strain the criminal law for the sake of en- 
 forcing 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 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 by fear of death. 
 The tortures of Ravaillac did not deter Da- 
 miens. The birch in the case of Bean and 
 O’Connor may effectively discountenance en- 
 terprises which are born of the mountebank’s 
 and not the fanatic’s spirit. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE OPIUM WAR. 
 
 The Opium dispute with China was going 
 on when the Queen came to the throne. The 
 Opium War broke out soon after. On 
 March 3, 1843, five huge wagons, each of 
 them drawn by four horses, and the whole 
 under escort of a detachment of the 60th Reg- 
 iment, arrived in front of the Mint. An im- 
 mense crowd followed the wagons. It was 
 seen that they were filled with boxes ; and 
 one of the boxes having been somewhat bro- 
 ken in its journey, the crowd were able to see 
 that it was crammed full of odd-looking sil- 
 ver coins. The* lookers-on were delighted, 
 as well as amused, by the sight of this huge 
 consignment of treasure ; and when it be- 
 came 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 indem- 
 nity imposed on China. Nearly four mil- 
 lions 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 
 in 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 perhaps an event of which the 
 nation was entitled to be very proud. It 
 was the precursor of other wars ; the policy 
 on which it was conducted has never since 
 ceased altogether to be a question of more or 
 less excited controversy ; but it may safely 
 be asserted that if the same events were to 
 occur in our day it would be hardly possible 
 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 amid 
 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 promoters 
 themselves. As the quarrel between this 
 country and China went on, a great many 
 minor and incidental subjects 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 con- 
 troversy 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 considera- 
 tion of this kind can now hide from our eyes 
 the fact that in the beginning and the very 
 origin of the quarrel we were distinctly in the 
 wrong. We asserted or at least acted on the 
 assertion of a claim so unreasonable and 
 even monstrous that it never could have been 
 made upon any nation strong enough to ren- 
 der 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 glo- 
 rify the errors of their own people, and to 
 make wrong appear right, because an Eng- 
 lish Government talked the public opinion of 
 the time into a confusion of principles. 
 
 The whole principle of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion, at the time when the Opium War broke 
 out, was based on conditions which to any 
 modern nation must seem erroneous and un- 
 reasonable. 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 pri- 
 vate and commercial dealings ; but they would 
 have no political intercourse with foreigners, 
 and they would not even recognize the exist- 
 ence of foreign peoples as States. They were 
 perfectly satisfied with themselves and their 
 own systems. They were convinced that 
 their own systems were not only wise but ab- 
 solutely perfect. It is superfluous to say 
 that this was in itself evidence of ignorance 
 and self-conceit. A belief in the perfection 
 of their own systems could only exist among 
 a people who knew nothing of any other sys- 
 tems. 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 
 a civilization so ancient that the oldest events 
 preserved in European history were but as 
 yesterday in the comparison. Whatever its 
 errors and defects, it was distinctly a civiliza- 
 tion. It was a system with a literature and 
 laws and institutions of its own ; it was a 
 coherent and harmonious social and political 
 system which had on the whole worked tol- 
 erably 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 instincts and his con- 
 victions alike tend this way. The sleepiest 
 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 what- 
 ever ; the flaneur 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 them- 
 selves, would be delighted to hear of travel 
 and enterprise, and of new things and new 
 discoveries. But to the Chinese, of all East- 
 ern 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 precipice is to a nerv- 
 ous 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 beyond an average 
 
 Englishman. In the present day a consider- 
 able alteration has taken place in this respect. 
 The Chinese have had innovation after in- 
 novation 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 Euro- 
 pean civilization like a garment. Japan 
 effected in a few years a revolution in the 
 political constitution 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 noth- 
 ing 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 Dioge- 
 nes to Alexander — “stand out of my sun- 
 shine.” 
 
 It was, as we have said, to political re- 
 lationships rather than to private and com- 
 mercial 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 foreign- 
 ers 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 conditions, 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 mer- 
 chants, who bought of the Company the opi- 
 um 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 prosperity 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 un- 
 wholesome as the Chinese governments al- 
 ways thought, and that it does not do as 
 much proportionate 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 consider- 
 ations of interest as much political as philan- 
 thropic. Lord Palmerston insisted 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 interest in China, 
 and of the economists who wished to prevent 
 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 ourselves 
 whether the Chinese Government were per- 
 fectly sincere in their professions of a lofty 
 morality, or whether they, unlike all other 
 governments that have ever been known. 
 
24 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 govern- 
 ments. Especially when these laws even pro- 
 fess to concern questions of morals, is it the 
 duty of foreign States not to interfere with 
 the regulations which a government consid- 
 ers it necessary to impose for the protection 
 of its people. All traffic in opium was strict- 
 ly forbidden by the governments and laws 
 of China. Yet our English traders carried 
 on a brisk and profitable trade in the forbid- 
 den article. Nor was this merely an ordi- 
 nary smuggling, or a business akin to that 
 of the blockade running during the Ameri- 
 can civil war. The arrangements with the 
 Chinese Government allowed the existence of 
 all establishments and machinery for carry- 
 ing on a general trade at Canton and Macao ; 
 and under cover of these arrangements the 
 opium traders set up their regular head-quar- 
 ters in these towns. 
 
 Let us find an illustration intelligible to read- 
 ers of the present day to show how unjusti- 
 fiable 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 Au- 
 gusta, and the other towns of Maine, for the 
 purpose of brewing beer and distilling whis- 
 key, 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 ironclad fleet to Portland 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 
 possible. 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 abandoned. But in 
 dealing with China the Ministry never seems 
 to have thought the right or wrong of the 
 question a matter worthy of any considera- 
 tion. The controversy was entered upon 
 with as light a heart as a modern war of still 
 graver moment. The people in general knew 
 nothing about the matter until it had gone so 
 far that the original point of dispute was al- 
 most out of sight, and it seemed as if the safe- 
 ty of English subjects and the honor of Eng- 
 land were compromised in some way by the 
 hgh-handed proceedings of the Chinese Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 The English Government appointed super- 
 intendents to manage our commercial deal- 
 ings with China. Unluckily these superin- 
 tendents were invested with a sort of politi- 
 cal or diplomatic character, and thus from 
 the first became objectionable to the Chinese 
 authorities. One of the first of these super- 
 intendents 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 mer- 
 chant vessels in regard to the freedom of in- 
 tercourse. Misunderstandings occurred at 
 every new step of negotiation. These mis- 
 understandings were natural. Our people 
 knew hardly anything about the Chinese. 
 The limitation of our means of communica- 
 tion with them made this ignorance inevita- 
 ble, but certainly did not excuse our acting 
 as if we were in possession of the fullest anil 
 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 de- 
 bate on the whole subject in the House of 
 Commons in April, 1840. It was, Sir James 
 Graham said, as if a foreigner who was oc- 
 casionally permitted to anchor at the Nore, 
 and at times to land at Wapping, being plac- 
 ed in close confinement during his continu- 
 ance there, were to pronounce a deliberate 
 opinion upon the resources, the genius, and 
 the character of the British Empire. 
 
 Our representatives were generally dispos- 
 ed to be unyielding ; and not only that, but 
 to see deliberate offence in every Chinese 
 usage or ceremony which the authorities en- 
 deavored 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 coun- 
 tenanced 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 superintendents took 
 no steps to aid the Chinese authorities in 
 stopping the hated trade. The British trad- 
 ers naturally enough thought that the British 
 Government were determined to protect them 
 in earning it on. Indeed the superintend- 
 ents themselves might well have had the 
 same conviction. The Government at home 
 allowed Captain Elliott, the chief superin- 
 tendent, to make appeal after appeal for in- 
 structions 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 apathet- 
 ic for a long time, were now at last deter- 
 mined 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 Government 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 conse- 
 quence 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 traders had been allowed 
 to go on for a long time under the full con- 
 viction 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 author- 
 ities actually proceeded to insist on the for- 
 feiture of an immense quantity of the opium 
 in the hand of British traders, and took other 
 harsh but certainly not unnatural measures 
 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 property of Eng- 
 lishmen in China. Before long British ships 
 arrived ; and the two countries were at war. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe the succes- 
 sive steps by which the war came on. It 
 was inevitable from the moment 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 under- 
 standing 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 present- 
 ed itself to their mind was the fact that Eng- 
 lishmen were in danger in a foreign countrv ; 
 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 Chi- 
 nese were a barbarous and a ridiculous peo- 
 ple who had no alphabet and thought them- 
 selves much better than any other people, 
 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 Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 The policy of the Government was chal- 
 lenged 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 resolu- 
 tion 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 de- 
 bate which continued for three days took 
 place. It was marked by the same curious 
 mixture of parties which we have seen in de- 
 bates on China questions in days nearer to 
 the present. The defence of the Govern- 
 ment was opened by Mr. Macaulay, who 
 had been elected for Edinburgh and appoint- 
 ed Secretary at War. The defence consisted 
 chiefly in the argument that we could not 
 have put the trade in opium down, no mat- 
 ter how earnest we had been, and that it 
 was not necessary or possible to keep on is- 
 suing frequent instructions to agents so far 
 away as our representatives in China. Mr. 
 Macaulay actually drew from our experience 
 in India an argument in support of his posi- 
 tion. We cannot govern India from Lon- 
 don, he insisted ; we must, for the most 
 part, govern India in India. One can imag- 
 ine how Macaulay would in one of his essays 
 have torn into pieces such an argument com- 
 ing from any advocate of a policy opposed 
 to his own. The reply, indeed, 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 to rule the 
 country were there, provided with all the ap- 
 pliances and forces of rule. In China we had 
 an agent with a vague and anomalous office 
 dropped down in the middle of a hostile peo- 
 ple, possessed neither of recognized author- 
 ity 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 appearance at another. But what 
 we ought to have done is, therefore, only the 
 more clear. We ought to have announced 
 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 determination. As it 
 was, we allowed our traders to remain under 
 the impression that we were willing to sup- 
 port them, until it was too late to undeceive 
 them with any profit to their safety or our 
 credit. The Chinese authorities acted after a 
 while with a high-handed disregard of fair- 
 ness, and of anything like what we should 
 call the responsibility of law ; but it is evi- 
 dent that they believed they were themselves 
 the objects of lawless intrusion and enter- 
 prise. There were on the part of the Gov- 
 ernment great efforts made to represent the 
 motion as an attempt to prevent the Minis- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 35 
 
 try from exacting satisfaction from the Chi 
 uese 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 condemna- 
 tion. When Englishmen are being impris- 
 oned 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 pos- 
 sible for English statesmen in opposition to 
 say, “We will not allow England to 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 Govern- 
 ment would have spared us the beginning of 
 such a war.” There was really no inconsist- 
 ency in recognizing the necessity of carry- 
 ing on the war, and at the same time censur- 
 ing the Ministry who had allowed the neces- 
 sity to be forced upon us. Sir Robert Peel 
 quoted with great effect, during the debate, 
 the example of Fox, who declared his readi- 
 ness 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 ma- 
 jority 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 concern- 
 ed. It was on our side nothing but a succes- 
 sion of cheap victories. The Chinese fought 
 very bravely in a great many instances ; and 
 they showed still more often a Spartanlike 
 resolve not to survive 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 
 servants set fire to the building, and calmly 
 sat in his chair until he was burned to death. 
 One of the English officers 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 chil- 
 dren 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 ; ne- 
 gotiations were opened, and the prelimina- 
 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 
 mainland, fell into our hands ; Amoy, far- 
 ther south, was captured ; our troops were 
 before Nankin when the Chinese Govern- 
 ment 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, ludi- 
 crous, iu 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-Koug. 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 trad- 
 ers, and that consuls should be established 
 there. Needless to say that this too was 
 conceded. Then it was agreed that the in- 
 demnity already mentioned should be paid 
 by the Chinese Government — some four mil- 
 lions and a half sterling, in addition to one 
 million and a quarter as compensation for 
 the destroyed opium. It was also stipulated 
 that correspondence between officials of the 
 
 two Governments was thenceforth to be car- 
 ried 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 operations. 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 be- 
 tween 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 Wellington was a sim- 
 ple-minded man with little sense of 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 tri- 
 umphed over the unarmed, helpless, child- 
 like 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 destroyed opium. The Govern- 
 ment 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 com- 
 pensation for the opium. The traders in- 
 sisted 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 de- 
 manded 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 in the end, and were hardly in a 
 position, either logical or dignified, when 
 they afterwards chose to say, “ Yes, we ad- 
 mit that we did undertake to get you re- 
 dress, 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 ac- 
 quittance in full. It is hard to get up any 
 feeling of sympathy with the traders 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. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 DECLINE AND FALL OF 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 direction. 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 delib- 
 eration and thoughtfulness which might have 
 reminded one of Locke and the Constitution 
 of the Carolinas. Some of the first compre- 
 hensive and practical measures to mitigate 
 the rigor and to correct the indiscriminate- 
 ness of the death punishment were taken 
 during this period. One of the first legisla- 
 tive 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 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 curi- 
 ous to notice how long and how fiercely this 
 modest measure of recognition for what may 
 almost be called the natural rights 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 education which was made 
 by the Melbourne Government. In 1834 the 
 first grant of public money for the purposes 
 of elementary education was made by Parlia- 
 ment. The sum granted was twenty thou- 
 sand pounds, and the same grant was made 
 every year until 1839. Then Lord John Rus- 
 sell asked for an increase of ten thousand 
 pounds, and proposed a change in the man- 
 ner of appropriating the money. Up to that 
 time the grant had "been distributed through 
 the National School Society, a body in direct 
 connection with the Church of England, and 
 the British and Foreign School Association, 
 which admitted children of all Christian de- 
 nominations without imposing on them sec- 
 tarian 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 to do anything for itself, the Lords of 
 the Treasury would do nothing for it. Nat- 
 urally 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 Parlia- 
 ment 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 good. “The statistics of the schools,” 
 says a writer in the “Edinburgh Review,” 
 “ were alone considered : the size of the 
 schoolroom, 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 composed 
 of the president and not more than five mem- 
 bers. Lord John Russell also proposed the 
 appointment of inspectors, 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 contribu- 
 tion, to establish iu poor and crowded places 
 schools not necessarily connected with either 
 of the two educational societies, and to ex- 
 tend 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 Par- 
 liament. The most various and fantastic 
 forms of bigotry combined against them. 
 The application of public money, and es- 
 pecially 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 recog- 
 
26 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 nition of popery and heresy. Scarcely less 
 marvellous to us now are the speeches of 
 those who promoted than of those who op- 
 posed the scheme. Lord John Russell him- 
 self, who was much in advance of the com- 
 mon 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 teach- 
 ing all done in her own way or to allow no 
 teaching at all. 
 
 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 re- 
 quested to revoke the Order in Council ap- 
 pointing 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 
 Canterbury actually moved and carried by a 
 large majority an address to the Queen pray- 
 ing 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 conscience, and the safety of 
 the Established Church, and so dismissed the 
 question. The Government therefore suc- 
 ceeded in establishing their Committee of 
 Council on Education, the institution by 
 which our system of public instruction has 
 been managed ever since. The Ministry on 
 the whole showed to advantage in this strug- 
 gle. 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 per- 
 son of our time because of the feeble, apolo- 
 getic, and almost craven tone in which they 
 assert the claims of a system of national ed- 
 ucation, yet it must be admitted that the 
 principle was accepted by the Government at 
 some risk, and that it was not shabbily de- 
 serted in the face of hostile pressure. It is 
 worth noticing that while the increased grant 
 and the principles on which it was to be dis- 
 tributed were opposed by such men as Sir 
 Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, Mr. Gladstone, 
 and Mr. Disraeli, it had the support 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 prin- 
 ciple. O’Connell was the recognized leader 
 of the Irish Catholics and nationalists ; Smith 
 O’Brien was an aristocratic Protestant. 
 With all the weakness of the Whig Ministry, 
 their term of office must at least be remark- 
 able for the new departure it took in the mat- 
 ter of national education. The appoint- 
 ment of the Committee of Council marks an 
 epoch. 
 
 Indeed the history of that time seems full 
 of Reform projects. The Parliamentary an- 
 nals contain the names of various measures 
 of social and political improvement which 
 might in themselves, it would seem, bear wit- 
 ness to the most unsleeping activity on the 
 part of any Ministry. 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 sys- 
 tem ; 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 disabili- 
 ties — these are but a few of the many pro- 
 jects of social and political reform that occu- 
 pied 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 in 
 whose time all these things were done or at- 
 tempted as exhausted and worthless ? 
 
 One answer is plain. The reforming en- 
 ergy was in the time and not in the Minis- 
 try. 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 improve- 
 ment they usually did all they could to min- 
 imize the amount of reform to be effected. 
 Whatever they undertook they seemed to un- 
 dertake reluctantly, and as if only with the 
 object of preventing other people from hav- 
 ing anything to do with it. Naturally, there- 
 fore, they 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 
 Commission 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 re- 
 formers 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 apparently got into 
 his mind the conviction that the only sensible 
 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 something 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 enthusiasm in these countries has only 
 to glance at its history. The Church of Eng- 
 land and the Church of Scotland were alike 
 convulsed by movements which were the 
 offspring of a genuine and irresistible enthu- 
 siasm — enthusiasm of that strong far-reach- 
 ing 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 periodically 
 made among ourselves had their beginning 
 then, and 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, beershops and ginshops are legally 
 open.” The motion was of course rejected ; 
 but it is worthy of mention now as an evi- 
 dence of the point to which the spirit of so- 
 cial 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 al- 
 lowed, 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 Stockdaie case was a disturbance of 
 ministerial repose which at one time threat- 
 ened 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 pub- 
 lished certain Parliamentary reports on pris- 
 ons, in which it happened that a book pub- 
 lished by J. J. Stockdaie was described as 
 obscene and disgusting in the extreme. 
 Stockdaie proceeded against the Hansards for 
 libel. The Hansards pleaded the authority 
 of Parliament ; but Lord Chief Justice Den- 
 
 man decided that the House of Commons 
 was not Parliament, and had no authority to 
 sanction the publication of libels on individ- 
 uals. Out of this contradiction of authori- 
 ties 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 Lon- 
 don were called on to seize and sell some of 
 the Hansards’ property to satisfy the de- 
 mands of the plaintiff. The unhappy 
 sheriffs were placed, as the homely old say- 
 ing would describe it, between the devil and 
 the deep sea. If they touched the property 
 of the Hansards they were acting in con- 
 tempt of the privilege of the House of Com- 
 mons, and were liable to be committed 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 Sheriff’s Court in order tc 
 avoid the scandal of a sale, but under pro- 
 test ; the House of Commons ordered the 
 sheriffs to refund the money to the Han- 
 sards ; the Court of Queen’s Bench was 
 moved for an order to direct the sheriffs to 
 pay it over to Stockdaie. 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 Jiabeas corpus on the ser- 
 geant-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 sufficient, 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 off the pertinacious Stock- 
 dale, 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 iron- 
 ical laughter. At last the House of Com- 
 mons had recourse to legislation, and Lord 
 John Russell brought in a bill on March 3, 
 1840, to afford summary protection to all per- 
 sons employed in the publication of Parlia- 
 mentary papers. The preamble of the meas- 
 ure declared that “ whereas it is essential to 
 the due and effectual discharge of the func- 
 tions and duties of Parliament that no ob- 
 struction 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 proceed- 
 ings shall be taken on account of such pub- 
 lication 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 14. It settled the question satisfacto- 
 rily enough, although it certainly did not de- 
 fine 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 in public fat or as to bring 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 27 
 
 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 con- 
 troversy except that imposed on them by of- 
 ficial duty. Accordingly the sheriffs were the 
 heroes of the hour, and were toasted and ap- 
 plauded all over the country. Assuredly it 
 was an awkward position for the House of 
 Commons to be placed in when it had to 
 vindicate its privileges by committing to pris- 
 on men who were merely doing a duty 
 which the law courts imposed on them. It 
 would have been better probably if the Gov- 
 ernment had more firmly asserted the rights 
 of the House of Commons at the beginning, 
 and thus allowed the public to see the real 
 question which the whole controversy in- 
 volved. Nothing can be more clear now 
 than the paramount importance of securing 
 to each House of Parliament an absolute 
 authority and freedom of publication. No 
 evil that could possibly arise out of the mis- 
 use 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 
 single 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 interested in upholding a grievance had the 
 power of worrying the publishers of the Par- 
 liamentary reports by legal proceedings in 
 the earlier stages of the discussion. Nor 
 would it be of any use to protect merely the 
 freedom of debate in Parliament itself. It is 
 not through debate, but through publication, 
 that the public opinion of the country 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 free- 
 dom of publication to be vested in the hands 
 of Parliament. The factory child, the climb- 
 ing boy, the apprentice under colonial sys- 
 tems 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 ud.- 
 sexed in form, function, and soul, who in her 
 filthy trowsersof sacking dragged on all fours 
 the coal trucks in the mines— these are the 
 tyrants and the monopolists for whom \ 7 e as- 
 sert the privilege of Parliamentary publica- 
 tion. 
 
 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 impor- 
 tant a bearing on the relations between this 
 country and France, and are so directly con- 
 nected with subsequent events in which Eng- 
 land bore a leading part, that it would be im- 
 possible to pass them over without some no- 
 tice here. Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, 
 the most powerful of all the Sultan’s feuda- 
 tories, 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 encoun- 
 tered them. Mohammed’s victories had for 
 the time compelled the Porte to allow him to 
 remain in 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 ob- 
 tained an overwhelming victory over the 
 Turkish army. The energetic Sultan Mah- 
 moud, a man not unworthy to cope with 
 such an adversary as Mohammed Ali, 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 unex- 
 ampled treachery even in the history of the 
 Ottoman Empire. It was evident that Tur- 
 key was not able to hold her own against the 
 formidable Mohammed and his successful 
 son ; and the policy of the Western Powers 
 of Europe, and of England especially, had 
 long been to maintain the Ottoman Empire as 
 a necessary part of the common State sys- 
 tem. The policy of Russia was to keep up 
 that empire as long as it suited her own pur- 
 poses ; 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 Tur- 
 key as would satisfy Russian interests. 
 Russia therefore was to be found now de- 
 fending Turkey, and now assailing her. The 
 course taken by Russia was seemingly in- 
 consistent ; 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 ambi- 
 tions 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 gen- 
 erally with England ; 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 harmoni- 
 ous 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 strongholds. Ibrahim 
 Pasha with all his courage and genius was 
 not equal to the odds against which he now 
 saw himself forced to contend. He had to 
 succumb. No one could doubt that he and 
 his father were incomparably better able to 
 ive good government and the chances of 
 evelopment 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 se- 
 cured in his government of Egypt. A con- 
 vention signed at London on July 15, 1840, 
 arranged for the imposition of those terms on 
 Mohammed Ali. 
 
 The convention was signed by the repre- 
 sentatives of Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, 
 and Russia, on the one part, and of the Otto- 
 man 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, rest- 
 less and ambitious temperament, and what 
 we cannot help calling a vulgar spirit of na- 
 tional self-sufficiency — we are speaking now 
 of the Thiers of 1840, not of the wise and capa- 
 ble 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 coun- 
 trymen that England was bent upon driving 
 Mohammed 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 re- 
 motest idea of becoming 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 13, 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 here- 
 after, by which the Sultan declared himself 
 firmly resolved to maintain the ancient prin- 
 ciple 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 Eng- 
 land in a war with France. Some of the ep- 
 isodes 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 suc- 
 cessful 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 
 Porte ; not a few were utterly ignorant as to 
 whether he was fighting for Porte or for 
 Pasha. Those who claimed to be more en- 
 lightened had a sort of general idea that it 
 was in some way essential to the safety and 
 glory of England 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 unrea- 
 sonable. Even a very cool and impartial 
 Frenchman might be led to the conclusion 
 that free England would not without some 
 direct purpose of her own have pledged her- 
 self to the cause of a base and a decaying 
 despotism. 
 
 Steadily meanwhile did the Ministry go 
 from bad to worse. They had greatly dam- 
 aged 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 remarka- 
 bly bad administrators ; 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-man- 
 aged revenue and a comfortable surplus are 
 generally looked upon as in some way or 
 ouier the monopoly of a Liberal administra- 
 tion ; while lavish expenditure, deficit and 
 increased taxation are counted among the 
 
28 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 necessary accompaniments of a Tory Gov- 
 ernment. 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 rev- 
 enue 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 incapa- 
 ble of managing the finances. The budget 
 of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Bar- 
 ing, showed a deficiency of nearly two mil- 
 lions. 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 ; blit they were not 
 yet willing to accept the consequences of de- 
 feat. They thought they had another stone 
 in their sling. Lord John Russell had pre- 
 viously given notice of his intention to move 
 for a committee of the whole House to con- 
 sider the state cf legislation with regard to 
 the trade in corn ; and he now brought for- 
 ward 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 inci- 
 dent 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 al- 
 ways spoken with the uttermost contempt of 
 the Free Trade agitation. With characteris- 
 tic 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 offi- 
 cial advocates of a moderate fixed duty was 
 all too sudden for tlie« conscience, for the 
 very stomach of the nation. Public opinion 
 would not endure it. Nothing but harm 
 came to the Whigs from the attempt. In- 
 stead of any new adherents or fresh sympa- 
 thy 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 the confidence 
 of the House sufficiently to enable them to 
 carry through the measures which they 
 deemed of essential importance to the public 
 welfare, and that their continuance in office 
 under such circumstances was at variance 
 with the spirit of the Constitution. On 
 June 4, 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 be- 
 gan 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 mo- 
 ment the new Parliament was assembled 
 amendments to the address were carried in 
 both Houses in a sense hostile to the Govern- 
 ment. Lord Melbourne and his colleagues 
 had to resign, and Sir Robert Peel was en- 
 trusted 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 expulsion from office 
 and his death, which took place in 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 lonesome and melan- 
 choly ; 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 bitterness of neg- 
 lect. He was a generous and kindly man ; 
 his personal character, although often as- 
 sailed, 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 Sec- 
 retary. 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 time into the House of Commons. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MOVEMENTS IN THE CHUECHES. 
 
 While Lord Melbourne and his Whig col- 
 leagues, still in office, were fribbling away 
 their popularity on the pleasant assumption 
 that nobody was particularly in 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 tenden- 
 cies were formally censured in the condem- 
 nation of this tract, was one of the most mo- 
 mentous that had stirred the Church of Eng- 
 land 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 seem- 
 ed to put forward — that a man might honest- 
 ly 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 re- 
 garded as a necessary protest. The great 
 movement which was thus brought into sud- 
 den question and publicity was in itself an 
 offspring of the immense stirring of thought 
 which the French Revolution called up, 
 and which had its softened echo in the Eng- 
 lish Reform Bill. The centre of the relig- 
 ious movement was to be found in the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford. When it is in the right, and 
 when it is in the wrong, Oxford has always 
 had more of the sentimental and of the poetic 
 in its cast of thought than its rival or col- 
 league of Cambridge. There were two influ- 
 ences 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 tendency 
 to Rationalism drawn from the German theo- 
 logians ; 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 in- 
 stitution and teacher. The Reform party 
 everywhere were assailing the rights and prop- 
 erty of the Church. In Ireland especially 
 experiments were made which every practi- 
 cal 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 freedom 
 and influence of the Church. Out of the 
 contemplation 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 in- 
 spirer 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 disinter- 
 ested 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 pleas- 
 ure since all is well. He urged on some of 
 the more vigorous and thoughtful minds 
 around him, or rather he suggested it by his 
 influence and his example, that they should 
 reclaim for the Church the place which 
 ought to be hers, as the true successor of the 
 Apostles. He claimed for her that she, and 
 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 his- 
 torian’s elder brother, who gave rich promise 
 of a splendid career, but who died while still 
 in comparative youth ; Dr. Pusey, afterwards 
 leader of the school of ecclesiasticism which 
 bears his name ; and, most eminent of all, Dr. 
 Newman. Keble had taken part in the pub- 
 lication of a series of treatises called ‘ ‘ Tracts 
 for the Times,” the object of which was to 
 vindicate the real mission, as the writers be- 
 lieved, of the Church of England. This 
 was the Tractarian movement which had 
 such various and memorable results. New- 
 man first started the project of the tracts, 
 and wrote the most remarkable of them. 
 He had up to this time been distinguished 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 tri- 
 color ; Newman would not even look at her. 
 “ On my return, though forced to stop 
 twenty-four hours at Paris, I kept indoors 
 the whole time, and all that I saw of that 
 beautiful city was what I saw from the 
 diligence.” He had never had any man- 
 ner of association with Roman Catholics ; 
 had in fact known singularly little of 
 them. As Newman studied and wrote con- 
 cerning the best way to restore the Church 
 of England to her proper place in the na- 
 tional 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. There was 
 need of a second Reformation.” At this 
 time the idea of leaving the Church never, Dr. 
 Newman himself 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 de- 
 partment of thought. His position and in- 
 fluence 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 cor- 
 rupt and ungenerous sense of the latter word. 
 It had often been said of him and of another 
 great Englishman, that a change in their ear- 
 ly conditions and training would easily have 
 made of Newman a Stuart Mill, and of Mill 
 a Newman. England in our time has hardly 
 had a greater master of argument and of 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 29 
 
 English prose than Newman. lie is one! of 
 the keenest of dialecticians ; and like Mill 
 has the rare art that dissolves all the difficul- 
 ties of the most abstruse or perplexed sub- 
 ject, 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 pen- 
 etrating 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 constrained, ungraceful, and 
 even awkward ; his voice was thin and weak. 
 His bearing was not at first impressive 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 intellectual 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 de- 
 spised it only when it gave itself airs. His in- 
 fluence while he was the vicar of St. Mary’s 
 at Oxford was profound. As Mr. Glad- 
 stone 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.” Air. Glad- 
 stone in the same speech gave a description 
 of Dr. Newman’s pulpit style which is inter- 
 esting : “ Dr. Newman’s manner in the pul- 
 pit 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. Y es ; 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 
 completeness in the figure, taken together 
 with the tone and with the manner, which 
 made even his delivery, such as I have de- 
 scribed it, and though exclusively wdth writ- 
 ten 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 character. Dr. Newman had a 
 younger brother, Francis W. Newman, who 
 also possessed remarkable ability and ear- 
 nestness. He too was distinguished at Ox- 
 ford, and seemed to have a great career there 
 before him. But he was drawn one way by 
 the wave of thought before his more famous 
 brother had been draw T n the other way. In 
 1830, the younger Newman found himself 
 prevented by religious scruples from sub- 
 scribing the Thirty-nine Articles for his mas- 
 ter’s degree He left the university, and 
 wandered for years in the East, endeavoring, 
 not very successfully perhaps, to teach Chris- 
 tianity on its broadest base to Mahometans ; 
 and then he came back to England to take 
 bis 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 bleeding 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 dis- 
 continued the publication of such treatises. 
 But he did not admit any change of opin- 
 ion ; and indeed soon after he edited a publi- 
 cation called “ The British Critic,” in which 
 many of the principles held to be exclusively 
 
 those of the Church of Rome were enthusias- 1 
 tically claimed for the English Church. Yet 
 a little and the gradual working 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 Newman went over to the 
 Church of Rome. His secession was de- 
 scribed by Mr. Disraeli a quarter of a cen- 
 tury afterwards as having “ dealt a blow to 
 the Church of England under which she still 
 reels.” To this result had the inquiry con- 
 ducted 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 tem- 
 per for the faith of the Protestant ; and 
 which had sent Francis Newman into Radi- 
 calism and Rationalism. 
 
 In truth it is not difficult now to under- 
 stand how the elder Newman’s mind became 
 drawn towards, the ancient Church which 
 won him at last. We can see from his own 
 candid account of his early sentiments how 
 profoundly mystical was his intellectual na- 
 ture, and how, long before he was conscious 
 of any such tendency, he was drawn towards 
 the very symbolisms of the Catholic Church. 
 Pascal’s early and unexplained mastery of 
 mathematical problems which no one had 
 taught him is not more suggestive in its way 
 than those early drawings of Catholic sym- 
 bols and devices which, done in his child- 
 hood, Newman says surprised and were in- 
 explicable 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 Ox- 
 ford, with all its noble memories of scholars 
 and of priests, with its picturesque and poetic 
 surroundings, and its never-fading medieval- 
 ism. Newman lived in the past. His spirit was 
 with medieval 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 mo- 
 ment suppose that that ideal Church was to 
 be found in the English Establishment, sub- 
 mitted 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 it- 
 self 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 receive the decis- 
 ion 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 pretension, it would be rejected 
 with contempt by the common mind of the 
 nation. We are not discussing questions of 
 dogma, or the rival 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, con- 
 tended for supremacy with the tendency to 
 devotion and mysticism, only impelled him 
 more rigorously on his way. He could not 
 put up with compromises, and convince him- 
 self that he ought to be convinced. He 
 dragged every compromise and every doc- 
 trine into the light, and insisted on knowing 
 exactly what it amounted to and what it , 
 meant to say. The doctrines and compro- | 
 
 | mises of his own Church did not satisfy him. 
 There are minds which in this condition of 
 bewilderment might have been content to 
 find “ no footing so solid as doubt.” New- 
 man 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 anticipating by a few years the pass- 
 ing over of Dr. Newman, Cardinal Man- 
 ning and others to the ancient Church. It is 
 clear that Newman was not himself con- 
 scious 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 remain- 
 ed a conscious Roman Catholic in "the Eng- 
 lish Church, laboring to make new converts. 
 Apart from his own calm assurances, and 
 from the singularly pure and candid nature 
 of the man, there are reasons enough to ren- 
 der such a charge absurd. Indeed, that sim- 
 ple and childish conception of human nature 
 which assumes that a man must always see 
 the logical consequences of certain admis- 
 sions or inquiries beforehand, because all 
 men can see them afterwards, is rather con- 
 fusing and out of place when we are consid- 
 ering 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 impulse overshot itself in 
 some cases and was misdirected in others. 
 It proved a failure on the whole as to its def- 
 inite 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 Scotland about the same 
 time. A fortnight before the decision 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 dis- 
 sensions 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 denounced it, and the Government 
 opposed it ; and he, therefore, had nothing 
 further to suggest in the matter. The per- 
 plexity of Lord Aberdeen only faintly typi- 
 fied the perplexity 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 diffi- 
 culty' 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 Eng- 
 land. In both cases alike the effort of the 
 reforming party was to emancipate the 
 Church from the control of the State in mat- 
 ters involving religious doctrine and duty. 
 In Scotland was soon to be presented the 
 spectacle of a great secession from an Estab- 
 lished Church, not because the seceders ob- 
 jected to the principle of a Church, but be- 
 cause they held that the Establishment was 
 not faithful enough to its mission as a Church. 
 One of the seceders pithily explained the po- 
 sition of the controversy when he said that 
 I he and his fellows were leaving the Kirk 
 | of Scotland, not because she was too 
 
30 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 “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 Scot- 
 land the free choice as to the appointment 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 sup- 
 posed sanctity of an ecclesiastical appoint- 
 ment, were the authors of this compromise, 
 which was exactly of the kind that sensible 
 men of the world everywhere might be sup- 
 posed likely to accept and approve. In an 
 immense number of Scotch parishes the min- 
 ister was nominated by a lay patron ; and if 
 the presbytery found nothing to condemn in 
 him as to “ life, literature, and doctrine,” 
 they were compelled to appoint him, now- 
 ever unwelcome he might be to the parish- 
 ioners. Now it is obvious that a man might 
 have a blameless character, sound religious 
 views, and an excellent education, and never- 
 theless be totally unfitted to undertake the 
 charge of a Scottish parish. The Southwark 
 congregation who appreciate and delight in 
 the ministrations of Mr. Spurgeon might 
 very well be excused if they objected to hav- 
 ing 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 pat- 
 ron. 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 minis- 
 ters. Men clung to the National Church as 
 long as it was national — that is, as long as it 
 represented and protected the sacred claims 
 of a deeply religious people. Dissent, or 
 rather voluntaryism, began to make a prog- 
 ress 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 nomination of the pastor should be exer- 
 cised by the congregation, in accordance 
 with a fundamental law of the Church that 
 no pastor should be intruded on any congre- 
 gation 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 in- 
 compatible with the Act of Queen Anne. 
 But it diminished far too seriously the power 
 of the lay patron to be accepted without a 
 struggle. In the celebrated Auchterarder 
 case the patron won a victory over the 
 Church in the courts of law, for having pre- 
 sented a minister whose appointment was 
 vetoed by the congregation ; he obtained an 
 order from the civil courts deciding that the 
 presbytery must take him on trial, in obedi- 
 ence 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 appeal- 
 ed to the Legislature to do something which 
 might make the civil law in harmony with 
 the principles of the Church. A more seri- 
 ous question, however, presently arose. 
 This was the famous Strathbogie case, which 
 brought the authority of the Church and that 
 of the State into irreconcilable corflict. 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 re- 
 
 ject the minister, Mr. Edwards. The pres- 
 bytery had long been noted for its leaning 
 towards 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 
 question 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 mem- 
 bers, constituting the majority of the presby- 
 tery, determined, without consulting the Gen- 
 eral Assembly, to obey the civil power, and 
 they admitted Mr. Edwards on trial. The 
 seven were brought before the bar of the 
 General Assembly, and by an overwhelming 
 majority were condemned to be deposed 
 from their places in the ministry. Their 
 parishes were declared vacant. A more com- 
 plete antagonism between Church and State 
 is not possible to imagine. The Church ex- 
 pelled 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. Chal- 
 mers became the leader of the movement 
 which was destined within two years from 
 the time we are now surveying to cause the 
 disruption of the ancient Kirk of Scotland. 
 No man could be better fitted for the task of 
 leadership in such a movement. He was 
 beyond comparison the foremost man in the 
 Scottish Church. He was the greatest pul- 
 pit orator in Scotland, or, indeed, in Great 
 Britain. As a scientific writer, both on as- 
 tronomy and on political economy, he had 
 made a great mark. From having been in 
 his earlier days the minister of an obscure 
 Scottish village congregation, he had sud- 
 denly sprung into fame. He was the lion of 
 any city which he happened to visit. If he 
 preached in London, the church was crowd- 
 ed 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 Scot- 
 tish 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 in preaching — overborne 
 by his power, which melted 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. Chal- 
 mers 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 pow- 
 erful frame and his broad brow and his com- 
 manding 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 con- 
 victions of his Scottish audiences. His 
 whole soul was in his work as a leader of re- 
 ligious movements. He cared little or noth- 
 ing 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 noth- 
 ing to lull the agonies of its tottering exist- 
 ence but the Hosannas of a drivelling gen- 
 
 eration.” 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 illustration of the genius 
 and the influence of Chalmers in his publish- 
 ed 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 peo- 
 ple. 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 generation. It grew natu- 
 rally 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 in- 
 stance as in that of the Oxford movement, 
 and mention at once the fact that on May 
 18, 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 en- 
 actment, 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 secession 
 — as to its effects upon the history and the 
 character of the Scottish people since that 
 time ; but there can be no difference of opin- 
 ion 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 positions of comfort and 
 honor, from home and competence, to meet 
 an uncertain and a perilous future, with per- 
 haps poverty and failure to be the final re- 
 sult of their enterprise, and with miscon- 
 struction and misrepresentation to make the 
 bitter bread of povery 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 
 Scotland 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 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 Chal- 
 mers, who, whether they sought it or not, 
 found fame shining on their path of self-sac- 
 rifice. 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 interference 
 with conscience, the dishonor done to Christ’s 
 crown, and the rejection of his sole and su- 
 preme authority as King in his Church.” 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE DISASTERS OF 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 agricul- 
 tural districts ; but there was a general con- 
 fidence that the financial genius of Peel 
 would quickly find some way to make bur- 
 dens light, and that the condition of things 
 all over the country would begin to mend. 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 31 
 
 It was a region far removed from the knowl- 
 edge 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 yesterday the 
 first accounts that reached this country of 
 the surrender at Cabul, and the gradual ex- 
 tinction 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 ordinary 
 course of things that some part of the empire 
 might be torn with convulsion for months 
 before London knew that the even and or- 
 dinary condition of things had been dis- 
 turbed. In this instance, the rejoicings at 
 the accession of the young Queen were still 
 going on, when a series of events had begun 
 in Central Asia destined to excite the pro- 
 foundest emotion in England, and to exercise 
 the most powerful influence upon our foreign 
 policy down to the present hour. On Sep- 
 tember 20, 1837, Captain Alexander Burnes 
 arrived at Cabul, the capital of the State of 
 Cabul, in the north of Afghanistan, and the 
 ancient capital of the Emperor Baber, whose 
 tomb is on a hill outside 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 Govern- 
 ment, 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 en- 
 ter into commercial relations with Dost Ma- 
 homed, 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 diplomatic mission ; and 
 his tragic fate would make his journey mem- 
 orable to Englishmen for ever, 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 West- 
 ern 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 
 becoming lord of Cabul. The Afghans are 
 the ruling nation, but among them had long 
 been settled Hindoos, Arabs, Armenians, 
 Abyssinians, and men of other races and re- 
 ligions. The Afghans are Mahometans 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 po- 
 sition 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 quar- 
 rels of his sons ; the leaders of a powerful 
 tribe, the Barukzyes, took advantage of the 
 events that arose out of this condition of 
 tilings to dethrone the descendants of Ahmed 
 Shah. When Captain Burnes visited Af- 
 ghanistan in 1832, the only part of all their 
 great inheritance which yet remained 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 en- 
 ergy. 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 coun- 
 try, and on the whole a wise and just ruler. 
 When Captain Burnes visited Dost Mahom- 
 ed he was received with every mark of 
 friendship and favor. Dost Mahomed pro- 
 fessed to be, and no doubt at one time was, 
 a sincere friend of the English Government 
 and people. There was, however, at that 
 time a quarrel going on between the Shah of 
 Persia and the Prince of Herat, the last en- 
 throned representative, as has 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 proba- 
 ble too that the Persian Shah had been seek- 
 ing for, and in any case would have found, a 
 pretext for making war ; and the strong im- 
 pression at the time in England, and among 
 the authorities in India, was that Persia her- 
 self 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 undoubtedly the at- 
 tack on Herat might have been regarded as 
 the first step of a great movement of Russia 
 towards 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 negoti- 
 ating 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 Dost Ma- 
 homed prevailed. It was again and again 
 impressed on Burnes that he must regard Dost 
 Mahomed as a treacherous enemy and as a man 
 playing the part of Persia and of Russia. It 
 is impossible now to estimate fairly all the 
 reasons which may have justified the Eng- 
 lish and the Indian Governments in this con- 
 viction. But we know that nothing in the 
 policy afterwards 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 — al- 
 most to a day the extent of this sad chapter 
 of English history — will be a tale of such 
 misfortune, blunder, and humiliation as the 
 annals of England do not anywhere else pre- 
 sent. 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 formida- 
 ble 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 ig- 
 noble 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 in- 
 vasion of Mexico under the Second Empire 
 seems like glory when compared with the 
 failure of our attempt to impose a hated sov- 
 ereign on the Afghan people. 
 
 Captain Burnes then was placed in the 
 painful difficulty 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 have been better for the career and 
 for the reputation of Burnes 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 am- 
 bition. He thought be saw a career of dis- 
 tinction opening before him, and he was un- 
 willing to close it abruptly by setting himself 
 in obstinate opposition to his superiors. He 
 was, besides, of a quick mercurial tempera- 
 ment, over which mood followed mood in 
 rapid succession of change. A slight con- 
 tradiction sometimes threw him into momen- 
 tary despondency ; a gleam of hope elated 
 him into the assurance that all was won. It 
 is probable that after a while he may have 
 persuaded himself to acquiesce in the judg- 
 ment 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 arguments. Runjeet 
 Singh, the daring and successful adventurer 
 who had annexed the whole province of 
 Cashmere to his dominions, was the enemy 
 of Dost Mahomed and the faithful ally of 
 England. Dost Mahomed thought the Brit- 
 ish 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 satisfac- 
 tory 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 backward ; “ yet in all 
 that has passed, or is daily transpiring, 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 judg- 
 ment 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, how- 
 ever, was unable to impress his superiors with 
 any belief either in Dost Mahomed or in the 
 policy which he himself advocated, and the 
 result was that Lord Auckland, the Gover- 
 nor-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 ex- 
 iled representative of what we may call the 
 legitimist rulers of Afghanistan, for the res- 
 toration of the latter to the throne of his an- 
 cestors, and for the destruction of the power 
 of Dost Mahomed. 
 
 It ought to be a waste of time to enter into 
 
32 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 any argument in condemnation of such a pol- 
 icy in uur 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 slightest 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 dis- 
 astrous attempt to impose a foreign ruler on 
 the Mexican 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 enter- 
 prise. But the French Emperor could at 
 least have pleaded in his defence that Max- 
 imilian of Austria had not already been tried 
 and rejected by the Mexican people. Our 
 protege 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 possible dan- 
 gers 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 suc- 
 cess when compared with the immediate re- 
 sult of our enterprise in Cabul. Before pass- 
 ing 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 pre- 
 sented to the House of Commons his de- 
 spatches in so mutilated and altered a form, 
 that Burnes was made to seem as if he act- 
 ually 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 states- 
 manship fell for the hour under the demoral- 
 izing influence which allowed such things to 
 be thought legitimate. An Oriental atmos- 
 phere 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 Palmerston was 
 called upon to defend the policy which had 
 thus dealt with the despatches of Alexander 
 Burnes, he did 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 no 
 wise bound to publish those passages of his 
 despatches in which he set forth assumptions 
 which they believed to be unfounded, 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 suppressing 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 ear- 
 nestly protesting. Burnes was himself the 
 first victim of the policy which he strove 
 against, and which all England has since con- 
 demned. No severer word is needed to con- 
 demn 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. W. 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 have 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 — coun- 
 terfeits, which the ministerial stamp forces 
 into currency, defrauding a present genera- 
 tion, 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 a famous man- 
 ifesto, dated from Simla, October 1, 1838, in 
 which he set forth the motives of his policy. 
 The Governor-General stated that Dost Ma- 
 homed had made a sudden and unprovoked 
 attack upon our ancient ally, Runjeet Singh, 
 and that when the Persian army was besieg- 
 ing Herat Dost Mahomed was giving undis- 
 guised support to the designs of Persia. The 
 chiefs of Candahar, the brothers of Dost Ma- 
 homed, had also, Lord Auckland declared, 
 given in their adherence to the plans of Per- 
 sia. Great Britain regarded the advance of 
 Persian arms in Afghanistan as an act of hos- 
 tility towards herself. The Governor-Gen- 
 eral 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 hon- 
 orable asylum in British territory ; and 
 “ whose popularity throughout Afghanistan” 
 — Lord Auckland wrote in words that must 
 afterwards 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 sovereign, this favorite of his 
 people, was at the time living in exile, with- 
 out the faintest hope of ever again being re- 
 stored 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. (after Sir W. 
 H.) Macnaghten, Secretary to the Govern- 
 ment of India, was appointed to be envoy 
 and minister at the court of Shah Soojah ; 
 and Sir Alexander Burnes (who had been re- 
 called from the court of Dost Mahomed and 
 rewarded with a title for giving the advice 
 which his superiors thought absurd) was de- 
 puted to act under his direction. It is only 
 right to say that the policy of Lord Auckland 
 had the entire approval of the British Gov- 
 ernment. It was afterwards stated in Parlia- 
 ment on the part of the Ministry that a de- 
 spatch recommending to Lord Auckland ex- 
 actly such a course as he pursued crossed on 
 the way his despatch announcing to the Gov- 
 ernment at home that he had already under- 
 taken the enterprise. 
 
 We conquered Dost Mahomed and de- 
 throned 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 afterwards to have a hateful 
 sound in all English ears. As we approached 
 Cabul, Dost Mahomed abandoned his capital 
 and fled with a few horsemen across the In- 
 dus. Shah Soojah entered Cabul accompa- 
 nied 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 Auck- 
 land 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 ma- 
 jority 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 Brit- 
 ish army, however, withdrew, leaving only 
 a contingent of some eight thousand men, 
 besides the Shah’s own hirelings, to main- 
 tain him for the present. Sir W. Macnagh- 
 ten 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. 
 
 Dost Mahomed made more than one effort 
 to regain his place. He invaded Shah Soo- 
 jah’s dominions, and met the combined 
 forces of the Shah and their English ally in 
 more than one battle. On November 2, 1840, 
 he won the admiration of the English them- 
 selves 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 English officers, who vain- 
 ly tried to rally them. In this battle of Pur- 
 wandurrah victory might not unreasonably 
 have been claimed for Dost Mahomed. He 
 won at least his part of the battle. No 
 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, and is led to his destruc- 
 tion by the vain hope that lie can hold out 
 against it to tbe 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 ex- 
 ploit in the field Dost Mahomed rode quietly 
 up to the quarters of Sir W. Macnaghten, 
 met the envoy, who was returning from an 
 evening ride, and to Macnaghten’s utter 
 amazement announced himself as Dost Ma- 
 homed, 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 afterwards he was sent to India, where 
 a residence and a revenue were assigned to 
 him. 
 
 But the withdrawal of Dost Mahomed from 
 the scene did nothing to secure the reign of 
 the unfortunate Shah Soojah. The Shah 
 was hated on his own account. He was re- 
 garded 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 2, 1841, an insurrec- 
 tion 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 in the flrst instance with 
 hardly the need even of Napoleon’s famous 
 “ whiff of grapeshot. ” 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 33 
 
 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 as- 
 pect 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 seem to have under- 
 stood up to the very last moment that by re- 
 minding 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 vic- 
 tim 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 cantonments outside the 
 city, and at some little distance from it. 
 These cantonments were in any case of real 
 difficulty practically indefensible. The pop- 
 ular monarch, the darling of his people, 
 whom we had restored to his throne, was in 
 the Balia Hissar, or citadel of Cabul. From 
 the moment when the insurrection broke out 
 he may be regarded as a prisoner or a be- 
 sieged man there. He was as utterly unable 
 to help our people as they were to help him. 
 The whole country threw itself into insurrec- 
 tion against him and us. The Afghans at- 
 tacked the cantonments and actually com- 
 pelled 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 mili- 
 tary leaders. Sir. W. Macnagliten was a man 
 of high character and good purpose, but he 
 was weak and credulous. The commander, 
 General Elphinstone, was old, infirm, tor- 
 tured 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 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 can- 
 kered vanity, the dogmatical perverseness of 
 the other, might have in some measure de- 
 tracted from their efficiency as military com- 
 manders, 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 cantonments 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 pol- 
 icy 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 negotia- 
 tions 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 negotia- 
 tions 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 unscrupulous 
 young man. From the moment when he en- 
 tered 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. Mac- 
 naghten indignantly rejected, them. Every- 
 thing went wrong with him, however. We 
 were beaten again and again by the Afghans. 
 Our officers never faltered in their duty ; but 
 the melancholy truth has to be told that the 
 men, most of whom were Asiatics, at last be- 
 gan to lose heart and would not fight the en- 
 emy. 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 Brit- 
 ish troops should quit Afghanistan at once ; 
 that Dost Mahomed and liis family should be 
 sent back to Afghanistan ; that on his return 
 the unfortunate Shah Soojah should be al- 
 lowed 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 tin-one 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 only excuse it by considering the 
 terrible circumstances of Macnaghten’s po- 
 sition, the manner in which his nerves and 
 moral fibre had been shaken and shattered 
 by calamities, and his doubts whether he 
 could place any reliance on the promises of 
 the chiefs. He had apparently sunk into 
 that condition of mind which Macaulay tells 
 us that Clive adopted so readily in his deal- 
 ing with Asiatics, and under the influence of 
 which men naturally honorable and high- 
 minded come to believe that it is right to act 
 treacherously with those whom we believe to 
 be treacherous. 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 pro- 
 posals 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 officers were 
 with him. Akbar Khan was ominously sur- 
 rounded by friends and retainers. These 
 kept pressing round the unfortunate envoy. 
 Some remonstrance 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 
 
 3 
 
 expected conference had hardly begun when a 
 signal was given or an order issued by Akbar 
 Khan, and the envoy and the officers were sud- 
 denly seized from behind. A scene of wild 
 confusion 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 Macnaghten ; 
 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 fanatics who were 
 crowding round hacked the body to pieces 
 with their knives. Of the three officers one 
 was killed on 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 unfortu- 
 nate 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 personal purposes Akbar was favor- 
 ing the envoy and even intriguing with him. 
 Akbar offered to prove his sincerity by mak- 
 ing the envoy a captive and handing him 
 over to the 1 chiefs. This was the treacher- 
 ous plot which he strove to carry out by en- 
 tering 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 cantonments to rescue 
 the envoy ; and, wild with passion, he sud- 
 denly drew his pistol and fired. This was 
 the statement made again and again by Akbar 
 Khan himself. It does not seem an improb- 
 able explanation for what otherwise looks a 
 murder as stupid and purposeless as it was 
 brutal. The explanation does not much re- 
 lieve the darkness of Akbar Khan’s charac- 
 ter. It is given here as history, not as excul- 
 pation. There is not the slightest reason to 
 suppose that Akbar Khan would have 
 shrunk from any treachery or any cruelty 
 which served his purpose. His own explana- 
 tion 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 mur- 
 dered 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 canton- 
 ments. The military chiefs afterwards 
 stated that they did not know until the fol- 
 lowing 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 bazaars of Cabul. 
 A paralysis seemed to have fallen over the 
 councils of our military chiefs. On Decem- 
 ber 24, 1841, came a letter from one of the 
 officers seized by Akbar Khan, accompany- 
 ing proposals for a treaty from the Afghan 
 chiefs. It is hard now to understand how 
 
34 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 any English officers could have consented to 
 enter into terms with the murderers of Mac- 
 naghten 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 or- 
 dered by fate to accept whatever the con- 
 uerors chose to offer. We can all see the 
 ifficulty of their position. General Elpliin- 
 stone 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 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 consid- 
 eration. It was determined to treat with the 
 Afghans ; and treating with the Afghans 
 now meant accepting 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, con- 
 tains 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 ; uot 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 Macnagh- 
 ten’s murderers ; to the friendship, in any 
 case, of the man whose father we had de- 
 throned and driven into exile. Not over- 
 powering the weak with sufferings ! The 
 weak were the English ! One might fancy 
 he was reading the plaintive and piteous ap- 
 peal of some forlorn and feeble tribe of help- 
 less half-breeds for the mercy of arrogant 
 and mastering rulers. “ Suffolk’s imperious 
 tongue is stern and rough,” says one in 
 Shakespeare’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 
 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 fallng ruins to attack the en- 
 emy 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 resistance, 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 Afghan- 
 istan, 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 
 something additional for the safe conduct of 
 the poor little army to Peshawur or to Jella- 
 labad ; 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 Mahomed and his family and 
 their return to Afghanistan. When these 
 should return, the six hostages were to be 
 
 I released. Only one concession had been ob- 
 tained 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 
 condition was waived — at least for the 
 moment. When the treaty was signed, the 
 officers who had been seized when Macnagh- 
 ten 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 from being 
 murdered by bands of his fanatical followers. 
 One of the officers has himself described the 
 almost desperate 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 manfully” in 
 defence of his prisoner. When, however, he 
 had got the latter into a place of safety, the 
 impetuous young Afghan chief could not re- 
 strain 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 mean- 
 ing to the taunt, if they did not actually ex- 
 cuse it. At a later period of this melancholy 
 story it is told by Lady Sale that crowds of 
 the fanatical Gliilzyes 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 calami- 
 ties had come upon them because Dost Ma- 
 homed would not take their advice. Akbar 
 Khan either was or pretended to be moderate. 
 He might indeed safely put on an air of mag- 
 nanimity. His enemies were doomed. It 
 needed no command from him to decree 
 their destruction. 
 
 The withdrawal from Cabul began. It 
 was the heart of a cruel winter. The Eng- 
 lish had to make their way through the 
 awful pass of Koord Cabul. This stupen- 
 dous gorge runs for some five miles between 
 mountain ranges so 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 precip- 
 itous mountain 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 de- 
 gree worse than the road which for two 
 whole days the English had to traverse to 
 reach it. The army which set out from Ca- 
 bul numbered more than four thousand fight- 
 ing 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 Macnaghten, widow of the 
 murdered envoy ; Lady Sale, whose gallant 
 husband was holding Jellalabad, at the near 
 end of the Kliyber Pass, towards the Indian 
 frontier ; Mrs. Sturt, her daughter, soon to 
 be widowed by the death of her young hus- 
 band ; Mrs. Trevor and her seven children, 
 and many other pitiable fugitives. The win- 
 ter journey would have been cruel and dan- 
 gerous enough in time of peace ; but this 
 journey had to be accomplished 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 heterogeneous 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 constant battle against a guerilla en- 
 emy of the most furious and merciless tem- 
 per, 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 sav- 
 age 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 amid 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 paralyzed and exhausted to be 
 slaughtered by the Afghan knives. And 
 amidst these fearful scenes of carnage, 
 through a shower of matchlock 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 bewilder- 
 ment of the desolating march.” 
 
 W as 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 Eng- 
 lish. 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 whenever they 
 got a chance. The force of some few hun- 
 dred horsemen whom Akbar Khan had with 
 him were utterly incapable, he declared, of 
 maintaining order among such a mass of in- 
 furiated 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 themselves on the 
 horizon : trying still to protect the English 
 from utter ruin, as he declared ; come to 
 gloat over their misery and to see that it was 
 surely accomplished, some of the unhappy 
 English were ready to believe. Yet his pres- 
 ence 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 
 conveyed by him in safety to Peshawur. 
 There was nothing better to be done. The 
 only modification of his request, or com- 
 mand, that could be obtained was that the 
 husbands of the married ladies should ac- 
 company 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 unfortunate 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 35 
 
 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 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 de- 
 stroying it on its way. It was in great meas- 
 ure as a security for its moving that he de- 
 sired 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 con- 
 trol 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 con- 
 dition set down in the article of the treaty. 
 Now that he had the women in his power, 
 however, he demanded other guarantees 
 with openly acknowledged purpose of keep- 
 ing these latter until Jellalabad should have 
 been evacuated. He demanded that General 
 Elphinstone, the commander, with his sec- 
 ond in command, and also one other officer, 
 should hand themselves over to him as host- 
 ages. He promised if this were done to ex- 
 ert himself more than before to restrain the 
 fanatical tribes, and also to provide the army 
 in 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 miser- 
 able toilers found that the fanatical, implac- 
 able tribes had barricaded the pass. All 
 was over. The army of Cabul was finally 
 extinguished in that barricaded pass. 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 num- 
 ber was reduced to six. Of these six, five 
 were killed by straggling marauders 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 fic- 
 tion in vain for any picture more thrilling 
 with the suggestion 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 Thermopylae 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 recovery. Our 
 successes are common enough ; we may tell 
 their tale briefly in this instance. The garri- 
 son at Jellalabad had received before Dr. 
 Brydon’s arrival an intimation that they were 
 to go out and march towards India in accord- 
 ance with the terms of the treaty extorted 
 from Elphinstone at Cabul. They very prop- 
 erly declined to be bound by a treaty which, 
 as General Sale rightly conjectured, 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 walls of the place, and 
 produced more terrible destruction than the 
 mostformidable guns of modern warfare could 
 haved one. But the garrison held out fear- 
 lessly ; they restored the parapets, re-establish- 
 ed every battery, re-trenched the whole of the 
 gates, and built up all the breaches. They 
 resisted every attempt of Akbar Khan to ad- 
 vance upon their works, and at length, when 
 it became certain that General Pollock was 
 forcing the Khyber Pass, to come to their re- 
 lief, they determined to attack Akbar Khan’s 
 army ; they issued boldly out of their forts, 
 forced a battle on the Afghan chief, and com- 
 pletely defeated him. Before Pollock, hav- 
 ing gallantly fought his way through the 
 Khyber Pass, had reached Jellalabad, the 
 beleaguering army had been entirely defeated 
 and dispersed. 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 announcement to the 
 throne of his ancestors, was dead. He was 
 assassinated in Cabul, soon after the depart- 
 ure 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 jew- 
 els, was flung into a ditch. Historians quar- 
 rel a good deal over the question of his sin- 
 cerity and fidelity in his dealings with us. It 
 is not likely that an Oriental of his tempera- 
 ment and his weakness could have been 
 capable of any genuine and unmixed loyalty 
 to the English strangers. It seems to us 
 probable enough that he may at important 
 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 friendship and our pro- 
 tection to the tender mercies which he was 
 doomed to experience when our troops had 
 left him. But if we ask concerning his grat- 
 itude to us, it may be well also to ask what 
 there was in our conduct towards him which 
 called for any enthusiastic display of grati- 
 tude. 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 puppet, and 
 we took him when it suited us. We also 
 abandoned him when it suited us. As Lady 
 Teazle proposes to do with honor in her con- 
 ference 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 despondent be- 
 cause 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 Company were well aware of the vast 
 expense which our enterprises in Afghanis- 
 tan must impose on the revenues of India, 
 and they looked forward eagerly to the ear- 
 liest opportunity of bringing it to a close. 
 Lord Auckland had been persuaded into 
 adopting it against his better judgment, and 
 against even the whisperings of his con- 
 science ; 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 vic- 
 tory. He had received an earldom for the ser- 
 vices he was presumed to have rendered to his 
 sovereign and his Country. He had there- 
 fore in full sight that mournful juxtaposition 
 of incongruous objects which a great Eng- 
 lish writer has described so touchingly and 
 tersely — the trophies of victory and the battle 
 lost. He was an honorable, kindly gentle- 
 man, and the news of all the successive ca- 
 lamities 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 for ever. 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 populations 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 com- 
 mitted one error of policy is bound in con- 
 science to take all the worst and most pro- 
 tracted 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 Eu- 
 rope as well as in India, to prove that our 
 strength had not been broken nor our coun- 
 sels 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 na- 
 tional 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 succes- 
 sor was Lord Ellenborough, the son of that 
 Edward Law, afterwards Lord Ellenbor- 
 ough, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 
 who had been leading counsel for Warren 
 Hastings when the latter was impeached be- 
 fore the House of Lords. The second Ellen- 
 borough was at the time of his appointment 
 filling the office of President of the Board of 
 Control, an office he had held 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 Mel- 
 bourne 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 tell- 
 ing 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 cer- 
 tain 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 pa- 
 geant of which it would have been his am- 
 bition to form the central figure. His elo- 
 quence was often of a lofty and noble order. 
 Men who are still hardly of middle age can 
 remember Lord Ellenborough on great oc- 
 casions in the House of Lords, and can recol- 
 lect 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 
 listening to Lord Ellenborough one was lis- 
 tening 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 question to deal with, and when his in- 
 stincts, if not his reasoning power, had put 
 
36 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 him on the right or at least the effective 
 side of it, he could speak in a tone of poetic 
 and elevated eloquence to which it was im- 
 possible to listen without emotion. But if 
 Lord Ellenborough was in some respects a 
 man of genius, lie 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 greater men than he must be as- 
 sociated in the same category. The elder 
 Pitt, the first Napoleon, Mirabeau, Boling- 
 broke, and many others, were men in whom 
 undoubtedly some of the charlatan was 
 mixed up with some of the very highest 
 qualities of genius. In Lord Ellenborough 
 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 weaknesses made 
 so disproportionate an impression that they 
 can see in him little more than a mere char- 
 latan. 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 emer- 
 gency always thought of how to display him- 
 self effectively, and who would have met the 
 peril of an empire as poor Narcissa met 
 death, with an overmastering desire to show 
 to the best personal advantage. 
 
 Lord Ellenborough’s appointment was 
 hailed by all parties in India as the most au- 
 spicious that could be made. Here, people 
 said, is surely the great stage for a great act- 
 or ; 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 stand- 
 ing out in history as the avenger of the 
 shames of Cabul. But those who thought in 
 this way found themselves suddenly disap- 
 pointed. Lord Ellenborough uttered and 
 wrote a few showy sentences about reveng- 
 ing 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 an- 
 nounced that the only object of the Govern- 
 ment was to get the troops out of Afghanis- 
 tan as quickly as might be, and almost on 
 any terms. The whole of Lord Ellen- 
 borough’s conduct during this crisis is inex- 
 plicable except on the assumption that he 
 really did not know at certain times how to 
 distinguish between phrases and actions. A 
 general outcry was raised in India and among 
 the troops in Afghanistan against the extra- 
 ordinary policy which Lord Ellenborough 
 propounded. Englishmen, in fact, refused 
 to believe 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 intention must be that the army should 
 retrieve its fame and retire only after com- 
 plete victory. The Governor-General him- 
 self after a while quietly acted on this inter- 
 pretation of lus meaning. He allowed the 
 military commanders in Afghanistan to pull 
 their resources together and prepare for in- 
 flicting 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 Septem- 
 ber 15, 1842, General Pollock’s force entered 
 Cabul. A few days after, as a lasting mark 
 of retribution for the crimes which had been 
 committeed there, the British commander or- 
 dered the destruction of the great bazaar of 
 Cabul, where the mangled remains of the 
 unfortunate envoy Macnaghten had been ex- 
 
 hibited in brutal triumph and joy to the Af- 
 ghan populace. 
 
 It is not necessary to enter into detailed de- 
 scriptions of the successful progress of our 
 arms. The war may be regarded as over. 
 It is, however, necessary to say something 
 of the fate of the captives, or hostages, who 
 were hurried away that terrible January 
 night at the command of Akbar Khan. One 
 thing has first to be told which some may 
 now receive with incredulity, but which is, 
 nevertheless, true — there was a British gen- 
 eral, who was disposed to leave them to their 
 fate and take no trouble about them, and 
 who declared himself under the conviction, 
 from the tenor of all Lord Ellenborough’s 
 despatches, that the recovery of the prison- 
 ers was “ a matter of indifference to the Gov- 
 ernment.” 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, pre- 
 vailed. 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 was expected — so many of them as 
 were yet alive. Poor General Elpliinstone 
 had long before succumbed to disease and 
 hardship. The ladies had gone through 
 strange privations. 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 
 suffered 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 know- 
 ing what might befall. Yet they seem to 
 have held up their courage and spirits won- 
 derfully well, and to have kept the hearts of 
 the children alive with mirth and sport at 
 moments of the utmost peril. Gradually it 
 became more and more suspected that the for- 
 tunes of Akbar Khan were failing. At last 
 it was beyond doubt that he had been com- 
 pletely defeated. Then they were hurried 
 away again, they knew not whither, through 
 ever-ascending mountain passes, under a 
 scorching sun. They were being carried off 
 to the wild rugged regions of the Indian 
 Caucasus. They were bestowed in a misera- 
 ble fort at Bameean. They were now under 
 the charge of one of Akbar Khan’s soldiers 
 of fortune. This man had begun to suspect 
 that things were well-nigh hopeless with Ak- 
 bar Khan. He was induced by gradual and 
 very cautious approaches to enter into an 
 agreement with the prisoners for their re- 
 lease. The English officers signed an agree- 
 ment with him to secure him a large reward 
 and a pension for life if he enabled them to 
 escape. He accordingly declared that he re- 
 nounced his allegiance to Akbar Khan ; all 
 the more readily seeing that news came in of 
 the chief’s total defeat and flight, no one 
 knew whither. The prisoners and their es- 
 cort, lately their jailer and guards, set forth 
 on their way to General Pollock’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 over- 
 whelming, for tongue to utter.” Descrip- 
 tion, indeed, could do nothing for the effect 
 of such a meeting but to spoil it. 
 
 There is a very different ending to the epi- 
 sode 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 
 afterwards became suspicious of English de- 
 signs 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 capricious 
 as another Caligula, and perhaps in truth 
 quite as 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 Stod- 
 dart, but could only succeed in sharing his 
 sufferings, and, at last, his fate. The Ameer 
 had written a letter to the Queen of Eng- 
 land, and the answer was written by the For- 
 eign Secretary, referring the Ameer to the 
 Governor-General of India. The savage ty- 
 rant redoubled the ill-treatment of his cap- 
 tives. 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 instruc- 
 tions, and that Conolly in particular had con- 
 tributed by indiscretion to his own fate. 
 Nothing therefore was done to obtain their 
 release beyond diplomatic efforts, and ap- 
 peals to the magnanimity of the Ameer, 
 which had not any particular effect. Dr. 
 Wolff, the celebrated traveller and mission- 
 ary, afterwards undertook an expedition of 
 his own in the hope of saving the unfortu- 
 nate 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 pe- 
 riod of his captivity, and they relieve so far 
 the melancholy of the fate that fell on the 
 unfortunate officers by showing that the hor- 
 rors 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, including the unfortunate 
 officers themselves, the course pursued by 
 the English authorities in India had done 
 more to hand them over to the treacherous 
 cruelty of their 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 harle- 
 quinade. The curtain fell amid general 
 laughter. Only the genius of Lord Ellen- 
 borough could have turned the mood of In- 
 dia and of England to mirth on such a sub- 
 ject. Lord Ellenborough was equal to this 
 extraordinary feat. The never-to-be-forgot- 
 ten proclamation about the restoration to In- 
 dia of the gates of the temple of Somnauth, 
 redeemed at Lord Ellenborough’s orders 
 when Ghuznee was retaken by the English, 
 was first received with incredulity as a prac- 
 tical 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.” 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 37 
 
 No words of pompous man could possibly 
 have put together greater absurdities. The 
 brothers and friends were Mahometans and 
 Hindoos, who were about as likely to agree 
 as to the effect of these symbols of triumph 
 as a Fenian and an Orangeman would be to 
 fraternize in a toast to the glorious, pious and 
 immortal memory. To the Mahometans the 
 triumph of Lord Ellenborough was simply 
 an insult. To the Hindoos the offer was ri- 
 diculous, for the temple of Somnauth itself 
 was in ruins, and the ground it covered was 
 trodden by Mahometans. To finish the ab- 
 surdity, the gates proved not to be genuine 
 relics at all. 
 
 On October 1, 1842, exactly four years 
 since Lord Auckland’s proclamation an- 
 nouncing and justifying the intervention to 
 restore Shah Soojah, Lord Ellenborough is- 
 sued another proclamation announcing the 
 complete failure and the revocation of the 
 policy of his predecessor. Lord Ellenbor- 
 ough declared that “to force a sovereign 
 upon a reluctant people would be as inconsist- 
 ent with the policy as it is with the princi- 
 ples of the British Government that there- 
 fore they would recognize any government 
 approved by the Afghans themselves ; that 
 the British arms would be withdrawn from 
 Afghanistan, and that the Government of 
 India would remain “ content with the lim- 
 its nature appears to have assigned to its em- 
 pire.” 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 con- 
 dition 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 
 Englishmen sleeping in bloody graves. The 
 Duke of Wellington ascribed the causes of 
 our failure to making war with a peace estab- 
 lishment ; making war without a safe base 
 of operations ; carrying the native army out 
 of India into a strange and cold climate ; in- 
 vading a poor country which was unequal to 
 the supply of our wants ; giving undue 
 power to political agents ; want of fore- 
 thought and undue confidence in the Af- 
 ghans on the part of Sir W. Macnaghten ; 
 placing our magazines, even our treasure, in 
 idefensible places ; great military neglect and 
 mismanagement after the outbreak. Doubt- 
 less these were in a military sense the reasons 
 for the failure of an enterprise which cost the 
 revenues of India an enormous amount of 
 treasure. But the causes of failure were deep- 
 er than any military errors could explain. 
 It is doubtful whether the genius of a Na- 
 poleon 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 entrusted with the task of carrying 
 it out could have made it deserve success. 
 Our first error of principle was to go com- 
 pletely 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 
 proclamation, to force a sovereign upon a 
 reluctant people. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE REPEAL TEAR. 
 
 “ The year 1843,” said O’Connell, “ is and 
 shall be the great Repeal year.” In the year 
 1843, at all events, O’Connell and his Repeal 
 agitation are entitled to the foremost place. 
 The character of the man himself well de- 
 serves some calm consideration. We are 
 now, perhaps, in a condition to do it justice. 
 We are far removed in sentiment and polit- 
 ical 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 de- 
 nounced. 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 ap- 
 plied to O’Connell. The only vituperation 
 which could equal in vehemence and scurril- 
 ity 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 concerned. We are 
 now able to recognize the fact that a public 
 man may hold opinions which are distasteful 
 to the majority, and yet be perfecty 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 agita- 
 tion. He and his enemies alike acted in their 
 controversies on the principle that a political 
 opponent is necessarily a blockhead or a 
 scoundrel. It is strange and somewhat mel- 
 ancholy to read the strictures of so enlight- 
 ened a woman as Miss Martineau upon 
 O’Connell. They are all based upon what a 
 humorous 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 know- 
 ingly and purposely a villain. Not only does 
 she hold that his Repeal agitation was an un- 
 qualified evil for his country, and that Re- 
 peal, if gained, would have been a curse to 
 it, but she insists that O’Connell himself was 
 thoroughly convinced of the facts. She de- 
 votes whole pages of lively and acrid argu- 
 ment to prove not only that O’Connell was 
 ruining his country, but that he knew he 
 was ruining it, and persevered in his wicked- 
 ness out of pure self-seeking. No writer pos- 
 sessed of one-tenth of Miss Martineau ’s in- 
 tellect 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 it. One of the great causes 
 of the detestation in which the Melbourne 
 Whigs were held by a vast number of Eng- 
 lish people was their alleged subserviency to 
 the Irish agitator. We cannot be surprised 
 if the English public just then was little in- 
 clined to take an impartial estimate of 
 O’Connell. He had attacked some of their 
 public men in language of the fiercest denun- 
 ciation. He had started an agitation which 
 seemed as if it were directly meant to bring 
 about a break-up of the Imperial system 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 en- 
 riching 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. Cobden, and so honorably ac- 
 
 cepted by him ; and that he died poor, leav- 
 ing his sons poor. Indeed, it is a remark- 
 able 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 coun- 
 tries 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 qual- 
 ities, too, that specially endeared him to his 
 Celtic countrymen made him particularly ob- 
 jectionable to Englishmen ; and Englishmen 
 have never been famous for readiness to en- 
 ter into the feelings and accept the point of 
 view of other peoples. O’Connell was a 
 thorough Celt. He represented all the im- 
 pulsiveness, the quick - changing emotions, 
 the passionate, exaggerated loves and hatreds, 
 the heedlessness of statement, the tendency 
 to confound impressions with facts, the ebul- 
 lient 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 es- 
 pecially favorable to success in such a sphere. 
 He had a herculean frame, a stately presence, 
 a face capable of expressing easily and effect- 
 ively the most rapid alternations of mood, 
 and a voice which all hearers admit to have 
 been almost unrivalled for strength and sweet- 
 ness. Its power, its pathos, its passion, its 
 music have been described in words of posi- 
 tive rapture by men who detested O’Connell, 
 and who would rather, if they could, have de- 
 nied to him any claim on public attention, 
 even in the matter of voice. He spoke with- 
 out studied preparation, and of course had 
 all the defects of such a style. He fell into 
 repetition and into carelessness of construc- 
 tion ; he was hurried away into exaggeration 
 and sometimes into mere bombast. But he 
 had all the peculiar success, too, which re- 
 wards the orator who can speak without prep- 
 aration. He always spoke right to the 
 hearts of his hearers. On the platform or in 
 Parliament, whatever he said was said to his 
 audience, and was never in the nature of a 
 discourse delivered over their heads. He en- 
 tered the House of Commons when he was 
 nearly fifty-four years of age. Most persons 
 supposed that the style of speaking he had 
 formed, first in addressing juries, and next in 
 rousing Irish mobs, must cause his failure 
 when he came to appeal to the unsympa- 
 thetic and fastidious House of Commons. 
 But it is certain that O’Connell became one 
 of the most successful Parliamentary orators 
 of his time. Lord Jeffrey, a professional 
 critic, declared that all other speakers in the 
 House seemed to him only talking schoolboy- 
 talk after he had heard O'Connell. No man 
 we now know of is less likely to be carried 
 away by any of the claptrap arts of a false 
 demagogic style than Mr. Roebuck ; and Mr. 
 Roebuck has said that he considers O’Con- 
 nell 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 pen- 
 cil once when engaged in reporting a speech 
 of O’Connell’s on one of the tithe riots in Ire- 
 land, and declared that he could not take 
 notes of the speech, so moved was he by its 
 pathos. Lord Beaconsfiekl, 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 denuncia- 
 tion, although he took care never to obtrude 
 
38 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 on Parliament the extravagant and unmean- 
 ing abuse of opponents which delighted the 
 Irish mob meetings. 
 
 O’Connell was a crafty and successful law- 
 yer. The Irish peasant, like the Scottish, is, 
 or at least then was, remarkably fond of liti- 
 gation. He delighted in the quirks and quib- 
 bles of law, and in the triumphs won by the 
 skill of lawyers over opponents. He admired 
 O’Connell all the more when O’Connell boast- 
 ed 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 per- 
 sonage whose cleverness and craft procure 
 for him a sobriquet which has 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 Cath- 
 olic 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 re- 
 form which in the course of civilization must 
 have been carried. It had in its favor all 
 the enlightenment of the time. The elo- 
 quence 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. No one can 
 doubt that it must in a short time have been 
 carried if O’Connell had never lived. But 
 it was carried just then by virtue of O’Con- 
 nell’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 dis- 
 turbance. To an Englishman looking coolly 
 back from a distance, the difference is clear 
 between granting to-day, rather than provoke 
 disturbance, that which every one sees must 
 be granted some time, and conceding what 
 the vast majority of the English people be- 
 lieve can never with propriety or even safety 
 be granted at all. But we can hardly won- 
 der if the Irish peasant did not make such 
 distinctions. All he knew was that O’Con- 
 nell had demanded Catholic emancipation, 
 and had been answered at first by a direct 
 refusal ; that he had said he would compel 
 its concession, and that in the end it was 
 conceded to him. When, therefore, O’Con- 
 nell said that he would compel the Govern- 
 ment 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 himself believed in the possibility 
 of accomplishing his purpose. 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’Connell entered Parliament. The 
 veneration of ancient lineage, 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 towards the recog- 
 nition 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 pro- 
 test 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 vener- 
 able landmarks of the Constitution — with the 
 Free Traders, whose approaching triumph 
 he had hailed and exulted in from afar. He 
 had perceived the possibility of forming a 
 powerful party in 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 predicted that should there be 
 a collision with France while the nation was 
 organized as in 1843, Repeal would be the 
 inunediate and the inevitable consequence. 
 In a word, he believed that under a constitu- 
 tional government the will of four fifths of a 
 nation, if peacefully, perseveringly, and ener- 
 getically expressed, must sooner or later be 
 triumphant. 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 successful ?” No one, 
 we fancy, except those who are always con- 
 vinced that nothing can ever come to pass 
 which they think ought not to come to pass. 
 At all events, if an English political philoso- 
 pher, 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 al- 
 lowed 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 perfection. It is an ex- 
 cellent mechanism on the whole ; it is prob- 
 ably the most satisfactory that the wit of 
 man has yet devised for the management of 
 the affairs of a state ; but its greatest ad- 
 mirers will bear to be told that it has its 
 drawbacks and disadvantages. One of these 
 undoubtedly 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 pressure 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 oppo- 
 nent of negro slavery ; he was a staunch 
 Free Trader ; he was a friend of popular ed- 
 ucation ; he was an enemy to all excess ; he 
 was opposed to strikes ; he was an advocate 
 of religious equality everywhere ; and he de- 
 clined to receive the commands of the Vati- 
 can in his political agitation. ‘ ‘ I am a Cath- 
 olic, but I am not a Papist,” was his own 
 definition of his religious attitude. He 
 preached the doctrine of constitutional agita- 
 tion strictly, and declared that no political 
 Reform was worth the shedding 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 undoubtedly is 
 that O’Connell deliberately revived and work- 
 ed 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 out- 
 rageous. The very effusiveness of his loyalty 
 told to his disadvantage. People could not 
 understand how one who perpetually de- 
 nounced “ the Saxon” could be so enthusias- 
 tic and rapturous in his professions of loyalty 
 to the Saxon’s Queen. In the common 
 opinion of Englishmen, all the evils of Ire- 
 land, all the troubles attaching to the connec- 
 tion between the two countries, had arisen 
 from this unmitigated, rankling hatred of 
 Celt for Saxon. It was impossible 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 in- 
 tolerable that while thus laboring to make 
 the Celt hate the Saxon he should yet profess 
 an extravagant devotion to the Sovereign of 
 England. 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 Revolution. 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 Em- 
 metts, and Fitzgeralds, whom so many of the 
 Irish people adored, were, in O’Connell’s 
 eyes, and in his words, only “ a gang of mis- 
 creants.” He grew angry at the slightest 
 expression 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 
 entrusted to himself, with the Irish priesthood 
 acting as his officers and agents. He main- 
 tained 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 su- 
 preme as the pontiff over all. 
 
 He had a Parliamentary system by means 
 of which he proposed to approach more di- 
 rectly 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 retainers. “ 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 
 constituencies, and whenever a vacancy 
 took place he sent down the Repeal candi- 
 date 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 con- 
 duct 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 remarkable 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 temper- 
 ate man, and he was delighted at the pros- 
 pect of good order and discipline which the 
 Temperance movement afforded. Father 
 Mathew was very far from sharing all the 
 political opinions of O’Connell. 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 agitation, and was 
 rather Conservative than otherwise in his 
 views. But he could not afford to repudiate 
 the support of O’Connell, who on all occa- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 39 
 
 eions glorified the Temperance movement, 
 and called upon his followers to join it, and 
 was always boasting of his “ noble army of 
 Teetotalers.” It was probably when he 
 found that the mere fact of his having sup- 
 ported 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 mon- 
 ster meeting which has since his time been 
 regularly established among us as a principal 
 part of all political organization for a definite 
 purpose. He founded in Dublin a Repeal 
 Association which met in a place on Burgh 
 Quay, and which he styled Conciliation 
 Hall. Arouud him in this Association he 
 gathered his sons, his relatives, his devoted 
 followers, priestly and lay. The Nation 
 newspaper, then in 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 se- 
 lected for its historic fame, and with all the 
 picturesque surroundings of hill and stream. 
 From the dawn of the summer day the Re- 
 pealers were thronging to the scene of the 
 meeting. They came from all parts of the 
 neighboring country for miles and miles. 
 They were commonly marshalled and guided 
 by their parish priests. They all attended 
 the services of their Church before the meet- 
 ing began. The influence of his religion and 
 of his patriotic feelings was brought to bear 
 at once upon the impressionable and emo- 
 tional 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 Ire- 
 land to the restoration of her old Parliament 
 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 education ; 
 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 thrill- 
 ing to the extreme of 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 himself 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 elo- 
 quence ran over the assemblage. He com- 
 manded the emotions of his hearers as a con- 
 summate conductor sways the energies of his 
 orchestra. Every allusion told. When, in 
 one of the meetings 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 apostrophized Ireland as the 
 “ land of the green valley and the rushing 
 river” — an admirably characteristic and com- 
 plete description ; or recalled some historical 
 association connected with the scene he sur- 
 veyed — each was some special appeal to the 
 instant feelings of his peculiar audience. 
 Sometimes he indulged in the grossest and 
 what ought to have been the most ridiculous 
 flattery of his hearers — flattery which would 
 have offended and disgusted the dullest Eng- 
 lish audience. But the Irish peasant, with 
 all his keen sense of the ridiculous in others, 
 is singularly open to the influence of any ap- 
 peal 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 agi- 
 tation 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. Ilis dispraise often had absolutely 
 no meaning in it. There was no sense what- 
 ever in calling the Duke of Wellington “ a 
 stunted corporal one might as well have 
 called Mont Blanc a molehill. 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 disin- 
 genuousness 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 in Eng- 
 land, where, in whatever heat of political con- 
 troversy, words are supposed to be the expres- 
 sions of some manner of genuine sentiment. 
 Of course many of O’Connell’s abusive epi- 
 thets were not only full of humor, but did to 
 some extent fairly represent the weaknesses 
 at least of those against whom they were di- 
 rected. 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, ‘‘maybe 
 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 ap- 
 peal 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 
 Wexford, 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 
 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 1” He went 
 on then to assure his hearers that “ the 
 ruffianly Saxon paper, the Times, in the num- 
 ber received by me to-day, presumes to threat- 
 en us again with such a scene.” One would 
 like to see the copy of the Times which con- 
 tained 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 assert that there is no dan- 
 ger to our women now, for the men of Ire- 
 land would die to the last in their defence.” 
 Here the whole meeting broke into a storm 
 of impassioned cheering. “ Ay,” the orator 
 exclaimed, when the storm found a momen- 
 tary 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 reveliy, in the 
 cheerful light of the banquet house, they 
 were surrounded and butchered. None re- 
 turned 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 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. Stephens,” a picturesque descrip- 
 tion 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 unnat- 
 urally, 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 hell ; 
 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 clue 
 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 unsympa- 
 thetic witnesses that a quarter of a million of 
 people must have been present. The Gov- 
 ernment naturally felt that there was a veiy 
 considerable danger in the massing together 
 of such vast crowds of men in something like 
 military array and under the absolute leader- 
 ship 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 English 
 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 thgm to fight, and were much disap- 
 pointed when they found that he had no such 
 intention. The Government at last resolved 
 to interfere. A meeting was announced to 
 be held at Clontarf on Sunday, October 8, 
 1843. Clontarf is near Dublin, and is famous 
 in Irish history as the scene of a great vic- 
 tory of the Irish over their Danish invaders. 
 It was intended that this meeting should sur- 
 pass in numbers and in earnestness the as- 
 semblage at Tara. On the very day before 
 the 8tli the Lord Lieutenant issued a proc- 
 lamation prohibiting the meeting as “ calcu- 
 lated to excite reasonable and well-grounded 
 apprehension,” in that its object was “to ac- 
 complish alterations in the laws and constitu- 
 tion of the realm by intimidation and the de- 
 
40 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 monstration 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 ex- 
 ercise. The populations were already com- 
 ing in to Clontarf in streams from all the 
 country round when the proclamation of the 
 Lord-Lieutenant was issued. No doubt the 
 Irish Government ran a terrible risk when 
 they delayed so long the issue of their proc- 
 lamation. With the people already assem- 
 bling 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 surpris- 
 ing, perhaps, if O’Connell and many of his 
 followers made it a charge against the Gov- 
 ernment that they intended to bring about 
 such a collision in order to make an example 
 of some of the Repealers and thus strike ter- 
 ror through the country. Some sort of col- 
 lision would almost undoubtedly have occur- 
 red hut for the promptitude of O’Connell 
 himself. He at once issued a proclamation 
 of his own to which the populations were like- 
 ly to pay far more attention 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 meet- 
 ing was held. 
 
 From that moment, however, the great 
 power of the Repeal agitation was gone. 
 The Government had accomplished far more 
 by their proclamation than they could possi- 
 bly 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 
 between 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 maintain 
 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 known that they were only dem- 
 onstrations, and that nothing was ever to 
 come of them. The eye of an attentive for- 
 eigner was then fixed on Ireland and on 
 O’Connell ; the eye of one destined to play a 
 part in the political 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 study- 
 ing the politics and the general condition of 
 England and Ireland. 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 
 vigorous demonstration of his opponents he 
 has drawn back ; from that moment he has 
 ceased to be dangerous.” Cavour was per- 
 fectly right. It was never again possible to 
 bring the Irish people up to the pitch of en- 
 thusiasm which O’Connell had wrought them 
 to before the suppression 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 him- 
 self, his son John, the late Sir John Gray, 
 and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, were the most 
 conspicuous of those against whom the pros- 
 ecution was directed. They were charged 
 with conspiring to raise and excite disaffec- 
 tion among her Majesty’s subjects, to excite 
 them to hatred and contempt of the Govern- 
 ment and Constitution of the realm. The 
 trial was in many ways a singularly unfor- 
 
 tunate proceeding. The Government prose- 
 cutor objected to all the Catholics whose 
 names were called as jurors. An error of the 
 sheriff’s in the construction of the jury-lists 
 had already reduced by a considerable num- 
 ber the roll of Catholics entitled to serve on 
 juries. It therefore happened that the great- 
 est of Irish Catholics, the representative 
 Catholic of his day, the principal agent in 
 the work of carrying Catholic Emancipation, 
 was tried by a jury composed exclusively of 
 Protestants. 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 re- 
 garded 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 Ire- 
 land 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’ im- 
 prisonment and a fine of 2000Z. The others 
 received lighter sentences. O’Connell ap- 
 pealed to the House of Lords against the 
 sentence. In the meantime he issued a proc- 
 lamation to the Irish people commanding 
 them to keep perfectly quiet and not to com- 
 mit any offence against the law. ‘ ‘ Every 
 man,” said one of his proclamations, “ w r ho 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 delayed in various ways, 
 and the sentence was not pronounced until 
 May 24, 1844. The appeal to the House of 
 Lords — we may pass over intermediate stages 
 of procedure — was heard in the following 
 September. Five law lords were present. 
 The Lord Chancellor (Lord Lyndhurst) and 
 Lord Brougham were of opinion that the 
 sentence of the court below should be affirm- 
 ed. Lord Denman, Lord Cottenham, and 
 Lord Campbell were of the opposite opinion. 
 Lord Denman, in particular, condemned the 
 manner in which the jury-lists had been pre- 
 pared. Some of his words on the occasion 
 became memorable, and passed into a sort of 
 proverbial expression. Such practices, he 
 said, would make of the law “ a mockery, a 
 delusion, and a snare.” A strange and mem- 
 orable scene followed. The constitution of 
 the House of Lords then and for long 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 com- 
 panions could not be doubtful. O’Connell 
 had always been the bitter enemy of the 
 House of Lords. He had vehemently de- 
 nounced 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 in- 
 terference. 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 Brough- 
 am were of opinion that the judgment ought 
 to be sustained. There would, therefore, 
 have been some ground for maintaining that 
 the substantial 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 Wliarncliffe, 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 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 instance, to ascertain in 
 the usual way whether a division w r ould be 
 necessary, several lay peers seemed as if they 
 were determined to vote. But the appeal of 
 Lord Wliarncliffe settled the matter. All the 
 lay peers at once withdrew and left the mat- 
 ter according to the usual course in the hands 
 of the law lords. The majority of these be- 
 ing against the judgment of the court below, 
 it was accordingly reversed, and O’Connell 
 and his associates were set at liberty. The 
 propriety of a lay peer voting on a question 
 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 satis- 
 factory 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 bj r a ju- 
 dicial 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 denounced by O’Con- 
 nell 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 in- 
 fluence 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 find intelligent men 
 like Mr. Green, the author of “ A Short His- 
 tory of the English People, ” countenancing 
 such a belief. If the House of Lords had, by 
 the votes of the lay peers, confirmed the sen- 
 tence 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 
 I 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’Con- 
 nell himself. The moment it was made clear 
 that nothing was to be done but agitate, and 
 that all the monster meetings, the crowds and 
 banners 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 yonng men were disgusted 
 with the kind of gigantic sham which the 
 great agitator seemed to have been conduct- 
 ing for so long a time. It would have been 
 impossible to keep up for ever such an ex- 
 citement as that which got together the mon- 
 ster 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 41 
 
 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 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 proclama- 
 tion nor the prosecution by the Government 
 that impaired the influence of O’Connell. It 
 was O’Connell’s own proclamation declaring 
 for submission to the law that dethroned him. 
 From that moment the political monarch had 
 to dispute with rebels for his crown ; and 
 the crown fell off in the struggle, like that 
 which Uhland tells of in the pretty poem. 
 
 For the Clontarf meeting had been the cli- 
 max. There was all manner of national re- 
 joicing when the decision of the House of 
 Lords set O’Connell and his fellow-prisoners 
 free. There were illuminations and ban- 
 quets and meetings and triumphal proces- 
 sions, 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 in which he became 
 engaged with the Young Irelanders, dividing 
 his party into two hostile camps, were a 
 grievous burden to him. In Lord Beacons- 
 fitld’s Life of Lord George Bentinck, a very 
 touching description is given of the last 
 speecli made by O’Connell in Parliament. 
 It was on April 3, 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 Min- 
 isters sitting on the other side of the green 
 table, and listening with that interest and re- 
 spectful attention which became the occa- 
 sion.” O’Connell 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, dis- 
 turbed, and controlled senates. . . . To 
 
 the House generally it was a performance in 
 dumb show : a feeble old man muttering 
 before a table ; but respect for the great Par- 
 liamentary personage kept all as orderly as if 
 the fortunes of a party hung upon his rhet- 
 oric ; and though not an accent reached the 
 gallery, means were taken that next morn- 
 ing 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 regret 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 hur- 
 ried to Italy at a time when the prospect of 
 the famine 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 15, 1847. The close of his career was a 
 mournful collapse ; it was like the sudden 
 crumbling in of some stately and command- 
 
 ing 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 rack dislimbs, and makes it in- 
 distinct, as water is in water. ’ ’ 
 
 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 prohibited ab- 
 solutely the employment of women and girls 
 in mines and collieries was rendered unavoid- 
 able by the fearful exposures made through 
 the instrumentality of a commission appoint- 
 ed to inquire into the whole subject. This com- 
 mission was appointed on the motion of the 
 then Lord Ashley, since better known as the 
 Earl of Shaftesbury, a man who during the 
 whole of a long career has always devoted 
 himself — sometimes wisely and successfully, 
 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 com- 
 mission found many hideous evils arising 
 from the employment of women and girls 
 under-ground, and Lord Ashley made 
 such effective use of their disclosures 
 that he encountered very little opposition 
 when he came to propose restrictive legisla- 
 tion. 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 
 between the legs of the unfortunate women, 
 and was then connected with a belt which 
 was strapped round their naked waists. 
 Their only clothing often consisted of an old 
 pair of trousers made of sacking ; and they 
 were uncovered from the waist up — uncov- 
 ered, that is to say, except for the grime and 
 filth that collected and clotted around them. 
 All manner of hideous diseases were generated 
 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 repro- 
 ductive power : a happy condition truly un- 
 der 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 immor- 
 ality 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 for ever by the 
 Act of 1842, which declared that, after a cer- 
 tain limited period, no woman or girl what- 
 ever should be employed in mines and col- 
 lieries. 
 
 Lord Ashley was less completely success- 
 ful in his endeavor 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 fol- 
 lowed in the footsteps of Mr. Michael Thomas 
 Sadler, he brought the Government up to the 
 point of undertaking legislation on the sub- 
 ject. They first introduced a bill which 
 combined a limitation of the labor of children 
 in factories with a plan for compulsory edu- 
 cation among the children. The educational 
 clauses of the bill had to be abandoned in 
 consequence of a somewhat narrow-minded 
 opposition among the Dissenters, who feared 
 that too much advantage was given to the 
 Church. Afterwards the Government 
 brought in another 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 work- 
 ing hours of children under thirteen years of 
 age, and fixed them at six and a half hours 
 each day ; extended somewhat the time dur- 
 ing which they were to be under daily in- 
 struction, and did a good many other useful 
 and wholesome things. The principle of leg- 
 islative interference to protect youthful 
 workers in factories had been already estab- 
 lished by the Act of 1833 ; and Lord Ashley’s 
 agitation only obtained for it a somewhat ex- 
 tended 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 legislative interference with what 
 might be called the freedom of contract be- 
 tween 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 after- 
 wards 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 jus- 
 tice, that the interference of the State for the 
 protection or the compulsory education of 
 children in factories would have been much 
 better employed, and was far more loudly 
 called for, in the case of the children em- 
 ployed 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 himself and his wife and his family, it 
 was argued ; but what of the miserable Giles 
 Scroggins of Dorsetshire or Somersetshire, 
 who never has more in all his life than just 
 enough to keep body and soul together ; and 
 for whom, at the close, the workhouse 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. Gladstone’s Irish Land Act would have 
 seemed alike impossible to most persons in 
 this country. The practical mind of the Eng- 
 lishman carries to an extreme the dislike and 
 contempt for what the French call les prin- 
 cipes 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 regu- 
 lation — what was once humorously described 
 as grandmotherly legislation. With our re- 
 cent experiences we can only be surprised 
 that a few years ago there was such a repug- 
 nance 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 
 certain that Parliament will at one 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 
 
42 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 facto- 
 ries. 
 
 Many other things done by Sir Robert Peel’s 
 Government aroused bitter controversy and 
 agitation. In one or two remarkable in- 
 stances 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 edu- 
 cation 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 col- 
 lege. The Government of Sir Robert Peel 
 only proposed to make that which was in- 
 sufficient sufficient ; to enable the college 
 to be kept in repair, and to accomplish the 
 purpose for which it was founded. As 
 Macaulay put it, there was no more ques- 
 tion 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 in 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 in 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 between Macaulay and his Edin- 
 burgh constituents, and of the annual motion 
 for the withdrawal of the grant which was 
 so long afterwards 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 candles specially placed for his con- 
 venience 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 Govern- 
 ment 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 afterwards called 
 the “ godless colleges” in Ireland. O’Con- 
 nell has often had the credit of applying this 
 nickname 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 afterwards 
 took it vigorously 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 afterwards as President, of 
 the Board of Trade, resigned his office be- 
 cause of the Irish schemes. He acted, per- 
 haps, with a too sensitive chivalry. He had 
 written a work, as all the world knows, on 
 the relations of Church and State, and he did 
 not think the views expressed in that book 
 left him free to co-operate in the ministeri- 
 al 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 es- 
 
 tablish in Ireland three colleges, one in Cork, 
 the second in Belfast, and the third in Gal- 
 way, 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 intentions 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 in each 
 Church came an equally fierce denunciation 
 of the proposal to separate secular from re- 
 ligious 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 established 
 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 meas- 
 ure ; 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 excluded 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- 
 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 rejected 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 ses- 
 sions, 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 requiring 
 the whole of the further circulation to be on 
 a basis of bullion, and prohibiting the forma- 
 tion of any new banks of issue, is a charac- 
 teristic and an important measure of Peel’s 
 Government. To Peel, too, we owe the es- 
 tablishment 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 speculation. 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 ad- 
 venturers turned the heads of the whole com- 
 munity. For a time it seemed to be a na- 
 tional 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 out- 
 break of what were called the Rebecca riots 
 in Wales. These riots arose out of the anger 
 and impatience of the people at the great in- 
 crease of toll-bars and tolls on the public 
 roads. Some one, it was supposed, had hit 
 upon a passage in Genesis 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 which hate them.” They set about 
 accordingly to possess very effectually the 
 gates of those which hated them. Mobs as- 
 sembled every night, destroyed turnpikes, 
 and dispersed. They met with little molesta- 
 
 tion in most cases for a while. The mobs 
 were always led by a man in woman’s 
 clothes, supposed to represent the typical 
 Rebecca. As the disturbances went on, it 
 was found that no easier mode of disguise 
 could be got than a woman’s clothes, and 
 therefore 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 
 conflicts 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 in- 
 quire into the cause of so much disturbance ; 
 and the commission, as will readily be imag- 
 ined, found that there were genuine griev- 
 ances 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 intro- 
 duced measures which removed the griev- 
 ances 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 allowed to stand. 
 Rebecca and her short career mark an ad- 
 vancement in the political and social history 
 of England. 
 
 Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, 
 brought himself and the Government into some 
 trouble by the manner in which he made use 
 of the power invested in the Administration 
 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 communicated to 
 the Sardinian and Austrian Governments, 
 and that as a result men who were supposed 
 to be implicated 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 authoriz- 
 ing the opening of some of Mazzini’s letters ; 
 but he contended that the right to open let- 
 ters had been specially reserved to the Gov- 
 ernment on its responsibility, that it had 
 been always exercised, but by him with 
 special caution and moderation ; and that it 
 would be impossible for any Government ab- 
 solutely to deprive itself of such a right. The 
 public excitement was at first very great ; 
 but it soon subsided. The reports of Parlia- 
 mentary committees appointed by the two 
 Houses showed that all governments had ex- 
 ercised the right, but naturally with decreas- 
 ing 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 written 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, some 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 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 43 
 
 free from innuendoes and attacks on the 
 ground that he had tampered with the cor- 
 respondence 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 
 assumption that he does not involve her in 
 responsibility and danger by using her pro- 
 tection as a shield behind which to contrive 
 plots and organize insurrections against 
 foreign governments. It is certain that Maz- 
 zini did make use of the shelter England gave 
 him for such a purpose. It would in the 
 end be to the heavy injury of all fugitives 
 from despotic rule if to shelter them brought 
 such consequences on the countries that 
 offered them a home. 
 
 The Peel Administration was made memo- 
 rable by many remarkable events at home as 
 well as abroad. It had, as we have seen, in- 
 herited wars and brought them to a close : it 
 had wars of its own. Scinde was annexed by 
 Lord Ellenborough in consequence of the dis- 
 putes which had arisen between us and the 
 Ameers, whom we accused of having broken 
 faith with us. They were said to be in cor- 
 respondence 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 annexa- 
 tion of the territory. Sir Charles Napier 
 won a splendid victory — splendid, that is, in a 
 military sense — over an enemy outnumbering 
 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 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 Na- 
 pier, one of the most brilliant, daring, suc- 
 cessful, eccentric, and self -conceited captains 
 who had ever fought in the service of Eng- 
 land since the days of Peterborough. Later 
 on the Sikhs invaded our territory by cross- 
 ing the Sutlej in great force. Sir Hugh 
 Gough, afterwards Lord Gough, fought sev- 
 eral 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 con- 
 sequence of the dispute that arose between 
 this country and France about Tahiti and 
 Queen Pomare. Queen Pomare was sov- 
 ereign of the island of Tahiti, in 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 induced or compelled to put 
 herself and her dominion under the protec- 
 tion of France ; a step which was highly dis- 
 pleasing to her subjects. Some ill-feeling 
 towards 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 sud- 
 denly appeared off the coast, and called on 
 her to hoist the French flag above her own. 
 She refused ; and he instantly effected a land- 
 ing 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 Com- 
 modore 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 be covered under your 
 great shadow, the same that afforded 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 themselves to become in- 
 flamed with the idea that British intrigue 
 was at the bottom of the Tahiti people’s dis- 
 
 like to the protectorate of France, and that 
 England wanted to get Queen Pomare ’s do- 
 minions for herself. They cried out there- 
 fore that to take down the flag of France from 
 its place in Tahiti would be to insult the dig- 
 nity of the French nation, and to insult it at 
 the instance of England. The cry was echoed 
 in the shrillest tones by a great number 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 offi- 
 cious servant carries off the property of some 
 one else, and gives it to his master, the mas- 
 ter’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. Pos- 
 sibly they found themselves in something of 
 the same difficulty as the English Govern- 
 ment 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 Pomare. A French senti- 
 nel had been attacked, or was said to have 
 been attacked, in the night, and in conse- 
 quence the French commandant seized Pritch- 
 ard in reprisal, declaring him to be “ the 
 only mover and instigator of disturbances 
 among the natives.” Pritchard was flung 
 into prison, and only released to be expelled 
 from the island. He came home to Eng- 
 land with his story ; and his arrival was the 
 signal for an outburst of indignation all over 
 the country. Sir Robert Peel and Lord Ab- 
 erdeen alike stigmatized the treatment of 
 Pritchard 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-feeling 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 
 popular 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 
 5, 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 nominally re- 
 stored 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 Eng- 
 lish 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 Ashburton Treaty 
 bears date August 9, 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 understanding as to 
 the boundary line between Canada and the 
 State of Maine had been a source of some 
 disturbance, and of much controversy. Ar- 
 bitration between England and the United 
 States had been tried and failed, both parties 
 declining the award. Sir Robert Peel sent 
 out Lord Ashburton, formerly Mr. Baring, 
 as plenipotentiary, to Washington, in 1842, 
 and by his intelligent exertions an arrange- 
 ment was come to which appears to have 
 given mutual satisfaction ever since, despite 
 
 of the sinister prophesyings of Lord Palmer" 
 ston at the time. The Oregon question was 
 more complicated, and was the source of a 
 longer controversy. More than once the dis- 
 pute about the boundary line in the Oregon 
 region had very nearly become an occasion 
 for war between England and the United 
 States. In Canning’s time there was a crisis 
 during which, to quote the words of an Eng- 
 lish statesman, war could have been brought 
 about by the holding up of a finger. The 
 question in dispute was as to the boundary 
 line between English 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 Moun- 
 tains was regarded by most persons as little 
 better than a desert wild. But when the vast 
 capacities and the splendid future of the Pa- 
 cific slope began to be recognized, and the 
 importance 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 at- 
 tempt 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 settlement, but failed. The 
 dispute involved the ownership of the mouth 
 of the Columbia River, and of the noble isl- 
 and which bears the name of Vancouver, off 
 the shore of British Columbia, The joint oc- 
 cupancy was renewed for an indefinite time ; 
 but in 1843, the President of the United 
 States somewhat peremptorily called for a 
 final settlement of the boundary. The ques- 
 tion was eagerly taken up by excitable poli- 
 ticians in the American House of Represent- 
 atives. For more than two years the Ore- 
 gon question became a party cry in America. 
 With a large proportion of the American 
 public, including, of course, nearly all citi- 
 zens of Irish birth or extraction, any Presi- 
 dent would have been popular beyond meas- 
 ure who had forced a war on England. Calm- 
 er and wiser counsels prevailed, however, 
 on both sides. Lord Aberdeen, our Foreign 
 Secretary, was especially moderate and con- 
 ciliatory. He offered a compromise which 
 was at last accepted. On June 15, 1846, 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 mainland ; thence southerly through the 
 middle 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 Co- 
 lumbia River was secured. We have said 
 that the question was settled, “for that 
 time because an important part of it came 
 up again for settlement 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 agree- 
 ment on the subject, and the divergence of 
 the claims made on one side and the other 
 constituted a new question, which became a 
 part of the famous Treaty of Washington in 
 1871, and was finally settled by the arbitra- 
 tion of the Emperor of Germany. But it is 
 much to the honor of the Peel Administra- 
 tion that a dispute which had for years been 
 charged with possibilities of war, and had 
 become a stock subject of political agitation 
 in America, should have been so far settled 
 as to be removed for ever 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 Ad- 
 
44 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ministration which had come into power with 
 such splendid promise, and had accomplished 
 so much in such various fields of legislation, 
 was brought so suddenly to a fall. The 
 story is one of the most remarkable and im- 
 portant chapters in the history of English pol- 
 itics and parties. 
 
 During Peel’s time we catch a last glimpse 
 of the famous Arctic navigator, Sir John 
 Franklin. He sailed on the expedition 
 which was doomed to be his last, on May 
 26, 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 nav- 
 igator 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.” 
 
 CHAPTER XIY. 
 
 FREE TRADE AND THE LEAGUE. 
 
 Few chapters of political history in modern 
 times have given occasion for more contro- 
 versy than that which contains the story of 
 Sir Robert Peel’s Administration in its deal- 
 ing with the Corn Laws. Told in the brief- 
 est form, the story is that Peel came into 
 office in 1841 to maintain the Corn Laws, and 
 that in 1846 he repealed them. The contro- 
 versy as to the wisdom or unwisdom of re- 
 pealing the Corn Laws has long since come 
 to an end. They who were the uncompro- 
 mising opponents of Free Trade at that time 
 are proud to call themselves its uncompro- 
 mising 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 dis- 
 pute, as to the conduct of Sir Robert Peel. 
 
 The Melbourne Ministry fell, as we have 
 seen, in consequence of a direct vote of want 
 of confidence moved by their leading oppo- 
 nent, and the return of a majority hostile 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 sub- 
 stitute 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 du- 
 ties and improving the system, but maintain- 
 ing the principle. Lord John Russell pro- 
 posed an amendment declaring that the 
 House of Commons, ‘ ‘ considering the evils 
 which have been caused by the present Corn 
 Laws, and especially by the fluctuation of 
 the graduated or sliding scale, is not prepar- 
 ed to adopt the measure of her Majesty’s 
 Government, which is founded on the same 
 principles, and is likely to be attended by 
 similar results.” The amendment was re- 
 jected 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 amendment declaring for 
 the entire abolition of all duties on grain. 
 Only ninety votes were given for the amend- 
 ment, while three hundred and ninety-three 
 were recorded against it. Sir Robert Peel’s 
 Government, therefore, came into power dis- 
 tinctly 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 lead- 
 ing statesman. Mr. Gladstone was never as- 
 sailed by the staunchest supporter of the Irish 
 Church in words so vituperative as those 
 which rated Sir Robert Peel for his supposed 
 apostasy. 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 supported. 
 
 ‘‘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 blessing of genial 
 seasons, fills the nation’s stores with plen- 
 teousness, then and then only has the cry of 
 ruin to the cultivator been proclaimed as the 
 one great evil for legislation to repress.” 
 This is indeed the very meaning of the prin- 
 ciple 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 partic- 
 ular 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 monopolist is always 
 and inevitably opposed to the interest of the 
 community. 
 
 But it is easy even now, when we have al- 
 most forgotten the days of protection, to see 
 that the corn -grower is not likely either to 
 recognize or to admit this conflict of interests 
 between his protection and the public wel- 
 fare. 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 charm- 
 ing 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 com- 
 pact seems reasonable and tempting. Al- 
 most 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 ma- 
 chinery. The great object of legislation and 
 of social compacts of whatever kind seemed 
 to be to keep the rents of the landowners and 
 the prices of the farmers up to a comfortable 
 standard. It is not particularly to the dis- 
 credit of the landlords and the farmers that 
 this was so. We have seen 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 partic- 
 ular interests. The paper manufacturers 
 liked it as little in 1860 as the landlords and 
 farmers had done fifteen years earlier. 
 When the cup comes to be commended to 
 the lips of each interest in turn, we always 
 find that it is received as a poisoned chalice, 
 and taken with much shuddering and pas- 
 sionate protestation. The particular advan- 
 tage possessed by vested interests in the 
 Corn Laws was that for a long time the land- 
 lords possessed all the legislative power and 
 all the p?-estige as well. There was a certain 
 reverence and sanctity about the ownership 
 of land, with its hereditary descent and its 
 patriarchal dignities, which the manufacture 
 of paper could not pretend to claim. 
 
 If it really were true that the legitimate in- 
 comes or the legitimate influence of the land- 
 lord 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 Revo- 
 lution, had done something themselves to en- 
 courage the growth of new and disturbing 
 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 in a good time com- 
 ing of equality and brotherhood. In some- 
 thing of the same fashion the aristocracy of 
 England were for some time before the re- 
 peal of the Com Laws illustrating a sort of 
 
 revival of patriarchal 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 noble was the 
 father of the poor and the chief of his neigh- 
 borhood. All manner of pretty whimsies 
 were caught up with this ruling idea to give 
 them an appearance 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 es- 
 tate, 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 aristoc- 
 racy, but who was afterwards destined to be 
 the successful leader of the Conservative and 
 aristocratic party ; to be its saviour 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 Con- 
 servatism 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 meas- 
 ure imposed a duty on the importation of 
 foreign grain which amounted to prohibition. 
 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 shil- 
 lings a quarter. The Corn Law of 1815 was 
 hurried through Parliament, absolutely clos- 
 ing the ports against the importation of for- 
 eign grain until the price of our home-grown 
 grain had reached the magic figure of eighty 
 shillings a quarter. It was hurried through, 
 despite the most earnest petitions from the 
 commercial and manufacturing classes. A 
 great deal of popular disturbance attended 
 the passing of the measure. There were riots 
 in London, and the houses of several of the 
 supporters of the bill were attacked. Incen- 
 diary fires blazed in many parts of the coun- 
 try. 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 sup- 
 press them. Five persons were hanged as 
 the result of these disturbances. 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 demanding 
 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 vary- 
 ing system of duty, so that, according as the 
 price of home-produced wheat rose to a cer- 
 tain 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 pro- 
 fit the public at large had no right to any re- 
 duction in the cost of food. When the har- 
 vest was a good one, and the golden grain 
 was plenty, then the soul of the grower was 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 45 
 
 afraid, and lie 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 general was 
 enhanced, he too must come to benefit by it. 
 
 Naturally it was in places like Manchester 
 that the fallacy of all this theory was first 
 commonly perceived and most warmly re- 
 sented. The Manchester manufacturers 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 be- 
 tween them and the sale. Manchester, from 
 the time of its first having Parliamentary rep- 
 resentation — only a few years before the 
 foundation of the Anti-Corn-Law League — 
 had always spoken out for Free Trade. The 
 fascinating sophism which had shell 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 enriching 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 depression, arising, in some parts of 
 the country, to actual and severe suffering. 
 Some members of Parliament and other in- 
 fluential 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 coun- 
 try 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 agitation. It is too large to have 
 any central interest or source of action. It 
 is too dependent socially and economically 
 on the patronage of the higher and wealthier 
 classes. London has never been to England 
 what Paris has been to France. It has hard- 
 ly ever made or represented 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 Lancashire the proper place. In the 
 year 1838 the town of Bolton-le-Moors, in 
 Lancashire, was the victim of a terrible com- 
 mercial crisis. Thirty out of the fifty man- 
 ufacturing establishments which the town 
 contained were closed ; nearly a fourth of all 
 the houses of business were closed and actu- 
 ally 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 principle that it was 
 necessary to keep bread dear. A meeting 
 was held in 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 impor- 
 tance and strength. ^ Meetings'” were held in 
 various towns of England and Scotland. {As- 
 sociations 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 ra- 
 
 ther fierce opposition from the Chartists, who ! 
 loudly proclaimed that the whole movement 
 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 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'Connell, who became 
 one of their principal orators when they held 
 meetings in the metropolis. They issued 
 pamphlets 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 bazaars in Manchester and in 
 London, and by calling for subscriptions. A 
 bazaar in Manchester brought in ten thou- 
 sand pounds ; one in London raised rather 
 more than double that sum, not including 
 the subscriptions that were contributed. 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 16, 
 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 Lib- 
 erals 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 modem 
 apostle of peace and Free Trade as a site 
 whereon to build a hall sacred to the pro- 
 mulgation of his favorite doctrines. 
 
 The times were peculiarly favorable to the 
 new sort of propaganda which came into be- 
 ing 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 reduc- 
 tion of the cost of postage alone must have 
 facilitated its labors to an extent beyond cal- 
 culation. 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 be- 
 ing 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 appointment to do its 
 work. Great as the work was which the 
 League did, it will be remembered in Eng- 
 land 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 Parliament was for many years Mr. Charles 
 Yilliers, 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 phe- 
 nomenon 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. Vil- 
 liers’ class devoting himself to a cause so en- 
 tirely practical and business-like as that of 
 the repeal of the Corn Laws. Mr. Yilliers 
 brought forward for several successive ses- 
 sions 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 at- 
 
 tention of the country to the whole question, 
 and making converts to the principle he ad- 
 vocated. The House of Commons has al- 
 ways of late years been the best platform 
 from which to address the country. In po- 
 litical agitation it has thus been made to pre- 
 pare the way for the schemes of legislation 
 which it has itself always begun by reprobat- 
 ing. But Mr. Villiers might have gone on 
 for all his life dividing the House of Com- 
 mons on the question of Free Trade, with- 
 out 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 par- 
 ticularly by the great manufacturing towns 
 of the 'North. Until the passing of Lord 
 Grey’s Reform Bill these towns had no rep- 
 resentation in Parliament. They seemed 
 destined after that event to make up for their 
 long exclusion from representative 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 in- 
 considerable time they undoubtedly possess- 
 ed. The reforms they chiefly aimed at have 
 been carried, and the spirit which in times of 
 stress and struggle kept their populations al- 
 most of one mind has less necessity of exist- 
 ence 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 supremacy 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 landowning) body 
 representing the country. The Manchester 
 school, as it was called, then and for long 
 after had some teachers and leaders who 
 were of themselves capable of making any 
 school powerful and respected. With the 
 Manchester school began a new kind of pop- 
 ular agitation. Up to that time agitation 
 meant appeal to passion, and lived by pro- 
 voking 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, rather than fig- 
 ures of speech, and which converted mob 
 meetings to political economy. 
 
 The real leader of the movement was Mr. 
 Richard Cobden. Mr. Cobden was a man 
 belonging to the yeoman class. He had re- 
 ceived 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 afterwards be- 
 came a ^partner in a Manchester printed cot- 
 ton factory ; and he travelled occasionally on 
 the commercial business of this establish- 
 ment. He had a great liking for travel ; but 
 not by any means as the ordinary tourist trav- 
 els ; the interest of Cobden was not in scen- 
 ery, 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 affect the future. On 
 everything that he saw he turned a quick 
 and intelligent eye ; and he saw for himself 
 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 different stamp from him 
 and from each other have possessed ; of 
 which Goethe frankly boasted, and which 
 Mirabeau had more largely than he was al- 
 ways willing to acknowledge ; the faculty 
 which exacts from every one with whom its 
 owner comes into contact some contribution 
 to his stock of information and to his advan- 
 tage. 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 something in the way of informa- 
 
46 
 
 A HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tion. He travelled very widely for a time 
 when travelling was more difficult work 
 than it is at present. He made himself famil- 
 iar with most of the countries of Europe, 
 with many parts of 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 dis- 
 miss 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 ed- 
 ucation of the highest 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 statesmanship ; the balance of 
 power in Europe ; the necessity of maintain- 
 ing a State Church in Ireland ; the impor- 
 tance of allowing no European quarrel to go 
 on without England’s intervention ; and 
 similar dogmas. Mr. Cobden’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 reason- 
 ably enough that Mr. Cobden was one of the 
 greatest orators England has ever known. 
 Nothing could exceed the persuasiveness of 
 his style. His manner was simple, sweet, 
 and earnest. It was persuasive, but it had 
 not the sort of persuasiveness which is mere- 
 ly a better kind of plausibility. It persuad- 
 ed by convincing. It was transparently 
 sincere. The light of its convictions shone 
 all through it. It aimed at the reason and 
 the judgment of the listener, and seemed to 
 be convincing him to his own interest against 
 his prejudices. Cobden’s style was almost 
 exclusively conversational, but he had a 
 clear, well-toned voice, with a quiet unassum- 
 ing power in it which enabled him to make 
 his words heard distinctly and without effort 
 all through the great meetings he had often 
 to address. His speeches were full of 
 variety. He illustrated every argument by 
 something drawn from his personal observa- 
 tion or from reading, and his illustrations 
 were always striking, appropriate, and in- 
 
 I teresting. He had a large amount of bright 
 and winning humor, and he spoke the sim- 
 plest and purest English. 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 be- 
 neath 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 
 standing rules, if such an expression may be 
 allowed, of morality, then Cobden was un- 
 equalled. So long as the controversy could 
 be settled after this fashion — “ I will show 
 you that in such a course you are acting in- 
 juriously 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 pas- 
 sion 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 perfection as 
 it was of common sense and fab - play, was 
 
 out of season. It could not answer feeling 
 with feeling. It was not able to “ over- 
 crow,” in the word of Shakespeare and 
 Spenser, one emotion by another. The de- 
 fect of Mr. Cobden’s style of mind and tem- 
 per 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 com- 
 mon sense and fair dealing, he had no sym- 
 pathy with )he passions of men ; he did not 
 understand them ; they passed for nothing 
 in his calculations. His judgment of men 
 and of nations was based far too much on 
 his knowledge of his own motives and char- 
 acter. 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 governed by the 
 rules of prudence and of equity. History 
 had little interest for him, except as it testi- 
 fied to man’s advancement and steady prog- 
 ress, and furnished arguments to show that 
 men prospered by liberty, peace, and just 
 dealings with their neighbors. He cared lit- 
 tle 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 pru- 
 dently. He did not see why the mere idea of 
 nationality, for example, should induce peo- 
 ple to disturb themselves by insurrections 
 and wars, so long as they were tolerably well 
 governed, and allowed to exist in peace and 
 to make an honest living. Thus he never rep- 
 resented more than half the English char- 
 acter. He was always out of sympathy with 
 his countrymen on some great political ques- 
 tion. 
 
 But he seemed as if he were designed by 
 nature to conduct to success such an agita- 
 tion 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 suffrage, as that of Mr. Cobden. If 
 Mr. Bright had been on the wrong side of 
 every cause he pleaded ; if his agitation had 
 been as conspicuous for failure as it was for 
 success, he would still be famous among 
 English public men. He was what Mr. Cob- 
 den 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. He 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 unspeak- 
 able effect to any passages of pathos or of 
 scorn. His style of speaking was exactly 
 what a conventional demagogue’s ought 1 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 admira- 
 ble 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 thinking 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 terminology, but was above all 
 things Saxon and simple.’ Bright was a man 
 of the middle class. His family were Quak- 
 ers of a somewhat austere mould. They 
 were manufacturers of carpets in Rochdale, 
 Lancashire, and had made considerable 
 money in their business. John Bright there- 
 fore 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 interest- 
 ing 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 Man- 
 chester 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 conversation- 
 al 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 ap- 
 peal to him to join in the agitation for the 
 repeal of the Corn Laws : 
 
 “I was in Leamington, and Mr. Cobden 
 called on me. I was then in the depths of 
 grief — I may almost say of despair, for- the 
 light and sunshine of my house had been ex- 
 tinguished. All that was left on earth of my 
 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. Cob- 
 den called on me as his friend and addressed 
 me, as you may suppose, with words of con- 
 dolence. After a time he looked up and 
 said : ‘ There are thousands 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 brotherhood, 
 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 mentioned 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 power- 
 ful allies. Each had something that the 
 other wanted. Bright had no Cobden’s win- 
 ning persuasiveness 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 4? 
 
 admirable testimony to their argumentative 
 power and to their influence over the House 
 of 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 sci- 
 entific 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 
 a while he felt it to be a torture and a vio- 
 lence 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 resist- 
 ance which has been thus far offered to it in 
 almost every country but England alone. 
 
 These men had many assistants and lieu- 
 tenants 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 ora- 
 tor 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 considerable debating skill. In the 
 Lancashire towns the League had the ad- 
 vantage of being officered for the most part 
 by shrewd and sound men of business who 
 gave their time as freely as they gave their 
 money to the advancement of the cause. It 
 is curious to compare the manner in which 
 the Anti-Corn-Law agitation was conducted 
 with the manner in which the contemporary 
 agitation in Ireland for repeal of the Union 
 was carried on. In England the agitation 
 was based on the most strictly business prin- 
 ciples. 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 roman- 
 tic rousings of sentimental emotion. The 
 system of the agitation was as clear, straight- 
 forward and business-like as its purpose. In 
 Ireland there were monster meetings with all 
 manner of dramatic and theatric effects ; with 
 rhetorical exaggeration and vehement appeal 
 to passion and to ancient memory of suffer- 
 ing. The cause was kept up from day to 
 day by assurances of near success so pos- 
 itive that it is sometimes hard to believe 
 those who made them could themselves have 
 been deceived by them. No doubt the differ- 
 ence 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 better 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’Connell’s cause 
 was a mere shadow ; nor will it appear, if 
 we study the criticism 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 Laws. Cobden and Bright 
 
 on the one side, O’Connell on the other, 
 knew the audiences they had to address. It 
 would have been impossible to stir the blood 
 of the Lancashire artisan by means of the ap- 
 peals 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 enforced 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 different 
 tone of appeal. “All men are not alike,” 
 says the Norman butler to the Flemish sol- 
 dier in Scott’s “ Betrothed “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 battle- 
 ments.” The most impassioned Celt, how- 
 ever, will admit that in the Anti-Corn-Law 
 movement of Cobden and Bright, with its 
 rigid truthfulness and its strict proportion 
 between capacity and promise, there was an 
 entirely new dignity lent to popular agitation 
 which raised it to the condition of states- 
 manship in the rough. The Reform agita- 
 tion in England had not been conducted 
 without some exaggeration, much appeal to 
 passion, and some not by any means indis- 
 tinct allusion to the reserve of popular force 
 which might be called into action if legisla- 
 tors and peers proved insensible to argument. 
 The era of the Anti-Corn-Law movement 
 was a new epoch altogether in English polit- 
 ical controversy. 
 
 The League, however, successful as it 
 might be throughout the country, had its 
 great work to do in Parliament. 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 of 
 Commons was still composed, as to nine 
 tenths of its whole number, by representa- 
 tives of the landlords. The entire House of 
 Lords then was constituted of the owners of 
 land. All tradition, all prestige, all the dig- 
 nity of aristocratic institutions, seemed to be 
 naturally arrayed against the new movement, 
 conducted as it was by manufacturers and 
 traders for the benefit seemingly of trade and 
 those whom it employed. The artisan popu- 
 lation, 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 ad- 
 mitted 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 ac- 
 cordance with them as to the mere principle 
 of protection, but who were always endeav- 
 oring 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 ad- 
 vocate 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 considered their fanatical 
 and uncompromising adherence to the prin- 
 ciple of Free Trade. “ In my opinion,” Mr. 
 
 Macaulay wrote to his constituents, “you 
 are all wrong — 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 com- 
 promise ; because, being in a situation where 
 every person who will go a step with you on 
 the right road ought to be cordially wel- 
 comed, you drive from you those who are 
 willing and desirous to go with you half 
 way. To this policy I will be no party. 1 
 will not abandon those witn whom I have 
 hitherto acted, and without whose help I am 
 confident that no great improvement can be 
 effected, for an object purely selfish.” It 
 had not occurred to Mr. Macaulay that any 
 party but the Whigs 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 ingrati- 
 tude amounting to a species of sacrilege to 
 accept 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 discomfited steady-going poli- 
 ticians 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 undertake 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. in- 
 dependent spirit into political life. It is al- 
 most ludicrous sometimes to read the dia- 
 tribes of supporters of Lord Melbourne’s 
 Government, for example, against any one 
 who should presume to think that any object 
 in the mind of a true patriot, or at least of a 
 true Liberal, could equal in importance that 
 of keeping the Melbourne Ministry in power. 
 Great reforms have been made by Conser- 
 vative governments 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 fur- 
 ther 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, how- 
 ever, it had not entered into the mind of any 
 W hig 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 
 sliding scale. Their hopes seem rather to 
 have gone up than gone down when the min- 
 ister came into power whose adherents, un- 
 like those of Lord John Russell, were abso- 
 lutely against the very principle of Free 
 Trade. It is of some importance, in estimat- 
 ing the morality of the course pursued by 
 Peel, to observe the opinion formed of his 
 professions 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 sur- 
 render of office. Now it is certain that the 
 League always regarded Sir Robert Peel as a 
 Free Trader in heart ; as one who fully ad- 
 mitted the principle of Free Trade, but who 
 did not see his way just then to deprive the 
 agricultural interest of the protection on 
 which they had for so many years been al- 
 
48 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 lowed and encouraged to lean. In the debate 
 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 vir- 
 tue of the Whig Ministry in coming out from 
 the ranks of the monopolists and advancing 
 three parts out of four in my own direction. 
 Yet if the right honorable baronet opposite 
 (Sir R. Peel) advances one step further, 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 Commons 
 again and again ; nor do I doubt that Sir 
 Robert Peel has in his inmost heart the de- 
 sire 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 de- 
 clared 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 producer. 
 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 iu 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, how- 
 ever, are exceptions to the general rule, and 
 I will not go into that question now.” The 
 press of the day, whether for or against Peel, 
 commented upon his declarations and his 
 measures as indicating clearly that the bent 
 of his mind was towards 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 excep- 
 tional circumstances sliouldarise, pullingmore 
 strongly in the direction of the League, Sir 
 Robert Peel’s own explicit declarations must 
 bind him to recognize the necessity of apply- 
 ing the Free Trade principles even to corn. 
 “ Sir Robert Peel,” says his cousin Sir Lau- 
 rence Peel, in a sketch of the life and charac- 
 ter of the great statesman, “ had been, as I 
 have said, always a Free Trader. The ques- 
 tions to which he had declined to apply those 
 principles had been viewed by him as excep- 
 tional. 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 1 
 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 Pro- 
 tectionist, 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 dealing with the pro- 
 tection of home-grown grain ought not on 
 the face of things to be accused of violating 
 
 his pledges and betraying his party, if, four 
 years later, under the pressure of extraordi- 
 nary 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 guarantee, “ so far as a 
 minister could give it, ’ ’ that the principle of 
 the State Church Establishment in England 
 shall be permanently adhered to. He de- 
 clines to fetter the discretion of the Govern- 
 ment in the future. Is it not evident that 
 such an answer would be taken by nine out 
 of ten 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 de- 
 nounced and he might even be execrated, but 
 no one could fairly accuse him of having 
 violated his pledge and betrayed his party. 
 
 The country party, however, did not un- 
 derstand Sir Robert Peel as their opponents 
 and his assuredly understood him. They 
 did not at this time believe in the possbility 
 of any change. Free Trade was to them 
 little more than an abstraction. They did 
 not much care who preached it out of Parlia- 
 ment. 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. Yilliersand his annual motion 
 in favor of Free Trade very much as a stout 
 old Tory of later times might regard the an- 
 nual motion for woman suffrage. Both par- 
 ties 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 observed that some men among the two 
 leading sets went farther in favor of the ab- 
 stract 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 lead- 
 er was avowedly in a progressive condition 
 on the subject of Free Trade. Because they 
 could not bring themselves to question for a 
 moment the principle 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 con- 
 science 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 di- 
 rectly to what Mr. Disraeli afterwards 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 grain having ceased to be ten- 
 able as an economic principle would possibly 
 some day have to be given up as a prac- 
 tice, 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 gen- 
 eral, 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 measures, was limitless, so far as 
 his party were concerned. He could have 
 
 done anything with them. Indeed we find 
 no evidence so clear to prove that Peel had 
 not in 1842 made up his mind to the intro- 
 duction 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 opin- 
 ion in bursts of confidence even to his ha- 
 bitual associates. He brooded over these 
 things in his own mind ; he gave such ex- 
 pression to them in open debate as any pass- 
 ing occasion seemed strictly to call for ; and 
 he assumed perhaps that the gradual changes 
 operating in his views when thus expressed 
 were understood by his followers. Above 
 all, it is probable that Peel himself 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 an- 
 nouncing his intended legislation in 1846, Sir 
 Robert Peel, with a proud frankness which 
 was characteristic 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, “withhold 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 1842.” But it is prob- 
 able that if the Irish famine had not threaten- 
 ed, the moment for introducing the new leg- 
 islation might have been indefinitely post- 
 poned. The prospects 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 practical 
 action. It is therefore not hard to under- 
 stand how even a far-seeing and conscien- 
 tious statesman busy with the practical work 
 of each day might have put off taking defi- 
 nite counsel with himself as to the introduc- 
 tion of measures for which just then there 
 seemed no special necessity, and which could 
 hardly be introduced without bitter contro- 
 versy. 
 
 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 grav- 
 itating towards it. Their leaders did not 
 quite see their way to accept it as a principle 
 of practical statesmanship, but it was evident 
 that their acceptance of it was only a ques- 
 tion of time, and of no long time. The leader 
 of the Tory party was being drawn day by 
 day more in the same direction. Both lead- 
 ers, Russell and Peel, had gone so far as to 
 admit the general principle of Free Trade. 
 Peel had contended that grain was in Eng- 
 land a necessary exception ; Russell was not 
 of opinion that the time had come when it 
 could be treated otherwise than as an excep- 
 tion. The Free Trade party, small, indeed, 
 in its Parliamentary force, but daily growing 
 more and more powerful with the country, 
 would take nothing from either leader but 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 49 
 
 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 sj s- 
 tem of government 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 interposed, 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 Com Laws. They 
 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 convic- 
 tions 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 agita- 
 tion, 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 happen- 
 ed in a fine sentence : “ Famine itself, against 
 which we had warred, joined us.” In the 
 autumn of 1845 the potato rot began in Ire- 
 land. 
 
 The vast majority of the working popula- 
 tion of Ireland were known to depend abso- 
 lutely on the potato for subsistence. 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 fam- 
 ine. 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 landowner on 
 condition of getting the use of a little scrap 
 of land for himself, on which to grow pota- 
 toes 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 imperilled, if not already 
 destroyed, the food of a people. 
 
 The Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel held hasty 
 meetings closely following each other. Peo- 
 ple 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 accom- 
 panied it with the expression of a doubt as to 
 whether it would ever be possible to restore 
 the restrictions that had once been suspend- 
 ed. Indeed this doubt must have filled every 
 mind. The League were openly declaring 
 that one reason why they called for the open- 
 ing 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 un- 
 
 popular and indefensible that if they were 
 once suspended under the pressure of no 
 matter what exceptional necessity, they never 
 could be reimposed. The Duke'of Welling- 
 ton and Lord Stanley, however, opposed the 
 idea of opening the ports, and the proposal 
 fell through. The Cabinet merely resolved 
 on appointing a commission, consisting of 
 heads of departments in Ireland, to take 
 some steps to guard against a sudden out- 
 break of famine, and the thought of an au- 
 tumnal session was abandoned. Sir Robert 
 Peel himself has thus tersely described the 
 manner in which his proposals were receiv- 
 ed : “ 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 conviction 
 from the most undeniable evidence that con- 
 siderably more than one third of the entire 
 potato crop in Ireland had been already de- 
 stroyed by the disease, and that the disease 
 had not ceased its ravages, but on the con- 
 trary was daily expanding more and more. 
 “ No reasonable conjecture can be formed,” 
 the resolutions went on to state, “ with re- 
 spect to the limit of its effects short of the 
 destruction of the entire remaining crop 
 and the document concluded with a denun- 
 ciation 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 elec- 
 tors 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 Auti-Corn-Law League. 
 The failure of the potato crop was ot course 
 the immediate occasion of this letter. “ In- 
 decision and procrastination,” Lord John 
 Russell wrote, “ may produce a state of suf- 
 fering which it is frightful to contemplate. 
 
 . . . It is no longer worth while to contend 
 for a fixed duty. In 1841 the Free Trade 
 party would have agreed to a duty of 8*. per 
 quarter on wheat, and after a lapse of years 
 this duty might have been further reduced, 
 and ultimately abolished. But the imposi- 
 tion of any duty at present, without a pro- 
 vision for its extinction within a short period, 
 would but prolong a contest already suffi- 
 ciently 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, mortality and crime among 
 the people.” Then the writer added a signi- 
 ficant remark to the effect that the Govern- 
 ment appeared to be waiting for some excuse 
 to give up the present Corn Laws, and urg- 
 ing 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 produc- 
 ed upon his own councils, It “ could not,” 
 he points out, “ fail to exercise a very ma- 
 terial 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 repeal of the Corn Laws.” Peel would 
 not consent now to propose simply an open- 
 ing of the ports. It would seem, he thought, 
 a mere submission, to accept the minimum of 
 
 4 
 
 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 tri- 
 fling with the question. Sir Robert Peel 
 therefore recommended to his Cabinet an 
 early meeting of Parliament with the view of 
 bringing forward some measure equivalent to 
 a speedy repeal of the Corn Laws. 
 
 The recommendation was wise. It was, 
 indeed, indispensable. Y r et 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 Rus- 
 sell had long been growing into the same con- 
 viction. Yet the League had been left to 
 divide with but small numbers against over- 
 whelming majorities made up of both parties, 
 until the very session before Peel proposed 
 to repeal the Corn Laws. Lord Beacons- 
 field, indeed, indulges in something like ex- 
 aggeration when lie says, in his “ Life of 
 Lord George Bentinck,” that the close of the 
 session of 1845 found the League nearly re- 
 duced to silence. But it is not untrue 
 that, as he says, “ the Manchester confed- 
 erates 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 cir- 
 cumstances 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. It is a fact al- 
 luded to in the very letter from Lord John 
 Russell which was creating so much com- 
 motion. “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 
 political 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 influence, and the 
 bore of the crotchet of one Parliament is the 
 great party controversy of a second, and the 
 accomplished 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 op- 
 timist of Parliamentary government who up- 
 holds the manner of Free Trade’s final adop- 
 tion as absolutely satisfactory, and as reflect- 
 ing 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 protective 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 
 
50 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 force of a great emergency and the rival bid- 
 dings of party leaders came to render its re- 
 peal 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 ephe- 
 meral calamity of the potato rot, which at the 
 time when Lord John Russell wrote that let- 
 ter did not threaten to become nearly so fatal 
 as it afterwards proved to be. One cannot 
 help asking how long would the Corn Laws 
 be suffered thus to blight commerce and 
 agriculture, to cause division among classes, 
 and to produce penury, mortality and crime 
 among the people, if the potato rot in Ire- 
 land had not rendered it necessary to do 
 something without delay ? 
 
 The potato rot, however, inspired the writ- 
 ing 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 Coun- 
 cil was held on November 25, almost imme- 
 diately after the publication of Lord John 
 Russell’s letter. At that council Sir Robert 
 Peel recommended the summoning of Par- 
 liament with a view to instant measures to 
 combat the famine in Ireland, but with a 
 view also to some announcement of legisla- 
 tion intended to pave the way for the repeal 
 of the Corn Laws. Lord Stanley still hesi- 
 tated, and asked time to consider his decis- 
 ion. The Duke of Wellington was unchang- 
 ed 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 
 li ro, “ is more important than Corn Laws or 
 any other consideration. ” One may smile at 
 this notion of a good government without ref- 
 erence to the quality of the legislation it in- 
 troduces ; it reminds one a little of the cele- 
 brated 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 be not right or neces- 
 sary for the welfare of England, but requisite 
 for the maintenance of Sir Robert Peel’s po- 
 sition “ in Parliament and in the public 
 view,” he should thoroughly support the pro- 
 posal. 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 persuade himself that he could fall iu 
 with the new position which the Premier 
 had assumed. Meanwhile the most excited 
 condition of public feeling prevailed through- 
 out London and the country generally. The 
 Times newspaper came out on December 4 
 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 re- 
 peal. It would be hardly possible to exag- 
 gerate the excitement caused by this startling 
 piece of news. It was indignantly and in 
 unqualified terms declared a falsehood by the 
 ministerial prints. Long arguments were 
 gone into to prove that even if the fact an- 
 nounced were true, it could not possibly have 
 been known to the Times. In Disraeli’s 
 “ C’oningsby” Mr. Rigby gives the clearest 
 and most convincing reasons to prove first 
 that Lord Spencer could not be dead, as re- 
 port 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 announce- 
 ment in the Times was fiercely and pedantic- 
 ally 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 Cabinet could possibly 
 know of it ‘‘if any one outside the Cab- 
 inet 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 even 
 Mr. Rigby’s power of disputation that the 
 announcement 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 blandish- 
 ments of a gifted and beautiful lady with a 
 dash of political intrigue in her had somehow 
 extorted the secret from a young and hand- 
 some 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 po- 
 sition to judge of the probabilities. On the 
 other hand, there were surely signs and to- 
 kens enough by which a shrewd politician 
 might have guessed what was to come with- 
 out any intervention of petticoat diplomacy. 
 It seems odd now that people should then 
 have distressed themselves so much by con- 
 jectures as to the source of the information 
 when once it was made certain that the in- 
 formation 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 4 the Times 
 made the announcement. On tlieCth, having 
 been passionately contradicted, it repeated 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 op- 
 position in the Cabinet had proved itself un- 
 manageable. Lord Stanley 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 satisfactorily un- 
 der such circumstances, and he therefore has- 
 tened 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 opin- 
 ion ; and under these circumstances, I con- 
 sidered it to be my duty to tender my resig- 
 nation to her Majesty. On the 5th of De- 
 cember I repaired to Osborne, Isle of Wihgt, 
 and humbly solicited her Majesty to relieve 
 me from duties which I felt I could no lon- 
 ger discharge with advantage to her Majes- 
 ty’s service.” The very day after the Times 
 made its famous announcement, the very day 
 before the Times repeated it, the Prime Min- 
 ister who was to propose the repeal of the 
 Corn Laws went out of office. 
 
 Querr i 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 im- 
 portant question in Parliament fettered 
 
 by a previous engagement of the nature 
 of I hat required of him.” The position 
 of Lord John Rus§ell was awkward. He 
 had been forced into it because one or two of 
 Sir Robert Peel’s colleagues would not con- 
 sent 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 whole risk and burden had 
 seemingly been thrown on Lord John Rus- 
 sell ; 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. He 
 resolved to form a Ministry without a Parlia- 
 mentary 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 fa- 
 ther (the stately Charles Earl Grey, the pupil 
 of Fox, and chief of the Cabinet which pass- 
 ed the Reform Bill and abolished slavery) — 
 Lord Grey felt a strong objection to the for- 
 eign 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 strong- 
 ly 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 lar- 
 ger sacrifice to justice and common sense 
 than a suggestion that the office of Vice-Pres- 
 ident of the Board of Trade should be ten- 
 dered to the leader of the Free Trade move- 
 ment. Mr. Macaulay describes the events in 
 a letter to the Edinburgh Chamber of Com- 
 merce. “All our plans were frustrated by 
 Lord Grey, who objected to Lord Palmer- 
 ston being Foreign Secretary. I hope that 
 the public interests will not suffer. Sir Rob- 
 ert Peel must now undertake the settlement 
 of the question. It is certain that he can set- 
 tle it. It is by no means certain 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 interest. 
 “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 abo- 
 lition were insurmountable ; but that if he 
 declared 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 opin- 
 ions 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 com- 
 promise, and in December, 1845, he is writing 
 to Edinburgh to say that the one only thing 
 for which he must stipulate was total and im- 
 mediate 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 lit- 
 tle altercations and embarrassments of par- 
 ties. They knew well enough now that let 
 who would take power he must carry out 
 their policy. At a meeting 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 an- 
 other 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 51 
 
 which I have so long and so anxiously desir- 
 ed, 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 Ministry. He signified his failure to 
 the Queen. Probably, having done the best 
 lie 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 resignation and to re- 
 main in her service. Sir Robert of course 
 could only comply. The Queen offered to 
 give him some time to enter into communica- 
 tion 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 posi- 
 tively undertaken to make. He therefore re- 
 turned from Windsor on the evening of De- 
 cember 20, “having resumed all the func- 
 tions of First Minister of the Crown.” The 
 Duke of Buccleuch withdrew 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 Colonies by Mr. Gladstone, 
 who, however, curiously enough remained 
 without a seat iu Parliament during the 
 eventful session that was now to come. Mr. 
 Gladstone had sat for the borough of New- 
 ark, but that borough being under the influ- 
 ence of the Duke of Newcastle, who had 
 withdrawn his support from the Ministry, he 
 did not invite re-election, but remained with- 
 out a seat in the House of Commons for 
 some months. Sir Robert Peel then, to use 
 his own words in a letter to the Princess de 
 Lieven, resumed 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 Jan- 
 uary. 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 
 in the famine. Tbe utmost indignation was 
 expressed at the idea of there being any fam- 
 ine in prospect which could cause any de- 
 parture 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 protesta- 
 tions 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 Norfolk of that time made himself 
 particularly conspicuous by a beneficent sug- 
 gestion which he offered to a distressed pop- 
 ulation. He went about recommending a 
 curry powder of his own device as a charm 
 against hunger. 
 
 Parliament met. The openiug day was 
 January 22, 1846. The Queen in person 
 opened the session, and the speech from the 
 throne said a good deal about the condition 
 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 giving my 
 asseut to the measures which you have pre- 
 sented to me from time to time, calculated to 
 extend commerce and to stimulate domestic 
 skill and industry, by the repeal of prohibi- 
 tive 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 earli- 
 est possible day to submit to the considera- 
 tion 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 de- 
 bate is expected, or when some momentous 
 announcement is to be made. A common thrill 
 seems to tremble all through the assembly as 
 a breath of wind 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 opposi- 
 tion, are occupied by the men of political re- 
 nown 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 open- 
 ing 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 gallery, 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 pro- 
 found 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 ambi- 
 tious. This time there was a curiosity about 
 everything. What was the minister about to 
 announce ? When and in what fashion 
 would he announce it? Would the Whig 
 leaders speak before the ministerial announce- 
 ment? Would the Free Traders? What 
 voice would first hint to the expectant Com- 
 mons the course which political events were 
 destined to take ? The moving of an address 
 to the throne is always a formal piece of bus- 
 iness. It would be hardly possible for Cicero 
 or Burke to be very interesting when per- 
 forming such a task. On the other hand, it 
 is an excellent chance for a young beginner. 
 He finds the House in a sort of contemptuously 
 indulgent mood, prepared to welcome the 
 slightest evidence of any capacity of speech 
 above the dullest mediocrity. 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 accord- 
 ingly from an assembly which counts on be- 
 ing bored, and feels doubly indebted to the 
 speaker who is even in the slightest degree an 
 agreeable disappointment. On this particu- 
 lar 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 be- 
 tween an eager House and an exciting an- 
 nouncement. A certain piquancy was lent, 
 however, to the performance of the duty by 
 the fact, which the speeches made evident 
 beyond the possibility of mistake, 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. Nothing can be more un- 
 usual 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 business 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 
 arise. But a surprised murmur running 
 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 
 Beaconsfield 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 deferred. The Prime Minister 
 showed a deliberate intention, it might have 
 been thought, not to come to the point at 
 once. He went into long and labored expla- 
 nations of the manner in which his mind had 
 been brought into a change on the subject of 
 Free Trade and Protection ; and he gave ex- 
 haustive calculations to show that the reduc- 
 tion of duty was constantly followed by 
 expansion of the revenue, and even a main- 
 tenance 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 doc- 
 trines of the Manchester school, and that in 
 his opinion the time had come when that 
 protection which he had taken office to main- 
 tain must for ever be abandoned. One sen- 
 tence at the close of his speech was made the 
 occasion of much labored criticism and some 
 severe accusation. It was that in which Peel 
 declared that he found it “ no easy task to 
 ensure 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 en- 
 deavor 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 evi- 
 dent 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 princi- 
 ples 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 nothing for, it but to wait 
 until the time should come for the formal an- 
 nouncement 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 his- 
 tory an example like this of a sudden turn 
 given to a whole career by a timely speech. 
 The member who rose to comment on the ex- 
 planation 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 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
52 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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, bril- 
 liant success. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MR. DISRAELI. 
 
 The speaker who rose into such sudden 
 prominence and something like the position 
 of a party leader was one of the most re- 
 markable 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 Conservative member for 
 Maidstone in 1837. He was then about 
 thirty-two years of age. He had previously 
 made repeated and unsuccessful attempts to 
 get a seat in Parliament. He began his pol- 
 itical career as an advanced Liberal, and had 
 come out under the auspices of Daniel 
 O’Connell and Joseph Hume. He had de- 
 scribed 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 aristo- 
 cratic parties. He had before this given in- 
 dications of remarkable literary talent, if in- 
 deed it might not he called genius. His 
 novel, “Vivian Grey,” published when he 
 was in his twenty-third year, was suffused 
 with extravagance, affectation, and mere an- 
 imal spirits ; but it was full of the evidences 
 of a fresh and brilliant ability. The son of a 
 distinguished literary man, Mr. Disraeli had 
 probably at that time only a young literary 
 man’s notions of politics. It is not neces- 
 sary to charge him with deliberate inconsist- 
 ency because from having 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. He 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 advanced Radicalism did not do 
 much to get him into Parliament, he prob- 
 ably began to ask himself whether his Lib- 
 eral convictions were so deeply rooted as to 
 call for the sacrifice of a career. He thought 
 the question over, and doubtless found him- 
 self crystallizing fast into an advocate of the 
 established order of things. In a purely per- 
 sonal light tliis was a fortunate conclusion 
 for the ambitious young politician. He 
 could not then have anticipated the extraor- 
 dinary 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. Cob- 
 den 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. Cob- 
 den was unsuccessful. Cobden had to wait four 
 years before he found his way into the House 
 of Commons ; Bright did not become a mem- 
 ber of Parliament until some two years later 
 still. It was, however, the Anti-Corn-Law agi- 
 tation which, by conquering Peel and making 
 him its advocate, brought about the memora- 
 ble split in the Conservative party, and car- 
 ried away from the cause of the country 
 squires nearly all the men of talent who had 
 hitherto been with them. A new or middle 
 party of so-called Peelites was formed. Gra- 
 ham, 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- 
 tinck. 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 Glad- 
 stone and Graham for its captains, and Cob- 
 den and Bright for its habitual supporters. 
 
 This, however, could not have been in Mr. 
 Disraeli’s thoughts when he changed from 
 Radicalism to Conservatism. No trace of 
 the progress of conversion can he found in his 
 speeches or his writings. It is not unreason- 
 able to infer that he took up Radicalism at 
 the beginning because it looked the most pic- 
 turesque 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 affinity with the cause of the coun- 
 try gentlemen. The reputation he had made 
 for himself before his going into Parliament 
 was of a nature rather calculated to retard 
 than to advance a political career. He was 
 looked upon almost universally as an eccen- 
 tric and audacious adventurer, who was kept 
 from being dangerous by the affectations and 
 absurdities of his conduct. He dressed in 
 the extremest style of preposterous foppery ; 
 he talked a blending of cynicism and senti- 
 ment ; he had made the most reckless state- 
 ments ; his boasting was almost outrageous ; 
 his rhetoric of abuse was, even in that free- 
 spoken time, astonishingly vigorous and un- 
 restrained. Even his literary efforts did not 
 then receive anything like the appreciation 
 they have obtained since. At that time they 
 were regarded rather as audacious whimsi- 
 calities, the fantastic freaks of a clever youth, 
 than as genuine works of a certain kind of 
 art. Even when he did get into the House 
 of Commons, his first experience there was 
 little calculated 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 derision. It is a clever speech, 
 full of point and odd conceits ; very like in 
 style and 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 prob- 
 ably 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 some- 
 thing to the contemptuous opinion which 
 was formed of him on his first attempt to ad- 
 dress the assembly which he afterwards 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 ex- 
 hibited a network of glittering chains ; large 
 fancy - pattern pantaloons, and a black tie, 
 above which no shirt-collar was visible, com- 
 pleted 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 clustering 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 man- 
 ner was intensely 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 illustra- 
 tion 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 ludicrous 
 failure. One who heard the debate thus de- 
 scribes 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 discouraged. 
 “ At last, losing his temper, which until now 
 he had preserved in a wonderful manner, he 
 paused in the midst of a sentence, and look- 
 ing the Liberals indignantly in the face, raised 
 his hands, and opening his mouth as widely 
 as its dimensions would admit, said in a re- 
 markably loud and almost terrific tone, ‘ I 
 have begun, several times, many things, and 
 I have often succeeded 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 bi- 
 ography would make up for a hero, and is so 
 like what was actually said in one or two 
 other remarkable instances, that a reader 
 might be excused for doubting its authentici- 
 ty in this case. But nothing can be more cer- 
 tain 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 Parliamentary orator. It is a cu- 
 rious fact that on that occasion almost the 
 only one of his hearers who seems to have 
 admired the speech was Sir Robert Peel. It 
 is by his philippic against Peel that Disraeli 
 is now about to convince the House of Com- 
 mons 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 a while, as he grew 
 more familiar with the House, to go in for 
 being paradoxical ; for making himself always 
 conspicuous ; for taking up positions and ex- 
 pounding 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 subjects of which it was evident 
 that he knew nothing, and sometimes he 
 managed by the sheer force of a strong intel- 
 ligence to discern the absurdity of economic 
 sophistries which had baffled men of far 
 greater experience, and which indeed, to 
 judge from his personal declarations and po- 
 litical conduct afterwards, 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 Macaulay 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 sim- 
 plicity of character. ” What Macaulay goes 
 on to say of Chatham will bear quotation 
 too. “ He was an actor in the closet, an 
 actor at council, an actor in Parliament ; and 
 even in private society he could not la}' aside 
 his theatrical tones and attitudes. Mr. Dis- 
 raeli was at one period of his career so affect- 
 ed 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 ; 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 53 
 
 he commanded 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 
 possession of a lofty nature. 
 
 For some time Mr. Disraeli then seemed 
 resolved to make himself remarkable — to be 
 talked about. He succeeded admirably. He 
 was talked about. All the political and satir- 
 ical 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 oppo- 
 nents of the press, and which his opponents 
 address to him. In some cases it is no exag- 
 geration to say that a squabble between two 
 Billingsgate fishwomen in 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 lit- 
 erary 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’Con- 
 nell denounced him as “a miscreant,” as 
 “ a wretch,” “ a liar,” “ whose life is a liv- 
 ing lie and finally as “ the heir-at-law of 
 the blasphemous thief who died impenitent 
 on the Cross.” Mr. Disraeli begins his re- 
 ply by describing himself as one of those 
 who “ will not be insulted even by a Yahoo 
 without chastising it and afterwards, 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’Connell’s] charac- 
 ter, 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 ab- 
 solutely nothing in common with our own. 
 It appears almost impossible to believe that 
 men still active in political 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 controversial duel with O’Connell ; but 
 there are many samples 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 any- 
 thing 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 apolo- 
 gize for an unjust or offensive expression 
 used in debate, was unknown then. Per- 
 haps it could hardly exist to any great extent 
 in the company 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 gentleman to atone for a wrong is not like- 
 ly to tiiumph very often over the fear of be- 
 ing 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 con- 
 troversies of Mr. Disraeli’s earlier days, when 
 men who aspired to be considered great po- 
 litical leaders thought it not unbecoming to 
 call names like a costermonger, and to swag- 
 ger 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 agreat debater and a powerful Parliament- 
 ary orator. We use the words Parliament- 
 ary orator with the purpose of conveying a 
 special qualification. He is a great Parlia- 
 mentary orator who can employ the kind of 
 eloquence and argument which tell 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 ‘‘ cham- 
 pagne speech” has vanished, evanescent al- 
 most 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 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-head- 
 ed adventurer, he soon won for himself the 
 name of one who could hold his own in re- 
 tort and in sarcasm against any antagonist. 
 The days of 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 elo- 
 quence with the House of Commons. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli was exactly the man to suc- 
 ceed under the new conditions of Parlia- 
 mentary eloquence. Hitherto he had wanted 
 a cause to inspire and justify audacity, and 
 on which to employ with effect his remark- 
 able 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 al- 
 most 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. The speech abounds iD 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 re- 
 linquished 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 retained a position which enabled him 
 to betray his party. He compared Peel to 
 the Lord High Admiral of the Turkish fleet, 
 who, at a great warlike crisis when he was 
 placed at the head of the finest armament 
 that ever left 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 pro- 
 longing a hopeless struggle, and that he had 
 accepted the command 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 without 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 
 nothing left on our side except the constitu- 
 encies which we have not betrayed.” He 
 denounced Peel as “ a man who never origi- 
 nates 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 minis- 
 ter, 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,” 11 in 
 a popular assembly has sometimes more suc- 
 cess 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 philippic 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 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 Parlia- 
 mentary discipline are very clinging. They 
 are hard to tear away. Every impulse 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 somewhat like that 
 of the heart of the Bruce in the fine old Scot- 
 tish story. Those who once followed will 
 still obey the name and the symbol even 
 when the actual power to lead is gone for- 
 ever. If one other night’s habitude had been 
 added to the long discipline that bound his 
 party to Peel ; if they had allowed them- 
 selves to listen to that declaration of the ses- 
 sion’s first night without murmur, perhaps 
 they might never have rebelled. Mr. Dis- 
 raeli drew together into one focus all the 
 rays of their gathering anger against Peel, 
 and made them light into a flame. He show- 
 ed 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 after- 
 wards explained, when Peel made allusion to 
 the fact, that he never had put himself 
 directly forward as a candidate for office ; 
 but there had undoubtedly been some negoti- 
 ation going forward which was conducted 
 on Mr. Disraeli’s side by some one who sup- 
 posed 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. Disraeli must have 
 known that when he attacked Peel, the latter 
 would hardly fail to make use of this obvi- 
 ous 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 
 
54 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and with effect. Disraeli made his own 
 career by the course he took on that memora- 
 ble night, and he also made a new career for 
 the Tory party. 
 
 Now that he had proved himself so bril- 
 liant 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 quota- 
 tion 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 gar- 
 ments.” “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 re- 
 course 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 Parlia- 
 mentary approbation. ” We can all readily 
 understand 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 au- 
 thors into his speeches, and who not unfre- 
 quently introduced citations which were re- 
 ceived 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 Can- 
 ning with Peel. Sir Robert had cited against 
 Disraeli 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 un- 
 timely end ; and we all sympathize with him 
 in his severe struggle with supreme prej- 
 udice and sublime mediocrity, with inveter- 
 ate foes and with candid friends.” The 
 phrase “ sublime mediocrity” had a marvel- 
 lous effect. As a hostile description of Peel’s 
 character it had enough of seeming truth 
 about it to tell most effectively 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 contro- 
 versy 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 
 Canning. 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 great- 
 est qualities of Sir Robert Peel. But at the 
 moment of his attacking Peel and crying up 
 Canning he was only concerned to 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 “ organized hypocrisy,” 
 was spoken during the debates of the session 
 of 1845, before the explanation of the Minis- 
 ter on the subject of Free Trade. All these 
 brilliant things men now began to recall. 
 Looking back from this distance 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 recog- 
 nize it. From the night of the opening of 
 the session of 1846 it was never questioned. 
 Thenceforward he was really the mouthpiece 
 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 supicion that the daring rhet- 
 orician 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 com- 
 plete a capacity for the control of a party as 
 any politician who for generations had ap- 
 peared in the House of Commons. 
 
 One immediate effect of the turn thus given 
 by Disraeli’s timely intervention in the de- 
 bate was the formation of a Protection party 
 in the House of Commons. The leadership 
 of this perilous adventure was entrusted to 
 Lord George Bentinck, a sporting nobleman 
 of energetic character, great tenacity of pur- 
 pose 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 
 himself 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. Once 
 he had accepted the position, he was un- 
 wearying in his attention to its duties ; and 
 indeed up to the moment of his sudden and 
 premature death he never allowed himself 
 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 friend- 
 ship, 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 
 energy was often and of necessity little bet- 
 ter 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 ap- 
 preciating the servicable qualities of other 
 men, may, always provided that he has high 
 birth and great social influence, make a very 
 successful leader, even though he be wanting 
 altogether in the higher attributes of elo- 
 quence and statesmanship. It may be doubted 
 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, and 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 honestly continue to believe in the old 
 doctrines, no matter what political economy 
 and hard facts might say to the contrary. 
 
 The secession was, therefore, in full course 
 of organization. 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 crowd- 
 ed. 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 Pro- 
 tection party were filled, and of the curiously 
 bad taste of which gentlemen 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 indignation 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 ushered in by a startling 
 occurrence.” What was this portentous 
 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 impor- 
 tance and a debate of profound interest, and 
 the husband of the Queen was anxious to be 
 a listeuer. The Prince Consort did not 
 understand that because he had married the 
 Queen he was therefore to be precluded from 
 hearing a discussion in the House of Com- 
 mons. 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 Con- 
 sort fancied that he too might listen to a de- 
 bate without unhinging the British Constitu- 
 tion. Lord George Bentinck and the Pro- 
 tectionists were aflame with indignation. 
 They saw in the quiet presence of the intelli- 
 gent gentleman who came to listen to the dis- 
 cussion an attempt to overawe the Commons 
 and compel them to bend to the will of the 
 Crown. It is not easy to read without a feel- 
 ing of shame the absurd and unseemly com- 
 ments which were made upon this harmless 
 incident. The Queen herself has given an 
 explanation 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 shiling 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 ne- 
 cessity 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 in- 
 tended to protect the growers of free sugars 
 against the competition of those who culti- 
 vated 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 removed. In order to 
 compensate the agricultural interests 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 manner in 
 which the principle of the readjustment of 
 local burdens is worked in the hope of con- 
 ciliating the agricultural interests. These re- 
 adjustments 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 landowners and farm- 
 ers had really any just ground of complaint 
 in 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 explanation, so far as 
 history is concerned, consisted in the fact 
 that Peel proclaimed himself an absolute con- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 55 
 
 vert to the Free Trade principle, and that the 
 introduction of the principle into all depart- 
 ments of our commercial legislation was, ac- 
 cording to his intention, to be a mere ques- 
 tion of time and convenience. The struggle 
 was to be between 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 prin- 
 ciple without the interval of three years, and 
 the devices and shifts which were to he put 
 in operation during 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 amendment failed to secure the approval 
 of the majority. The Protectionist amend- 
 ment 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 Protec- 
 tionists 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 re- 
 sult was to encourage the Protectionists in 
 their plans of opposition. The opportunities 
 of obstruction were many. The majority 
 just mentioned was merely in favor of going 
 into committee of the whole house to con- 
 sider the existing Customs and Corn Acts ; 
 hut 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 read- 
 ers to follow us into the details of these long- 
 discussions. They were not important ; they 
 were often not dignified. They more fre- 
 quently concerned themselves about the con- 
 duct and personal consistency of the minister 
 than about the merits of his policy. The ar- 
 guments in favor of Protection, which doubt- 
 less seemed effective to the country gentle- 
 men then, seem like the prattle of children 
 now. There were, indeed, some exciting 
 passages in the debates. For these the 
 House was mainly indebted to the rhetoric of 
 Mr. Disraeli. That indefatigable and some- 
 what reckless champion occupied himself 
 with incessant attacks on the Prime Minister. 
 He described Peel as “ a trader on other peo- 
 ple’s intelligence ; a political burglar of other 
 men’s ideas.” “ The occupants of the 
 Treasury bench,” he said, were “political 
 pedlars, 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. Dis- 
 raeli 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 sec- 
 retary of Sir Robert Peel, was shot by an as- 
 sassiif. There could be no doubt that the 
 victim had been mistaken for the Prime Min- 
 ister 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. Cohden hap- 
 pening to say that, he would hold the Prime 
 Minister responsible for the condition of the 
 country, Peel, in an 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 unreason- 
 ing 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 re- 
 gretted it ; and it ought to have been con- 
 
 I signed to forgetfulness ; but Mr. Disraeli, in 
 repelling a charge made against him of in- 
 dulging 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 
 unj ustifiable attempt to rekindle an old quar- 
 rel had, however, no other effect than to 
 draw from Sir Robert Peel a renewed ex- 
 pression of apology for the charge he had 
 made against Mr. Cobden, “ in the course of 
 a heated debate, when I put an erroneous 
 construction on some expressions used by the 
 lion, 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 allusion 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 15, by a major- 
 ity 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 
 25, the day when the bill was read for a third 
 time in the House of Lords, was a memorable 
 day in the Parliamentary annals of England. 
 It saw 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 Gov- 
 ernment 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 Ireland, to introduce a Coercion 
 Bill. Lord George Bentinck at first gave the 
 measure his support ; but during the Whit- 
 suntide recess he changed his views. He 
 now declared that he had only supported the 
 bill on the assurance 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 confi- 
 dence in the Government, and could not trust 
 them with extraordinary powers. In truth 
 the bill was placing the Government in a se- 
 rious difficulty. All the Irish followers of 
 O’Connell would of course oppose the coer- 
 cion measure. The Whigs when out of office 
 have usually made it a rule to oppose coer- 
 cion bills if they do not come accompanied 
 with some promises of legislative reform and 
 concession. The English Radical members, 
 Mr. Cobden and his followers, were almost 
 sure to oppose it. Under these circumstan- 
 ces, it seemed probable enough that if the 
 Protectionists joined with the other oppo- 
 nents of the Coercion Bill, the Government 
 must be defeated. The temptation was too 
 great. As Mr. Disraeli himself candidly says 
 of his party, “ Vengeance had succeeded in 
 most breasts to the more sanguine sentiment. 
 The field was lost, but at any rate there 
 should be retribution for those who had betray- 
 ed it. ” The question with many of the indig- 
 nant Protectionists was, as Mr. Disraeli him- 
 self 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 Thursday, June 25, and the Minis- 
 try were left in a minority of 73. Two hun- 
 
 [(UTRSIT 
 
 | dred and nineteen votes only were given for 
 the second reading of the bill, and 292 against 
 it. Some eighty of the Protectionists fol- 
 lowed 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 Protectionists passed in defile before the 
 minister to the hostile lobby.” “Pallas te 
 hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat,” cries the hero 
 of the H5neid, as he plunges his sword into 
 the heart of his rival. “ Protection kills 
 you ; not your Coercion Bill,” the irrecon- 
 cilable Protectionists might have said as they 
 trooped past the minister. Chance had put 
 within their grasp the means of vengeance, 
 and they had seized it, and made successful 
 use of it. The Peel Ministry had fallen in 
 its very hour of triumph. 
 
 Three days after Sir Robert Peel announc- 
 ed his resignation of office. His speech 
 “ was considered one of glorification and 
 pique,” says Mr. Disraeli. It does not so 
 impress most readers. It appears to have 
 been full of dignity, and of emotion, not 
 usual with Peel, but not surely under the cir- 
 cumstances incompatible with dignity. It 
 contained that often-quoted tribute to the 
 services of a former opponent, in which Peel 
 declared that “ the name which ought to be 
 and which will be associated with the suc- 
 cess of these measures is the name of the 
 man who, acting, I believe, from pure and 
 disinterested motives, has advocated 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-de- 
 served 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 elo- 
 quent 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 expres- 
 sions 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 un- 
 taxed food, the sweeter because it is no long- 
 er 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, andO’Con- 
 nell 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 in some by-way 
 as he passes home to enjoy his triumph. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FAMINE, COMMERCIAL TROUBLE, AND FOR- 
 EIGN INTRIGUE. 
 
 Lord John Russell succeeded Sir Rob- 
 ert Peel as First Lord of the Treasury ; Lord 
 Palmerston became Foreign Secretary ; Sir 
 Charles Wood was Chancellor of the Excheq- 
 uer ; Lord Grey took charge of the Colonies ; 
 and Sir George Grey was Home Secretary. 
 Mr. Macaulay accepted the office of Paymas- 
 ter-General, with a seat in the Cabinet, a dis- 
 tinction not usually given to the occupant of 
 that office. The Ministry was not particu- 
 larly strong in administrative talent. The 
 Premier and the Foreign Secretary were the 
 only members of the Cabinet who could be 
 called statesmen of the first class ; and even 
 Lord Palmerston had not as yet won more 
 than a somewhat doubtful 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 some- 
 
56 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 how in missing the career of a leading states- 
 man. He had great talents and some origi- 
 nality ; he was independent and bold. But 
 his independence degenerated too often into 
 impracticability and even eccentricity ; and 
 he was, in fact, a politician with whom or- 
 dinary men could not work. Sir Charles 
 Wood, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 had solid sense and excellent administrative 
 capacity, but he was about as bad a public 
 speaker as ever addressed the House of Com- 
 mons. His budget speeches were often made 
 so unintelligible by defective manner and de- 
 livery 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 ad- 
 ministration 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 cer- 
 tain time to forget the events of last year ; in 
 the meanwhile, it is evident that he does not 
 wish that any other Government 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 according to circumstan- 
 ces ; but as yet he is not considered as the 
 head of any party. George Bentinck has en- 
 tirely broken down as a candidate for minis- 
 terial 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 competitors. ’ ’ Palmerston's humor- 
 ous estimate of the state of affairs was ac- 
 curate. 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 Min- 
 istry to deal with. The failure of the potato 
 was an overwhelming disaster for a people 
 almost wholly agricultural 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 anj' 
 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 uni- 
 versally in three of the four provinces, was 
 an arrangement by which a man obtained in 
 return for his labor a right to cultivate a lit- 
 tle 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 there 
 fore compelled to screw every possible penny 
 of rent out of their tenants-at-will. Thej r 
 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 exactness. 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 indebtedness 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 ten- 
 ant 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 vi- 
 cious system established all round, demoraliz- 
 ing alike to the landlord and the tenant. 
 
 Underlying all the relations of landlord and 
 tenant in 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 un- 
 der which Ireland was placed was one en- 
 tirely foreign to the traditions, the ideas, one 
 might say the very genius of the Irish people. 
 Whether the system introduced by conquest 
 and confiscation was better than the old one 
 or not does not in the slightest degree aflect 
 the working of this fact on the relations be- 
 tween the landlord and the tenant in Ireland. 
 No one will be able to understand the whole 
 meaning and bearing of the long land strug- 
 gle 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-evi- 
 dent. 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 civiliza- 
 tion 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 Rus- 
 sell’s Government pottered with the difficulty 
 rather than encountered it. In their excuse 
 it has to be said of course that the calamity 
 they Imd to meet was unprecedented and that 
 it must have tried the resources of the most 
 energetic and foreseeing statesmanship. 
 Still the fact remains that the measures of 
 the Government were at first utterly inade- 
 quate to the occasion, and that afterwards 
 some of them were even calculated to make 
 bad worse. Not a county in Ireland whol- 
 ly 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 dysen- 
 tery 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 paro- 
 chial 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 ju- 
 ries added to their verdicts of death by starv- 
 ation some charge of wilful murder against 
 Lord John Russell 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 with- 
 out 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 agrarian disturb- 
 ances ? Who can now wonder, that being 
 so, that the Government introduced excep- 
 tional measures of repression ? But it cer- 
 tainly had a grim and a disheartening effect 
 on the spirits of the Irish people when it 
 seemed as if the Government could only pot- 
 ter and palter with famine, but could be ear- 
 nest and energetic when devising coercion 
 bills. 
 
 Whatever might be said of the Govern- 
 ment, no one could doubt the good will of 
 the English people. In every great English 
 community from the metropolis downwards 
 subscription lists were opened and the most 
 liberal contributions poured in. In Liver- 
 pool, for example, a great number of the 
 merchants of the place put down a thousand 
 pounds each. The Quakers of England sent 
 over a delegation of their number to the 
 specially famine-stricken districts of Ireland 
 to administer relief. Many other sects and 
 bodies followed the example. National Re- 
 lief Associations 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 joy bells of 
 the town were kept ringing all day in honor 
 of the arrival of one of these grain-laden ves- 
 sels — a mournfully significant form of rejoic- 
 ing 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 Dar- 
 danelles, and he sent her in pity the alms of 
 a beggar.” It was true that from Turkey as 
 from most other countries had come some 
 contribution towards the relief of Irish dis- 
 tress. 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 “ inaugu- 
 ration,” as it would be called by a certain 
 class of writers now, of a public soup kitch- 
 en, devised and managed by the fashionable 
 French cook M. Soyer, for the purpose of 
 showing the Irish people what remarkably 
 sustaining potage might be made out of the 
 thinnest and cheapest materials. This expo- 
 sition would have been well enough in a 
 quiet and practical way, but performed as a 
 grand national ceremony of regeneration, un- 
 der the patronage of the Viceroy, and with 
 accompaniment of brass-bands and pageantry, 
 it had a remarkably foolish and even offen- 
 sive 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 broadening. It was far too great to be 
 effectually encountered by subscriptions how- 
 ever generous ; and the Government, mean- 
 ing to do the best they could, were practically 
 at their wits’ end. The starving peasants 
 streamed into the nearest considerable ^own 
 hoping for relief there, and found too often 
 that there the very sources of charity were 
 dried up. Many, very many, thus disap- 
 pointed, 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 Ireland of tradition 
 was dissolved in the operation of that famine. 
 The old system gave way utterly. The land- 
 lordism 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 Estates Court ; 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 57 
 
 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 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 per- 
 haps 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 be- 
 sieged 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 favo- 
 rite. Especially was it adopted by young 
 girls and women. After a time the puzzled 
 magistrates resolved to put an end to this de- 
 vice by refusing to inflict the punishment 
 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 sys- 
 tem, 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 re- 
 ceptacle for the pauperism which could not 
 find a refuge in the overcrowded asylums 
 which the poor law system had already pro- 
 vided. The lion and the lizard, says the 
 Persian poet, keep tne halls where Jamshyd 
 gloried and drank deep. The pauper de- 
 voured his scanty dole of Indian meal por- 
 ridge in the hall where his landlord had glo- 
 ried and drunk deep. 
 
 When the famine was over and its results 
 came to be estimated, it was found that Ire- 
 land had lost about two millions of her pop- 
 ulation. 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 afterwards expressed it, towards 
 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 constitutent of the pop- 
 ulation. 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 heedlessly, to vote for any pol- 
 itician 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 Irishman, 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. 
 
 I The Government, as it may be supposed, 
 had hard work to do all this time. They 
 had the best intentions towards Ireland, 
 and were always indeed announcing that they 
 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 Naviga- 
 tion Laws, so far as these related to the im- 
 portation of grain. A tremendous commer- 
 cial panic, causing the fall of great houses, 
 especially in the com 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 treat- 
 ed considerately and loyally by Sir Robert 
 Peel ; but a new opposition had formed it- 
 self under the nominal guidance of Lord 
 George Beutinck, 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 con- 
 struction and completion of Irish railways. 
 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 Ire- 
 land ; 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 ex- 
 pense of the British tax-payer. The measure 
 was rejected. Lord George Bentinck was 
 able to worry the Ministry somewhat effect- 
 ively when they introduced a measure to re- 
 duce 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 them- 
 selves for the loss they might suffer in the 
 transition from slavery to free labor. Lord 
 George Bentinck therefore proposed an 
 amendment to the resolutions of the Govern- 
 ment, declaring it unjust and impolitic to re- 
 duce the duty on foreign slave-grown sugar, 
 as tending to check the advance of production 
 by British free labor, and to give a great ad- 
 ditional stimulus to slave labor. Many sin- 
 cere 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 Com- 
 mons. But it was announced that if the res- 
 olutions of the Government were defeated 
 ministers would resign, and there was no one 
 to take their place. Peel could not return to 
 power ; and the time was far distant yet 
 when Mr. Disraeli could form a Ministry. 
 The opposition crumbled away therefore, 
 and the Government measures were carried. 
 Lord George Bentinck made himself for a 
 while 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 in his more con- 
 genial pursuits as one of the principal men 
 
 I on the turf. The alliance between him and 
 I Mr. Disraeli is curious. The two men, one 
 would think, could have had absolutely noth- 
 ing in common. Mr. Disraeli knew nothing 
 about horses and racing. Lord George Ben- 
 tinck could not possihly have understood, 
 not to say sympathized with, many of the 
 leading ideas of his lieutenant. Yet Ben- 
 tinck 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 convic- 
 tions as to Disraeli ; Bentinck’s premature 
 death leaves Disraeli’s estimate of him an un- 
 tested speculation. 
 
 There were troubles abroad as well as at 
 home for the Government. Almost immedi- 
 ately 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 seri- 
 ously the good understanding between Eng- 
 land 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 fruits 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 min- 
 ister and his master was to bring the throne 
 of Spain in some way under the direct influ- 
 ence 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 jeal- 
 ousy. hostility, and war. Louis Philippe 
 and his minister were untaught by the les- 
 sons 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 profound or more often exposed than 
 that which inspires ambitious princes and en- 
 terprising 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 politi- 
 cal forces which bring nations into the field 
 of battle are not to be charmed into submis- 
 sion by the rubbing 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 alone he 
 could hold in his hands the destinies of na- 
 tions. 
 
 In an evil hour for themselves and their 
 fame, Louis Philippe and his minister be- 
 lieved that they could obtain a virtual owner- 
 ship 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 ven- 
 ture 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 Spain 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 Aus- 
 tria 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 
 
58 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 in no wise with the domestic affairs of Spain, 
 and had allowed Louis Philippe to spin what 
 ignoble plots he 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 al 
 lowed himself to be persuaded into believing, 
 that the security of France would be threat- 
 ened 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 in place of the 
 .obnoxious Prussian. If the French Emperor 
 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 b?en 
 •quietly sent back to his own country. 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 last man in the world to admit that 
 ■anything could go on in Europe or else- 
 where in which England was not entitled to 
 express an opinion, and to make her influ- 
 ence 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 secur- 
 ing 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, 
 Hon Francisco d’Assis, Duke of Cadiz ; and 
 lier sister to the Duke de Montpensier, Louis 
 Philippe’s son. There was reason to expect 
 •that the Queen, if married to Don Francisco, 
 would have no children, and that the wife of 
 Louis Philippe’s son, or some of her chil- 
 dren, would come to the throne of Spain. 
 
 On the moral guilt of a plot li^e this it 
 would be superfluous to dwell. Nothing in 
 the history of the perversions of human con- 
 science and judgment can be more extraor- 
 dinary than the fact that a man like M. 
 Guizot should have been its inspiring influ- 
 ence. 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 dis- 
 tinct 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 afterwards, 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 pre- 
 cisely,” he says, “ in what consists the devia- 
 tion 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 question 
 was one of succession. The objection of 
 
 I England aud 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 grandchildren. For 
 this reason the King had given his word to 
 Queen Victoria that he would not hear of his 
 son’s marriage with Isabella’s sister until the 
 difficulty about the succession had been re- 
 moved 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 the 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 for- 
 ward to palliate what he called his “ devia- 
 tion” from the promise to the Queen was not 
 of a nature calculated to allay the ill-feeling 
 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 Government, 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 declare # d, that there was an intention 
 on the part or England to put forward, as a 
 candidate for the hand of Queen Isabella, 
 Prince Leopold of Coburg, a cousin of Prince 
 Albert. There was so little justification for 
 any such suspicion that it hardly seems pos- 
 sible 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 candida- 
 ture 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 Span- 
 ish people, and that so long as that Queen 
 and that people were satisfied, and the inter- 
 ests of England were in no wise 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 man- 
 ner proved that they took no share in the 
 plans of Queen Christina, and had no sym- 
 pathy with them. But while the whole 
 negotiations were going on the defeat of Sir 
 Robert Peel’s Ministry brought Lord Pal- 
 merston into the Foreign Office in place of 
 Lord Aberdeen. The very name of Palmer- 
 ston 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 in bitter 
 memory the unexpected success which Pal- 
 merston had won from him in regard to 
 Turkey and Egypt. At that time, and espe- 
 cially in the court of Louis Philippe, foreign 
 politics were looked upon as the field in 
 which the ministers of great Powers con- 
 tended 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 prop- 
 erly belonging to the rules of the game. 
 Louis Philippe probably believed in good 
 faith that the return of Lord Palmerston to 
 
 I the Foreign Office must mean the renewed 
 activity of treacherous plans against him- 
 self. This at least is the only assump- 
 tion 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 dispatch 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, pro- 
 fessed himself relieved from all previous en- 
 gagements, and at once hurried on the mar- 
 riage between Queen Isabella and her cousin, 
 and that of his own son with Isabella’s sis- 
 ter. On October 10th, 1846, the double mar- 
 riage took place at Madrid ; and on February 
 5th following, M. Guizot told the French 
 Chambers that the Spanish marriages consti- 
 tuted the first great thing France had ac- 
 complished 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 Montpensier’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 mar- 
 riages and the feelings 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 interrupted. 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 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 involv- 
 ed in such ignoble policy. The whole trans- 
 action is but another and a most striking con- 
 demnation of that odious creed, for a long 
 time tolerated in statecraft, 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 considered in- 
 famous. It is impossible to suppose that M. 
 Guizot at least could have so acted in private 
 life. M. Guizot was a Protestant of a pecu- 
 liarly austere type, who professed to make 
 religious duty his guide in all things, and 
 who doubtless did make it so in all his deal- 
 ings 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 governed by the odious delusion that the 
 interests of a state can be advanced and 
 ought to be pursued by means which an ordi- 
 nary man of decent character would scorn to 
 employ 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 pos- 
 sessions 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 w r hich it was carried out, the 
 ruthless disregard for the inclinations, the 
 affections, 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. 
 
 END OF VOLTJNtE I. 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 fif 
 
 59 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CHARTISM AND YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 The year 1848 was an era in the modern 
 history of Europe. It was the year of un- 
 fulfilled revolutions. 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 predic- 
 tions, delivered and recorded before the rev- 
 olution was vet near, which show that it 
 ought not to have taken the world by sur- 
 prise. 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 mag- 
 nanimity in their systems of government. 
 This is indeed one of their weaknesses. It 
 lays them open to the allurements of any bril- 
 liant 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 pecu- 
 liarly 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 tran- 
 quillity. But the French people are always 
 impatient of anything like meanness in their 
 rulers, and the government of Louis Philippe 
 was especially mean. Its foreign policy was 
 treacherous ; its diplomatists were commis- 
 sioned 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 persuaded 
 his people to be content with defects at home 
 for the sake of prestige abroad. From the 
 hour when it became 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 catastro- 
 phe ; the alternate weakness and obstinacy 
 of the Government forced it on ; and the 
 King’s own lack of decision made it impossi- 
 ble 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 cap- 
 itals of the Continent. Revolution is like an 
 epidemic ; it finds out the weak places in sys- 
 tems. The two European 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 ap- 
 preciate it. They declared for their King, 
 and the shock of the revolution passed harm- 
 lessly away. In England and Ireland the 
 effect of the events in France was instantly 
 made manifest. 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 Charter and “no surrender.’’ A na- 
 tional convention of Chartists began its sit- 
 tings in London to arrange for a monster de- 
 monstration on April 10. Some of the speak- 
 ers 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 min- 
 isters of the different denominations, the au- 
 thors of books, the painters of pictures, the 
 bench, the bar, the army, the navy, the med- 
 ical profession — what all these or any of 
 them might think with regard to any propos- 
 ed constitutional changes was accounted a 
 matter in no wise 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 pe- 
 tition 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 depu- 
 tation who were to be conducted by a vast 
 procession up to the doors of the House. 
 The procession was to be formed on Ken- 
 nington Common, the space then unenclosed 
 which is now Kennington Park, on the south 
 side of London. 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 de- 
 monstrate the impossibility of refusing a de- 
 mand 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 unreasona- 
 ble 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. Ar- 
 dent 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 lib- 
 erty. Therefore, however differently and 
 harmlessly events may have turned out, we 
 may be certain that there went to the rendez- 
 vous at Kennington Common, on that April 
 10, 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 pro- 
 posed 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 re- 
 joiced 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? 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 ex- 
 actly after the pattern of the French Revolu- 
 tion ? 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 Gov- 
 ernment falls, exactly as in Paris. When 
 poor Dick Swiveller in Dickens’s story is re- 
 covering 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 un- 
 derstood of all who read Eastern romance, 
 and that next must appear at the princess’s 
 summons the row of slaves with jars of jew- 
 els 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 evi- 
 dence 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 fol- 
 lowed a popular demonstration in Paris to 
 follow a popular demonstration in London. 
 To begin with, the Chartists did not repre- 
 sent any such power in London as the Lib- 
 eral 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 na- 
 tion, and were not likely to yield for a single 
 moment to the hesitation which sealed the 
 fate of the French monarchy. 
 
 The Chartists fell to disputing among 
 themselves very much as O’Connell’s Re- 
 pealers had done. Some were for disobeying 
 the orders of the authorities and having the 
 procession, and provoking rather than avoid- 
 ing a collision. At a meeting of the Chartist 
 Convention held the night before the demon- 
 stration, “the eve of Liberty,” as some of 
 the orators eloquently termed it, a consider- 
 able number were for going armed to Ken- 
 nington Common. Feargus O’Connor had, 
 however, sense enough still left to throw the 
 weight of his influence against such an insane 
 proceeding, and to insist that the demonstra- 
 tion 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 in the Chartist as it had been in the 
 Repeal agitation. 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 Chartism 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 themselves 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 together 
 
CO 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 on Kennington Common at all, various re- 
 mote quarters of London were filled with 
 horrifying reports of encounters between the 
 insurgents and the police or the military, in 
 whicii the Chartists invariably had the better, 
 and as a result of which they were marching 
 in full force to the particular district where 
 the momentary panic prevailed. London is 
 worse oil 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 rap- 
 idly succeeding editions of the cheap papers 
 weie 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 pre- 
 cautions against an outbreak of armed Chart- 
 ism. The Duke of Wellington took charge 
 of all the arrangements for guarding the pub- 
 lic buildings and defending the metropolis 
 generally. He acted with extreme caution, 
 and told several influential 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, j 
 The coolness and preseuce of mind of the ! 
 stem old soldier are well illustrated 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 al- 
 most invariable answer was “ done already,” j 
 or “ done two hours ago,” or something of 
 the kind. A vast number of Londoners en- 
 rolled themselves 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 vol- 
 unteered to bear arms in the preservation of 
 order. Not a long time was to pass away be- 
 fore the most lawless outrage on the order and 
 life of a peaceful city was to be perpetrated j 
 by the special command of the man who was 
 so ready to lend the saving aid of his consta- 
 ble’s staff to protect English society against 1 
 some poor hundreds or thousands of English 
 workingmen. 
 
 The crisis, however, luckily proved not to 
 stand in need of such saviours of society. 
 The Chartist demonstration was a wretched 
 failure. The separation of the Chartists who 
 wanted force from those who wanted orderly 
 proceedings 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 tem- 
 perance demonstration had often drawn to- 
 gether on the same spot. Some twenty or 
 twenty-five thousand persons were on Ken- 
 nington 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’Connor 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 i 
 the more extreme and consequently disap- 
 pointed Chartists to express in very vehe- 
 ment language their not unreasonable con- 
 viction 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 an- 
 achronisms or absurdities. W e have already 
 shown that many of them were just and rea- 
 sonable, and that all came within the fair 
 scope of political argument. The anachron- 
 ism was in the idea that the display of phys- 
 ical 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 Commons, 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 examina- 
 tion of the document, and to report to the 
 House of Commons. The committee 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 millions. 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 wom- 
 en. It did not need much investigation to 
 prove that a large proportion of the signa- 
 tures 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 carried 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 al- 
 lies 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 per- 
 sons describing themselves as Pugnose, Flat- 
 nose, Wooden-legs, and by other such epi- 
 thets acknowledging curious personal de- 
 fects. We need not describe the laughter 
 and scorn which these revelations produced. 
 There really was not anything very marvel- 
 lous in the discovery. The petition was got 
 up in great haste and with almost utter care- 
 lessness. Its sheets used to be sent any- 
 where, and left lying about anywhere, on a 
 chance of obtaining signatures. The temp- 
 tation 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 Chart- 
 ists. As a matter of fact, almost all large 
 popular petitions are found to have some 
 such buffooneries mixed up with their seri- 
 ous business. The Committee on Petitions 
 have on several occasions had reason to draw 
 attention to the obviously fictitious nature of 
 signatures appended to such documents. 
 The petitions in favor of O’Connell’s move- 
 ment 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 gro- 
 tesque 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 discov- 
 ery that threw both into ridicule was over- 
 whelming. It was made certain that the 
 number of genuine signatures was ridicu- 
 lously below the estimate formed by the 
 Chartist leaders ; and the agitation after ter- 
 rifying respectability for a long time sudden- 
 ly showed itself as a thing only to be laugh- 
 ed at. The laughter was stentorian and 
 overwhelming. The very fact that the pe- 
 tition 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 provided 
 so ready a means of decrying their truthful- 
 ness 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 cal- 
 culation, and of the frame of mind which de- 
 sires 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 pe- 
 tition on the English public mind was de- 
 cisive. From that day Chartism never pre- 
 sented itself to the ordinary middle-class 
 Englishman as anything but an object of rid- 
 icule. The terror of the agitation was gone. 
 There were efforts made again and again dur- 
 ing 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 English cities endeavored to light up 
 the fire of their agitation again by the help of 
 some brands caught up from the pile of dis- 
 affection which Mitchel and Meagher were 
 setting ablaze in Dublin. A monster gather- 
 ing of Chartists was announced for Whit-Mon- 
 day, June 12, and again the metropolis was 
 thrown into a momentary alarm, very differ- 
 ent 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 insurrectionary 
 mob. Nothing came of this last gasp of 
 Chartism. TheTimesoi the following day re- 
 marked that there was absolutely nothing to 
 record, “ nothing except the blankest expec- 
 tation, 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 
 the hope of some miraculous crisis in their 
 affairs.” It is impossible not to pity those 
 who were thus deceived ; not to feel some re- 
 gret for the earnestness, the hope, the igno- 
 rant passionate energy which were thrown 
 away. 
 
 Nor can we feel only surprise and con- 
 tempt for those who imagined that the Char- 
 ter 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 Par- 
 liament 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 Parliament 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-receiv- 
 ing classes and the poor generally has been 
 passed since the time when the Chartists be- 
 gan 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 leg- 
 islators. He mignt 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 Par- 
 liament could make anything of the task of 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 61 
 
 government. I ask you what have you and 
 your lilce made of it already? Things are 
 well enough no doubt for you and your class, 
 a pitiful minority ; but they could not be any 
 worse for us, and we might make them better 
 so far as the great majority are 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 ma- 
 jority 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 move- 
 ments 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 insurrectionary 
 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 
 1 he disappointed fanatics of the movement. 
 Some of them were fiery and ignorant enough 
 for anything ; and throughout this memora- 
 ble 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 ar- 
 rests and a few not heavy sentences. Among 
 those tried in London on charges of sedition 
 merely, was Mr. Ernest Jones, who was sen- 
 tenced to two years’ imprisonment. Mr. Jones 
 has been already spoken of as a man of posi- 
 tion and of high culture ; a 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 admiration 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 workingmen 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 agitation, to hold public contro- 
 versy with the eccentric and clever Profes- 
 sor 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 
 immaturely into politics, and although a 
 whole generation had passed away since his 
 debut , he was but a young man comparatively 
 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 tend- 
 ency of the time to settle all questions by 
 reason, argument, and majorities ; of grow- 
 ing education ; of a strengthening sense of 
 duty among all the more influential 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 
 excesses ; it became an anachronism ; no one 
 wanted it any more. All that was sound in 
 
 its claims asserted itself and was in time con- 
 ceded. But its active or aggressive influence 
 ceased with 1848. The history of the reign 
 of Queen Victoria has not any further to con- 
 cern itself about 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 Eng- 
 land. 
 
 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 Y oung Ireland party had been estab- 
 lished as a rival association to the Repealers 
 who still believed in the policy of O’Connell. 
 It was inevitable that O’Connell’s agitation 
 should beget some such movement. The 
 great agitator had brought the temperament 
 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 w'hen the leader found that he had 
 been going too far and gave the word for 
 peace and retreat. The influence of O’Con- 
 nell 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 physical de- 
 cay. 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 somewhat 
 cunning and trickish agitation which O’Con- 
 nell 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 
 agitation and to chafe against the influence 
 of the priests. The famine had created an 
 immense amount of unreasonable but cer- 
 tainly 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 party had received a new sup- 
 port 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 related to many aris- 
 tocratic families. His brother was Lord 
 Inchiquin ; the title of the marquisate of 
 Thomond was in the family. He was un- 
 doubtedly descended from the famous Irish 
 hero and king Brian Boru, and was almost 
 inordinately proud of his claims of long de- 
 scent. He had the highest personal charac- 
 ter 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-mean- 
 ing but weak and vain man, whose head at 
 last became almost turned by the homage 
 which his followers and the Irish people gen- 
 erally paid to him. He was in short a sort of 
 Lafayette manque ; under the happiest aus- 
 pices he could never have been more than 
 a successful Lafayette. But his adhesion to 
 the cause of Young Ireland gave the move- 
 ment a decided impulse. His rank, his 
 legendary descent, his undoubted chivalry of 
 character and purity of purpose lent a ro- 
 mantic interest to his appearance as the rec- 
 ognized 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 leadership of 
 the movement. Thomas Francis Meagher, 
 the most brilliant orator of the party, a man 
 who under other conditions might have risen 
 to great distinction in public life, was then 
 only about two or three and twenty. Mitchel 
 
 and Duffy, 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 of these, who afterwards 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 Chatterton 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 reason- 
 able. The Young Ireland agitation was at 
 first a sort of college debating society move- 
 ment, and it never became really national. 
 It was composed for the most part of young 
 journalists, young scholars, amateur littera- 
 teurs , poets en herbe, orators moulded on the 
 finest patterns of Athens and the French Rev- 
 olution, and aspiring youths of theCherubino 
 time of life, who were ambitious of distinc- 
 tion as heroes in the eyes of young ladies. 
 Among the recognized 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 ele- 
 ments 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 re- 
 cruited 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 condemn- 
 ing 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 
 that he expected to get a body of men about 
 the age of Meagher to make a formal declara- 
 tion against the weapon of Leonidas and Mil- 
 tiades and all the other heroes dear to classic- 
 ally-instructed youth. Meagher declaimed 
 against the idea in a burst of poetic rhetoric 
 which made his followers believe that a new 
 Grattan of bolder style was coming up to re- 
 call the manhood of Ireland that had been 
 banished by the agitation of O’Connell and 
 the priests. “ I am not one of those tame 
 moralists,” the young orator exclaimed, 
 “ who say that liberty is not worth one drop 
 of blood. . . . Against this miserable maxim 
 the noblest virtue that has saved and sancti- 
 fied 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 cathe- 
 dral 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 tri- 
 umph 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 enjoy- 
 ed as much as they could get of this spark- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 62 
 
 ling 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 Nation was 
 pouring out weekly in prose and poetry, 
 could possibly have understood all its histor- 
 ical allusions. No harm, indeed, would 
 have come of this graceful and poetic move- 
 ment were it not forevents 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 re- 
 bellious 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 rebellious joy. Lamar- 
 tine 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 
 Yergniaud of the Irish revolution. Smith 
 O’Brien was called upon to become its Lafay- 
 ette. 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 
 Englishmen greatly respect his judgment and 
 prudence, but which much disconcerted the 
 hopes of the Young Irelanders. 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 Re- 
 public with the struggles of oppressed na- 
 tionalities, and to have fancied that the Re- 
 public 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 Parlia- 
 ment. In the meantime 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 for cau- 
 tion and delay. The party of action ac- 
 knowledged the leadership of John Mitchel. 
 The organ of this section was the newspaper 
 started by Mitchel in opposition to the Na- 
 tion, which had grown too slow for him. 
 The new journal was called the United Irish- 
 man . 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 com- 
 pel the Government to take steps for the pre- 
 vention of rebellion 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 un- 
 der different circumstances might have played 
 a formidable part. He came from the north- 
 ern 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 Toue 
 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 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 Govern- 
 ment to prosecute him. He poured out the 
 most fiery sedition, and used every incentive 
 that words could supply to rouse a hot- 
 headed people to arms or an impatient Gov- 
 ernment 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 genuine and sanguinary 
 insurrection, which would have read well in 
 the papers and redeemed the Irish National- 
 ists 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 dangerous 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 fero- 
 cious kind. The use of vitriol was recom- 
 mended 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 vit- 
 riolic articles were not written by him ; nor did 
 lie know of the famous recommendation about 
 the throwing of vitriol until it appeared in 
 print. He was, however, justly and properly 
 as well as technically responsible for all that 
 appeared in a paper started with such a pur- 
 pose as that of the United Irishman, and it 
 is not even certain that he would have disap- 
 proved of the vitriol-throwing recommenda- 
 tion 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 mentioned 
 here as a matter more or less interesting, and 
 not at all as any excuse for Mitchel’s general 
 style of newspaper war-making. He was a 
 fanatic, clever and fearless ; he would neither 
 have asked quarter nor given it ; and un- 
 doubtedly if Ireland had had many men of 
 his desperate resolve she would have been 
 plunged into a bloody, an obstinate, and a dis- 
 astrous contest against the strength of the 
 British Government. 
 
 In the meantime that Government had to 
 do something. The Lord Lieutenant could 
 not go on for ever allowing a newspaper to 
 scream out appeals to rebellion, and to pub- 
 lish every week minute descriptions of the 
 easiest and quickest way of killing off Eng- 
 lish 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 speaking and writing as 
 before, and when the cases came to be tried 
 by a jury the Government failed to obtain a 
 conviction. 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 transporta- 
 tion. This measure was passed rapidly 
 through all its stages. It enabled the Gov- 
 
 ernment to suppress newspapers like the 
 United Irishman, and to keep in prison with- 
 out bail, 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 person. 
 He repeated his incitements to insurrection, 
 was arrested and thrown into prison. The 
 climax of the excitement 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 Irelanders 
 were thrown into the shade, and the eyes of 
 the whole country were turned upon Mitch- 
 el’s cell. Had there been another Mitchel 
 out of doors, as fearless and reckless as the 
 Mitchel in the prison, a sanguinary outbreak 
 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 utterance to such a 
 sentiment. Mitcliel’s boldness and resolve 
 had placed them at a sad disadvantage. He 
 had that superiority of influence over them 
 that downright determination always gives a 
 man over colleagues who do not quite know 
 what they would have. One thing however 
 they could do ; and that they did. They dis- 
 couraged 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 proceedings partook rather of the na- 
 ture of burlesque. The Young Ireland lead- 
 ers became more demonstrative than ever. 
 The Nation newspaper now went in openly for 
 rebellion, but rebellion at some unnamed time, 
 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 announced 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 Government how- 
 ever showed a contempt for the rules of fair 
 play, suspended the Habeas Corpus Act in 
 Ireland, and issued warrants for the arrest of 
 Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and other Confed- 
 erate leaders. The Young Irelanders received 
 the news of this unchivalric proceeding with 
 an outburst of anger and surprise which was 
 evidenly genuine. They had clearly made 
 up their minds that they weie to go on play- 
 ing 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 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 63 
 
 or Vergniaud would have done under 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 prob- 
 able that they thought of evading arrest for 
 a while, and trying meantime if the country 
 was ready to follow them into an armed 
 moved. 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 follow- 
 ers of Smith O’Brien came into collision with 
 the police, at a place called Bailingarry 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 cab- 
 bage-garden outside. The police fired a few 
 volleys. The rebels fired, with what wretch- 
 ed 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, Tipperary. 
 He was calmly buying a ticket for Limerick 
 when he was recognized. He made no resist- 
 ance 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 unfortunate gentleman to 
 say that some reports which were rather 
 ignobly set abroad about his having showed 
 a lack of personal courage in the Bailingarry 
 affray were, as all will 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 reck- 
 lessness. 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 afterwards appeared also that any little 
 chance of carrying on any manner of rebel- 
 lion was put a stop to by 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 wan- 
 dering hopelessly and aimlessly through the 
 mountains of Tipperary. The prisoners were 
 brought for trial before a special commission 
 held at Clonmel in Tipperary, in the follow- 
 ing September. Smith O’Brien was the first 
 put on trial, and he was found guilty. He 
 said a few words with grave and dignified 
 composure, simply declaring that he had en- 
 deavored to do his duty to his native country, 
 and that he was prepared to abide the conse- 
 quences. He was sentenced to death after 
 the old form in cases of high treason — to be 
 hanged, beheaded, and quartered. Meagher 
 was afterwards found guilty. Great com- 
 miseration 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 Mea- 
 gher. 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 and 
 pathetic eloquence. He had nothing, he said, 
 to retract or to ask pardon for. ‘ ‘ I am not 
 here to crave with faltering lip the life I have 
 consecrated to the independence of my coun- 
 try. ... 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 justifies 
 it. . . . Even here, where the shadows 
 
 of death surround me, and from which I see 
 my early grave opening for me in no conse- 
 crated 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 coun- 
 try, 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 con- 
 trived to make his escape, followed by Mea- 
 gher. 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 magis- 
 trate to arrest him then and there. But the 
 magistrate was unprepared for his coming, 
 and was quite thrown off his guard. Mitchel 
 was armed, and so was a friend who accom- 
 panied 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 Ihe 
 court, mounted the horses, and rode away. 
 It was contended by Mitchel and by his com- 
 panion, Mr. P. J. Smyth (afterwards a distin- 
 guished 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 captors in ex- 
 actly 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 es- 
 cape, 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 honorable a manner 
 Smith O’Brien received a pardon on condi- 
 tion of his not returning to these islands ; but 
 this condition was withdrawn after a time, 
 and he came back to Ireland. He died 
 quietly in Wales in 1864. Mitchel settled for 
 a while in Richmond, Virginia, and became 
 an ardent advocate of slavery and an impas- 
 sioned 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 servi- 
 tude having expired, although he had not 
 
 served it. He was still a hero with a certain 
 class of the people ; he was put up as a candi 
 date for an Irish county, and elected. He 
 was not allowed to enter the House of Com- 
 mons, however ; the election was declared 
 void, and a new writ was issued. He was- 
 elected again, and some turmoil w r as expect- 
 ed, when suddenly Mitchel, who had long- 
 been in sinking health, was withdrawn 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 staunchest en- 
 emies 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 brilliant 
 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 run- 
 ning ; 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 Y oung Irelanders 
 rose to some distinction. Charles Gavan 
 Duffy, the editor of the Nation , who was 
 twice put on his trial after the failure of the 
 insurrection, but whom the jury would not 
 on either occasion 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 arid 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 connection. His untimely death by 
 the hand of an assassin was lamented in Eng- 
 land as well as in the colony he had served so 
 well. Some of the Young Irelanders re- 
 mained in the United States and won repute ; 
 others returned to England, and of these not 
 a few entered the House of Commons and 
 were respected there, the follies of their 
 youth quite forgotten by their colleagues, 
 even if not disowned by themselves. A re- 
 markable illustration of the spirit of fairness 
 that generally pervades the House of Com- 
 mons 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 op- 
 ponent of British rule in Ireland. He was 
 respected because of the purity of his char- 
 acter and the transparent sincerity of his 
 purpose. Martin had been devoted to Mitchel 
 in his lifetime, and he died a few days after 
 Mitchel’s death. 
 
 The Y oung 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 illustra- 
 tion 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 agita- 
 tion. The national emotion cau be wrought 
 up to a certain temperature, and if at that 
 boiling point nothing is done, the heat sud- 
 denly goes out, and no blowing of Cyclopean 
 bellows can rekindle it. The Repeal agita- 
 tion was brought up to this point when the 
 meeting at Clontarf was convened ; the dis- 
 persal of the meeting was the end of the 
 
64 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 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 observ- 
 ant Irishmen 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 Ireland, constituted what may be 
 called our tribute to the power of the insur- 
 rectionary 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, un- 
 der the eyes of bewildered royalty. The 
 whole of Italy, from the Alps to the Straits 
 of Messina, and from Venice to Genoa, was 
 thrown into convulsion ; “ Our Italy” once 
 again “shone o’er with civil swords.” 
 There was insurrection in Berlin and in Vien- 
 na. The Emperor had to fly from the latter 
 city as the Pope had fled from Rome. In 
 Paris there came a Red Republican 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 literally to run with 
 blood. It was a grim foreshadowing of the 
 Commune of 1871. Another remarkable 
 foreshadowing 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 ; Spain was in convul- 
 sion ; even Switzerland was not safe. Our 
 contribution to this general commotion was 
 to be found in the demonstration on Ken- 
 nington Common, and the abortive attempt 
 at a rising near Ballingarry. There could 
 not possibly be a truer tribute to the solid 
 strength of our system. Not for one mo- 
 ment was the political constitution of Eng- 
 land seriously endangered. Not for one hour 
 did the safety of our great communities re- 
 quire a call upon the soldiers instead of upon 
 the police. Not one charge of cavalry was 
 needed to put down the fiercest outburst 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 Euro- 
 pean countries which were torn and plough- 
 ed 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 our 
 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 justi- 
 fied any appeal to revolution. There, how- 
 ever, we touch upon the lesson of the time. 
 Our political and constitutional system ren- 
 dered an appeal to force unnecessary and su- 
 perfluous. 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 ; be- 
 cause 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 un- 
 favorable to popular liberty. The results of 
 the year that followed were decidedly reac- 
 tionary. The time had not come in 1848 or 
 ^ 1849 for Liberal principles to assert them- 
 
 selves. Their “ great deed,” to quote some 
 of the words of our English poetess, Eliza- 
 beth Barrett Browning, “ was too great.” 
 W e in this country were saved alike from the 
 revolution and the reaction by the universal 
 recognition of the fact, among all who gave 
 themselves time to think, that public opin- 
 ion, being the ultimate ruling power, was the 
 only authority to which an appeal was need- 
 ed, 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 DON PACIFICO. 
 
 The name of Don Pacifico was as familiar 
 to the world some quarter of a century ago 
 as that of M. Jecker was about the time of 
 the French invasion of Mexico. Don Pacifi- 
 co became famous for a season as the man 
 whose quarrel had nearly brought on a Euro- 
 pean war, caused a temporary disturbance of 
 good relations between England and France, 
 split up political parties in England in a man- 
 ner hardly ever known before, and established 
 the reputation of Lord Palmerston as one of 
 the greatest Parliamentary debaters of liis 
 time. Among the memorable speeches deliv- 
 ered in the English House of Commons, that 
 of Lord Palmerston on the Don Pacifico de- 
 bate must always take a place. It was not 
 because the subject of the debate was a great 
 one, or because there were any grand prin- 
 ciples involved. The question originally in 
 dispute was unutterably trivial and paltry ; 
 there was no particular principle involved ; 
 it was altogether what is called in commercial 
 litigation a question of account ; a controversy 
 about the amount and time of payment of a 
 doubtful claim. Nor was the speech deliv- 
 ered by Lord Palmerston one of the grand 
 historical displays of oratory that even when 
 the sound of them is lost send their echoes to 
 “ roll from soul to soul.” It was not like 
 one of Burke’s great speeches, or one of 
 Chatham’s. It was not one calculated to 
 provoke keen literary controversy, like Sher- 
 idan’s celebrated “Begum speech,” which 
 all contemporaries held to be unrivalled, but 
 which a later generation assumes to have 
 been rather flashy rhetoric. There are no 
 passages of splendid eloquence in Palmer- 
 ston’s Pacifico speech. Its great merit was 
 its wonderful power as a contribution to Par- 
 liamentary argument ; as a masterly appeal 
 to the feelings, the prejudices, and the pas- 
 sions of the House of Commons ; as a com- 
 plete Parliamentary victory over a combina- 
 tion of the mosi influential, eloquent, and 
 heterogeneous opponents. 
 
 Don Pacifico w r as a Jew, a Portuguese by 
 extraction, but a native of Gibraltar, and a 
 British subject. His house in Athens was 
 attacked and plundered in the open day on 
 April 4, 1847, by an Athenian mob, who 
 were headed, it was affirmed, by two sons of 
 the Greek Minister of W ar. The attack came 
 about in this way. It had been customary 
 in Greek towns to celebrate Easter by burn- 
 ing an effigy of Judas Iscariot. In 1847 the 
 police of Athens were ordered to prevent this 
 performance, and the mob, disappointed of 
 their favorite amusement, ascribed the new 
 orders to the influence of the Jews. Don 
 Pacifico ’s house happened to stand near the 
 spot where the Judas was annually burnt ; 
 Don Pacifico was known to be a Jew ; and 
 the anger of the mob was wreaked upon him 
 accordingly. There could be no doubt that 
 the attack was lawless, and that the Greek 
 authorities took no trouble to protect Pacifi- 
 co against it. Don Pacifico made a claim 
 against the Greek Government for compensa- 
 tion. He estimated his losses, direct and in- 
 direct. at nearly thirty-two thousand pounds 
 sterling. Another claim was made at the 
 same time by another British subject, a man 
 of a very different stamp from Don Pacifico. 
 This was Mr. Finlay, the historian of Greece. 
 
 Mr. Finlay had gone out to Greece in the 
 enthusiastic days of Byron and Cochrane and 
 Church and Hastings ; and he settled in 
 Athens when the independence of Greece 
 had been established. Some of his land had 
 been taken for the purpose of rounding off 
 the new palace gardens of King Otho ; and 
 Mr. Finlay had declined to accept the terms 
 offered by (he Greek Government, to which 
 other landowners in the same position as him- 
 self had assented. Some stress was laid by 
 Lord Palmerston's antagonists in the course 
 of the debate on the fact that Mr. Finlay thus 
 stood out apart from other landowners in 
 Athens. Mr. Finlay, however, had a perfect 
 right to stand out fer any price he thought 
 fit. He was in the same position as a Greek 
 resident of London or Manchester whose land 
 is taken for the purposes of a railway or other 
 public improvement, and who declines to ac- 
 cept the amount of compensation tendered 
 for it in the first instance. The peculiarity 
 of the case was that Mr. Finlay was not left, 
 as the supposed Greek gentleman assuredly 
 would be, to make good his claims for himself 
 in the courts of law. Neither Don Pacifico 
 nor Mr. Finlay had appealed to the law courts 
 at all. But about this time our Foreign Office 
 had had several little complaints against the 
 Greek authorities. We had taken so consider- 
 able a part in setting up Greece that our min- 
 isters not unnaturally thought Greece ought 
 to show her gratitude by attending a little 
 more closely to our advice. On the other 
 hand Lord Palmerston had made up his mind 
 that there was constant intrigue going on 
 against our interests among the foreign diplo- 
 matists in Athens. He "was convinced that 
 France was perpetually plotting against us 
 there, and that Russia was watching an op- 
 portunity to supersede once for all our influ- 
 ence by completely establishing hers. Don Pa- 
 cifico’s sheets, counterpanes, and gold watch 
 had the advantage of being made the subject 
 of a trial of strength between England on the 
 one side, and France and Russia on the other. 
 
 There had been other complaints as well. 
 Ionian subjects of her Majesty had sent in 
 remonstrances against lawless or high-handed 
 proceedings ; and a midshipman of her 
 Majesty’s ship Fantome, landing from a boat 
 at night on the shore of Patras, had been 
 arrested by mistake. None of these questions 
 would seem at first sight to wear a very 
 grave international character. All they needed 
 for settlement, it might be thought, was a 
 little open discussion and the exercise of 
 some good sense and moderation on both 
 sides. It cannot be doubted that the Greek 
 authorities were lax and careless, and that 
 acts had been done which they could not 
 justify. It is only fair to say that they do 
 not appear to have tried to justify some of 
 them ; but they were of opinion that certain 
 of the claims were absurdly exaggerated, and 
 in this belief they proved to be well sus- 
 tained. The Greeks were very poor, and also 
 very dilatory ; and they gave Lord Palmer- 
 ston a reasonable excuse for a little impa- 
 tience. Unluckily Lord Palmerston became 
 possessed with the idea that the French min- 
 ister in Greece was secretly setting the Greek 
 Government on to resist our claims. For 
 the Foreign Office had made the claims ours. 
 They had lumped up the outrages on Ionian 
 seamen, the mistaken arrest of the midship- 
 man (who had been released with apologies 
 the moment his nationality and position were 
 discovered), Mr. Finlay’s land, and Don 
 Pacifico’s household furniture in one claim, 
 converted it into a national demand, and in- 
 sisted that Greece must pay up within a giv- 
 en time or take the consequences. Greece 
 hesitated, and accordingly the British fleet 
 was ordered to the Piraeus. It made its ap- 
 pearance very promptly there, and seized all 
 the Greek vessels belonging to the Govern- 
 ment and to private merchants that were found 
 w itliin the waters. 
 
 The Greek Government appealed to France 
 and Russia as Powers joined with us in the 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 65 
 
 treaty to protect the independence of Greece. 
 France and Russia were both disposed to 
 make bitter complaint of not having been 
 consulted in the first instance by the British 
 Government ; nor was their feeling greatly 
 softened by Lord Palmerston’s peremptory 
 reply that it was all a question between Eng- 
 land and Greece, with which no other Power 
 had any business to interfere. The Russian 
 Government wrote an angry and indeed an 
 offensive remonstrance. The Russian 
 Foreign Minister spoke of “ the very painful 
 impression produced upon the mind of the 
 Emperor by the unexpected acts of violence 
 which the British authorities had just di- 
 rected against Greece and asked if Great 
 Britain, ‘ ‘ abusing the advantages which are 
 afforded to her by her immense maritime 
 superiority,” intended to “ disengage herself 
 from all obligation, ” and to “authorize all 
 Great Powers on every fitting opportunity to 
 recognize towards the weak no other rule but 
 their own will, no other right but their own 
 physical strength.” The French Govern- 
 ment, perhaps under the pressure of difficult- 
 ies and uncertain affairs at home, in their un- 
 settled state showed a better temper, and in- 
 tervened only in the interests of peace and 
 good understanding. Something like a friend- 
 ly arbitration was accepted from France, 
 and the French Government sent a special 
 representative to Athens to try to come to 
 terms with our minister there. The difficult- 
 ies appeared likely to be adjusted. All the 
 claims except those of Don Pacifico were 
 matter of easy settlement, and at first the 
 French commissioner seemed even willing to 
 accept Don Pacifico’s stupendous valuation 
 of his household goods. But Pacifico had 
 introduced other demands of a more shadowy 
 character. He said that he had certain claims 
 on the Portuguese Government, and that the 
 papers on which these claims rested for sup- 
 port were destroyed in the sacking of his 
 house, and therefore he felt entitled to ask 
 for 2G,(il8£. as compensation on that account 
 also. The French commissioner was a little 
 staggered at this demand, and declined to ac- 
 cede to it without further consideration ; and 
 as our minister, Mr. Wyse, did not believe 
 he had any authority to abate any of the now 
 national demand, the negotiation was for 
 the time broken off. In the meantime, how- 
 ever, negotiations had still been going on be- 
 tween the English and French Governments 
 in London, and these had resulted in a con- 
 vention disposing of all the disputed claims. 
 By the terms of this agreement a sum of 
 eight thousand five hundred pounds was to 
 be paid by the Greek Government to be di- 
 vided among the various claimants ; and 
 Greece was also to pay whatever sum might 
 be found to be fairly due on account of Don 
 Pacifico’s Portuguese claims after these had 
 been investigated by arbitrators. This would 
 seem a very satisfactory and honorable 
 arrangement. But some demon of mischief 
 appeared to have this unlucky affair in charge 
 from the first. The two negotiations going 
 on in London and Athens simultaneously got 
 in each other’s way. Instructions as to what 
 had been agreed to in London were not for- 
 warded to Athens quickly enough by the 
 English Government, and when the French 
 Government sent out to their commissioner 
 the news of the convention he found that Mr. 
 Wyse knew nothing about the matter, and 
 had no authority which, as he conceived, 
 would have warranted him in departing from 
 the course of action he was following out. 
 Mr. Wyse, therefore, proceeded with his 
 measures of coercion, and at length the Greek 
 Government gave way. The convention 
 having, however, been made in the meantime 
 in London, there then arose a question as to 
 whether that convention or the terms extorted 
 at Athens should be the basis of arrangement. 
 Over this trumpery dispute, which a few 
 words of frank good sense and good temper 
 on both sides would have easily settled, a new 
 quarre2 seemed at one time likely to break 
 
 out between England and France. The 
 French Government actually withdrew their 
 ambassador, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, from 
 London ; and there was for a short time a 
 general alarm over Europe. But the ques 
 tion in dispute was really too small and insig- 
 nificant for any two rational governments to 
 make it a cause of serious quarrel ; and after 
 a while our Government gave way, and 
 agreed to an arrangement which was in the 
 main all that France desired. When, after 
 a long lapse of time, the arbitrators came to 
 settle the claims of Don Pacifico, it was found 
 that he was entitled to about one thirtieth of 
 the sum he had originally demanded. He 
 had assessed all his claims on the same liberal 
 and fanciful scale as that which he adopted 
 in estimating the value of his household prop- 
 erty. Don Pacifico, it seems, charged in his 
 bill one hundred and fifty pounds sterling for 
 a bedstead, thirty pounds for the sheets of the 
 bed, twenty-five pounds for two coverlets, 
 and ten pounds for a pillow-case. Cleopatra 
 might have been contented with bed furniture 
 so luxurious as Don Pacifico represented 
 himself to have in his common use. The 
 jewellery of his wife and daughters he esti- 
 mated at two thousand pounds. He gave no 
 vouchers for any of these claims, saying that 
 all his papers had been destroyed by the 
 mob. It seemed too that he had always lived 
 in a humble sort of way, and was never sup- 
 posed by his neighbors to possess such splen- 
 dor of ornament and household goods. 
 
 While the controversy between the English 
 and French Governments was yet unfinished, 
 a Parliamentary controversy between the 
 former Government and the Opposition in 
 the House of Lords was to begin. Lord 
 Stanley proposed a resolution which was 
 practically a vote of censure on the Govern- 
 ment. The resolution in fact expressed the 
 regret of the House to find that “ various 
 claims against the Greek Government, doubt- 
 ful in point of justice, or exaggerated in 
 amount, have been enforced by coercive 
 measures, directed against the commerce and 
 people of Greece, and calculated to endanger 
 the continuance of our friendly relations with 
 foreign Powers.” The resolution was car- 
 ried, after a debate of great spirit and en- 
 ergy, by a majority of thirty-seven. Lord 
 Palmerston was not dismayed. A Ministry 
 is seldom greatly troubled by an adverse vote 
 in the House of Lords. The Foreign Secre- 
 tary, writing about the result of the division 
 the following day, merely said : “ We were 
 beaten last night in the Lords by a larger 
 majority than we had, up to the last moment, 
 expected ; but when we took office we knew 
 that our opponents had a larger pack in the 
 Lords than we had, and that whenever the 
 two packs were to be fully dealt out, their 
 would show a larger number than ours.” 
 Still it was necessary that something should 
 be done in the Commons to counterbalance 
 the stroke of the Lords, and accordingly Mr. 
 Roebuck, acting as an independent member, 
 although on this occasion in harmony with 
 the Government, gave notice of a resolution 
 which boldly affirmed that the principles on 
 which the foreign policy of the Government 
 had been regulated were “ such as were cal- 
 culated to maintain the honor and dignity of 
 this country, and in times of unexampled 
 difficulty to preserve peace between England 
 and the various nations of the world.” On 
 June 24, 1850, a night memorable in Parlia- 
 mentary annals as the opening night of the 
 debate which established Lord Palmerston’s 
 position as a great leader of party, Mr. Roe- 
 buck brought forward his resolution. 
 
 A reader unaccustomed to Parliamentary 
 tactics may fail to observe the peculiar 
 shrewdness of the resolution. It was framed, 
 at least it reads as if it had been framed, to 
 accomplish one purpose, while professing to 
 serve another. It was intended, of course, 
 as a reply to the censure of the House of 
 Lords. It was to proclaim to the world that 
 the Representative Chamber had reversed the | 
 
 decision of the House of Peers, and acquitted 
 the Ministry. But what did Mr. Roebuck’s 
 resolution actually do ? Did it affirm that the 
 Government had acted rightly with regard to 
 Greece ? The dealings with Greece were ex., 
 pressly censured by the House of Lords ; but 
 Mr. Roebuck proposed to affirm that the gen- 
 eral policy of the Ministry deserved the 
 approval of the House of Commons. It was 
 well known that there were many men of 
 Liberal opinions in the House of Commons 
 who did not approve of the course pursued 
 with regard to Greece, but who would yet 
 have been very sorry to give a vote which 
 might contribute to the overthrow of a Lib- 
 eral Government. The resolution was so 
 framed as to offer to all such an opportunity 
 of supporting the Government, and yet sat- 
 isfying their consciences. For it might be 
 thus put to them : “You think the Govern- 
 ment were too harsh with Greece ? Perhaps 
 you are right. But this resolution does not 
 say that they were quite free of blame In 
 their way of dealing with Greece. It only 
 says that their policy on the whole has been 
 sound and successful ; and of course you 
 must admit that. They may have made a 
 little mistake with regard to Greece ; but ad- 
 mitting that, do you not still think that on 
 the whole they have done very well, and much 
 better than any Tory Ministry would be likely 
 to do ? This is all that Roebuck’s resolution 
 asks you to affirm ; and you really cannot 
 vote against it. ’ ’ 
 
 A large number of Liberals were no doubt 
 influenced by this view of the situation, and 
 by the framing of the resolution. But there 
 were some who could not be led into any ap- 
 proval of the "particular transaction which 
 the resolution, if not intended to cover, 
 would certainly be made to cover. There 
 were others, too, who, even on the broader 
 field, opened purposely up by the resolution, 
 honestly believed that Lord Palmerston’s 
 general policy was an incessant violation of 
 the principle of non-intervention, and was 
 therefore injurious to the character and the 
 safety of the country. In a prolonged and 
 powerful debate some of the foremost men 
 on both sides of the House opposed and de- 
 nounced the policy of the Government, for 
 which, as every one knew, Lord Palmerston 
 was almost exclusively responsible. “ The 
 allied troops who led the attack,” says Mr. 
 Evelyn Ashley, in his life of Lord Palmer- 
 ston, “ were English Protectionists and 
 foreign Absolutists.” It is strange that 
 an able and usually fair-minded man should 
 be led into such an absurdity. Lord Palmer- 
 ston himself called it “ a shot fired by a foreign 
 conspiracy aided and abetted by a domestic 
 intrigue.” But Lord Palmerston was the 
 minister personally assailed, and might be 
 excused, perhaps, for believing at the 
 moment that warring monarchs were giving 
 the fatal wound, and that the attack on him 
 was the work of the combined treachery of 
 Europe. An historian looking back upon the 
 events after an interval of a quarter of a 
 century ought to be able to take a calmer 
 view of things. Among the “ English Pro- 
 tectionists” who took a prominent part in 
 condemning the policy of Lord Palmerston 
 were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, Sir Robert 
 Peel, Sir William Molesworth, and Mr. Sid- 
 ney Herbert. In the House of Lords, Lord 
 Brougham, Lord Canning, and Lord Aber- 
 deen had supported the resolution of Lord 
 Stanley. The truth is that Lord Palmer- 
 ston’s proceedings were fairly open to differ- 
 ence of judgment even on the part of the 
 most devoted Liberals and the most indepen- 
 dent thinkers. It did not need that a man 
 should be a Protectionist or an Absolutist to 
 explain his entire disapproval of such a 
 course of conduct as that which had been 
 followed out with regard to Greece. It seems 
 to us now, quietly looking back at the whole 
 story, hardly possible that a man with, for 
 example, the temperament and the general 
 views of Mr. Gladstone could have approved 
 
66 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 of such a policy ; obviously impossible that 
 a man like Mr. Cobden could have approved 
 of it. These men simply followed their 
 judgment and their conscience. 
 
 The principal interest of the debate now 
 rests in the manner of Lord Palmerston’s de- 
 fence. The speech was indeed a masterpiece 
 of Parliamentary argument and address. It 
 was in part a complete exposition and defence 
 of the whole course of the foreign policy 
 which the noble speaker had directed. But 
 although the resolution treated only of the 
 general policy of the Government, Lord Pal- 
 merston did not fail to make a special de- 
 fence of his action towards Greece. He based 
 his vindication of this particular chapter of 
 his policy on the ground which, of all others, 
 
 f ave him most advantage in addressing a 
 'arliamentary assembly. He contended that 
 in all he had done he had been actuated by 
 the resolve that the poorest claimant who 
 bore the name of an English citizen should 
 be protected by the whole strength of Eng- 
 land against the oppression of a foreign gov- 
 ernment. His speech was an appeal to all 
 the elementary emotions of manhood and cit- 
 izenship and good-fellowship. To vote 
 against him seemed to be to declare that Eng- 
 land was unable or unwilling to protect her 
 children. A man appeared to be guilty of 
 an unpatriotic and ignoble act who censured 
 the minister whose only error, if error it were, 
 was a too proud and generous resolve to 
 make the name of England and the rights of 
 Englishmen respected throughout the world. 
 A good deal of ridicule had been heaped not 
 unnaturally on Don Pacifico, his claims, his 
 career, and his costly bed furniture. Lord 
 Palmerston turned that very ridicule to good 
 account for his own cause. He repelled with 
 a warmth of seemingly generous indignation 
 the suggestion that because a man was lowly, 
 pitiful, even ridiculous, even of doubtful con- 
 duct in his earlier career, therefore he was 
 one with whom a foreign government was 
 not bound to observe any principles of fair 
 dealing at all. He protested against having 
 serious things treated jocosely ; as if any man 
 in Parliament had ever treated serious things 
 more often in a jocose spirit. He protested 
 against having the House kept “ in a roar of 
 laughter at the poverty of one sufferer, or at 
 the miserable habitation of another ; at the 
 nationality of one man, or the religion of an- 
 other ; as if because a man was poor he 
 might be bastinadoed and tortured with im- 
 punity, as if a man who was born in Scotland 
 might be robbed without redress, or because 
 a man is of the Jewish persuasion he is a fair 
 mark for any outrage.” Lord Palmerston 
 had also a great advantage given to him by the 
 argument of some of his opponents, that 
 whatever the laws of a foreign country, a 
 stranger has only to abide by them, and that 
 a government claiming redress for any wrong 
 done to one of its subjects is completely an- 
 swered by the statement that he has suffered 
 only as inhabitants of the country themselves 
 have suffered. The argument against Lord 
 Palmerston was pushed entirely too far in 
 this instance, and it gave him one of his 
 finest opportunities for reply. It is true as a 
 general rule in the intercourse of nations, 
 that a stranger who goes voluntarily into a 
 country is expected to abide by its laws, and 
 that his government will not protect him 
 from their ordinary operation in every case 
 where it may seem to press hardly or even 
 unfairly against him. But in this under- 
 standing is always involved a distinct as- 
 sumption that the laws of the State are to be 
 such as civilization would properly recognize, 
 supposing that the State in question profess- 
 es to be a civilized State. It is also distinct- 
 ly assumed that the State must be able and 
 willing to enforce its own laws where they 
 are fairly invoked on behalf of a foreigner. 
 If, for instance, a foreigner has a just claim 
 against some continental government, and 
 that government will not recognize the claim, 
 or recognizing it will not satisfy it, and the 
 
 government of the injured man intervenes 
 and asks that his claim shall be met — it 
 would never be accounted a sufficient answer 
 to say that many of the inhabitants of the 
 country had been treated just in the same 
 way, and had got no redress. If there were 
 a law in Turkey, or any other slave-owning 
 State, that a man who could not pay his debts 
 was liable to have his wife and daughter sold 
 into slavery, it is certain that no government 
 like that of England would hear of the appli- 
 cation of such a law to the family of a poor 
 English trader settled in Constantinople. 
 There is no clear rule easy to be laid down ; 
 perhaps there can be no clear rule on the 
 subject at all. But it is evident that the gov- 
 ernments of all civilized countries do exercise 
 a certain protectorate over their subjects in 
 foreign countries, and do insist in extreme 
 cases that the laws of the country shall nor 
 be applied or denied to them in a mannet 
 which a native resident might think himself 
 compelled to endure without protest. It is 
 not even so in the case of manifestly harsh 
 and barbarous laws alone, or of the denial of 
 justice in a harsh and barbarous way. The 
 principle prevails even in regard to laws 
 which are in themselves unexceptionable and 
 necessary. No government, for example, 
 will allow one of its subjects living in a for- 
 ign country to be brought under the law for 
 the levying of the conscription there, and 
 compelled to serve in the army of the foreign 
 State. 
 
 All this only shows that the opponents of 
 Lord Palmerston made a mistake when they 
 endeavored to obtain any general assent to 
 the principle that a minister does wrong who 
 asks for his fellow-subjects at the hands of a 
 foreign government any better treatment than 
 that which the government in question ad- 
 ministers, and without revolt, to its own peo- 
 ple. Lord Palmerston was not the man to 
 lose so splendid an opportunity. He really 
 made it appear as if the question between 
 him and his opponents was that of the pro- 
 tection of Englishmen abroad ; as if he were 
 anxious to look after their lives and safety, 
 while his opponents were urging the odious 
 principle that when once an Englishman put 
 his foot on a foreign shore his own govern- 
 ment renounced all intent to concern them- 
 selves with any fate that might befall him. 
 Here was a new turn given to the debate, a 
 new opportunity afforded to those who, 
 while they did not approve exactly of what 
 had been done with Greece, were neverthe- 
 less anxious to support the general principles 
 of Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy. The 
 speech was a marvellous appeal to what are 
 called “ English interests.” In a peroration 
 of thrilling power Lord Palmerston asked for 
 the verdict of the House to decide “ whether, 
 as the Roman in days of old held himself 
 free from indignity when he could say ‘ Civis 
 Romanus sum, ’ so also a British subject, in 
 whatever land he may be, shall feel confident 
 that the watchful eye and the strong arm of 
 England will protect him against injustice 
 and wrong.” 
 
 When Lord Palmerston closed his speech 
 the overwhelming plaudits of the House fore- 
 told the victory he had won. It was indeed 
 a masterpiece of telling defence. The speech 
 occupied some five hours in delivery. It was 
 spoken, as Mr. Gladstone afterwards said, 
 from the dusk of one day to the dawn of the 
 next. It was spoken without the help of a 
 single note. Lord Palmerston always wisely 
 thought that in order to have full command 
 of such an audience a man should, if possi- 
 ble, never use notes. He was quite con- 
 scious of his own lack of the higher gifts of 
 imagination and emotion that make the great 
 orator ; but he knew also what a splendid 
 weapon of attack and defence was his fluen- 
 cy and readiness, and he was not willing to 
 weaken the effect of its spontaneity by the 
 interposition of a single note. All this great 
 speech, therefore, full as it w 7 as of minute 
 details, names, dates, figures, references of 
 
 all kinds, was delivered with the same facil- 
 ity, the same lack of effort, the same absence 
 of any adventitious aids to memory which 
 characterized Palmerston’s ordinary style 
 when he answered a simple question. Nothing 
 could be more complete than Palmerston’s suc- 
 cess. “ Civis Romanus” settled the matter. 
 Who was in the House of Commons so rude 
 that would not be a Roman ? Who was there 
 so lacking in patriotic spirit that would not 
 have his countrymen as good as any Roman 
 citizen of them all ? It was to little purpose 
 that Mr. Gladstone, in a speech of singular 
 argumentative power, pointed out that ‘‘a 
 Roman citizen was the member of a privileg- 
 ed caste, of a victorious and conquering na- 
 tion, of a nation that held all others bound 
 down by the strong arm of power — which 
 had one law for him and another for the rest 
 of the world, which asserted in his favor 
 principles which it denied to all others.” It 
 was in vain that Mr. Gladstone asked 
 whether Lord Palmerston thought that was 
 the position which it would become a civil- 
 ized and Christian nation like England to 
 claim for her citizens. The glory of being a 
 “ Civis Romanus” was far too strong for any 
 mere argument drawn from fact and com- 
 mon sense to combat against it. The phrase 
 had carried the day. When Mr. Cockburn, 
 in supporting Lord Palmerston’s policy, 
 quoted from classical authority to show that 
 the Romans had always avenged any wrongs 
 done to their citizens, and cited the words 
 “ Quot cives Romani injuria affecti sunt, na- 
 vicularii retenti, mercatores spoliati esse dic- 
 erentur,” the House cheered more tumultu- 
 ously than ever. In vain was the calm, 
 grave, studiously moderate remonstrance of 
 Sir Robert Peel, who, while generously de- 
 claring that Palmerston’s speech “ made us 
 all proud of the man who delivered it,” yet 
 recorded his firm protest against the style of 
 policy which Palmerston’s eloquence had en- 
 deavored to glorify. The victory was all 
 with Palmerston. He had, in the words of 
 Shakespeare’s Rosalind, wrestled well and 
 overthrown more than his enemies. 
 
 After a debate of four nights, a majority 
 of forty-six was given for the resolution. 
 The Ministry came out not only absolved but 
 triumphant. The odd thing about the whole 
 proceeding is that the ministers in general 
 heartily disapproved of the sort of policy 
 which Palmerston put so energetically into 
 action — at least they disapproved, if not his 
 principles, yet certainly his way of enforcing 
 them. Before this debate came on, Lord 
 John Russell had made up his mind that it 
 would be impossible for him to remain in 
 office with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Sec- 
 retary. None the less, however, did Lord 
 John Russell defend the policy of the For- 
 eign Office in a speech which Palmerston him- 
 self described as “ admirable and first-rate.” 
 The ministers felt bound to stand by the ac- 
 tions which they had not repudiated at the 
 time when they were done. They could not 
 allow Lord Palmerston to be separated from 
 them in political responsibility when they 
 had not separated themselves from moral re- 
 sponsibility for his proceedings in time. 
 Therefore they had to defend in Parliament 
 what they did not pretend to approve in pri- 
 vate. The theory of a Cabinet always unit- 
 ed when attacked rendered doubtless such a 
 course of proceeding necessary in Parlia- 
 mentary tactics. It would, perhaps, be hard 
 to make it seem quite satisfactory to the sim- 
 ple and unsophisticated mind. No part of 
 our duty calls on us to attempt such a task. 
 It was a famous vict®ry — we must only settle 
 the question as old Caspar disposed of the 
 doubts about the propriety of the praise 
 given to the Duke of Marlborough and ‘ ‘ our 
 good Prince Eugene. ” “ It is not telling a 
 
 lie,” says some one in Thackeray, “ it is only 
 voting with your party.” But Thackeray 
 had never been in the House of Commons.” 
 
 Of many fine speeches made during this 
 brilliant debate we must notice one in partic- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 67 
 
 ular. It was that of Mr. Cockburn, then 
 member for Southampton — a speech to which 
 allusion has already been made. Never in 
 our time has a reputation been more sudden- 
 ly, completely, and deservedly made than Mr. 
 Cockburn won by his brilliant display of 
 ingenious argument and stirring words. The 
 manner of the speaker lent additional effect 
 to his clever and captivating eloquence. He 
 had a clear, sweet, penetrating voice, a flu- 
 ency that seemed so easy as to make listeners 
 sometimes fancy that it ought to cost no 
 effort, and a grace of gesture such as it must 
 be owned the courts of law where he had 
 had his training do not often teach. Mr. 
 Cockburn defended the policy of Palmerston 
 with an effect only inferior to that produced 
 by Palmerston’s own speech, and with a 
 rhetorical grace and finish to which Palmer- 
 ston made no pretension. In writing to Lord 
 Normanby about the debate, Lord Palmer- 
 ston distributed his praise to friends and en- 
 emies with that generous impartiality which 
 was a fine part of his character. Gladstone’s 
 attack on his policy he pronounced “ a first- 
 rate performance.” Peel and Disraeli he 
 praised likewise. But “ as to Cockburn's,” he 
 said, “I do not know that I ever in the 
 course of my life heard a better speech, from 
 anybody, without any exception.” The 
 effect which Cockburn’s speech produced on 
 the House was well described in the House 
 itself by one who rose chiefly for the pur- 
 pose of disputing the principles it advocated. 
 Mr. Cobden observed that when Mr. Cock- 
 burn had concluded his speech, “ one half of 
 the Treasury benches were left empty while 
 honorable members ran after one another, 
 tumbling over each other in their haste to 
 shake hands with the honorable and learned 
 member.” Mr. Cockburn’s career was safe 
 from that hour. It is needless to say that he 
 well upheld in after years the reputation he 
 won in a night. The brilliant and sudden 
 success of the member for Southampton was 
 but the fitting prelude to the abiding distinc- 
 tion won by the Lord Chief Justice of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 One association of profound melancholy 
 clings to that great debate. The speech de- 
 livered by Sir Robert Peel was the last that 
 was destined to come from his lips. The 
 debate closed on the morning of Saturday, 
 June 29. It was nearly four o’clock when 
 the division was taken, and Peel left the 
 house as the sunlight was already beginning 
 to stream into the corridors and lobbies. He 
 went home to rest ; but his sleep could not 
 be long. He had to attend a meeting of the 
 Royal Commissioners of the Great Industrial 
 Exhibition at twelve, and the meeting was 
 important. The site of the building had to 
 be decided upon, and Prince Albert and the 
 Commissioners generally relied greatly on the 
 influence of Sir Robert Peel to sustain them 
 against the clamorous objection out of doors 
 to the choice of a place in Hyde Park. Peel 
 went to the meeting and undertook to assume 
 the leading part in defending the decision of 
 the Commissioners before the House of Com- 
 mons. He returned home for a short time 
 after the meeting, and then set out for a ride 
 in the Park. He called at Buckingham Pal- 
 ace and wrote his name in the Queen’s visit- 
 ing-book. Then as he was riding up Con- 
 stitution Hill he stopped to talk to a young 
 lady, a friend of his, who was also riding. 
 His horse suddenly shied and flung him off ; 
 and Peel clinging to the bridle, the animal fell 
 with its knees on his shoulders. The inju- 
 ries which he received proved beyond all skill 
 of surgery. He lingered, now conscious, now 
 delirious with pain, for two or three days ; 
 and he died about eleven o’clock on the 
 night of July 2. Most of the members of his 
 family and some of his dearest old friends and 
 companions in political arms were beside 
 him when he died. The tears of the Duke 
 of Wellington in one House of Parliament, 
 and the eloquence of Mr. Gladstone in the 
 other, were expressions as fitting and ade- 
 
 quate as might be of the universal feeling of 
 the nation. 
 
 There was no honor which Parliament and 
 the country would not willingly have paid to 
 the memory of Peel. Lord John Russell 
 proposed with the sanction of the Crown 
 that his remains should be buried with pub- 
 lic honors. But Peel had distinctly declared 
 in his will that lie desired his remains to lie 
 beside those of his father and mother in the 
 family vault at Drayton Bassett. All that 
 Parliament and the country could do there- 
 fore was to decree a monument to him in 
 Westminster Abbey. The offer of a peerage 
 was made to Lady Peel, but, as might per- 
 haps have been expected, it was declined. 
 Lady Peel declared that her own desire was 
 to bear no other name than that by which 
 her husband had been known. She also ex- 
 plained that the express wish of her hus- 
 band, recorded in his will, was that no mem- 
 ber of his family should accept any title or 
 other reward on account of any services Peel 
 might have rendered to his country. No de- 
 sire could have been more honorable to the 
 statesman who had formed and expressed it ; 
 none certainly more in keeping with all that 
 was known of the severely unselfish and un- 
 ostentatious character of Sir Robert Peel. 
 Yet there were persons found to misconstrue 
 his meaning and to discover offence to the 
 order of aristocracy in Peel’s determination. 
 A report went about that the great states- 
 man’s objection to the acceptance of a peer- 
 age by one of his family implied a disparage- 
 ment of the order of peers, and was founded 
 on feelings of contempt or hostility to the 
 House of Lords. Mr. Goulburn, who was 
 one of Peel’s executors, easily explained 
 Peel’s meaning, if indeed it needed explana- 
 tion to any reasonable mind. Peel was im- 
 pressed with the conviction that it was better 
 for a man to be the son of his own works ; 
 and he desired that his sons, if they were to 
 bear titles and distinctions given them by the 
 State, should win them by their own services 
 and worth, and not simply put them on as 
 an inheritance from their father. As regards 
 himself, it may well be that he thought the 
 name under which he had made his reputa- 
 tion became him better than any new title. 
 He had not looked for reward of that kind, 
 and might well prefer to mark the fact that 
 he did not specially value such distinctions. 
 Nor would it be any disparagement to the 
 peerage — a thing which in the case of a man 
 with Peel’s opinions is utterly out of the 
 question — to think that much of the dignity 
 of a title depends on its long descent and its 
 historic record, and that a fire-new, specially 
 invented title to a man already great is a dis- 
 figurement, or at least a disguise, rather than 
 an adornment. When titles were abolished 
 during the great French Revolution, Mira- 
 beau complained of being called “ Citizen 
 Riquetti” in the official reports of the As- 
 sembly. ‘‘With your Riquetti,” he said an- 
 grily, ‘‘you have puzzled all Europe for 
 days.” Europe knew Count Mirabeau, but 
 was for some time bewildered by Citizen Ri- 
 quetti. Sir Robert Peel may well have ob- 
 jected to a reversal of the process, and to the 
 bewildering of Europe by disguising a famous 
 citizen in a new peerage. 
 
 “ Peel’s death,” Lord Palmerston wrote to 
 his brother a few days after, putting the re- 
 mark at the close of a long letter about the 
 recent victory of the Government and the 
 congratulations he had personally received, 
 
 “ is a great calamity, and one that seems to 
 have had no adequate cause. He was a very 
 bad and awkward rider, and his horse might 
 have been sat by any better equestrian ; but 
 he seems somehow or other to have been en- 
 tangled in the bridle, and to have pulled the 
 horse to step or kneel upon him. The in- 
 jury to the shoulder was severe but curable ; 
 that which killed him was a broken rib forc- 
 ed with great violence inwards into the 
 lungs.” The cause of Peel’s death would 
 certainly not have been adequate, as Lord 
 
 Palmerston put it, if great men needed pro- 
 digious and portentous events to bring about 
 their end. But the stumble of a horse has 
 been found enough in other instances too. 
 Peel seemed destined for great things yet 
 when he died. He was but in his sixty-third 
 year ; he was some years younger than Lord 
 Palmerson, who may be said without exag- 
 geration to have just achieved his first great 
 success. Many circumstances were pointing 
 to Peel as likely before long to be summoned 
 again to the leadership in the government of 
 the country. It is superfluous to say that his 
 faculties as Parliamentary orator or states- 
 man were not showing any signs of decay. 
 An English public man is not supposed to 
 show signs of decaying faculties at sixty- 
 two. The shying horse and perhaps the bad 
 ridership settled the question of Peel’s career 
 between them. W e have already endeavored 
 to estimate that career and to do justice to 
 Peel’s great qualities. He was not a man of 
 original genius, but he was one of the best 
 administrators of other men’s ideas that ever 
 knew how and when to leave a party and to 
 serve a country. He was never tried by the 
 severe tests which tell whether a man is a 
 statesman of the highest order. He was 
 never tried as Cavour, for example, was 
 tried, by conditions which placed the national 
 existence of his country in jeopardy. He 
 had no such trials to encounter as were forc- 
 ed on Pitt. He was the minister of a coun- 
 try always peaceful, safe, and prosperous. 
 But he was called upon at a trying moment 
 to take a step on which assuredly much of 
 the prosperity of the people and nearly all 
 the hopes of his party along with his own 
 personal reputation were imperilled. He 
 did not want courage to take the step, and 
 he had the judgment to take it at the right 
 time. He bore the reproaches of that which 
 had been liis party with dignity and compos- 
 ure. He was undoubtedly, as Lord Bea- 
 consfield calls him, a great member of Parlia- 
 ment ; but he was surely also a great minis- 
 ter. Perhaps he only needed a profounder 
 trial at the hands of fate to have earned the 
 title of a great man. 
 
 To the same year belongs the close of 
 another remarkable career. On August 26, 
 1850, Louis Philippe, lately King of the 
 French, died at Claremont, the guest of Eng- 
 land. Few men in history had gone through 
 greater reverses. Son of Philippe Egalite, 
 brought up in a sort of blending of luxury 
 and scholastic self-denial, under the contrast- 
 ing influence of his father and of his teacher, 
 Madame de Genlis, a woman full at least of 
 virtuous precept and Rousseau-like profes- 
 sion, he showed great force of character dur- 
 ing the Revolution. He still regarded France 
 as his country, though she no longer gave a 
 throne to any of his family. He had fought 
 like a brave young soldier at Valmy and 
 Jemappes. ‘‘ Egalite. Fils,” says Carlyle, 
 speaking of the young man at Valmy — 
 “ Equality Junior, alight, gallant field-oflicer, 
 distinguished himself by intrepidity — it is the 
 same intrepid individual who now, as Louis 
 Philippe, without the Equality, struggles un- 
 der sad circumstances to be called King of 
 the French for a season.” It is he who, as 
 Carlyle also describes it, saves his sister with 
 such spirit and energy when Madame de 
 Genlis with all her fine precepts would have 
 left her behind to whatever danger. “ Be- 
 hold the young Princely Brother, struggling 
 hitherward, hastily calling ; bearing the 
 Princess in his arms. Hastily lie has clutched 
 the poor young lady up, in her very night- 
 gown, nothing saved of her goods except the 
 watch from the pillow ; with brotherly de- 
 spair he flings her in, among the bandboxes, 
 into Genlis’s chaise, into Genlis’s arms. . . . 
 The brave young Egalite has a most wild 
 morrow to look for ; but now only himself 
 to carry through it.” The brave young 
 Egalite had indeed a wild time before him. 
 A wanderer, an exile, a fugitive, a teacher in 
 Swiss and American schools ; bearing many 
 
68 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 and various names as he turned to many call- 
 ings and saw many lands, always perhaps 
 keeping in mind that Danton had laid his 
 great hand upon his head and declared that 
 the boy must one day be King of France. 
 Then in the whirligig of time the opportunity 
 that long might have seemed impossible 
 came round at last ; and the soldier, exile, 
 college teacher, wanderer among American 
 Indian tribes, resident of Philadelphia, and 
 of Bloomingdale in the New York suburbs, 
 is King of the French. Well had Carlyle 
 gauged his position after some years of reign 
 when he described him “ as struggling under 
 sad circumstances to be called King of the 
 French for a season.” He ought to have 
 been a great man ; he had had a great train- 
 ing. All his promise as a man faded when his 
 seeming success began to shine. He had ap- 
 parently learned nothing of adversity ; he 
 was able to learn nothing of prosperity and 
 greatness. Of all men whom his time had 
 tried, he ought best to have known, one might 
 think, the vanity of human schemes, and the 
 futility of trying to uphold thrones on false 
 principles. He intrigued for power as if his 
 previous experience had taught him that 
 power once obtained was inalienable. He 
 seemed at one time to have no real faith in 
 any thing but chicane. He made the fairest 
 professions and did the meanest, falsest 
 things. He talked to Queen Victoria in lan- 
 guage that might have brought tears into a 
 father’s eyes ; and he was all the time plan- 
 ning the detestable juggle of the Spanish 
 marriages. He did not even seem to retain 
 the courage of his youth. It went apparently 
 with whatever of true, unselfish principle he 
 had when he was yet a young soldier of the 
 Republic. He was like our own James II., 
 who as a youth extorted the praise of the 
 great Turenne for his bravery, and as a king 
 earned the scorn of the world for his pusil- 
 lanimous imbecility. Some people say that 
 there remained a gleam of perverted principle 
 in Louis Philippe which broke out just at the 
 close, and unluckily for him exactly at the 
 wrong time. It is asserted that he could 
 have put down the movement of 1848 in the 
 beginning with one decisive word. Certainly 
 those who began that movement were as little 
 prepared as he for its turning out a revolu- 
 tion. It is generally assumed that he halted 
 and dallied and refused to give the word of 
 command out of sheer weakness of mind and 
 lack of courage. But the assumption ac- 
 cording to some is unjust. Their theory is 
 that Louis Philippe at that moment of crisis 
 was seized with a conscientious scruple, and 
 believed that having been called to power by 
 the choice of the people — called to rule not as 
 King of France, but as King of the French ; 
 as King, that is to say, of the French people 
 so long as they chose to have him — he was 
 not authorized to maintain himself on that 
 throne by force. The feeling would have 
 been just and right if it were certain that the 
 French people, or any majority of the French 
 people, really wished him away, and were 
 prepared to welcome a republic. But it was 
 hardly fair to those who set him on the 
 throne to assume at once that he was bound 
 to come down from it at the bidding of no 
 matter whom, how few or how many, and 
 without in some way trying conclusions to 
 see if it were the voice of France that sum- 
 moned him to descend, or only the outcry of 
 a moment and a crowd. The scruple, if it 
 existed, lost the throne ; in which we are far 
 from saying that France suffered any great 
 loss. We are bound to say that M. Thiers, 
 who ought to have known, does not seem to 
 have believed in the operation of any scruple 
 of the kind, and ascribes the King’s fall sim- 
 ply to blundering and to bad advice. But it 
 would have been curiously illustrative of the 
 odd contradictions of human nature, and es- 
 pecially curious as illustrating that one very 
 odd and mixed nature, if Louis Philippe had 
 really felt such a scruple and yielded to it. 
 He had carried out with full deliberation and 
 
 in spite of all remonstrances schemes which 
 tore asunder human lives, blighted human 
 happiness, played at dice with the destinies 
 of whole nations, and might have involved 
 all Europe in war, and it does not seem that 
 he ever felt one twinge of scruple or acknowl- 
 edged one pang of remorse. His policy had 
 been unutterably mean and selfish and deceit- 
 ful. His very bourgeois virtues, on which he 
 was so much inclined to boast himself, had 
 been a sham ; for he had carried out schemes 
 which defied and flouted the first principles 
 of human virtue, and made as light of the 
 honor of woman as of the integrity of man. 
 It would humor the irony of fate if he had 
 sacrificed his crown to a scruple which a 
 man of really high principle would well have 
 felt justified in banishing from his mind. 
 One is reminded of the daughter of Macklin, 
 the famous actor, who having made her suc- 
 cess on the stage by appearing constantly in 
 pieces which compelled the most liberal dis- 
 play of form and limbs to all the house and 
 all the town, died of a slight injury to her 
 knee, which she allowed to grow mortal rather 
 than permit any doctor to look at the suffer- 
 ing place. In Louis Philippe’s case, too, the 
 scruple would show so oddly that even the 
 sacrifice it entailed could scarcely make us 
 regard it with respect. 
 
 He died in exile among us, the clever, un- 
 wise, grand, mean old man. There was a 
 great deal about him which made him re- 
 spected in private life, and when he had noth- 
 ing to do with state intrigues and the foreign 
 policy of courts. He was much liked in Eng- 
 land, where for many years after his sons 
 lived. But there were Englishmen who did 
 not like him and did not readily forgive him. 
 One of these was Lord Palmerston. Lord 
 Palmerston wrote to his brother a few days 
 after the death of Louis Philippe, expressing 
 his sentiments thereupon with the utmost 
 directness. “ The death of Louis Philippe,” 
 he said, ‘‘delivers me from my most artful 
 and inveterate enemy, whose position gave 
 him in many ways the power to injure me.” 
 Louis Philippe always detested Lord Palmer- 
 ston, and, according to Thiers, was constantly 
 saying witty and spiteful things of the Eng- 
 lish Minister, which good-natured friends as 
 constantly brought to Palmerston’s ears. 
 When Lord Palmerston did not feel exactly 
 as a good Christian ought to have felt, he at 
 least never pretended to any such feeling. 
 The same letter contains immediately after a 
 reference to Sir Robert Peel. It too is char- 
 acteristic. “ Though I am sorry for the 
 death of Peel from personal regard and be- 
 cause it is no doubt a great loss to the coun- 
 try, yet, so far as my own political position 
 is concerned, I do not think that he was ever 
 disposed to do me any good turn.” A little 
 while before, Prince Albert, writing to his 
 friend Baron Stockmar, had spoken of Peel 
 as having somewhat unduly favored Palmer- 
 ston’s foreign policy in the great Pacifico de- 
 bate, or at least not having borne as severety 
 as he might upon it, and for a certainly not 
 selfish reason. “ He” (Peel) “ could not call 
 the policy good, and yet he did not wish to 
 damage the Ministry, and this solely because 
 he considered that a Protectionist Ministry 
 succeeding them would be dangerous to the 
 country, and had quite determined not to 
 take office himself. But would the fact that 
 his health no longer admitted of his doing so 
 have been sufficient as time went on to make 
 his followers and friends bear with patient 
 resignation their own permanent exclusion 
 from office? I doubt it.” The Prince might 
 well doubt it : if Peel had lived it is all but 
 certain that he would have had to take office. 
 It is curious, however, to notice how com- 
 pletely Prince Albert and Lord Palmerston 
 are at odds in their way of estimating Peel’s 
 political attitude before his death. Lord 
 Palmerston’s quiet way of setting Peel down 
 as one who would never be disposed to do 
 him a good turn is characteristic of the man- 
 ner in which the Foreign Secretary went in 
 
 for the game of politics. Palmerston was a 
 man of kindly instincts and genial tempera- 
 ment. He was much loved by his friends. 
 His feelings were always directing him to- 
 wards a certain half - indolent benevolence. 
 But the game of politics was to him like the 
 hunting field. One cannot stop to help a 
 friend out of a ditch or to lament over him if 
 he is down and seriously injured. For the 
 hour the only thing is to keep on one’s way. 
 In the political game Lord Palmerston was 
 playing, enemies were only obstacles, and it 
 would be absurd to pretend to be sorry when 
 they were out of his path. Therefore there 
 is no affectation of generous regret for Louis 
 Philippe. Political rivals, even if private 
 friends, are something like obstacles too. 
 Palmerston is of opinion that Peel would 
 never be disposed to do him a good turn, and 
 therefore indulges in no sentimental regret 
 for his death. He is a loss to the country, 
 no doubt, and personally one is sorry for him, 
 of course, and all that : “ which done, God 
 take King Edward to his mercy, and leave 
 the world for me to bustle in.” The world 
 certainly was more free henceforth for Lord 
 Palmerston’s active and unresting spirit to 
 bustle in. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES BILL. 
 
 The autumn of 1850 and the greater part 
 of 1851 were disturbed by an agitation which 
 seems strangely out of keeping with our 
 present condition of religious liberty and 
 civilization. A struggle with the Papal 
 Court might appear to be a practical impossi- 
 bility for the England of our time. The 
 mind has to go back some centuries to put it- 
 self into what would appear the proper frame- 
 work for such events. Legislation or even 
 agitation against Papal aggression would 
 seem about as superfluous in our modern 
 English days as the use of any of the once- 
 popular charms which were believed to hin- 
 der witches of their will. The story is ex- 
 traordinary, and is in many ways instructive. 
 
 For some time previous to 1850 there had 
 been, as we have seen already, a certain 
 movement among some scholarly, mystical 
 men in England towards the Roman Church. 
 We have already shown how this movement 
 began, and how little it could fairly be said 
 to represent any actual impulse of reaction 
 among the English people. But it unques- 
 tionably made a profound impression in 
 Rome. The court of Rome then saw every- 
 thing through the eyes of ecclesiastics ; and 
 a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic not well ac- 
 quainted with the actual conditions of Eng- 
 lish life might well be excused if, when he 
 found that two or three great Englishmen 
 had gone over to the Church, he fancied that 
 they were but the vanguard of a vast popular 
 or national movement. It is clear that the 
 court of Rome was quite mistaken as to the 
 religious condition of England. The mo t 
 chimerical notions prevailed in the Vatican. 
 To the eyes of Papal enthusiasm the whole 
 English nation was only waiting for some 
 word in season to return to the spiritual juris- 
 diction of Rome. The Pope had not been 
 fortunate in many things. He had been a 
 fugitive from his own city, and had been re- 
 stored only by the force of French arms. He 
 was a thoroughly good, pious, and genial 
 man, not seeing far into the various ways of 
 human thought and national character ; and 
 to his mind there was nothing unreasonable 
 in the idea that heaven might have made up 
 for the domestic disasters of his reign by 
 making him the instrument of the conversion 
 of England. No better proof can be given 
 of the manner in which he and his advisers 
 misunderstood the English people than the 
 step with which his sanguine zeal inspired 
 him. The English people, even while they 
 yet bowed to the spiritual supremacy of the 
 Papacy, were always keenly jealous of any 
 ecclesiastical attempt to control the political 
 action or restrict the national independence 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 69 
 
 of England. The history of the relations be- 
 tween England and Rome for long genera- 
 tions before England had any thought of re- 
 nouncing the faith of Rome might have fur- 
 nished ample proof of this to any one who 
 gave himself the trouble to turn over a few 
 pages of English chronicles. The Pope did 
 not read English, and his advisers did not 
 understand England. Accordingly he took 
 a step, with the view of encouraging and in- 
 viting England to become converted, which 
 was calculated specially and instantly to de- 
 feat its own purpose. Had the great majority 
 of the English people been really drawing 
 towards the verge of a reaction to Rome, 
 such an act as that done by the Pope might 
 have startled them back to their old attitude. 
 The assumption of Papal authority over Eng- 
 land only tilled the English people with a 
 new determination to repudiate and resist 
 every pretension at spiritual authority on the 
 part of the court of Rome. 
 
 The time has so completely passed away, 
 and the supposed pretensions have come to 
 so little, that the most zealous Protestant can 
 afford to discuss the whole question now 
 with absolute impartiality and unruffled calm- 
 ness. Every one can clearly see now that if 
 the Pope was mistaken in the course he took, 
 and if the nation in general was amply justi- 
 fied in resenting even a supposed attempt at 
 foreign interference, the piece of legislation 
 to which the occasion gave birth was not a 
 masterpiece of statesmanship, nor was the 
 manner in which it was carried through al- 
 ways creditable to the good sense of Parlia- 
 ment and the public. The Papal aggression 
 in itself was perhaps a measure to smile at 
 rather than to arouse great national indigna- 
 tion. It consisted in the issue of a Papal 
 bull, “ given at St. Peter’s, Rome, under the 
 seal of the fisherman,” and directing the es- 
 tablishment in England “ of a hierarchy of 
 bishops deriving their titles from their own 
 sees, which we constitute by the present let- 
 ter iu the various apostolic districts.” It is a 
 curious evidence of the little knowledge of 
 England’s condition possessed by the court 
 of Rome then, that although five sixths at 
 least of the Catholics in England were Irish 
 by birth or extraction, the newly-appointed 
 bishops were all, or nearly all, Englishmen 
 unconnected with Ireland. 
 
 An Englishman of the present day would 
 be probably inclined to ask, on hearing the 
 effect of the bull, Is that all ? Being told 
 that that was all, he would probably have 
 gone on to ask, What does it matter ? Who 
 cares whether the Pope gives new titles to his 
 English ecclesiastics or not ? What Protes- 
 tant is even interested in knowing whether a 
 certain Catholic bishop living in England is 
 called Bishop of Mesopotamia, or of Lam- 
 beth ? There always were Catholic bishops 
 in England. There were Catholic arch- 
 bishops. They were free to go and come, to 
 preach and teach as they liked ; to dress as 
 they liked ; for all that nineteen out of every 
 twenty Englishmen cared, they might have 
 been also free to call themselves what they 
 liked. Any Protestant who mixed with 
 Roman Catholics, or knew anything about 
 their usages, knew that they were in the habit 
 of calling their bishops “ my lord,” and their 
 archbishops “your grace.” He knew of 
 course that they had not the slightest legal 
 right to use such high-sounding titles, but 
 this did not trouble him in the least. It was 
 only a ceremonial intended for Catholics, and 
 it did not give him either offence or concern. 
 Why then should he be expected to disturb 
 his mind because the Pope chose to direct 
 that the English Roman Catholics should call 
 a man Bishop of Liverpool or Archbishop of 
 W estminster ? The Pope could not compel 
 him to call them by any such names if he did 
 not think fit ; and unless his attention had 
 been very earnestly drawn to the fact, he 
 never probably would have found out that 
 any new titles had been invented for the 
 Catholic hierarchy in England. 
 
 This was the way in which a great many 
 Englishmen regarded the matter even then. 
 But it must be owned that there was some- 
 thing about the time and manner of the Papal 
 bull calculated to offend the susceptibility of 
 a great and independent nation. The mere 
 fact that a certain movement towards Rome 
 had been painfully visible in the ranks of the 
 English Church itself, was enough to make 
 people sensitive and jealous. The plain sense 
 of many thoroughly impartial and cool-headed 
 Englishmen showed them that the two things 
 were connected in the mind of the Pope, and 
 that he had issued his bull because he thought 
 the time was actually coming when he might 
 begin to take measures for the spiritual an- 
 nexation of England. His pretensions might 
 be of no account in themselves ; but the fact 
 that he made them in the evident belief that 
 they were justified by realities, produced a 
 jarring and painful effect on the mind of Eng- 
 land. The offence lay in the Pope’s evident 
 assumption that the change he was making 
 was the natural result of an actual change in 
 the national feeling of England. The anger 
 was not against the giving of the new titles, 
 but against the assumption of a new right to 
 give titles representing territorial distinctions 
 in this country. The agitation that sprang 
 up was fiercely heated by the pastoral letter 
 of the chief of the new hierarchy. The Pope 
 had divided England into various dioceses, 
 which he placed under the control of an arch- 
 bishop and twelve suffragans ; and the new 
 archbishop was Cardinal Wiseman. Under 
 the title of Archbishop of Westminster and 
 Administrator Apostolic of the Diocese of 
 Southwark, Cardinal Wiseman was now to 
 reside in London. Cardinal Wiseman was 
 already well known in England. He was of 
 English descent on his father’s side and of 
 Irish on his mother’s ; he was a Spaniard by 
 birth and a Roman by education. His fam- 
 ily on both sides was of good position ; his 
 father came of a long line of Essex gentry. 
 Wiseman had held the professorship of Ori- 
 ental languages in the English College at 
 Rome, and afterwards became rector of the 
 college. In 1840 he was appointed by the 
 Pope one of the Vicars Apostolic in England, 
 and held his position here as Bishop of Mel- 
 ipotamus in parlibus infidelium. He was 
 well known to be a fine scholar, an accom- 
 plished linguist, and a powerful preacher and 
 controversialist. But he was believed also to 
 be a man of great ecclesiastical ambition — 
 ambition for his Church, that is to say — of 
 singular boldness, and of much political abil- 
 ity. The Pope’s action was set down as in 
 great measure the work of Wiseman. The 
 Cardinal himself was accepted in the minds 
 of most Englishmen as a type of the regular 
 Italian ecclesiastic— bold, clever, ambitious, 
 and unscrupulous. The very fact of his Eng- 
 lish extraction only militated the more 
 against him in the public feeling. He was 
 regarded as in some sense one who had gone 
 over to the enemy, and who was the more to 
 be dreaded because of the knowledge he 
 carried with him. Perhaps it is not too 
 much to say that in the existing mood of the 
 English people the very title of Cardinal ex- 
 asperated the feeling against Wiseman. Had 
 he come as a simple archbishop, the aggres- 
 sion might not have seemed so marked. 
 The title of Cardinal brought back unwel- 
 come memories to the English public. It 
 reminded them of a period of their history 
 when the forces of Rome and those of the 
 national independence were really arrayed 
 against each other in a struggle which Eng- 
 lishmen might justly look on as dangerous. 
 Since those times there had been no cardinal 
 in England. Did it not look ominous that a 
 cardinal should present himself now ? The 
 first step taken by Cardinal Wiseman did not 
 tend to charm away this feeling. He issued 
 a pastoral letter, addressed to England, on 
 October 7, 1850, which was set forth as “ giv- 
 en out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome.” 
 This description of the letter was afterwards 
 
 stated to be in accordance with one of the 
 necessary formularies of the Church of Rome; 
 but it was then assumed in England to be an 
 expression of insolence and audacity intend- 
 ed to remind the English people that from 
 out of Rome itself came the assertion of 
 supremacy over them. This letter was to be 
 read publicly in all the Roman Catholic 
 churches in London. It addressed itself di- 
 rectly to the English people, and it announced 
 that “ your beloved country has received a 
 place among the fair churches which nor- 
 mally constituted form the splendid aggregate 
 of Catholic communion ; Catholic England 
 has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesias- 
 tical firmament from which its light had 
 long vanished ; and begins now anew its 
 course of regularly-adjusted action round the 
 centre of unity, the source of jurisdiction, of 
 light, and of vigor.” 
 
 It must be allowed that this was rather im- 
 prudent language to address to a people pe- 
 culiarly proud of being Protestant ; a people 
 of whom their critics say, not wholly without 
 reason, that they are somewhat narrow and 
 unsympathetic in their Protestantism ; that 
 their national tendency is to believe in the 
 existence of nothing really good outside the 
 limits of Protestantism. In England the 
 National Church is a symbol of victory over 
 foreign enemies and domination at home. 
 It was not likely that the English people 
 could regard it as anything but an offence to 
 be told that they were resuming their place 
 as a part of an ecclesiastical system to which 
 they, of all peoples, looked with dislike and 
 distrust. We are not saying that the feeling 
 with which the great bulk of the English 
 people regarded Cardinal Wiseman’s church 
 was just or liberal. W e are simply recording 
 the unquestionable historical fact that such 
 was the mauner in which the English people 
 regarded the Roman Church, in order to 
 show how slender was the probability of 
 their being moved to anything but anger by 
 such expressions as those contained in Cardi- 
 nal Wiseman’s letter. But the letter had 
 hardly reached England when the country 
 was aroused by another letter coming from a 
 very different quarter, and intended as a coun- 
 terblast to the Papal assumption of authority. 
 This was Lord John Russell’s famous Dur- 
 ham letter. Russell had the art of writing 
 letters that exploded like bomb-shells in the 
 midst of some controversy. His Edinburgh 
 letter had set the Cabinet of Sir Robert Peel 
 on to recognize the fact that something must 
 be done with the Free Trade question ; and 
 now his Durham letter spoke the word that 
 let loose a very torrent of English public 
 feeling. The letter was in reply to one 
 from the Bishop of Durham, and was dated 
 “Downing Street, November the 4th.” 
 Lord John Russell condemned in the most 
 unmeasured terms the assumption of the 
 Pope as “ a pretension of supremacy over the 
 realm of England, and a claim to sole and un- 
 divided sway, which is inconsistent with the 
 Queen’s supremacy, with the rights of our 
 bishops and clergy, and with the spiritual in- 
 dependence of the nation as asserted even in 
 the Roman Catholic times.” Lord John 
 Russell went on to say that his alarm was by 
 no means equal to his indignation ; that the 
 liberty of Protestantism had been enjoyed too 
 long in England to allow of any successful 
 attempt to impose a foreign yoke upon men’s 
 minds and consciences, and that the laws of 
 the country should be carefully examined, 
 and the propriety of adopting some additional 
 measures deliberately considered. But Lord 
 John Russell went further than all this. He 
 declared that there was a danger that alarmed 
 him more than any aggression from a foreign 
 sovereign, and that was “ the danger within 
 the gates from the unworthy sons of the 
 Church of England herself. ’ ’ Clergymen of 
 that Church, he declared, had been “ leading 
 their flocks step by step to the verge of the 
 precipice.” What, he asked, meant “the 
 honor paid to saints, the claim of infallibility 
 
70 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 for the Church, the superstitious use of the 
 sign of the Cross, the muttering of the Lit- 
 urgy so as to disguise the language in which 
 it is written, the recommendation of auricu- 
 lar confession, and the administration of pen- 
 ance and absolution?” The letter closed 
 with a sentence which gave especial offence 
 to Roman Catholics, but which Lord John 
 Russell afterwards explained, and indeed the 
 context ought to have shown, was not meant 
 as any attack on their religion or their cere- 
 monial. “ I have little hope that the pro- 
 pounders and framers of these innovations 
 will desist from their insidious course ; but I 
 rely with confidence on the people of Eng- 
 land ; and I will not bate one jot of heart or 
 hope so long as the glorious principles and 
 the immortal martyrs of the Reformation 
 shall be held in reverence by the great mass 
 of a nation which looks with contempt on the 
 mummeries of superstition, and with scorn at 
 the laborious endeavors which are now mak- 
 ing to confine the intellect and enslave the 
 soul.” It is now clear from the very terms 
 of this letter that Lord John Russell meant to 
 apply these words to the practices within the 
 English Church which he had so strongly 
 condemned in the earlier passages, and 
 which alone, he said, he regarded with any 
 serious alarm. But the Roman Catholics in 
 general and the majority of persons of all 
 sects accepted them as a denunciation of 
 “Popery.” The Catholics looked upon 
 them as a declaration of war against Catholi- 
 cism ; the fanatical of the other side wel- 
 comed them as a trumpet-call to a new “ No 
 Popery” agitation. 
 
 The very day after the letter appeared was 
 the Guy Faux anniversary. All over the 
 country the effigies of the Pope and Cardinal 
 Wiseman took the place of the regulation 
 “Guy,” and were paraded and burnt amid 
 tumultuous demonstrations. A colossal pro- 
 cession of “ Guys” passed down Fleet Street, 
 the principal figure of which, a gigantic form 
 of sixteen feet high, seated in a chariot, had 
 to be bent down, compelled to “veil his 
 crest,” in order to pass under Temple Bar. 
 This Titanic “ Guy” was the new Cardinal 
 in his red robes. In Exeter a yet more elab- 
 orate Anti-Papal demonstration was made. 
 A procession of two hundred persons in char- 
 acter-dresses marched round the venerable 
 cathedral amid the varied effulgence of colored 
 lights. The procession represented the Pope, 
 the new Cardinal, and the Inquisition, various 
 of the Inquisitors brandishing instruments of 
 torture. Considerable sums of money were 
 spent on these popular demonstrations, the 
 only interest in which now is that they serve 
 to illustrate the public sentiment of the hour. 
 Mr. Disraeli good-naturedly endeavored at 
 once to foment the prevailing heat of public 
 temper and at the same time to direct its fer- 
 vor against the Ministry themselves, by de- 
 claring in a published letter that he could 
 hardly blame the Pope for supposing himself 
 at liberty to divide England into bishoprics, 
 seeing the encouragement he had got from 
 the ministers themselves by the recognition 
 they had offered to the Roman Catholic hier- 
 archy of Ireland. “ The fact is, ” Mr. Dis- 
 raeli said, “ the whole question has been sur- 
 rendered and decided in favor of the Pope 
 by the present Government. The ministers 
 who recognized the pseudo- Archbishop of 
 Tuam as a peer and a prelate cannot object 
 to the appointment of a pseudo- Arch bishop 
 of Westminster, even though he be a car- 
 dinal.” As a matter of fact it was not the 
 existing Government that had recognized the 
 rank of the Irish Catholic prelates. The rec- 
 ognition had been formally arranged in Jan- 
 uary, 1845, by a royal warrant or commission 
 for carrying out the Charitable Bequests Act, 
 which gave the Irish Catholic prelates rank 
 immediately after the prelates of the Estab- 
 lished Church of the same degree. But the 
 letter of Mr. Disraeli, like that of Lord John 
 Russell, served to inflame passions on both 
 sides and to put the country in the worst 
 
 possible mood for any manner of wholesome 
 legislation. Never during the same genera- 
 tion had there been such an outburst of anger 
 on both sides of the religious controversy. 
 It was a curious incident in political history 
 that Lord John Russell, who had more than 
 any Englishman then living been identified 
 with the principles of religious liberty, who 
 had sat at the feet of Fox, and had for his 
 closest friend the Catholic poet Thomas 
 Moore, came to be regarded by Roman Cath- 
 olics as the bitterest enemy of their creed and 
 their rights of worship. 
 
 The Ministry felt that something must be 
 done. They could not face Parliament with- 
 out some piece of legislation to satisfy public 
 feeling. Many even among the most zealous 
 Protestants deeply regretted that Lord John 
 Russell had written anything on the subject. 
 Not a few Roman Catholics of position and 
 influence bitterly lamented the indiscretion 
 of the Papal court. The mischief, however, 
 was now fairly afoot. The step taken by the 
 Pope had set the country aflame. Every day 
 crowded and tumultuous meetings were held 
 to denounce the action of the court of Rome. 
 Before the end of the year something like 
 seven thousand such meetings had been held 
 throughout the kingdom. Sometimes the 
 Roman Catholic party mustered strong at 
 such demonstrations, and the result was riot- 
 ing and disturbance. Addresses poured in 
 upon the Queen and the ministers calling for 
 decided action against the assumption of Pa- 
 pal authority. About the same time Father 
 Gavazzi, an Italian republican who had been 
 a priest, came to London and began a series 
 of lectures against the Papacy. He was a 
 man of great rhetorical power, with a remark- 
 able command of the eloquence of passion 
 and denunciation. His lectures were at first 
 given only in Italian, and therefore did not 
 appeal to a popular English audience. But 
 they were reported in the papers at much 
 length, and they contributed not a little to 
 swell the tide of public feeling against the 
 Pope and the court of Rome. The new Lord 
 Chancellor, Lord Truro, created great ap- 
 plause and tumult at the Lord Mayor’s din- 
 ner by quoting from Shakespeare the words, 
 “ Under my feet I’ll stamp thy cardinal’s 
 hat, in spite of Pope or dignities of Church. ” 
 Charles Kean, the tragedian, was interrupted 
 by thundering peals of applause and the ris- 
 ing of the whole audience to their feet when, 
 as King John, he proclaimed that “ no Ital- 
 ian priest shall tithe or toll in our dominion. ” 
 Long afterwards, and when the storm seemed 
 to have wholly died away, Cardinal Wise- 
 man, going in a carriage through the streets 
 of Liverpool to deliver a lecture on a purely 
 literary subject to a general audience, was 
 pelted with stones by a mob who remember- 
 ed the Papal assumption and the passions ex- 
 cited by the Ecclesiastical Titles Act. 
 
 The opening of Parliament came. The 
 Ministry had to do something. No Ministry 
 that ever held power in England could have 
 attempted to meet the House of Commons 
 without some project of a measure to allay 
 public excitement. On February 4, 1851, 
 the Queen in person opened Parliament. 
 Her speech contained some sentences which 
 were listened to with the profoundest interest 
 because they referred to the question which 
 was agitating all England. “ The recent as- 
 sumption of certain ecclesiastical titles con- 
 ferred by a foreign Power has excited strong 
 feelings in this country ; and large bodies of 
 my subjects have presented addresses to me 
 expressing attachment to the Throne and 
 praying that such assumptions should be re- 
 sisted. I have assured them of my resolu- 
 tion to maintain the rights of my crown and 
 the independence of the nation against all 
 encroachments, from whatever quarter they 
 may proceed. I have at the same time ex- 
 pressed my earnest desire and firm determina- 
 tion under God’s blessing to maintain unim- 
 paired the religious liberty which is so justly 
 prized by the people of this country.” How 
 
 little of inclination to any measures dealing 
 unfairly with Roman Catholics was in the 
 mind of the Queen herself may be seen from 
 a letter in which, when the excitement was at 
 its height, she had expressed her opinion to 
 her aunt, the Duchess of Gloucester. “ 1 
 would never have consented to anything 
 which breathed a spirit of intolerance. Sin- 
 cerely Protestant as I always have been and 
 always shall be, and indignant as I am at 
 those who call themselves Protestants while 
 they are in fact quite the contrary, I much 
 regret the unchristian and intolerant spirit 
 exhibited by many people at the public meet- 
 ings. I cannot bear to hear the violent 
 abuse of the Catholic religion, which is so 
 painful and so cruel towards the many good 
 and innocent Roman Catholics. However, 
 we must hope and trust this excitement will 
 soon cease, and that the wholesome effect of 
 it upon our own Church will be lasting.” 
 
 “ The Papal aggression question,” Lord 
 Palmerston wrote ’to his brother just before 
 the opening of Parliament, “ will give us 
 some trouble, and give rise to stormy de- 
 bates. Our difficulty will be to find out a 
 measure which shall satisfy reasonable Prot- 
 estants without violating those principles of 
 liberal toleration which we are pledged to. 
 I think we shall succeed. . . . The thing 
 
 itself, in truth, is little or nothing, and does 
 not justify the irritation. What has goaded 
 the nation is the manner, insolent and osten- 
 tatious, in which it has been done. . . . 
 
 We must bring in a measure. The country 
 would not be satisfied without some legisla- 
 tive enactment. We shall make it as gentle 
 as possible. The violent party will object 
 to it for its mildness, and will endeavor to 
 drive us farther.” A measure brought in 
 only because something must be done to sat- 
 isfy public opinion is not likely to be a very 
 valuable piece of legislation. The Ministry 
 in this case were embarrassed by the fact 
 that they really did not particularly want to 
 do anything except to satisfy public opinion 
 for the moment and get rid of all the contro- 
 versy. They were placed between two gall- 
 ing fires. On the one side were the extreme 
 Protestants, to whom Palmerston alluded as 
 violent, and who were eager for severe meas- 
 ures against the Catholics ; and on the other 
 were the Roman Catholic supporters of the 
 Ministry, who protested against any legisla- 
 tion whatever on the subject. It would 
 have been simply impossible to find any safe 
 and satisfactory path of compromise which 
 all could consent to walk. The Ministry did 
 the best they could to frame a measure which 
 should seem to do something and yet do lit- 
 tle or nothing. Two or three days after the 
 meeting of Parliament Lord John Russell in- 
 troduced his bill to prevent the assumption 
 by Roman Catholics of titles taken from any 
 territory or place within the United King- 
 dom. The measure proposed to prohibit 
 the use of all such titles under penalty, and 
 to render void all acts done by or bequests 
 made to persons under such titles. The Ro- 
 man Catholic Relief Act imposed a penalty 
 of one hundred pounds for every assumption 
 of a title taken from an existing see. Lord 
 John Russell proposed now to extend the pen- 
 alty to the assumption of any title whatever 
 from any place in the United Kingdom. 
 The reception which was given to Lord 
 John Russell’s motion for leave to bring in 
 this bill was not encouraging. Usually 
 leave to bring in a bill is granted as a matter 
 of course. Some few general observations of 
 extemporaneous and guarded criticism are 
 often made ; but the common practice is to 
 offer no opposition. On this occasion, how- 
 ever, it was at once made manifest that no 
 measure, however “gentle, ’ to use Lord 
 Palmerston’s word, would be allowed to pass 
 without obstinate opposition. Mr. Roebuck 
 described the bill as “one of the meanest, 
 pettiest, and most futile measures that ever- 
 disgraced even bigotry itself.” Mr. Bright 
 called it “ little, paltry, and miserable— a 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 71 
 
 mere sham to bolster up Church ascendency. ’ ’ 
 Mr. Disraeli declared that he would not op- 
 pose the introduction of the bill ; but he 
 spoke of it in language of as much contempt 
 as Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Bright had used, 
 calling it a mere piece of petty persecution. 
 “Was it for this,’’ Mr. Disraeli scornfully 
 asked, “that the Lord Chancellor trampled 
 on a cardinal’s hat amid the patriotic accla- 
 mations of the metropolitan municipality ?” 
 Sir Robert Inglis, on the part of the more ex- 
 treme Protestants, objected to the bill on the 
 ground that it did not go far enough. The 
 debate on the motion for leave to bring in the 
 bill was renewed for night after night, and 
 the fullest promise of an angry and prolonged 
 resistance was given. Yet so strong was the 
 feeling in favor of some legislation that when 
 the division was taken, three hundred and 
 ninety-five votes were given for the motion 
 and only sixty- three against it. The oppon- 
 ents of the measure had on their side not only 
 all the prominent champions of religious lib- 
 erty like Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, 
 Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright, but also Prot- 
 estant politicians of such devotion to the in- 
 terests of the Church as Mr. Roundell Pal- 
 mer, afterwards Lord Selborne, and Mr. Ber- 
 esford Hope ; and of course they had with 
 them all the Irish Catholic members. Yet 
 the motion for leave to bring in the bill was 
 carried by this overwhelming majority. The 
 ministers had at all events ample justifica- 
 tion, so far as Parliamentary tactics were 
 concerned, for the introduction of their 
 measure. 
 
 If, however, we come to regard the minis- 
 terial proposal as a piece of practical legisla- 
 tion, the case to be made out for them is not 
 strong, nor is the abortive result of their 
 efforts at all surprising. They set out on the 
 enterprise without any real interest in it, or 
 any particular confidence in its success. It 
 is probable that Lord John Russell alone of 
 all the ministers had any expectation of a 
 satisfactory result to come of the piece of 
 legislation they were attempting. We have 
 seen what Lord Palmerston thought on the 
 whole subject. The ministers were, in fact, 
 in the difficulty of all statesmen who bring in 
 a measure, not because they themselves are 
 clear as to its necessity or its efficacy, but be- 
 cause they find that something must be done 
 to satisfy public feeling, and they do not 
 know of anything better to do at the mo- 
 ment. The history of the Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Bill was, therefore, a history of blun- 
 der, unlucky accident, and failure from the 
 moment it was brought in until its ignomin- 
 ious and ridiculous repeal many years after, 
 and when its absolute impotence had been 
 not merely demonstrated but forgotten. 
 
 The Government at first, as we have seen, 
 resolved to impose a penalty on the assump- 
 tion of ecclesiastical titles by Roman Catho- 
 lic prelates from places in the United King- 
 dom, and to make null and void all acts 
 done or bequests made in virtue of such 
 titles. But they found that it would be 
 absolutely impossible to apply such legis- 
 lation to Ireland. In that country a Cath- 
 olic hierarchy had long been tolerated, 
 and all the functions of a regular hier- 
 archy had been in full and formal operation. 
 To apply the new measure to Ireland would 
 have been virtually to repeal the Roman 
 Catholic Relief Act and restore the penal 
 laws. On the other hand, the ministers were 
 not willing to make one law against titles 
 for England and another for Ireland. They 
 were driven, therefore, to the course of with- 
 drawing two of the stringent clauses of the 
 bill, and leaving it little more than a mere 
 declaration against the assumption of unlaw- 
 ful titles. But by doing this they furnished 
 stronger reasons for opposition to both of the 
 two very different parties who had hitherto 
 denounced their way of dealing with the cri- 
 sis. Those who thought the bill did not go 
 far enough before were of course indignant 
 at the proposal to shear it of whatever little 
 
 force it had originally possessed. They, on 
 the other hand, who had opposed it as a 
 breach of the principle of religious liberty 
 could now ridicule it with all the greater 
 effect on the ground that it violated a princi- 
 ple without even the pretext of doing any 
 practical good as a compensation. In the 
 first instance the Ministry might plead that 
 the crisis was exceptional ; that it called for 
 exceptional measures ; that something must 
 be done ; and that they could not stand on 
 ceremony even with the principle of religious 
 liberty when the interest of the State was at 
 stake. Now they left it in the power of their 
 opponents to say that they were breaking a 
 principle for the sake of introducing a non- 
 entity. 
 
 The debates were long, fierce, and often 
 passionate. The bill, even cut down as it 
 was, had a vast majority on its side. But 
 some of the most illustrious names in the 
 House of Commons were recorded against it ; 
 by far the most eloquent voices in the House 
 were raised to condemn it. The Irish Ro- 
 man Catholic members set up a persistent op- 
 position to it, and up to a certain period of its 
 progress put in requisition all the forms of the 
 House to impede it. This part of the story 
 ought not to be passed over without mention 
 of the fact that among other effects produced 
 by the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, perhaps the 
 most distinct was the creation of the most 
 worthless band of agitators who ever pre- 
 tended to speak with the voice of Ireland. 
 These were the men who were called in the 
 House “ the Pope’s Brass Band,” and who 
 were regarded with as much dislike and dis- 
 trust by all intelligent Irish Catholics and Irish 
 Nationalists as by the most inveterate Tories. 
 These men leaped into influence by their 
 denunciations of the Ecclesiatical Titles Bill. 
 They were successful for a time in palming 
 themselves off as patriots upon Irish constitu- 
 encies. They thundered against the bill ; they 
 put in motion every mechanism of delay and 
 obstruction ; some of them were really clever 
 and eloquent ; most of them were loud-voic- 
 ed ; they had a grand and heaven-sent oppor- 
 tunity given to them, and they made use of 
 it. They had a leader, the once famous John 
 Sadleir. This man possessed marked ability, 
 and was further gifted with an unscrupulous 
 audacity at least equal to his ability. He 
 went to work deliberately to create for him- 
 self a band of followers by whose help he 
 might mount to power. He was a financial 
 swindler as well as a political adventurer. 
 By means of the money he had suddenly ac- 
 quired and by virtue of his furious denuncia- 
 tions of the anti-Catholic policy of the Gov- 
 ernment, he was for a time able to work the 
 Irish popular constituencies so as to get his 
 own followers into the House and become for 
 the hour a sort of little O’Connell. He had 
 with him some two or three honest men, 
 whom he deluded into a belief in the sincer- 
 ity of himself and his gang of swindling ad- 
 venturers ; and it is only fair to say that by 
 far the most eloquent man of the party ap- 
 pears to have been one of those on whom 
 Sadleir was thus able to impose. Mr. Sad- 
 leir’s band afterwards came to sad grief. He 
 committed suicide himself to escape the pun- 
 ishment of his frauds ; some of his associates 
 fled to foreign countries and hid themselves 
 under feigned names. James Sadleir, broth- 
 er and accomplice of John, was among these, 
 and underwent that rare mark of degradation 
 in our days, a formal expulsion from the 
 House of Commons. The Pope’s Brass 
 Band and its subsequent history, culminating 
 in the suicide on Hampstead Heath, was 
 about the only practical result of the Eccle- 
 siastical Titles Bill. 
 
 The bill, reduced in stringency as has been 
 described, made, however, some progress 
 through the House. It was interrupted at 
 one stage by events which had nothing to do 
 with its history. The Government got into 
 trouble of another kind. At the opening of 
 the session Mr. Disraeli introduced a motion 
 
 to the effect that the agricultural distress of 
 the country called upon the Government to 
 introduce without delay some measures for 
 its relief. This motion was in fact the last 
 spasmodic cry of Protection. Many influen- 
 tial politicians still believed that the cause of 
 Protection was not wholly lost ; that a reac- 
 tion was possible ; that the Free Trade doc- 
 trine would prove a failure and have to be 
 given up ; and they regarded Mr. Disraeli’s 
 as a very important motion calling for a 
 strenuous effort in its favor. The Govern- 
 ment treated the motion as one for restored 
 Protection, and threw all their strength into 
 the struggle against it. They won ; but only 
 by a majority of fourteen. A few days 
 after, Mr. Locke King, member for East 
 Surrey, asked for leave to bring in a bill to 
 assimilate the county franchise to that exist- 
 ing in boroughs. Lord John Russell opposed 
 the motion, and the Government were de- 
 feated by 100 votes against 52. It was evi- 
 dent that this was only what is called a 
 “ snap” vote ; that the House was taken by 
 surprise, and that the result in no wise repre- 
 sented the general feeling of Parliament. 
 But still it was a vexatious occurrence for the 
 Ministry already humiliated by the small 
 majority they had obtained on Disraeli’s mo- 
 tion. Their budget had already been re- 
 ceived with very general marks of dissatisfac- 
 tion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer only 
 proposed a partial and qualified repeal of the 
 window tax, an impost which was justly de- 
 tested, and he continued the income tax. 
 The budget was introduced shortly before 
 Mr. Locke King’s motion, and every day that 
 had elapsed since its introduction only more 
 and more developed the public dissatisfaction 
 with which it was regarded. Under all these 
 circumstances Lord John Russell felt that he 
 had no alternative but to tender his resigna- 
 tion to the Queen. Leaving his Ecclesiasti- 
 cal Titles Bill suspended in air, he announced 
 that he could no longer think of carrying on 
 the government of the country. 
 
 The question was who should succeed him. 
 The Queen sent for Lord Stanley, afterwards 
 Lord Derby. Lord Stanley offered to do his 
 best to form a Government, but was not at 
 all sanguine about the success of the task nor 
 eager to undertake it. He even recommended 
 that before he made any experiment Lord 
 John Russell should try if he could not do 
 something by getting some of the Peelites, as 
 they were then beginning to be called — the fol- 
 lowers of Sir Robert Peel who had held with 
 him to the last — to join him and thus patch 
 up the Government anew. This was tried, 
 and failed. The Peelites would have nothing 
 to do with the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and 
 Lord John Russell would not go on without 
 it. On the other hand, Lord Aberdeen, the 
 chief of the Peelites in the House of Lords, 
 would not attempt to form a Ministry of his 
 own, frankly acknowledging that in the ex- 
 isting temper of the country it would be im- 
 possible for any Government to get on with- 
 out legislating in some way on the Papal 
 aggression. There was nothing for it but for 
 Lord Stanley to try. He tried without hope, 
 and of course he was unsuccessful. The 
 position of parties was very peculiar. It was 
 impossible to form any combination which 
 could really agree upon anything. There 
 were three parties out of which a Ministry 
 might be formed. These were the Whigs, 
 the Conservatives, and the Peelites. The 
 Peelites were a very rising and promising 
 body of men. Among them were Sir James 
 Graham, Lord Canning, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. 
 Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell, and some 
 others almost equally well known. Only 
 these three groups were fairly in the compe- 
 tition for office ; for the idea of a Ministry of 
 Radicals and Manchester men was not then 
 likely to present itself to any official mind. 
 But how could any one put together a Minis- 
 try formed from a combination of these 
 three ? The Peelites would not coalesce with 
 the Tories because of the Protection ques- 
 
72 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tion, to which Mr. Disraeli’s motion had giv- 
 en a new semblance of vitality, and because 
 of Lord Stanley’s own declaration that he 
 still regarded the policy of Free Trade as 
 only an experiment. The Peelites would 
 not combine with the Whigs because of the 
 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. The Conservatives 
 would not disavow protective ideas ; the 
 Whigs would not give up the Ecclesiastical 
 Titles Bill. No statesman, therefore, could 
 form a Government without having to count 
 on two great parties being against him on one 
 question or the other. All manner of delays 
 took place. The Duke of Wellington was 
 consulted. Lord Lansdowne was consulted. 
 The wit of man could suggest nothing satis- 
 factory. The conditions for extracting any 
 satisfactory solution did not exist. There 
 was nothing better to be done than to ask the 
 ministers who had resigned to resume their 
 places and muddle on as they best could. 
 It is not enough to say that there was nothing 
 better to be done : there was nothing else to 
 be done. They were at all events still ad- 
 ministering the affairs of the country, and no 
 one would relieve them of the task. Ipso 
 facto they had to stay. 
 
 The ministers returned to their places and 
 resumed the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. It 
 was then that they made the chaDge in its 
 conditions which has already been mentioned, 
 and thus created new argument against them 
 on both sides of the House of Commons. 
 They struck out of the bill every word that 
 might appear like an encroachment on the 
 Roman Church within the sphere of its own 
 ecclesiastical operations, and made it simply 
 an Act against the public and ostentatious as- 
 sumption of illegal titles. The bill was 
 wrangled over until the end of June, and 
 then a large number, some seventy, of the 
 Irish Catholic members publicly seceded from 
 the discussion and announced that they would 
 take no further part in the divisions. On 
 this some of the strongest opponents of the 
 Papal aggression, led by Sir Frederick Thes- 
 iger, afterwards Lord Chelmsford, brought 
 in a series of resolutions intended to make the 
 bill more stringent than it had been even as 
 originally introduced. The object of the res- 
 olutions was principally to give the power of 
 prosecuting and claiming a penalty to any- 
 body, provided he obtained the consent of the 
 law officers of the Crown, and to make penal 
 the introduction of bulls. The Government 
 opposed the introduction of these amend- 
 ments, and were put in the awkward position 
 of having to act as antagonists of the party 
 in the country who represented the strongest 
 hostility to the Papal aggression. Thus for 
 the moment the author of the Durham letter 
 was seemingly converted into a champion of 
 the Roman Catholic side of the controversy. 
 His championship was ineffective. The Irish 
 members took no part in the controversy, and 
 the Government were beaten by the ultra- 
 Protestant party on every division. Lord 
 John Russell was bitterly taunted by various 
 of his opponents, and was asked with indig- 
 nation why he did not withdraw the bill 
 when it ceased to be any longer his own 
 scheme. He probably thought by this time 
 that it really made little matter what bill was 
 passed so long as any bill was passed, and 
 that the best thing to do was to get the con- 
 troversy out of the way by any process. He 
 did not therefore withdraw the bill, although 
 Sir Frederick Thesiger carried all his strin- 
 gent clauses. When the measure came on 
 for a third reading, Lord John Russell moved 
 the omission of the added clauses, but he was 
 defeated by large majorities. The bill was 
 done with so far as the House of Commons 
 was concerned. After an eloquent and pow- 
 erful protest from Mr. Gladstone against the 
 measure, as one disparaging to the great 
 principle of religious freedom, the bill was 
 read a third time. It went up to the House 
 of Lords, was passed there without alteration, 
 although not without opposition, and soon 
 after received the Royal assent. 
 
 This was practically the last the world 
 heard abotit it. In the Roman Church every- 
 thing went on as before. The new Cardinal 
 Archbishop still called himself Archbishop 
 of Westminster ; some of the Irish prelates 
 made a point of ostentatiously using their 
 territorial titles, in letters addressed to the 
 ministers themselves. The bitterness of feel- 
 ing which the Papal aggression and the leg- 
 islation against it had called up did not in- 
 deed pass away very soon. It broke out 
 again and again, sometimes in the form of 
 very serious riot. It turned away at many 
 an election the eyes and minds of the constit- 
 uencies from questions of profound and gen- 
 uine public interest to dogmatic controversy 
 and the hates of jarring sectaries. It fur- 
 nished political capital for John Sadleir 
 and his band, and kept them flourishing for a 
 while ; and it set up in the Irish popular 
 mind a purely imaginary figure of Lord John 
 Russell, who became regarded as the malign 
 enemy of the Catholic faith and of all religious 
 liberty. But save for the quarrels aroused at 
 the time, the act of the Pope and the Act of 
 Parliament were alike dead letters. Nothing 
 came of the Papal bull. England was not 
 restored to the communion of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury and the Bishop of London retained 
 their places and their spiritual jurisdiction as 
 before. Cardinal Wiseman remained only a 
 prelate of Roman Catholics. On the other 
 hand, the Ecclesiastical Titles Act was never 
 put in force. Nobody troubled about it. 
 Many years after, in 1871, it was quietly re- 
 pealed. It died in such obscurity that the 
 outer public hardly knew whether it was 
 above ground or below. Certainly, if the 
 whole agitation showed that England was 
 thoroughly Protestant, it also showed that 
 English Protestants had not much of the per- 
 secuting spirit. They had no inclination to 
 molest "their Catholic neighbors, and only 
 asked to be let alone. The Pope, they be- 
 lieved, had insulted them ; they resented the 
 insult : that was all. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE EXHIBITION IN HYDE PARK. 
 
 The first of May, 1851, will always be 
 memorable as the day on which the Great 
 Exhibition was opened in Hyde Park. The 
 year 1851, indeed, is generally associated in 
 the memory of Englishmen with that first 
 Great International Exhibition. As we look 
 back upon it pleasant recollections come up 
 of the great glass palace in Hyde Park, the 
 palace “ upsp ringing from the verdant sod,” 
 which Thackeray described so gracefully and 
 with so much poetic feeling. The strange 
 crowds of the curious of all provinces and all 
 nations are seen again. The marvellous and 
 at that time wholly unprecedented collection 
 of the products of all countries ; the glitter 
 of the Koh-i-Noor, the palm trees beneath 
 the glass roof, the leaping fountains, the stat- 
 uary, the ores, the ingots, the huge blocks of 
 coal, the lace-work, the loom-work, the Ori- 
 ental stuffs — all these made on the mind of 
 the ordinary inexpert a confused impression 
 of lavishness and profusion and order and fan- 
 tastic beauty which was then wholly novel, 
 and could hardly be recalled except in mere 
 memory. The novelty of the experiment 
 was that which made it specially memorable. 
 Many exhibitions of a similar kind have tak- 
 en place since. Some of these far surpassed 
 that of Hyde Park in the splendor and variety 
 of the collections brought together. Two of 
 them at least — those of Paris in 1867 and 
 1878 — were infinitely superior in the array 
 and display of the products, the dresses, the 
 inhabitants of far-divided countries. But the 
 impression which the Hyde Park Exhibition 
 made upon the ordinary mind was like that 
 of the boy’s first visit to the play — an impres- 
 sion never to be equalled, no matter by what 
 far superior charm of spectacle it may in after 
 years again and again be followed. 
 
 Golden indeed were the expectations with 
 
 which hopeful people welcomed the Exhi- 
 bition of 1851. It was the first organized to 
 gather all the representatives of the world’s 
 industry into one great fair ; and there were 
 those who seriously expected that men who 
 had once been prevailed upon to meet together 
 in friendly and peaceful rivalry would never 
 again be persuaded to meet in rivalry of a 
 fiercer kind. It seems extraordinary now to 
 think that any sane person can have indulged 
 in such expectations, or can have imagined 
 that the tremendous forces generated by the 
 rival interests, ambitions, and passions of 
 races could be subdued into harmonious co- 
 operation by the good sense and good feeling 
 born of a friendly meeting. The Hyde Park 
 Exhibition and all the exhibitions that follow'- 
 ed it have not as yet made the slightest per- 
 ceptible difference in the warlike tendencies 
 of nations. The Hyde Park Exhibition was 
 often described as the festival to open the 
 long reign of Peace. It might as a mere 
 matter of chronology be called without any 
 impropriety the festival to celebrate the close 
 of the short reign of Peace. From that year, 
 1851, it may be said fairly enough that the 
 world has hardly known a week of peace. 
 The coup d'etat in France closed the year. 
 The Crimean War began almost immediately 
 after, and was followed by the Indian Muti- 
 ny, and that by the war between France and 
 Austria, the long civil war in the United 
 States, the Neapolitan enterprises of Garibal- 
 di, and the Mexican intervention, until we 
 come to the war between Austria, Prussia, 
 and Denmark ; the short sharp struggle for 
 German supremacy between Austria and 
 Prussia, the war between France and Ger- 
 many, and the war between Russia and Tur- 
 key. Such were, in brief summary, the 
 events that quickly followed the great inau- 
 gurating Festival of Peace in 1851. Of course 
 those who organized the Great Exhibition 
 were in no way responsible for the exalted 
 and extravagant expectations which were 
 formed as to its effects on the history of the 
 world and the elements of human nature. 
 But there was a great deal too much of the 
 dithyrambic about the style in which many 
 writers and speakers thought fit to describe 
 the Exhibition. With some of these all this 
 was the result of genuine enthusiasm. In 
 other instances the extravagance was in- 
 dulged in by persons not habitually extrava- 
 gant, but, on the contrary, very sober, me- 
 thodical, and calculating, who by the very 
 fact of their possessing eminently these qual- 
 ities were led into a total misconception of 
 tie influence of such assemblages of men. 
 These calm and wise persons assumed that 
 because they themselves, if shown that a cer- 
 tain course of conduct ivas for their material 
 and moral benefit, would instantly follow it 
 and keep to it, it must therefore follow that 
 all peoples and states were amenable to the 
 same excellent principle of self-discipline. 
 War is a foolish and improvident, not to say 
 immoral and atrocious, way of trying to ad- 
 just our disputes, they argued ; let peoples 
 far divided in geographical situation be only 
 brought together and induced to talk this 
 over, and see how much more profitable and 
 noble is the rivalry of peace in trade and 
 commerce, and they will never think of the 
 coarse and brutal arbitrament of battle any 
 more. Not a few others, it must be owned, 
 indulged in the high-flown glorification of 
 the reign of peace to come because the Exhi- 
 bition was the special enterprise of the Prince 
 Consort, and they had a natural aptitude for 
 the production of courtly strains. But among 
 all these classes of paean-singers it did hap- 
 pen that a good deal of unmerited discredit 
 was cast upon the results of the Great Exhi- 
 bition, for the enterprise -was held responsi- 
 ble for illusions it had of itself nothing to do 
 with creating, and disappointments which 
 were no consequence of any failure on its 
 part. Even upon trade and production 
 it is very easy to exaggerate the beneficent 
 influences of an international exhibition. 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 73 
 
 But that such enterprises have some bene- 
 ficial influence is beyond doubt ; and that 
 they are interesting, instructive, well cal- 
 culated to educate and refine the minds of 
 nations, may be admitted by the least enthu- 
 siastic of men. 
 
 The first idea of the Exhibition was con- 
 ceived by Prince Albert ; and it was his en- 
 ergy and influence which succeeded in carry- 
 ing the idea into practical execution. Prob- 
 ably no influence less great than that which 
 his station gave to the Prince would have 
 prevailed to carry to success so difficult an 
 enterprise. There had been industrial ex- 
 hibitions before on a small scale and of local 
 limit ; but if the idea of an exhibition in 
 which all the nations of the world were to 
 compete had occurred to other minds before, 
 as it may well have done, it was merely as a 
 vague thought, a day-dream, without any 
 claim to a practical realization. Prince Al- 
 bert was President of the Society of Arts, 
 and this position secured him a platform for 
 the effective promulgation of his ideas. On 
 June 30, 1849, he called a meeting of the 
 Royal Society at Buckingham Palace. He 
 proposed that the Society should undertake 
 the initiative in the promotion of an exhi- 
 bition of the works of all nations. The main 
 idea of Prince Albert was that the exhibition 
 should be divided into four great sections — 
 the first to contain raw materials and prod- 
 uce ; the second machinery for ordinary in- 
 dustrial and productive purposes and mechan- 
 ical inventions of the more ingenious kind ; 
 the third manufactured articles ; and the 
 fourth sculpture, models, and the illustra- 
 tions of the plastic arts generally. The idea 
 was at once taken up by the Society of Arts, 
 and by their agency spread abroad. On 
 October 17 in the same year a meeting of 
 merchants and bankers was held in London 
 to promote the success of the undertaking. 
 In the first few days of 1850 a formal Com- 
 mission was appointed “ for the promotion 
 of the Exhibition of the Works of All Na- 
 tions, to be holden in the year 1851. ” Prince 
 Albert was appointed President of the Com- 
 mission. The enterprise was now fairly 
 launched. A few days after a meeting was 
 held in the Mansion House to raise funds in 
 aid of the Exhibition, and ten thousand 
 pounds was at once collected. This of course 
 was but the beginning, and a guarantee fund 
 of two hundred thousand pounds was very 
 soon obtained. 
 
 On March 31 in the same year the Lord May- 
 or of London gave a banquet at the Mansion 
 House to the chief magistrates of the cities, 
 towns, and boroughs of the United Kingdom, 
 for the purpose of inviting their co-operation 
 in support of the undertaking. Prince Albert 
 was present, and spoke. He had cultivated 
 the art of speaking with much success, and 
 had almost entirely overcome whatever diffi- 
 culty stood in his way from his foreign birth 
 and education. He ne ver quite lost his foreign 
 accent. No man coming to a new country at 
 the age of manhood as Prince Albert did ever 
 acquired the new tongue in such a manner 
 as to lose all trace of a foreign origin ; and 
 to the end of his career Prince Albert spoke 
 with an accent which, however carefully 
 trained, still betrayed its early habitudes. 
 But, except for this slight blemish, Prince 
 Albert may be said to have acquired a per- 
 fect mastery of the English language ; and 
 he became a remarkably good public speak- 
 er. He had indeed nothing of the orator in 
 his nature. It was but the extravagance of 
 courtliness which called his polished and 
 thoughtful speeches oratory. In the Prince’s 
 nature there was neither the passion nor the 
 poetry that are essential to genuine elo- 
 quence ; nor were the occasions on which he 
 addressed the English people likely to stim- 
 ulate a man to eloquence. But his style of 
 speaking was clear, thoughtful, stately, and 
 sometimes even noble. It exactly suited its 
 purpose. It was that of a man who did not 
 set up for an orator ; and who, when he 
 
 spoke, wished that his ideas rather than his 
 words should impress his hearers. It is very 
 much to be doubted whether the English pub- 
 lic would be quite delighted to have a prince 
 who was also a really great orator. Genuine 
 eloquence would probably impress a great 
 many respectable persons as a gift not exactly 
 suited to a prince. There is even still a cer- 
 tain distrust of the artistic in the English 
 mind as of a sort of thing which is very proper 
 in professional writers and painters and 
 speakers, but which would hardly become 
 persons of the highest station. Prince Al- 
 bert probably spoke just as well as he could 
 have done with successful effect upon his 
 English audiences. At the dinner in the 
 Mansion House he spoke with great clearness 
 and grace of the purposes of the Great Exhi- 
 bition. It was, he said, to “ give the world 
 a true test, a living picture, of the point of 
 industrial development at which the whole of 
 mankind has arrived, and a new starting- 
 point from which all nations will be able to 
 direct their further exertions.” 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that the 
 project of the Great Exhibition advanced 
 wholly without opposition. Many persons 
 were disposed to sneer at it ; many were 
 sceptical about its doing any good ; not a few 
 still regarded Prince Albert as a foreigner 
 and a pedant, and were slow to believe that 
 anything really practical was likely to be de- 
 veloped under his impulse and protection. 
 A very whimsical sort of opposition was 
 raised in the House of Commons by a once 
 famous eccentric, the late Colonel Sibthorp. 
 Sibthorp was a man who might have been 
 drawn by Smollett. His grotesque gestures, 
 his overboiling energy, his uncouth appear- 
 ance, his huge moustache, marked him out 
 as an object of curiosity in any crowd. He 
 was the subject of one of the most amusing 
 pieces of impromptu parody ever thrown off 
 by a public speaker— that in which O’Con- 
 nell travestied the famous lines about the 
 three poets in three different regions born, 
 and pictured three colonels in three different 
 countries born, winding up with : “ The 
 
 force of Nature could no farther go ; to 
 beard the one she shaved the other two.” 
 One of the gallant Sibtliorp’s especial weak- 
 nesses was a distrust and detestation of all 
 foreigners. Foreigners he lumped together 
 as a race of beings whose chief characteristics 
 were Popery and immorality. While three 
 fourths of the promoters of the Exhibition 
 were dwelling with the strongest emphasis 
 on the benefit it would bring by drawing into 
 London the representatives of all nations, 
 Colonel Sibthorp was denouncing this ag- 
 glomeration of foreigners as the greatest 
 curse that could fall upon England. He re- 
 garded foreigners much as Isaac of York, in 
 “ Ivanhoe,” regards the Knight Templars. 
 “ When,” asks Isaac in bitter remonstrance, 
 “ did Templars breathe aught but cruelty to 
 men and dishonor to women?” Colonel 
 Sibthorp kept asking some such question 
 with regard to foreigners in general and their 
 expected concourse to the Exhibition. In 
 language somewhat too energetic and broad 
 for our more polite time he warned the 
 House of Commons and the country of the 
 consequences to English morals which must 
 come of the influx of a crowd of foreigners 
 at a given season. “Take care,” he ex- 
 claimed in the House of Commons, ‘ ‘ of your 
 wives and daughters ; take care of your prop- 
 erty and your lives !” He declared that he 
 prayed for some tremendous hailstorm or 
 visitation of lightning to be sent from heaven 
 expressly for the purpose of destroying in 
 advance the building destined for the ill- 
 omened Exhibition. When Free Trade had 
 left nothing else needed to complete the ruin 
 of the nation, the enemy of mankind, he de- 
 clared, had inspired us with the idea of the 
 Great Exhibition, so that the foreigners who 
 had first robbed us of our trade might now 
 be enabled to rob us of our honor. 
 
 The objections raised to the Exhibition 
 
 were not by any means confined to Colonel 
 Sibthorp or to his kind of argument. After 
 some consideration the Royal Commissioners 
 had fixed upon Hyde Park as the best site for 
 the great building, and many energetic and 
 some influential voices were raised in fierce 
 outcry against what was called the profana- 
 tion of the park. It was argued that the 
 public use of Hyde Park would be destroyed 
 by the Exhibition ; that the park would be 
 utterly spoiled ; that its beauty could never 
 be restored. A petition was presented by 
 Lord Campbell to the House of Lords against 
 the occupation of any part of Hyde "Park 
 with the Exhibition building. Lord Brough- 
 am supported the petition with his charac- 
 teristic impetuosity and vehemence. He de- 
 nounced the Attorney-General with indig- 
 nant eloquence because that official had de- 
 clined to file an application to the Court of 
 Chancery for an injunction to stay any pro- 
 ceeding with the proposed building in the 
 park. He denounced the House of Lords 
 itself for what he considered its servile defer- 
 ence to royalty in the matter of the Exhi- 
 bition and its site. He declared that when 
 he endeavored to raise the question there he 
 was received in dead silence ; and he asserted 
 that an effort to bring on a discussion in the 
 House of Commons was received with a 
 silence equally profound and servile. Such 
 facts, he shouted, only showed more pain- 
 fully “ that absolute prostration of the under- 
 standing which takes place even in the minds 
 of the bravest when the word prince is men- 
 tioned in this country !” It is probably true 
 enough that only the influence of a prince 
 could have carried the scheme to success 
 against the storms of opposition that began 
 to blow at various periods and from different 
 points. Undoubtedly a vast number, prob- 
 ably the great majority, of those who sup- 
 ported the enterprise in the beginning did so 
 simply because it was the project of a prince. 
 Their numbers and their money enabled it to 
 be carried on, and secured it the test of the 
 world’s examination and approval. In that 
 sense the very servility which accepts with 
 delight whatever a prince proposes stood the 
 Exhibition in good stead ; a courtier may 
 plead that if English people in general had 
 been more independent and less given to ad- 
 miration of princes, the excellent project de- 
 vised by Prince Albert would never have had 
 a fair trial. Many times during its progress 
 the Prince himself trembled for the success of 
 his scheme. Many a time he must have felt 
 inclined to renounce it or at least to regret 
 that he had ever taken it up. 
 
 Absurd as the opposition to the scheme may 
 now seem, it is certain that a great many 
 sensible persons thought the moment singu- 
 larly inopportune for the gathering of large 
 crowds, and were satisfied that some incon- 
 venient, if not dangerous, public demonstra- 
 tion must be provoked. The smouldering 
 embers of Chartism, they said, were every- 
 where under society’s feet. The crowds of 
 foreigners whom Colonel Sibthorp so dreaded 
 would, calmer people said, naturally include 
 large numbers of the “ Reds” of all Conti- 
 nental nations, who would be only too glad 
 to coalesce with Chartism and discontent of 
 all kinds, for the purpose of disturbing the 
 peace of London. The agitation caused by 
 the Papal aggression was still in full force 
 and flame. By an odd coincidence the first 
 column of the Exhibition building had been 
 set up in Hyde Park almost at the same 
 moment with the issue of the Papal bull es- 
 tablishing a Roman Catholic hierarchy in 
 England. These conditions looked gloomy 
 for the project. “ The opponents of the Ex- 
 hibition,” wrote the Prince himself, “ work 
 with might and main to throw all the old 
 women here into a panic and to drive myself 
 crazy. The strangers, they give out, arc cer- 
 tain to commence a thorough revolution here, 
 to murder Victoria and myself, and to pro- 
 claim the Red Republic in England ; the 
 plague is certain to ensue from the conflu- 
 
74 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ence of such vast multitudes, and to swallow 
 up those whom the increased price of every- 
 thing has not already swept away. For all 
 this I am to be responsible, and against all 
 this I have to make efficient provision.” 
 Most of the Continental sovereigns looked 
 coldly on the undertaking. The King of 
 Prussia took such alarm at the thought of the 
 Red Republicans whom the Exhibition would 
 draw together, that at first he positively pro- 
 hibited his brother, then Prince of Prussia, 
 now German Emperor, from attending the 
 opening ceremonial ; and though he after- 
 wards withdrew the prohibition, he remained 
 full of doubts and fears as to the personal 
 safety of any royal or princely personage 
 found in Hyde Park on the opening day. 
 The Duke of Cambridge, being appealed to 
 on the subject, acknowledged himself also 
 full of apprehensions. The objections to the 
 site continued to grow up to a certain time. 
 “ The Exhibition,” Prince Albert wrote once 
 to Baron Stockmar, his friend and adviser, 
 “ is now attacked furiously by the Times , 
 and the House of Commons is going to drive 
 us out of the Park. There is immense ex- 
 citement on the subject. If we are driven 
 out of the Park the work is done for.” At 
 one time, indeed, this result seemed highly 
 probable ; but public opinion gradually un- 
 derwent a change, and the opposition to the 
 site was defeated in the House of Com- 
 mons by a large majority. 
 
 Even, however, when the question of the 
 site had been disposed of, there remained 
 immense difficulties in the way. The press 
 was not on the whole very favorable to the 
 project ; Punch, in particular, was hardly 
 ever weary of making fun of it. Such a pro- 
 ject, while yet only in embryo, undoubtedly 
 furnished many points on which satire could 
 fasten ; and nothing short of complete suc- 
 cess could save it from falling under a moun- 
 tain of ridicule. No half success would have 
 rescued it. The ridicule was naturally pro- 
 voked and aggravated to an unspeakable de- 
 gree by the hyperbolical expectations and pre- 
 posterous dithyrambics of some of the well- 
 meaning but unwise and somewhat too ob- 
 streperously loyal supporters of the enter- 
 prise. To add to all this, as the time for the 
 opening drew near, some of the foreign di- 
 plomatists in London began to sulk at the 
 whole project. There were small points of 
 objection made about the position and func- 
 tions of foreign ambassadors at the opening 
 ceremonial, and what the Queen and Prince 
 meant for politeness was in one instance at 
 least near being twisted into cause of offence. 
 Up to the last moment it was not quite cer- 
 tain whether an absurd diplomatic quarrel 
 might not have been part of the inaugural 
 ceremonies of the opening day. 
 
 The Prince did not despair, how ever, and the 
 project went on. There was a great deal of 
 difficulty in selecting a plan for the building. 
 Huge structures of brickwork, looking like 
 enormous railway sheds, costly and hideous 
 at once, were proposed ; it seemed almost 
 certain that some one of them must be chos- 
 en. Happily, a sudden inspiration struck 
 Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Paxton, who 
 was then in charge of the Duke of Devon- 
 shire’s superb grounds at Chatsworth. Why 
 not try glass and iron ? he asked himself. 
 Why not build a palace of glass and iron 
 large enough to cover all the intended con- 
 tents of the Exhibition, and which should be 
 at once light, beautiful, and cheap ? Mr. 
 Paxton sketched out his plan hastily, and the 
 idea was eagerly accepted by the Royal Com- 
 missioners. He made many improvements 
 afterwards in his design ; but the palace of 
 glass and iron arose within the specified time 
 on the green turf of Hyde Park. The idea 
 so happily hit upon was serviceable in more 
 ways than one to the success of the Exhi- 
 bition. It made the building itself as much 
 an object of curiosity and wonder as the col- 
 lections under its crystal roof. Of the hun- 
 dreds of thousands who came to the Exhi- 
 
 bition, a goodly proportion were drawn to 
 Hyde Park rather by a wish to see Paxton’s 
 palace of glass than all thew'onders of indus- 
 trial and plastic art that it enclosed. Indeed, 
 Lord Palmerston, writing to Lord Normanby 
 on the day after the opening of the Exhi- 
 bition, said : “ The building itself is far more 
 worth seeing than anything in it, though 
 many of its contents are worthy of admira- 
 tion.” Perhaps the glass building was like 
 the Exhibition project itself in one respect. 
 It did not bring about the revolution which 
 it was confidently expected to create. Glass 
 and iron have not superseded brick and 
 stone, any more than competitions of peace- 
 ful industry have banished arbitrament by 
 war. But the building, like the Exhibition 
 itself, fulfilled admirably its more modest and 
 immediate purpose, and was in that way a 
 complete success. The structure of glass is 
 indeed in every mind inseparably associated 
 with the event and the year. 
 
 The Queen herself has written a very in- 
 teresting account of the success of the open- 
 ing day. Her description is interesting as an 
 expression of the feelings of the writer, the 
 sense of profound relief and rapture, as well 
 as for the sake of the picture it gives of the 
 ceremonial itself. The enthusiasm of the 
 wife over the complete success of the project 
 on which her husband had set his heart and 
 staked his name is simple and touching. If 
 the importance of the undertaking and the 
 amount of fame it was to bring to its author 
 may seem a little overdone, not many readers 
 will complain of the womanly and wifely 
 feeling which could not be denied such fer- 
 vent expression. “ The great event,” wrote 
 the Queen, “ has taken place — a complete 
 and beautiful triumph — a glorious and touch- 
 ing sight, one which I shall ever be proud of 
 for my beloved Albert and my country. . . . 
 The park presented a wonderful spectacle — 
 crowds streaming through it, carriages and 
 troops passing, quite like the Coronation day, 
 and for me the same anxiety — no, much 
 greater anxiety, on account of my beloved 
 Albert. The day was bright, and all bustle 
 and excitement. . . . The Green Park and 
 Hyde Park were one densely crowded mass 
 of human beings, in the highest good humor 
 and most enthusiastic. I never saw Hyde 
 Park look as it did — as far as the eye could 
 reach. A little rain fell just as we started, 
 but before we came near the Crystal Palace 
 the sun shone and gleamed upon the gigantic 
 edifice, upon which the flags of all nations 
 were floating. . . . The glimpse of the tran- 
 sept through the iron gates, the waving 
 palms, flowers, statues, myriads of people 
 filling the galleries and seats around, with 
 the flourish of trumpets as we entered, gave 
 us a sensation which I can never forget, and 
 I felt much moved. . . . The sight as we 
 came to the middle was magical — so vast, so 
 glorious, so touching — one felt, as so many 
 did whom I have since spoken to, filled with 
 devotion — more so than by any service I have 
 ever heard. The tremendous cheers, the joy 
 expressed in every face, the immensity of the 
 building, the mixture of palms, flowers, 
 trees, statues, fountains ; the organ (with two 
 hundred instruments and six hundred voices, 
 which sounded like nothing), and my beloved 
 husband the author of this peace festival, 
 which united tfie industry of all nations of 
 the earth — all this was moving indeed, and it 
 was and is a day to live for ever. God bless 
 my dearest Albert ! God bless my dearest 
 country, which has shown itself so great to- 
 day ! One felt so grateful to the great God, 
 who seemed to pervade all and to bless all.” 
 
 The success of the opening day was indeed 
 undoubted. There were nearly thirty thou- 
 sand people gathered together within the 
 building, and nearly three quarters of a mil- 
 lion of persons lined the way between the Ex- 
 hibition and Buckingham Palace ; and yet 
 no accident whatever occurred, nor had the 
 police any trouble imposed on them by the 
 conduct of anybody in the crowd. “ It was 
 
 impossible,” wrote Lord Palmerston, “ for 
 the invited guests of a lady’s drawing-room 
 to have conducted themselves with more per- 
 fect propriety than did this sea of human 
 beings.” It is needless to say that there 
 were no hostile demonstrations by Red Repub- 
 licans, or malignant Chartists, or infuriated 
 I Irish Catholics. The one thing which es- 
 pecially struck foreign observers, and to 
 which many eloquent pens and tongues bore 
 witness, was the orderly conduct of the 
 people. Nor did the subsequent history of 
 the Exhibition in any way belie the promise 
 of its opening day. It continued to attract 
 delighted crowds to the last, and more than 
 once held within its precincts at one moment 
 nearly a hundred thousand persons, a con- 
 course large enough to have made the popu- 
 lation of a respectable Continental capital. 
 In another way the Exhibition proved even 
 more successful than was anticipated. There 
 had been some difficulty in raising money in 
 the first instance, and it was thought some- 
 thing of a patriotic risk w T hen a few spirited 
 citizens combined to secure the accomplish- 
 ment of the undertaking by means of a guar- 
 antee fund. But the guarantee fund became 
 in the end merely one of the forms and cere- 
 monials of the Exhibition ; for the undertak- 
 ing not onlj- covered its expenses, but left a 
 huge sum of money in the hands of the Royal 
 Commissioners. The Exhibition was closed 
 by Prince Albert on October 15. That at 
 least may be described as the closing day, for 
 it was then that the awards of prizes were 
 made known in presence of the Prince and a 
 large concourse of people. The Exhibition 
 itself had actually been closed to the general 
 public on the eleventh of the month. It has 
 been imitated again and again. It was fol- 
 lowing by an exhibition in Dublin ; an exhi- 
 bition of the paintings and sculptures of all 
 nations in Manchester ; three great exhi- 
 bitions in Paris ; the International Exhibition 
 in Kensington in 1862 — the enterprise too of 
 Prince Albert, although not destined to have 
 his presence at its opening ; an exhibition at 
 Vienna, one in Philadelphia, and various 
 others. Where all nations seem to have 
 agreed to pay Prince Albert’s enterprise the 
 compliment of imitation, it seems superfluous 
 to say that it was a success. Time has so 
 toned down our expectations in regard to 
 these enterprises that no occasion now arises 
 for the feeling of disappointment which was 
 long associated in the minds of once-sanguine 
 persons with the Crystal Palace of Hyde 
 Park. We look on such exhibitions now as 
 useful agencies in the work of industrial de- 
 velopment, and in promoting the intercourse 
 of peoples, and thus co-operating with vari- 
 ous other influences in the general business 
 of civilization . But the impressions produced 
 by the Hyde Park Exhibition were unique. 
 It was the first thing of the kind ; the gather- 
 ing of peoples it brought together was as 
 new, odd, and interesting as the glass build- 
 ing in which the industry of the world was 
 displayed. For the first time in their lives 
 Londoners saw the ordinary aspect of Lon- 
 don distinctly modified and changed by the 
 incursion of foreigners who came to take 
 part in or to look at our Exhibition. Lon- 
 don seemed to be playing at holiday in a 
 strange carnival sort of way during the time 
 the Exhibition was open. ’ The Hyde Park 
 enterprise bequeathed nothing very tangible 
 or distinct to the world, except indeed the 
 palace which, built out of its fabric, not its 
 ruins, so gracefully ornaments one of the soft 
 hills of Sydenham. But the memory of the 
 Exhibition itself is very distinct with all who 
 saw it. None of its followers was exactly 
 like it, or could take its place in the recollec- 
 tion of those who were its contemporaries. 
 In a year made memorable by many political 
 events of the greatest importance, of dis- 
 turbed and tempestuous politics abroad and 
 at home, of the deaths of many illustrious 
 men, and the failure of many splendid hopes, 
 the Exhibition in Hyde Park still holds its 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 75 
 
 place in memory — not for what it brought or 
 accomplished, but simply for itself, its sur- 
 roundings, and its house of glass. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 PALMERSTON. 
 
 The death of Sir Robert Peel had left 
 Lord Palmerston the most prominent if not 
 actually the most influential among the states- 
 men of England. Palmerston’s was a stren- 
 uous self-asserting character. He loved, 
 whenever he had an opportunity, to make a 
 stroke, as he fraquently put it himself, “ off 
 his own bat.” He had given himself up 
 to fhe study of foreign affairs as no minister 
 of his time had done. He had a peculiar 
 capacity for understanding foreign politics 
 and people as well as foreign languages ; and 
 he had come somewhat to pique himself 
 upon his knowledge. As Bacon said that he 
 had taken all learning for his province, Pal- 
 merston seemed to have made up his mind 
 that he had taken all European affairs for 
 his province. His sympathies were marked- 
 ly liberal. As opinions went then, they 
 might have been considered among states- 
 men almost revolutionary ; for the Conserva- 
 tive of our day is to the full as liberal as the 
 average Liberal of 1848 and 1850. In all the 
 popular movements going on throughout the 
 Continent Palmerston’s sympathies were gen- 
 erally with the peoples and against the gov- 
 ernments ; while he had, on the other hand, 
 a very strong contempt, which he took no 
 pains to conceal, even for the very best class 
 of the Continental demagogue. It was not, 
 however, in his sympathies that Palmerston 
 differed from most of his colleagues. He 
 was not more liberal even in his views of for- 
 eign affairs than Lord John Russell ; he was 
 probably not so consistently and on principle 
 a supporter of free and popular institutions. 
 But Lord Palmerston’s energetic, heedless 
 temperament, his „exuberant animal spirits, 
 and his profound confidence in himself and 
 his opinions, made him much more liberal 
 and spontaneous in his expressions of sympa- 
 thy than a man of Russell’s colder nature 
 could well have been. Palmerston seized a 
 conclusion at once, and hardly ever departed 
 from it. He never seemed to care who knew 
 what he thought on any subject. He had 
 a contempt for men of more deliberate 
 temper, and often spoke and wrote as if he 
 thought a man slow in forming an opinion 
 must needs be a dull man, not to say a fool. 
 All opinions not his own be held in good- 
 humored scorn. In some of his letters we 
 find him writing of men of the most un- 
 doubted genius and wisdom, whose views 
 have since stood all the test of time and trial, 
 as if they were mere blockheads for whom 
 no practical man could feel the slightest re- 
 spect. It would be almost superfluous to 
 say, in describing a man of such a nature, 
 that Lord Palmerston sometimes fancied he 
 saw great wisdom and force of character in 
 men for whom neither then nor since did the 
 world in general show much regard. As 
 with a man, so with a cause. Lord Palmer- 
 ston was to all appearance capricious in his 
 sympathies. Calmer and more earnest minds 
 were sometimes offended at what seemed a 
 lack of deep-seated principle in his mind and 
 his policy, even when it happened that he 
 and they were in accord as to the course that 
 ought to be pursued. His levity often 
 shocked them ; his blunt, brusque ways of 
 speaking and writing sometimes gave down- 
 right offence. 
 
 In his later years Lord Palmerston’s man- 
 ner in Parliament and out of it had greatly 
 mellowed and softened and grown more gen- 
 ial He retained all the good spirits and the 
 ready, easy, marvellously telling humor : 
 but he had grown more considerate of the 
 feelings of opponents in debate, and he al- 
 lowed his genuine kindness of heart a freer 
 influence upon his mode of speech. He had 
 grown to prefer on the whole his friend or 
 even his honorable opponent to his joke. 
 
 They who only remember Palmerston in his 
 very later years in the House of Commons, and 
 who can only recall to memory that bright 
 racy humor which never offended, will per- 
 haps find it hard to understand how many ene- 
 mies he made for himself at an earlier period by 
 the levity and flippancy of his manner. Many 
 grave statesmen thought that the levity and 
 flippancy were far less dangerous even when 
 employed in irritating his adversaries in the 
 House of Commons than when exercised in 
 badgering foreign ministers and their govern- 
 ments and sovereigns. Lord Palmerston was 
 unsparing in his lectures to foreign States. 
 He was always admonishing them that they 
 ought to lose no time in at once adopting the 
 principles of government which prevailed in 
 England. He not uncommonly put his ad- 
 monitions in the tone of one who meant to 
 say : “ If you don’t take my advice you will 
 be ruined, and your ruin will serve you right 
 for being such fools.” While, therefore, he 
 was a Conservative in home politics, and 
 never even professed the slightest personal 
 interest in any projects of political reform in 
 England, he got the credit all over the Conti- 
 nent of being a supporter, promoter, and pat- 
 ron of all manner of revolutionary move- 
 ments, and a disturber of the relations be- 
 tween subjects and their sovereigns. 
 
 Lord Palmerston was not inconsistent in 
 thus being a Conservative at home and some- 
 thing like a revolutionary abroad. He was 
 quite satisfied with the state of things in Eng- 
 land. He was convinced that when a people 
 had got a well-limited suffrage and a respect- 
 able House of Commons elected by open 
 vote, a House of Lords, and a constitutional 
 Sovereign, they had got all that in a political 
 sense man has to hope for. He was not a 
 far-seeing man, nor a man who much troub- 
 led himself about what a certain class of writ 
 ers and thinkers are fond of calling “ prob- 
 lems of life.” It did not occur to him to 
 think that as a matter of absolute necessity 
 the very reforms we enjoy in one day are 
 only putting us into a mental condition to as- 
 pire after and see the occasion for further re- 
 forms as the days go on. But he clearly saw 
 that most Continental countries were govern- 
 ed on a system which was not only worn out 
 and decaying, but which was the source of 
 great practical and personal evils to their in- 
 habitants. He desired therefore for every 
 country a political system like that of Great 
 Britain, and neither for Great Britain nor for 
 any other country did he desire anything 
 more. He was, accordingly, looked upon by 
 Continental ministers as a patron of revolu- 
 tion, and by English Radicals as the steady 
 enemy of political reform. Both were right 
 from their own point of view. The familiar 
 saying among Continental Conservatives was 
 expressed in the well-known German lines, 
 which affirm that “ If the devil had a son, 
 he must be surely Palmerston.” On the 
 other hand, the English Radical party re- 
 garded him as the most formidable enemy 
 they had. Mr. Cobden deliberately declared 
 him to be the worst minister that had ever 
 governed England. At a later period, when 
 Lord Palmerston invited Cobden to take 
 office under him, Cobden referred to what he 
 had said of Palmerston, and gave this as a 
 reason to show the impossibility of his serv- 
 ing such a chief. The good-natured states- 
 man only smiled, and observed that another 
 public man who had just joined his Adminis- 
 tration had often said things as hard of him 
 in other days. “Yes,” answered Cobden, 
 quietly, “ but I meant what I said.” 
 
 Palmerston, therefore, had many enemies 
 among European statesmen It is now cer- 
 tain that the Queen frequently winced under 
 the expressions of ill-feeling which were 
 brought to her ears as affecting England, 
 and, as she supposed, herself, and which she 
 believed to have been drawn on her by the 
 inconsiderate and impulsive conduct of Pal- 
 merston. The Prince Consort, on whose ad- 
 vice the Queen very naturally relied, was 
 
 a man of singularly calm and earnest na- 
 ture. He liked to form his opinions deliber- 
 ately and slowly, and disliked expressing any 
 opinion until his mind was well made up. 
 Lord Palmerston, when Secretary for For- 
 eign Affairs, was much in the habit of writ- 
 ing and answering despatches on the spur of 
 the moment, and without consulting either 
 the Queen or his colleagues. Palmerston 
 complained of the long delays which took 
 place on several occasions when, in matters 
 of urgent importance, he waited to submit 
 despatches to the Queen before sending them 
 off. He was of opinion that during the 
 memorable controversy on the Spanish mar- 
 riages the interests of England were once in 
 danger of being compromised by the delay 
 thus forced upon him. He contended too 
 that where the general policy of a state was 
 clearly marked out and well known, it would 
 have been idle to insist that a Foreign Secre- 
 tary capable of performing the duties of his 
 office should wait to submit for the inspection 
 and approval of the Sovereign and liis col- 
 leagues every scrap of paper he wrote on be- 
 fore it was allowed to leave England. If such 
 precautions were needful. Lord Palmerston 
 contended, it could only be because the per- 
 son holding the office of Foreign Secretary 
 was unfit for his post ; and he ought, there- 
 fore, to be dismissed, and some better quali- 
 fied man put in his place. Of course there is 
 some obvious justice in this view of the case. 
 It would perhaps have been unreasonable to 
 expect that, at a time when the business of 
 the Foreign Office had suddenly swelled to 
 unprecedented magnitude, the same rules and 
 formalities could be kept up which had suit- 
 ed slower and less busy days. But the com- 
 plaint made by the Queen was not that Pal- 
 merston failed to consult her on every detail, 
 and to submit every line relating to the or- 
 ganization of the Foreign Office for her ap- 
 proval before he sent it off. The complaint 
 was clear, and full of matter for very grave 
 consideration. The Queen complained that 
 on matters concerning the actual policy of 
 the State Palmerston was in the habit of act- 
 ing on his own independent judgment and 
 authority ; that she found herself more than 
 once thus pledged to a course of policy which 
 she had not had an opportunity of consider- 
 ing, and would not have approved if she had 
 had such an opportunity ; and that she hard- 
 ly ever found any question absolutely intact 
 and uncompromised, when it was submitted 
 to her judgment. The complaint was justi- 
 fied in many cases. Lord Palmerston fre- 
 quently acted in a manner which almost 
 made it seem as if he were purposely ignor- 
 ing the authority of the Sovereign. In part 
 this came from the natural impatience of a 
 quick man confident in his own knowledge 
 of a subject, and chafing at any delay which 
 he thought unnecessary and merely formal. 
 But it is not easy to avoid a suspicion that 
 Lord Palmerston’s rapidity of action some- 
 times had a different explanation. Two 
 impressions seem to have had a place deeply 
 down in the mind of the Foreign Secretary. 
 He appears to have felt sure that, roughly 
 speaking, the sympathies of the English peo- 
 ple were with the Continental movements 
 against the sovereigns, and that the sympa- 
 thies of the English Court were with the sov- 
 ereigns against the popular movements. In 
 the first belief he was undoubtedly right. 
 In the second he was probably right. It is 
 not likely that a man of Prince Albert’s pe- 
 culiar turn of mind could have admitted 
 much sympathy with revolution against con- 
 stituted authority of any kind. Even his 
 Liberalism, undoubtedly a deep and genuine 
 conviction, did not lead him to make much 
 allowance for any disturbing impulses. His 
 orderly intellectual nature, with little of fire 
 or passion in it, was prone to estimate every- 
 thing by the matter in which it stood the 
 test of logical argument. He could under- 
 stand arguing against a bad system better 
 than he could understand taking the risk of 
 
76 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 making things worse by resisting it. Some 
 of the published memoranda or other writ- 
 ings of Prince Albert are full of a curious in- 
 terest as showing the way in which a calm, 
 intellectual, and earnest man could approach 
 some of the burning questions of the day with 
 the belief apparently that the great antagon- 
 isms of systems and of opposing national for- 
 ces could be argued into moderation and per- 
 suaded into compromise. In Prince Albert 
 there were two tendencies counteracting each 
 other. His natural sympathies were mani- 
 festly with the authority of thrones. His ed 
 ucation taught him that thrones can only ex- 
 ist by virtue of their occupants recognizing 
 the fact that they do not exist of their own 
 authority, and taking care that they do not 
 become unsuited to the time. The influence 
 of Prince Albert would therefore be some- 
 thing very different from the impulses and 
 desires of Lord Palmerston. It is hardly to 
 be doubted that Palmerston sometimes acted 
 upon this conviction. He thought he un- 
 derstood better than others not only the ten- 
 dencies of events in foreign politics, but also 
 the tendencies of English public opinion with 
 regard to them. He well knew that so long 
 as he had public opinion with him, no influ- 
 ence could long prevail against him. His 
 knowledge of English public opinion was 
 something like an instinct. It could always 
 be trusted. It had, indeed, no far reach. 
 Lord Palmerston never could be relied upon 
 for a judgment as to the possible changes of 
 a generation or even a few years. But he 
 was an almost infallible guide as to what a 
 majority of the English people were likely to 
 say if asked at the particular moment when 
 any question was under dispute. Palmer- 
 ston never really guided, but always follow- 
 ed, the English public, even in foreign 
 affairs. He was, it seems almost needless to 
 say, an incomparably better judge of the di- 
 rection English sentiment was likely to take 
 than the most acute foreigner put in such a 
 place as Prince Albert’s could possibly hope 
 to be. It may be assumed then that some at 
 least of Lord Palmerston’s actions were dic- 
 tated by the conviction that he had the gene- 
 ral force of that sentiment to sustain him in 
 case his mode of conducting the business of 
 the Foreign Office should ever be called into 
 account. 
 
 A time came when it was called into ac- 
 count. The Queen and the Prince had long 
 chafed under Lord Palmerston’s cavalier 
 way of doing business. So far back as 1849 
 her Majesty had felt obliged to draw the at- 
 tention of the Foreign Secretary to the fact 
 that his office was constitutionally under the 
 control of the Prime Minister, and that the 
 despatches to be submitted for her approval 
 should, therefore, pass through the hands of 
 Lord John Russell. Lord John Russell ap- 
 proved of this arrangement, only suggesting 
 — and the suggestion is of some moment in 
 considering the defence of his conduct after- 
 wards made by Lord Palmerston — that every 
 facility should be given for the transaction of 
 business by the Queen’s attending to the draft 
 despatches as soon as possible after their ar- 
 rival. The Queen accepted the suggestion 
 good-humoredly, only pleading that she 
 should “ not be pressed for an answer within 
 a few minutes, as is done now sometimes. ’ ’ 
 One can see tolerably well what a part of the 
 difficulty was even from these slight hints. 
 Lord Palmerston was rapid in forming his 
 judgments, as in all his proceedings, and 
 when once he had made up his mind was im- 
 patient of any delay which seemed to him 
 superfluous. Prince Albert was slow, delib- 
 erate, reflective, and methodical. Lord Pal- 
 merston was always sure he was right in 
 every judgment he formed, even if it were 
 adopted on the spur of the moment ; Prince 
 Albert loved reconsideration, and was open 
 to new argument and late conviction. How- 
 ever, the difficulty was got over in 1849. 
 Lord Palmerston agreed to every suggestion, 
 and for the time all seemed likely to go 
 
 smoothly. It was only for the time. The 
 Queen soon believed she had reason to com- 
 plain that the new arrangement was not car- 
 ried out. Things were going on, she 
 thought, in just the old way. Lord Palmer- 
 ston dealt as before with foreign courts ac- 
 cording to what seemed best to him at the 
 moment ; and his Sovereign and his colleagues 
 often only knew of some important despatch 
 or instruction when the thing was done and 
 could not be conveniently or becomingly un- 
 done. The Prince, at her Majesty’s request, 
 wrote to Lord John Russeil, complaining 
 strongly of the conduct of Lord Palmerston. 
 The letter declared that Lord Palmerston had 
 failed in his duty towards her, “ and not 
 from oversight or negligence, but upon prin- 
 ciple, and with astonishing pertinacity, 
 against every effort of the Queen. Besides 
 which. Lord Palmerston does not scruple to 
 let it appear in public as if the Sovereign’s 
 negligence in attending to the papers sent to 
 her caused delay and annoyance. ” Even be- 
 fore this it seems that the Queen had drawn 
 up a memorandum to lay down in clear and 
 severe language the exact rules by which the 
 Foreign Secretary must be bound in his 
 dealings with her. The memorandum was 
 not used at that time, as it was thought that 
 the remonstrances of the Sovereign and the 
 Prime Minister alike could hardly fail to 
 have some effect on the Foreign Secretary. 
 This time, however, the Queen appears to 
 have felt that she could no longer refrain ; 
 and accordingly the following important 
 memorandum was addressed by her Majesty 
 to the Prime Minister. It is well worth 
 quoting in full, partly because it became a 
 subject of much interest and controversy 
 afterwards, and partly because of the tone of 
 peculiar sternness, rare indeed from a sover- 
 eign to a minister in our times, in which its 
 instructions are conveyed. 
 
 Osborne, August 12, 1850. 
 
 With reference to the conversation about Lord 
 Palmerston which the Queen had with Lord John 
 Russell the other day, and Lord Palmerston’s disa- 
 vowal that he ever intended any disrespect to her by 
 the various neglects of which she has had so long and 
 so often to complain, she thinks it right, in order to 
 prevent any mistake for the future, to explain what it 
 is she expects from the Foreign Secretary. 
 
 She requires : 
 
 First. That he will distinctly state what he proposes 
 to do in a given case, in order that the Queen may 
 know as distinctly to what she has given her royal 
 sanction. 
 
 Second. Having once given her sanction to a meas- 
 ure, that it be not arbitrarily altered or modified by 
 the Minister ; such an act she mufet consider as failure 
 in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited 
 by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismiss- 
 ing that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of 
 what passes between him and the foreign ministers, 
 before important decisions are taken based upon that 
 intercourse ; to receive the foreign despatches in good 
 time, and to have the drafts for her approval sent to 
 her in sufficient time to make herself acquainted with 
 their contents before they must be sent off. The 
 Queen thinks it best that Lord John Russell should 
 show tills letter to Lord Palmerston . 
 
 The tone of the memorandum was severe, 
 but there was nothing unreasonable in its 
 stipulations. On the contrary, it simply pre- 
 scribed what every one might have supposed 
 to be the elementary conditions on which the 
 duties of a sovereign and a foreign minister 
 can alone be satisfactorily canned on. Custom 
 as well as obvious convenience demanded 
 such conditions. The Duke of Wellington 
 declared that when he was Prime Minister no 
 despatch left the Foreign Office without his 
 seeing it. No sovereign, one would think, 
 could consent to the responsibility of rule on 
 any other terms. We have perhaps got into 
 the habit of thinking, or at least of saying, 
 that the sovereign of a constitutional country 
 only rules through the ministers. But it 
 would be a great mistake to suppose that the 
 sovereign has no constitutional functions 
 whatever provided by our system of govern- 
 ment, and that the sole duty of a monarch is 
 to make a figure in certain state pageantry. 
 It has sometimes been said that the sover- 
 eign in a country like England is only the 
 signet ring of the nation. If this were true, 
 
 I it might be asked with unanswerable force 
 why a veritable signet ring costing a few 
 pounds, and never requiring to be renewed, 
 j would not serve all purposes quite as well 
 and save expense. But the position of the 
 sovereign is not one of meaningless inactiv- 
 ity. The sovereign has a verjr distinct and 
 practical office to fulfil in a constitutional 
 country. The monarch in England is the 
 chief magistrate of the State, specially raised 
 above party and passion and change in order 
 to be able to look with a clearer eye to all 
 that concerns the interests of the nation. Our 
 constitutional system grows and develops it- 
 self year after year as our requirements and 
 conditions change ; and the position of the 
 sovereign, like everything else, has undergone 
 some modification. It is settled now beyond 
 dispute that the sovereign is not to dismiss 
 ministers or a minister simply from personal 
 inclination or conviction, as until a very re- 
 cent day it was the right and the habit of 
 English monarchs to do. The sovereign now 
 retains, in virtue of usage having almost the 
 force of constitutional law, the ministers of 
 whom the House of Commons approves. 
 But the Crown still has the right, in case of 
 extreme need, of dismissing any minister 
 who actually fails to do his duty. The sov- 
 ereign is always supposed to understand the 
 business of the State, to consider its affairs, 
 and to offer an opinion and enforce it by ar- 
 gument on any question submitted by the 
 ministers. When the ministers find that 
 they cannot allow their judgment to bend to 
 that of the sovereign, then indeed the sover- 
 eign gives way or the ministers resign. In 
 all ordinary cases the sovereign gives way. 
 But it was never intended by the English 
 Constitution that the ministers and the coun- 
 try were not to have the benefit of the advice 
 and the judgment of a magistrate who is 
 purposely placed above all the excitements 
 and temptations of party, its triumphs and 
 its reverses, and who is assumed therefore to 
 have no other motive than the good of the 
 State in offering an advice. The sovereign 
 would grossly fail in public duty, and would 
 be practically disappointing the confidence of 
 the nation, who consented to act simply as 
 the puppet of the minister, and to sign 
 mechanically and without question every 
 document he laid on the table. 
 
 In the principles which she laid down there- 
 fore the Queen was strictly right. But the 
 memorandum was none the less a severe and a 
 galling rebuke for the Foreign Secretary. 
 We can imagine with what emotions Lord 
 Palmerston must have received it. He was 
 a proud, self-confident man ; and it came on 
 him just in the moment of his greatest tri- 
 umph. Never before, never since, did Lord 
 Palmerston win so signal and so splendid a 
 victory as that which he had extorted by the 
 sheer force of his eloquence and his genius 
 from a reluctant House of Commons in the 
 Don Pacifico debate. Never probably in 
 our Parliamentary history did a man of years 
 so advanced accomplish such a feat of elo- 
 quence, argument, and persuasion as he had 
 achieved. He stood up before the world the 
 foremost English statesman of the day. It 
 is easy to imagine how deeply he must have 
 felt the rebuke conveyed in the memoran- 
 dum of the Queen. W e know as a matter of 
 fact, from what he himself afterwards said, 
 that he did feel it bitterly. But he kept 
 down his feelings. Whether he was right or 
 wrong in the matter of dispute, he undoubt- 
 edly showed admirable self-control and good- 
 temper in his manner of receiving the repri- 
 mand. He wrote a friendly and good-hu- 
 mored letter to Lord John Russell, saying, 
 
 ‘ ‘ I have taken a copy of this memorandum 
 of the Queen, and will not fail to attend to 
 the directions which it contains.” The let- 
 ter then gave a few lines of explanation 
 about the manner in which delays had arisen 
 in the sending of despatches to the Queen, 
 but promising to return to the old practice, 
 and expressing a hope that if the return re- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 77 
 
 quired an additional clerk or two, the Treas- 
 ury would be liberal in allowing him that as- 
 sistance. Nothing could be more easy and 
 pleasant. It might have seemed the ease of 
 absolute carelessness. But it was nothing of 
 the kind. Lord Palmerston had acted delib- 
 erately and with a purpose. He afterwards 
 explained why he had not answered the re- 
 buke by resigning his office. “ The paper,” 
 he said, “ was written in anger by a lady as 
 well as by a sovereign, and the difference be- 
 tween a lady and a man could not be forgot- 
 ten even in the case of the occupant of the 
 throne.” He had “no reason to suppose 
 that this memorandum would ever be seen 
 by or be known to anybody but the Queen, 
 John Russell, and myself. ’ ’ Again, ‘ ‘ I had 
 lately been the object of violent political at- 
 tack, and had gained a great and signal vic- 
 tory in the House of Commons and in public 
 opinion ; to have resigned then would have 
 been to have given the fruits of victory to 
 antagonists whom I had defeated, and to 
 have abandoned my political supporters at 
 the very moment when by their means I had 
 triumphed.” But beyond all that, Lord 
 Palmerston said that by suddenly resigning 
 “ I should have been bringing for decision at 
 the bar of public opinion a personal quarrel 
 between myself and my Sovereign — a step 
 which no subject ought to take if he can pos- 
 sibly avoid it ; for the result of such a course 
 must be either fatal to him or injurious to 
 the country. If he should prove to be in the 
 wrong, he would be irretrievably condemn- 
 ed ; if the Sovereign should be proved to be 
 in the wrong, the monarchy would suffer.” 
 
 It is impossible not to feel a high respect 
 for the manner in which, having come to 
 this determination, Lord Palmerston at once 
 acted upon it. As he had resolved not to re- 
 sent the rebuke, he would not allow any 
 gleam of feeling to creep into his letter 
 which could show that he felt any resent- 
 ment. Few men could have avoided the 
 temptation to throw into a reply on such an 
 occasion something of the tone of the in- 
 jured, the unappreciated, the martyr, the 
 wronged one who endures much and will not 
 complain. Lord Palmerston felt instinctive- 
 ly the bad taste and unwisdom of such a 
 style of reply. He took his rebuke in the 
 most perfect good humor. His letter must 
 have surprised Lord John Russell. Macau- 
 lay observes that Warren Hastings, confi- 
 dent that he knew best and was acting right- 
 ly, endured the rebukes of the East India 
 Company with a patience which was some- 
 times mistaken for the patience of stupidity. 
 It is not unlikely that when the Prime Min- 
 ister received Lord Palmerston’s reply he 
 may have mistaken its patience for the pa- 
 tience of downright levity and indifference. 
 
 Lord Palmerston went a step farther in the 
 way of conciliation. He asked for an inter- 
 view with Prince Albert, and he explained to 
 the Prince in the most emphatic and indig- 
 nant terms that the accusation against him 
 of being purposely wanting in respect to the 
 Sovereign was absolutely unfounded. 
 
 ‘ ‘ Had it been deserved, he ought to be no 
 longer tolerated in society.” But he does 
 not seem in the course of the interview to 
 have done much more than argue the point 
 as to the propriety and convenience of the 
 system he had lately been adopting in the 
 business of the Foreign Office. 
 
 So for the hour the matter dropped. Other 
 events interfered ; there were many impor- 
 tant questions of domestic policy to be attend- 
 ed to ; and for some time Lord Palmerston’s 
 policy and his way of conducting the busi- 
 ness of the Foreign Office did not invite any 
 particular attention. But the old question 
 was destined to come up again in more seri- 
 ous form than before. 
 
 The failure of the Hungarian rebellion, 
 through the intervention of Russia, called 
 up a wide and deep feeling of regret and in- 
 dignation in this country. The English peo- 
 ple had very generally sympathized with the 
 
 cause of the Hungarians and rejoiced in the 
 victories which up to a certain point the 
 arms of the insurgents had won. When the 
 Hungarians were put down at last, not by 
 the strength of Austria but by the interven- 
 tion of Russia, the anger of Englishmen in 
 general found loud-spoken expression. 
 Louis Kossuth, who had been Dictator of 
 Hungary during the greater part of the insur- 
 rection, and who represented, in the English 
 mind at least, the cause of Hungary and her 
 national independence, came to England. 
 He was about to take up his residence, as he 
 then intended, in the United States, and on 
 his way thither he visited England. He had 
 applied for permission to pass through 
 French territory, and had been refused the 
 favor. The refusal only gave one additional 
 reason to the English public for welcoming 
 him with especial cordiality. He was ac- 
 cordingly received at Southampton, in Bir- 
 mingham, in London, with an enthusiasm 
 such as no foreigner except Garibaldi alone 
 has ever drawn in our time from the English 
 people. There was much in Kossuth him- 
 self as well as in his cause to attract the en- 
 thusiasm of popular assemblages. He had a 
 strikingly handsome face and a stately pres- 
 ence. He was picturesque and perhaps 
 even theatric in his dress and his bearing. 
 He looked like a picture ; all his attitudes 
 and gestures seemed as if they were meant to 
 be reproduced by a painter. He was un- 
 doubtedly one of the most eloquent men who 
 ever addressed an English popular audience. 
 In one of his imprisonments Kossuth had 
 studied the English language chiefly from 
 the pages of Shakespeare. He had mastered 
 our tongue as few foreigners have ever been 
 able to do ; but what he had mastered was not 
 the common colloquial English of the streets 
 and the drawing-rooms. The English he 
 spoke was the noblest in its style from which 
 a student could supply his eloquence : Kos- 
 suth spoke the English of Shakespeare. He 
 could address a public meeting for an hour 
 or more with a fluency not inferior seemingly 
 to that of Gladstone, with a measured dig- 
 nity and well-restrained force that were not 
 unworthy of Bright ; and in curiously ex- 
 pressive, stately, powerful, pathetic English 
 which sounded as if it belonged to a higher 
 time and to loftier interests than ours. 
 Viewed as a mere performance the achieve- 
 ment of Kossuth was unique. It may well 
 be imagined what the effect was on a popular 
 audience when such eloquence was poured 
 forth in glowing eulogy of a cause with 
 which they sympathized, and in denuncia- 
 tion of enemies and principles they detested. 
 It was impossible not to be impressed by the 
 force of some of the striking and dramatic 
 passages in Kossuth’s fervid, half-oriental ora- 
 tions. He stretched out his right hand and 
 declared that “ the time was when I held the 
 destinies of the House of Hapsburg in the 
 hollow of that hand !” He apostrophized 
 those who fought and fell in the rank and 
 file of Hungary’s champions as “unnamed 
 demi gods.” He prefaced a denunciation of 
 the Papal policy % an impassioned lament 
 over the brief hopes that the Pope was about 
 to head the Liberal movement in Italy, and 
 reminded his hearers that “ there was a time 
 when the name of Pio Nono, coupled with 
 that of Louis Kossuth, was thundered in vivas 
 along the sunny shores of the Adriatic.” 
 Every appeal was vivid and dramatic ; every 
 allusion told. Throughout the whole there 
 ran the thread of one distinct principle of in- 
 ternational policy to which Kossuth endeav- 
 ored to obtain the assent of the English 
 people. This was the principle that if one 
 State intervenes in the domestic affairs of an- 
 other for the purpose of putting down revo- 
 lution, it then becomes the right, and may 
 even be the duty, of any third State to throw 
 in the weight of her sword against the un- 
 justifiable intervention. A3 a principle this 
 is nothing more than some of the ablest and 
 most thoughtful Englishmen had advocated 
 
 before and have advocated since. But in 
 Kossuth’s mind and in the understanding of 
 those wdio heard him, it meant that England 
 ought to declare war against Russia or Aus- 
 tria, or both ; the former for having inter- 
 vened between the Emperor of Austria and 
 the Hungarians, and the latter for having in- 
 vited and profited by the intervention. 
 
 The presence of Kossuth and the reception 
 he got excited a wild anger and alarm among 
 Austrian statesmen. The Austrian Minister 
 was all sensitiveness and remonstrance. The 
 relations between this country and Austria 
 seemed to become every day more and more 
 strained. Lord Palmerston regarded the an- 
 ger and the fears of Austria with a contempt 
 which he took no pains to conceal. Before 
 the Hungarian exile had reached this coun- 
 try, while he was still under the protection 
 of the Sultan of Turkey, and Austria was in 
 wild alarm lest he should be set at liberty and 
 should come to England, Lord Palmerston 
 wrote to a British diplomatist saying, “ What 
 a childish, silly fear this is of Kossuth ! 
 What great harm could he do to Austria 
 while in France or England ? He would be 
 the hero of half a dozen dinners in England, 
 at which would be made speeches not more 
 violent than those which have been made on 
 platforms here within the last four months, 
 and he would soon sink into comparative ob- 
 scurity ; while on the other hand, so long as 
 he is a State detenu in Turkey he is a martyr 
 and the object of never-ceasing interest.” 
 Lord Palmerston understood thoroughly the 
 temper of his countrymen in general. The 
 English public never had any serious notion 
 of going to war with Austria in obedience to 
 Kossuth’s appeal. They sympathized gen- 
 erally with Kossuth’s cause, or with the 
 cause which they understood him to repre- 
 sent ; they were taken with his picturesque 
 appearance and his really wonderful elo- 
 quence ; they wanted a new hero, and Kos- 
 suth seemed positively cut out to supply the 
 want. The enthusiasm cooled down after a 
 while, as was indeed inevitable. The time 
 was not far off when Kossuth was to make 
 vain appeals to almost empty halls, and when 
 the eloquence that once could cram the larg- 
 est buildings with excited admirers was to 
 call aloud to solitude. There came a time 
 when Kossuth lived in Englaud forgotten 
 and unnoticed ; when his passing away from 
 England was unobserved as his presence 
 there had long been. There seems, one can 
 hardly help saying, something cruel in this 
 way of suddenly taking up the representative 
 of some foreign cause, the spokesman of 
 some “ mission and then, when he has 
 been filled with vain hopes, letting him drop 
 down to disappointment and neglect. It was 
 not perhaps the fault of the English people if 
 Kossuth mistook, as many another man in 
 like circumstances has done, the meaning of 
 English popular sympathy. The English 
 crowds who applauded Kossuth at first meant 
 nothing more than general sympathy with 
 any hero of Continental revolution, and per- 
 sonal admiration for the eloquence of the 
 man who addressed them. But Kossuth did 
 not thus accept the homage paid to him. No 
 foreigner could have understood it in his 
 place. Lord Palmerston understood it thor- 
 oughly, and knew what it meant, and how 
 long it would last. 
 
 The time, however, had not yet come when 
 the justice of Lord Palmerston’s words was 
 to be established. Kossuth was the hero of 
 the hour, the comet of the season. The Aus- 
 trian statesmen were going on as if every 
 word spoken at a Kossuth meeting were a 
 declaration of war against Austria. Lord 
 Palmerston was disposed to chuckle over the 
 anger thus displayed. “ Kossuth’s recep- 
 tion,” he wrote to his brother, “ must have 
 been gall and wormwood to the Austrians 
 and to the absolutists generally.” Some of 
 Lord Palmerston’s colleagues, however, be- 
 came greatly alarmed when it was reported 
 that the Foreign Minister was about to re- 
 
78 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ceive a visit from Kossuth in person to thank 
 him for the sympathy and protection which 
 England had accorded to the Hungarian ref- 
 ugees while they were still in Turkey, and 
 without which it is only too likely that they 
 would have been handed over to Austria or 
 Russia. It was thought that for the Foreign 
 Secretary to receive a formal visit of thanks 
 from Kossuth would be regarded by Austria 
 as a recognition by England of the justice of 
 Kossuth’s cause and an expression of censure 
 against Austria. If Kossuth were received 
 by Lord Palmerston, the Austrian ambassa- 
 dor, it was confidently reported, would leave 
 England. Lord John Russell took alarm, 
 and called a meeting of the Cabinet to 
 consider the momentous question. Lord 
 Palmerston reluctantly consented to ap- 
 pease the alarms of his colleagues by 
 promising to avoid an interview with Kos- 
 suth. 
 
 It does not seem to us that there was much 
 dignity in the course taken by the Cabinet. 
 Lord Palmerston actually used, and very pro- 
 perly used, all the influence England could 
 command to protect the Hungarian refugees 
 in Turkey. He had intimated very distinct- 
 ly, and with the full approval of England, 
 that he would use still stronger measures if 
 necessary to protect at once the Sultan and 
 the refugees. It seems to us that, having 
 done this openly, and compelled Russia and 
 Austria to bend to his urgency, there could 
 be little harm in his receiving a visit from one 
 of the men whom he had thus protected. 
 Austria’s sensibilities must have been of a 
 peculiar nature indeed if they could bear 
 Lord Palmerston’s very distinct and ener- 
 getic intervention between her and her in- 
 tended victim, but could not bear to hear that 
 the rescued victim had paid Lord Palmer- 
 ston a formal visit of gratitude. At all 
 events, it does not seem as if an English min- 
 ister was bound to go greatly out of his way 
 to conciliate such very eccentric and morbid 
 sensibilities. We owe to a foreign state with 
 which we are on friendly terms a strict and 
 honorable neutrality. Our ministers are 
 bound by courtesy, prudence, and good sense 
 not to obtrude any expression of their opin- 
 ion touching the internal dissensions of a for- 
 eign state on the representatives of that state 
 or the public. But they are not by any 
 means bound to treat the enemies of every 
 foreign state as our enemies. They are not 
 expected to conciliate the friendship of Aus- 
 tria, for example, by declaring that any one 
 who is disliked by the Emperor of Austria 
 shall never be admitted to speech of them. 
 If Kossuth had come as the professed repre- 
 sentative of an established government, and 
 had sought an official interview with Lord 
 Palmerston in that capacity, then indeed it 
 would have been proper for the English For- 
 eign Secretary to refuse to receive him. Our 
 ministers, with perfect propriety, refused to 
 receive Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell, the emis- 
 saries of the Southern Confederation, as offi- 
 cial representatives of any state. But it is 
 absurd to suppose that when the civil war 
 was over in America an English statesman in 
 office would be bound to decline receiving a 
 visit from Mr. Jefferson Davis. We know, 
 in fact, that the ex-King of Naples, the ex- 
 King of Hanover, Don Carlos, and the royal 
 representatives of various lost causes, are 
 constantly received by English ministers and 
 by fhe Queen of England, and no representa- 
 tives of any of the established governments 
 would think of offering a remonstrance. If 
 the Emperor of Austria was likely to be 
 offended by Lord Palmerston’s receiving a 
 visit from Kossuth, the only course for an 
 English minister, as it seems to us, was to 
 leave him to be offended, and to recover 
 from his anger whenever he chose to allow 
 common sense to resume possession of his 
 mind. The Queen of England might as well 
 have taken offence at the action of the 
 American Government, who actually gave, 
 not merely private receptions, but public ap- 
 
 pointments, to Irish refugees after the out- 
 break of 1848. 
 
 Lord Palmerston, however, gave way, and 
 did not receive the visit from Kossuth. The 
 hoped-for result, that of sparing the sensibili- 
 ties of the Austrian Government, was not at- 
 tained. In fact, things turned out a great 
 deal worse than they might have done if the 
 interview between Lord Palmerston and Kos- 
 suth had been quietly allowed to come off. 
 Meetings were held to express sympathy 
 with Kossuth, and addresses were voted to 
 Lord Palmerston thanking him for the influ- 
 ence he had exerted in preventing the sur- 
 render of Kossuth to Austria. Lord Pal- 
 merston consented to receive these addresses 
 from the hands of deputations at the Foreign 
 Office. The deputations represented certain 
 metropolitan parishes, and were the expo- 
 nents of markedly Radical opinions. Some of 
 the addresses contained strong language with 
 reference to the Austrian Government and 
 the Austrian Sovereign. Lord Palmerston 
 observed in his reply that there were expres- 
 sions contained in the addresses with which 
 he could hardly be expected to concur ; but 
 he spoke in a manner which conveyed the 
 idea that his sympathies generally were with 
 the cause which the deputations had adopt- 
 ed. This was the speech containing a phrase 
 which was identified with Palmerston’s 
 name, and held to be specially characteristic 
 of his way of speaking, and indeed of think- 
 ing, for many years after — in fact to the 
 close of his career. The noble lord told the 
 deputation that the past crisis was one which 
 required on the part of the British Govern- 
 ment much generalship and judgment ; and 
 that ‘ ‘ a good deal of judicious bottle-hold- 
 ing was obliged to be brought into play.” 
 The phrase “ bottle-holding,” borrowed 
 from the prize ring, offended a good many 
 persons who thought the past crisis far too 
 grave, and the issues it involved too stern, to 
 be properly described in language of such 
 levity. But the general public were amused 
 and delighted by the words, and the judi- 
 cious bottle-holder became more of a popular 
 favorite than ever. Some of the published 
 reports put this a good deal more strongly 
 than Lord Palmerston did, or at least than 
 he intended to do ; and he always insisted 
 that he said no more to the deputations than 
 he had often said in the House of Commons ; 
 and that he had expressly declared he could 
 not concur in some of the expressions con- 
 tained in the addresses. Still, the whole pro- 
 ceeding considerably alarmed some of Lord 
 Palmerston’s colleagues, and was regarded 
 with distinct displeasure by the Queen and 
 Prince Albert. The Queen specially re- 
 quested that the matter should be brought be- 
 fore a Cabinet Council. Lord John Russell 
 accordingly laid the whole question before 
 his colleagues, and the general opinion seem- 
 ed to be that Lord Palmerston had acted 
 with want of caution. No formal resolution 
 was adopted. It was thought that the gene- 
 ral expression of opinion from his colleagues 
 and the known displeasure of the Queen 
 would be enough to impress the necessity for 
 greater prudence on the mind of the Foreign 
 Secretary. Lord John Russell, in communi- 
 cating with her Majesty as to the proceedings 
 of the Cabinet Council, expressed a hope that 
 “ it will have its effect upon Lord Palmer- 
 ston, to whom Lord John Russell has written 
 urging the necessity of a guarded conduct in 
 the present very critical condition of Eu- 
 rope.” This letter was not written when 
 startling evidence was on its way to show 
 that the irrepressible Foreign Secretary had 
 been making a stroke off his own bat again ; 
 and a stroke this time of capital importance 
 in the general game of European politics. 
 The possible indiscretion of Lord Palmer- 
 ston’s dealings with a deputation or two 
 from Finsbury and Islington became a mat- 
 ter of little interest when the country was 
 called upon to consider the propriety of the 
 I Foreign Secretary’s dealings with the new 
 
 ruler of a new state system, with the author 
 of the coup d’etat. 
 
 The news of the coup d’etat took England 
 by surprise. A shock went through the 
 whole country. Never probably was pub- 
 lic opinion more unanimous, for the hour 
 at least, than in condemnation of the stroke 
 of policy ventured on by Louis Napoleon, 
 and the savage manner in which it was car- 
 ried to success. After a while no doubt a 
 considerable portion of the English public 
 came to look more leniently on what had 
 been done. Many soon grew accustomed to 
 the story of the massacres along the Boule- 
 vards of Paris, and lost all sense of their hor- 
 ror. Some disposed of the whole affair after 
 the satisfactory principle so commonly adopt- 
 ed by English people in judging of foreign 
 affairs, and assumed that the system intro- 
 duced by Louis Napoleon was a very good 
 sort of thing — for the French. After a while 
 a certain admiration, not to say adulation, of 
 Louis Napoleon, began to be a kind of faith 
 with many Englishmen, and the coup d’etat 
 was condoned and even approved by them. 
 But there can be no doubt that when the 
 story first came to be told in England, the 
 almost universal voice of opinion condemned 
 it as strongly as nearly all men of genuine 
 enlightenment and feeling condemned it then 
 and since. The Queen was particularly 
 anxious that nothing should be said by the 
 British ambassador to commit us to any appro- 
 val of what had been done. On December 4 
 the Queen wrote to Lord John Russell from 
 Osborne, expressing her desire that Lord 
 Normanby, our ambassador at Paris, should 
 be instructed to remain entirely passive and 
 say no word that might be misconstrued into 
 approval of the action of the Prince Presi- 
 dent. The Cabinet met that same day and 
 decided that it was expedient to follow most 
 closely her Majesty’s instructions. But they 
 decided also, and very properly, that there 
 was no reason for Lord Normanby suspend- 
 ing his diplomatic functions. Lord Norman- 
 by had in fact applied for instructions on this 
 point. Next day Lord Palmerston, as 
 Foreign Secretary, wrote to Lord Normanby, 
 informing him that he was to make no change 
 in his diplomatic relations with the French 
 Government. Lord Normanby’s reply to 
 this despatch created a startling sensation. 
 Our ambassador wrote to say that when he 
 called on the French Minister for Foreign 
 Affairs to inform him that he had been in- 
 structed by her Majesty’s Government not to 
 make any change in his relations with the 
 French Government, the Minister, M. Tur- 
 got, told him that he had heard two days be- 
 fore from Count Walewski, the French am- 
 bassador in London, that Lord Palmerston 
 had expressed to him his entire approval of 
 what Louis Napoleon had done, and his con- 
 viction that the Prince President could not 
 have acted otherwise. It would not be easy 
 to exaggerate the sensation produced among 
 Lord Palmerston’s colleagues by this astound- 
 ing piece of news. The Queen wrote at once 
 to Lord John Russell, asking him if he knew 
 anything about the approval which ‘‘the 
 French Government pretend to have re- 
 ceived declaring that she could not “ be- 
 lieve in the truth of the assertion, as such an 
 approval given by Lord Palmerston would 
 have been in complete contradiction to the 
 line of strict neutrality and passiveness which 
 the Queen had expressed her desire to see fol- 
 lowed with regard to the late convulsions at 
 Paris.” Lord John Russell replied that he 
 had already written to Lord Palmerston, 
 
 ‘ ‘ saying that he presumed there was no truth 
 in the report.” The reply of Lord Palmer- 
 ston was delayed for what Lord John Russell 
 thought an unreasonable length of time at 
 such a crisis ; but when it came it left no 
 doubt that Lord Palmerston had expressed to 
 Count Walewski his approval of the coup 
 d’etat. Lord Palmerston observed indeed 
 that Walewski had probably given to M. Tur- 
 got a somewhat highly colored report of 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 79 
 
 what he had said, and that the report had 
 lost nothing in passing from M. Turgot to 
 Lord Normanby ; but the substance of the 
 letter was a full admission that Lord Palmer- 
 ston approved of what had been done, and 
 had expressed his approval to Count Walew- 
 ski. The letters of explanation which the 
 Foreign Minister wrote on the subject, 
 whether to Lord Normanby or to Lord John 
 Russell, were elaborate justifications of the 
 coup d’etat ; they were in fact exactly such 
 arguments as a minister of Louis Naploeon 
 might with great propriety address to a 
 foreign Court. They were full of an undis- 
 guised and characteristic contempt for any one 
 who could think otherwise on the subject 
 than as Lord Palmerston thought. In reply- 
 ing to Lord John Russell the contempt was 
 expressed in a quiet sneer ; in the letters to 
 Lord Normanby it was obtrusively and 
 offensively put forward. Lord John Russell 
 in vain endeavored to fasten Palmerston’s 
 attention on the fact that the question was 
 not whether the action of Louis Napoleon 
 was historically justifiable, but whether the 
 conduct of the English Foreign Minister in 
 expressing approval of it without the knowl- 
 edge and against the judgment of the Queen 
 and his colleagues was politically justifiable. 
 Lord Palmerston simply returned to his de- 
 fence of Louis Napoleon and his assertion 
 that the Prince President was only anticipat- 
 ing the intrigues of the Orleans family and 
 the plans of the Assembly. Lord Palmerston 
 indeed gave a very minute account of a plot 
 among the Orleans princes for a military 
 rising against Louis Napoleon. No evidence 
 of the existence of any such plot has ever 
 been discovered. Louis Napoleon never 
 pleaded the existence of such a plot in his 
 own justification ; it is now, we believe, uni- 
 versally admitted that Lord Palmerston was 
 for once the victim of a mere canard. But 
 even if there had been an Orleanist plot, or 
 twenty Orleanist plots, it never has been part 
 of the duty or the policy of an English Gov- 
 ernment to express approval of anything and 
 everything that a foreign ruler may do to 
 anticipate or put down a plot against him. 
 The measures may be unjustifiable in their 
 principle or in their severity ; the plot may 
 be of insignificant importance, utterly inade- 
 quate to excuse any extraordinary measures. 
 The English Government is not in ordinary 
 cases called upon to express any opinion 
 whatever. It had in this case deliberately 
 decided that all expression of opinion should 
 be scrupulously avoided, lest by any chance 
 the French Government should be led to be- 
 lieve that England approved of what had 
 been done. 
 
 Lord Palmerston endeavored to draw a dis- 
 tinction between the expressions of a Foreign 
 Secretary in conversation with an ambassador, 
 and a formal declaration of opinion. But it 
 is clear that the French ambassador did not 
 understand Lord Palmerston to be merely 
 indulging in the irresponsible gossip of pri- 
 vate life., and that Lord Palmerston never 
 said a word to impress him with the belief 
 that their conversation had that colorless and 
 unmeaning character. In any case it was 
 surely a piece of singular indiscretion on the 
 part of a Foreign Minister to give to the 
 French ambassador, even in private conver- 
 sation, an unqualified opinion in favor of a 
 stroke of policy of which the British Govern- 
 ment as a whole, and indeed with the one 
 exception of Lord Palmerston, entirely dis- 
 approved. To give such an opinion without 
 qualification or explanation was to mislead 
 the French ambassador in the grossest man- 
 ner, and to send him away, as in fact he was 
 sent, under the impression that the conduct 
 of his chief had the approval of the Sovereign 
 and Government of England. Let it be re- 
 membered further that the Foreign Secretary 
 who did this had been again and again re- 
 buked for acting on his own responsibility, 
 for saying and doing things which pledged, 
 or seemed to pledge, the responsibility of the 
 
 Government without any authority, that a 
 formal threat of dismissal actually hung over 
 his head in the event of his repeating such 
 indiscretions, and we shall be better able to 
 form some idea of the sensation which was 
 created in England by the revelation of Lord 
 Palmerston’s conduct. Many of his col- 
 leagues had cordially sympathized with his 
 views on the occasion of former indiscre- 
 tions ; and even while admitting that he had 
 been indiscreet, yet acknowledged to them- 
 selves that their opinion on the broad ques- 
 tion involved was not different from his. 
 But even these drew back from any approval 
 of his conduct in regard to the coup d’etat. 
 The almost universal judgment was that he 
 had gone surprisingly wrong. Not a few, 
 finding it impossible to account otherwise for 
 such a proceeding, came to the conclusion 
 that he must have been determined somehow 
 to bring about a rupture with his colleagues 
 of the Cabinet, and had chosen this high- 
 handed assertion of his will as the best means 
 of flinging his defiance in their teeth. 
 
 Lord John Russell made up his mind. He 
 came to the conclusion that he could no longer 
 go on with Lord Palmerston as a colleague 
 in the Foreign Office, and he signified his 
 decision to Lord Palmerston himself. 
 “ While I concur, ” thus Lord John Russell 
 wrote, “ in the foreign policy of which you 
 have been the adviser, and much as I admire 
 the energy and ability with which it has been 
 carried into effect, I cannot but observe that 
 misunderstandings perpetually renewed, vio- 
 lations of prudence and decorum too fre- 
 quently repeated, have marred the effects 
 which ought to have followed from a sound 
 policy and able administration. I am there- 
 fore most reluctantly compelled to come to 
 the conclusion that the conduct of foreign 
 affairs can no longer be left in your hands 
 with advantage to the country. ’ ’ Rather un- 
 fortunately, Lord John Russell endeavored 
 to soften the blow by offering, if Lord Palmer- 
 ston should be willing, to recommend him to 
 the Queen to fill the office of Lord- Lieutenant 
 of Ireland. This was a proposal which we 
 agree with Mr. Evelyn Ashley, Lord Palmer- 
 ston’s biographer, in regarding as almost 
 comical in its character. Lord Palmerston’s 
 whole soul was in foreign affairs. He had 
 never affected any particular interest in Irish 
 business. He cared little even for the home 
 politics of England ; it was out of the ques- 
 tion to suppose that he would consent to bury 
 himself in the Viceregal Court of Dublin and 
 occupy his diplomatic talents in composing 
 disputes for precedence between Protestant 
 deans and Catholic bishops, and in doling out 
 the due proportion of invitations to the vari- 
 ous ranks of aspiring traders and shopkeepers 
 and their wives. Lord Palmer ston declined 
 the offer with open contempt, and indeed it 
 can hardly be supposed for a moment that 
 Lord John Russell expected he would have 
 seriously entertained it. The quarrel was 
 complete ; Lord Palmerston ceased for the 
 time to be Foreign Secretary, and his place 
 was taken by Lord Granville. 
 
 Seldom has a greater sensation been pro- 
 duced by the removal of a minister. The 
 effect which was created all over Europe was 
 probably just what Lord Palmerston himself 
 would have desired ; the belief prevailed 
 everywhere that he had been sacrificed to the 
 monarchical and reactionary influences all 
 over the Continent. The statesmen of Europe 
 were under the impression that Lord Palmer- 
 ston was put out of office as an evidence that 
 England was about to withdraw from her 
 former attitude of sympathy with the popu- 
 lar movements of the Continent. Lord Pal- 
 merston himself fell under a delusion which 
 seems marvellous in a man possessed of his 
 clear, strong common sense. He conceived 
 that lie had been sacrificed to reactionary in- 
 trigue. He wrote to his brother to say that 
 the real ground for his dismissal was a 
 “ weak truckling to the hostile intrigues of 
 the Orleans family, Austria, Russia, Saxony, 
 
 and Bavaria, and in some degree of the pres- 
 ent Prussian Government.” “ All these 
 parties,” he said, ‘‘found their respective 
 views and systems of policy thwarted by the 
 course pursued by the British Government, 
 and they thought that if they could remove 
 the minister they would change the policy. 
 They had for a long time past effectually 
 poisoned the mind of the Queen and Prince 
 against me, and John Russell giving way 
 rather encouraged than discountenanced the 
 desire of the Queen to remove me from the 
 Foreign Office.” So strongly did the idea 
 prevail that an intrigue of foreign diploma- 
 tists had overthrown Palmerston, that the 
 Russian ambassador, Baron Brunnow, took 
 the very ill-advised step of addressing to Lord 
 John Russell a disclaimer of any participation 
 in such a proceeding. The Queen made a 
 proper comment on the letter of Baron 
 Brunnow by describing it as “ very pre- 
 suming,” inasmuch as it insinuated the pos- 
 sibility “ of changes of governments in this 
 country taking place at the instigation of 
 foreign ministers.” Lord Palmerston was of 
 course entirely mistaken in supposing that 
 any foreign interference had contributed to 
 his removal from the Foreign Office. The 
 only wonder is how a man so experienced as 
 he could have convinced himself of such a 
 thing ; at least it would be a wonder if one 
 did not know that the most experienced 
 author or artist can always persuade himself 
 that a disparaging critique is the result of 
 personal and malignant hostility. But that 
 the feeling of the Queen and the Prince had 
 long been against him can hardly admit of 
 dispute. Prince Albert seems not to have 
 taken any pains to conceal his dislike and dis- 
 trust of Palmerston. Nearly two years be- 
 fore, when the French ambassador was re- 
 called for a time, the Prince wrote to Lord 
 John Russell to say that both the Queen and 
 himself were exceedingly sorry to hear of the 
 recall ; adding, ‘‘We are not surprised, how- 
 ever, that Lord Palmerston’s mode of doing 
 business should not be borne by the suscepti- 
 ble French Government with the same good- 
 humor and forbearance as by his colleagues. ” 
 At the moment when Lord John Russell re- 
 solved on getting rid of Lord Palmerston, 
 Prince Albert wrote to him to say that ‘ ‘ the 
 sudden termination of your difference with 
 Lord Palmerston has taken us much by sur- 
 prise, as we were wont to see such differences 
 terminate in his carrying his points, and leav- 
 ing the defence of them to his colleagues, and 
 the discredit to the Queen.” It is clear from 
 this letter alone that the Court was set against 
 Lord Palmerston at that time. The Court 
 ] was sometimes right where Palmerston was 
 | wrong ; but the fact that he then knew him- 
 self to be in antagonism to the Court is of 
 importance both in judging of his career and 
 j in estimating the relative strength of forces 
 j in the politics of England. 
 
 | Lord Palmerston then was dismissed. The 
 meeting of Parliament took place on the 3d 
 of February following, 1852. It would be 
 superfluous to say that the keenest anxiety 
 was felt to know the full reasons of the 
 sudden dismissal. To quote the words used 
 by Mr. Roebuck, “ The most marked person 
 in the Administration, he around whom all 
 the party battles of the Administration had 
 been fought, whose political existence had 
 been made the political existence of the Gov- 
 ernment itself, the person on whose being in 
 office the Government rested their existence 
 as a government, was dismissed ; their right 
 hand was cut off, their most powerful arm 
 was taken away, and at the critical time 
 when it was most needed.” The House of 
 Commons was not long left to wait for an 
 explanation. Lord John Russell made a long 
 speech, in which he went into the whole his- 
 tory of the differences between Lord Palmer- 
 ston and his colleagues ; and, what was more 
 surprising to the House, into a history of the 
 late Foreign Secretary’s differences with his 
 Sovereign, and the threat of dismissal which 
 
80 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 liad so loug been hanging over his head. 
 The Prime Minister read to the House the 
 Queen’s memorandum, which we have already 
 quoted. Lord John Russell’s speech was a 
 great success. Lord Palmerston’s was, even 
 in the estimation of his closest friends, a fail- 
 ure. Par different, indeed, was the effect it 
 produced from the almost magical influence 
 of that wonderful speech on the “ Don Pa- 
 cifico” question, which had compelled even 
 unconvinced opponents to genuine admira- 
 tion. Palmerston seemed to have practically 
 no defence. He only went over again the 
 points put by him in the correspondence al- 
 ready noticed ; contended that on the whole 
 he had judged rightly of the French crisis, 
 and that he could not help forming an opinion 
 on it, and so forth. Of the Queen’s memo- 
 randum he said nothing. He did not even 
 attempt to explain how it came about that, 
 having received so distinct and severe an in- 
 junction, he had ventured deliberately to dis- 
 regard it in a matter of the greatest national 
 importance. Some of his admirers were of 
 opinion then and long after that the reading 
 of the memorandum must have come on him 
 by surprise ; that Lord John Russell must 
 have sprung a mine upon him ; and that 
 Palmerston was taken unfairly and at a dis- 
 advantage. But it is certain that Lord John 
 Russell gave notice to his late colleague of 
 his intention to read the memorandum of the 
 Queen. Besides, Lord Palmerston was one 
 of the most ready and self-possessed speakers 
 that ever addressed the House of Commons. 
 During the very reading of the memorandum 
 he could have found time to arrange his 
 ideas, and to make out some show of a case 
 for himself. The truth, we believe, is that 
 Lord Palmerston deliberately declined to 
 make any reply to that part of Lord John 
 Russell’s speech which disclosed the letter 
 from the Queen. He made up his mind that 
 a dispute between a sovereign and a subject 
 would be unbecoming of both ; and he passed 
 over the memorandum in deliberate silence. 
 He doubtless felt convinced that, even though 
 such discretion involved him for the moment 
 in seeming defeat, it would in the long run 
 reckon to liis credit and his advantage. Lord 
 Dalling, better known as Sir Henry Bul- 
 wer, was present during the debate, and 
 formed an opinion of Palmerston’s conduct 
 which seems in every way correct and far- 
 seeing. “ I must say,” Lord Dalling writes, 
 ‘ ‘ that I never admired him so much as at this 
 crisis. He evidently thought he had been ill- 
 treated ; but I never heard him make an un- 
 fair or irritable remark, nor did he seem in 
 anywise stunned by the blow he had received, 
 or dismayed by the isolated position in which 
 he stood. I should say that he seemed to 
 consider that he had a quarrel put upon him 
 which it was his wisest course to close by 
 receiving the fire of his adversary and not re- 
 turning it. He could not in fact have gained 
 a victory against the Premier on the ground 
 which Lord John Russell had chosen for the 
 combat, which would not have been more 
 permanently disadvantageous to him than a 
 defeat. The faults of which he had been 
 accused did not touch his own honor nor that 
 of his country. Let them be admitted and 
 there was an end of the matter. By and by 
 an occasion would probably arise, in which 
 he might choose an advantageous occasion 
 for giving battle, and he was willing to wait 
 calmly for that occasion.” 
 
 Lord Dalling judged accurately so far as 
 his judgment went. But while we agree 
 with him in thinking that Lord Palmerston 
 refrained from returning his adversary’s fire 
 for the reasons Lord Dalling has given, we 
 are strongly of opinion that other reasons 
 too influenced Palmerston. He knew that 
 he was not at that time much liked or trusted 
 by the Queen and Prince Albert. He was 
 not sorry that the fact should be made known 
 to the world. He thoroughly understood 
 English public opinion, and was not above 
 taking advantage of its moods and its preju- 
 
 dices. He did not think a statesman would 
 stand any the worse in the general estimation 
 of the English public then because it was 
 known that he was not admired by Prince 
 Albert. 
 
 But the almost universal opinion of the 
 House of Commons and of the clubs was that 
 Lord Palmerston’s career was closed. 
 “ Palmerston is smashed !” was the common 
 saying of the clubs. A night or two after the 
 debate Lord Dalling met Mr. Disraeli on the 
 staircase of the Russian Embassy, and Dis- 
 raeli remarked to him that “ there was a 
 Palmerston.” 
 
 Lord Palmerston evidently did not think 
 so. The letters he wrote to friends immedi- 
 ately after his fall show him as jaunty and 
 full of confidence as ever. He was quite 
 satisfied with the way things had gone. He 
 waited calmly for what he called, a few days 
 afterwards, “ my tit-for-tat with John Rus- 
 sell,” which came about indeed sooner than 
 even he himself could well have expected. 
 
 We have not hesitated to express our opin- 
 ion that throughout the whole of this partic- 
 ular dispute Lord Palmerston was in the 
 wrong. He was in the wrong in many, if not 
 most of the controversies which had preceded 
 it. That is to say, he was wrong in commit- 
 ting England, as he so often did, to measures 
 which had not had the approval of the Sov- 
 ereign or his colleagues. In the memorable 
 dispute which brought matters to a crisis he 
 seems to us to have been in the wrong not 
 less in what he did than in his manner of 
 doing it. Yet it ought not to have been 
 difficult for a calm observer even at the time 
 to see that Lord Palmerston was likely to 
 have the best of the controversy in the end. 
 The faults of which he was principally ac- 
 cused were not such as the English people 
 would find it very hard to forgive. He was 
 said to be too brusque and high-handed in his 
 dealings with foreign states and ministers ; 
 but it did not seem to the English people in 
 general as if this was an offence for which 
 his own countrymen were bound to condemn 
 him too severely. There was a general im- 
 pression that his influence was exer.cised on 
 behalf of popular movements abroad ; and 
 an impression nearly as general that if he had 
 not acted a good deal on his own impulses 
 and of his own authority he could hardly 
 have served any popular cause so well. The 
 coup d’etat certainly was not popular in Eng- 
 land. For a long time it was a subject of 
 general reprehension ; but even at that time 
 men who condemned the coup d’etat w T ere not 
 disposed to condemn Lord Palmerston over- 
 much because, acting as usual on a personal 
 impulse, he had in that instance made a mis- 
 take. There was even in his error something 
 dashing, showy, and captivating to the gen- 
 eral public. He made the influence of Eng- 
 land felt, people said. His chief fault was 
 that he was rather too strong for those around 
 him. If any grave crisis came, he, it was 
 murmured, and he alone, would be equal to 
 the occasion and would maintain the dignity 
 of England. Neither in w’ar nor in states- 
 manship does a man suffer much loss of pop- 
 ularity by occasionally disobeying orders and 
 accomplishing daring feats. Lord Palmer- 
 ston saw his way clearly at a critical period 
 of his career. He saw that at that time there 
 was, rightly or wrongly, a certain jealousy of 
 the influence of Prince Albert, and he did 
 not hesitate to take advantage of the fact. 
 He bore his temporary disgrace with well- 
 justified composure. “ The devil aids him 
 surely,” says Sussex, speaking to Raleigh of 
 Leicester in Scott’s “ Kenilworth,” “ for all 
 that would sink another ten fathom deep 
 seems but to make him float the more easily. ' ’ 
 Some rival may have thought thus of Lord 
 Palmerston. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 BIRTH OF THE EMPIRE; DEATH OF “THE 
 DUKE.” 
 
 TnE year 1852 was one of profound emo- 
 
 tion and even excitement in England. An 
 able writer has remarked that the history of 
 the Continent of Europe might be traced 
 through the history of England, if all other 
 sources of information were destroyed, by 
 the influence which every great event in Con- 
 tinental affairs produces on the mood and pol- 
 icy of England. As the astronomer infers 
 the existence and the attributes of some star 
 his keenest glass will not reveal by the per- 
 turbations its neighborhood causes to some 
 body of light within his ken, so the student 
 of English history might well discover com- 
 motion on the Continent by the evidence of 
 a corresponding movement in England. All 
 through the year 1852 the national mind of 
 England was disturbed. The country was 
 stirring itself in quite an unusual manner. 
 A military spirit was exhibiting itself every- 
 where, not unlike that told of in Shakes- 
 peare’s “ Henry the Fourth.” The England 
 of 1852 seems to threaten that “ ere this year 
 expire we bear our civil swords and native 
 fire as far as France.” At least the civil 
 swords were sharpened in order that the coun- 
 try might be ready for a possible and even an 
 anticipated invasion from France. The Vol- 
 unteer movement sprang into sudden exist- 
 ence. All over the country corps of young 
 volunteers were being formed. An immense 
 amount of national enthusiasm accompanied 
 and acclaimed the formation of the volunteer 
 army, which received the sanction of the 
 Crown early in the year, and thus became a 
 national institution. 
 
 The meaning of all this movement was ex- 
 plained some years after by Mr. Tennyson, 
 in a string of verses which did more honor 
 perhaps to his patriotic feeling than to his 
 poetic genius. The verses are absurdly un- 
 worthy of Tennyson as a poet ; but they ex- 
 press with unmistakable clearness the pop- 
 ular sentiment of the hour ; the condition of 
 uncertainty, vague alarm, and very general 
 determination to be ready at all events for 
 whatever might come. “ Form, form, rifle- 
 men, form,” wrote the Laureate ; “ better a 
 rotten borough or two than a rotten fleet and 
 a town in flames.” “True that we have a 
 faithful ally, but only the devil knows what 
 he means.” This was the alarm and the ex- 
 planation. We had a faithful ally, no doubt ; 
 but we certainly did not quite know what he 
 meant. All the earlier part of the year had 
 witnessed the steady progress of the Prince 
 President of France to an imperial throne. 
 The previous year had closed upon his coup 
 d’etat. He had arrested, imprisoned, banished 
 or shot his principal enemies, and had demand- 
 ed from the French people a Presidency for 
 ten years, a Ministry responsible to the ex- 
 ecutive power — himself alone — and two po- 
 litical Chambers to be elected by universal 
 suffrage. Nearly five hundred prisoners, un- 
 tried before any tribunal, even that of a drum- 
 head, had been shipped off to Cayenne. The 
 streets of Paris had been soaked in blood. 
 The President instituted a plebiscite , or vote of 
 the whole people, and of course he got all he 
 asked for. There was no arguing with the 
 commander of twenty legions, and of such 
 legions as those that had operated with terri- 
 ble efficiency on the Boulevards. The first 
 day of the new year saw the religious cere- 
 mony at Notre Dame to celebrate the accept- 
 ance of the ten years’ presidency by Louis 
 Napoleon. The same day a decree was pub- 
 lished in the name of the President declaring 
 that the French eagle should be restored to 
 the standards of the army, as a symbol of 
 the regenerated military genius of France. 
 A few days after, the Prince President decreed 
 the confiscation of the property of the Orleans 
 family and restored titles of nobility in 
 France. The birthday of the Emperor Na- 
 poleon was declared by decree to be the only 
 national holiday. When the two legislative 
 bodies came to be sworn in, the President 
 made an announcement which certainly did 
 not surprise many persons, but which never- 
 theless sent a thrill abroad over all parts of 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 81 
 
 Europe. If hostile parties continued to plot 
 against him, the President intimated, and to 
 question the legitimacy of the power he had 
 assumed by virtue of the national vote, then 
 it might be necessary to demand from the 
 people, in the name of the repose of France, 
 “ a new title which will irrevocably fix upon 
 my head the power with which they have in- 
 vested me.” There could be no further 
 doubt. The Bonapartist Empire was to be 
 restored. A new Napoleon was to come to 
 the throne. 
 
 “ Only the devil knows what he means,” 
 indeed. So people were all saying through- 
 out England in 1852. The scheme went on 
 to its development, and before the year was 
 quite out Louis Napoleon was proclaimed 
 Emperor of the French. Men had noticed 
 as a curious, not to say ominous, coincidence 
 that on the very day when the Duke of Wel- 
 lington died the Moniteur announced that 
 the French people were receiving the Prince 
 President everywhere as the Emperor-elect 
 and as the elect of God ; and another French 
 journal published an article hinting not ob- 
 scurely at the invasion and conquest of Eng- 
 land as the first great duty of a new Napole- 
 onic Empire. The Prince President indeed, 
 in one of the provincial speeches which he 
 delivered just before he was proclaimed Em- 
 peror, had talked earnestly of peace. In his 
 famous speech to the Chamber of Commerce 
 of Bordeaux on October 9, he denied that the 
 restored Empire would mean war. “ I say,” 
 he declared, raising his voice and speaking 
 with energy and emphasis, ‘ ‘ the Empire is 
 peace.” But the assurance did not do much 
 to satisfy Europe. Had not the same voice, 
 it was asked, declaimed with equal energy 
 and earnestness the terms of the oath to the 
 Republican Constitution ? Never, said a bit- 
 ter enemy of the new Empire, believe the 
 word of a Bonaparte, unless when he prom- 
 ises to kill somebody. Such was indeed the 
 common sentiment of a large number of the 
 English people during the eventful year when 
 the President became Emperor, and Prince 
 Louis Napoleon was Napoleon the Third. 
 
 It would have been impossible that the 
 English people could view all this without 
 emotion and alarm. It had been clearly seen 
 how the Prince President had carried his 
 point thus far. He had appealed at every 
 step to the memory of the Napoleonic legend. 
 He had in every possible way revived and re- 
 produced the attributes of the reign of the 
 Great Emperor. His accession to power was 
 strictly a military and a Napoleonic triumph. 
 In ordinary circumstances the English people 
 would not have troubled themselves much 
 about any change in the form of government 
 of a foreign country. They might have felt 
 a strong dislike for the manner in which such 
 a change had been brought about ; but it 
 would have been in nowise a matter of per- 
 sonal concern to them. But they could not 
 see with indifference the rise of a new Napo- 
 leon to power on the strength of the old Na- 
 poleonic legend. The one special character- 
 istic of the Napoleonic principle was its hos- 
 tility to England. The life of the Great Na- 
 poleon in its greatest days had been devoted 
 to the one purpose of humiliating England. 
 His plans had been foiled by England. 
 Whatever hands may have joined in pressing 
 him to the ground, there could be no doubt 
 that he owed his fall principally to Eng- 
 land. He died a prisoner of England, and 
 with his hatred of her embittered rather 
 than appeased. It did not seem unreasonable 
 to believe that the successor who had been 
 enabled to mount the Imperial throne simply 
 because he bore the name and represented the 
 principles of the First Napoleon would in- 
 herit the hatred to England and the designs 
 against England. Everything else that sav- 
 ored of the Napoleonic era had been revived ; 
 why should this, its principal characteristic, 
 be allowed to lie in the tomb of the First 
 Emperor ? The policy of the First Napoleon 
 had lighted up a fire of hatred between Eng- 
 
 land and France which at one time seemed 
 inextinguishable. There were many who 
 regarded that international hate as something 
 like that of the hostile brothers in the classic 
 story, the very flames of whose funeral piles 
 refused to mingle in the air ; or like that of 
 the rival Scottish families, whose blood, it 
 was said, would never commingle though 
 poured into one dish. It did not seem pos- 
 sible that a new Emperor Napoleon could 
 arise without bringing a restoration of that 
 hatred along with him. 
 
 There were some personal reasons, too, for 
 particular distrust of the upcoming Emperor 
 among the English people. Louis Napoleon 
 had lived many years in England. He was 
 as well known there as any prominent mem- 
 ber of the English aristocracy. He went a 
 good deal into very various society, literary, 
 artistic, merely fashionable, purely rowdy, 
 as well as into that political society which 
 might have seemed natural to him. In all 
 circles the same opinion appears to have been 
 formed of him. From the astute Lord Pal- 
 merston to the most ignorant of the horse- 
 jockeys and ballet-girls with whom he occa 
 sionally consorted, all who met him seemed 
 to think of the Prince in much the same way. 
 It was agreed on all hands that he was a fat- 
 uous, dreamy, moony, impracticable, stupid 
 young man. A sort of stolid amiability, not 
 enlightened enough to keep him out of low 
 company and questionable conduct, appeared 
 to be his principal characteristic. He con- 
 stantly talked of his expected accession some- 
 how and some time to the throne of France, 
 and people only smiled pityingly at him. His 
 attempts at Strasburg and Boulogne had cov- 
 ered him with ridicule and contempt. We 
 cannot remember one authentic account of 
 any Englishman of mark at that time having 
 professed to see any evidence of capacity and 
 strength of mind in Prince Louis Napoleon. 
 
 When the coup d’etat came and was success- 
 ful, the amazement of the English public 
 was unbounded. Never had any plot been 
 more skilfully and more carefully planned, 
 more daringly carried out. Here evidently 
 was a master in the art of conspiracy. Here 
 was the combination of steady caution and 
 boundless audacity. What a subtlety of de- 
 sign ; what a perfection of silent self-control ! 
 How slowly the plan had been matured ; 
 how suddenly it was flashed upon the world 
 and carried to success. No haste ; no de- 
 lay ; no scruple, no remorse, no fear ! And 
 all this was the work of the dull dawdler of 
 English drawing-rooms, the heavy, apathetic, 
 unmoral rather than immoral haunter of 
 English race-courses and gambling-houses ! 
 What new surprise might not be feared, 
 what subtle and daring enterprise might not 
 reasonably be expected from one who could 
 thus conceal and thus reveal himself, and do 
 both with a like success ! 
 
 Louis Napoleon, said a member of his fam- 
 ily, deceived Europe twice : first when he 
 succeeded in passing off as an idiot, and 
 next when he succeeded in passing off as a 
 statesman. The epigram had doubtless a 
 great deal of truth in it. The coup d’etat was 
 probably neither planned nor carried to suc- 
 cess by the cleverness and energy of Louis 
 Napoleon. Cooler and stronger heads and 
 hands are responsible for the execution at 
 least of that enterprise. The Prince , it is 
 likely, played little more than a passive part 
 in it, and might have lost his nerve more than 
 once but for the greater resolution of some 
 of his associates, who were determined to 
 crown him for their own sakes as well as for 
 his. But at the time the world at large 
 saw only Louis Napoleon in the whole scheme, 
 conception, execution, and all. The idea 
 was formed of a colossal figure of cunning 
 and daring — a Brutus, a Talleyrand, a Philip 
 of Spain, and a Napoleon the B'irst all in one. 
 Those who detested him most admired and 
 feared him not the least. Who can doubt, it 
 was asked, that he will endeavor to make 
 himself the heir of the revenges of Napoleon ? 
 
 Who can believe any pledges he may give 
 How enter into any treaty or bond of any 
 kind with such a man ? Where is the one 
 that can pretend to say he sees through him 
 and understands his schemes ? 
 
 Had Louis Napoleon any intention at any 
 time of invading England V We are inclined 
 to believe that he never had a regular fixed 
 plan of the kind. But we are also inclined to 
 think that the project entered into his mind 
 with various other ideas and plans more or 
 less vague, and that circumstances might 
 have developed it into an actual scheme. 
 Louis Napoleon was above all things a man 
 of ideas in the inferior sense of the word ; 
 that is to say, he was always occupying him- 
 self with vague, dreamy suggestions of plans 
 that might in this, that, or the other case be 
 advantageously pursued. He had come to 
 power probably with the determination to 
 keep it and make himself acceptable to 
 France first of all. After this came doubtless 
 the sincere desire to make France great and 
 powerful and prosperous. At first he had no 
 particular notion of the way to establish him- 
 self as a popular ruler, and it is certain that 
 he turned over all manner of plans in his 
 mind for the purpose. Among these must 
 certainly have been one for the invasion of 
 England and the avenging of Waterloo. He 
 let drop hints at times which showed that 
 he was thinking of something of the kind. 
 He talked of himself as representing a de- 
 feat. He was attacked with all the bit- 
 terness of a not unnatural but very unre- 
 strained animosity in the English press for 
 his conduct in the coup d'etat; and no 
 doubt he and his companions were greatly 
 exasperated. The mood of a large portion 
 of the French people was distinctly aggres- 
 sive. Ashamed to some degree of much that 
 had been done and that they had had to suffer, 
 many Frenchmen were in that state of dis- 
 satisfaction with themselves which makes 
 people eager to pick a quarrel with some one 
 else. Had Louis Napoleon been inclined, 
 he might doubtless have easily stirred liis 
 people to the war mood ; and it is not to be 
 believed that he did not occasionally contem- 
 plate the expediency of doing something of 
 the kind. Assuredly, if he had thought such 
 an enterprise necessary to the stability of his 
 reign, he would have risked even a war with 
 England. But it would not have been tried 
 except as a last resource ; and the need did 
 not arise. No one could have known better 
 the risks of such an attempt. He knew Eng- 
 land as his uncle never did ; and if he had 
 not his uncle’s energy or military genius, he 
 had far more knowledge of the world and of 
 the relative resources and capabilities of na- 
 tions. He would not have done anything 
 rash without great necessity or the prospect 
 of very certain benefit in the event of success. 
 
 An invasion of England was not, therefore, 
 a likely event. Looking back composedly 
 now on what actually did happen, we may 
 safely say that few things were less likely. 
 But it was not by any means an impossible 
 event. The more* composedly one looks back 
 to it now, the more he will be compelled to 
 admit that it was at least on the cards. The 
 feeling of national uneasiness and alarm was 
 not a mere panic. There were five projects 
 with which public opinion all over Europe 
 specially credited Louis Napoleon when he 
 began his imperial reign. One was a war 
 with Russia. Another was a war with Aus- 
 tria. A third was a war with Prussia. A 
 fourth was the annexation of Belgium. The 
 fifth was the invasion of England. Three of 
 these projects were carried out. The fourth 
 we know was in contemplation. Our com- 
 bination with France in the first project prob- 
 ably put all serious thought of the fifth out of 
 the head of the French Emperor. He got far 
 more prestige out of an alliance with us than 
 he could ever have got out of any quarrel 
 with us ; and he had little or no risk. We 
 do not count for anything the repeated as- 
 surances of Louis Napoleon that he desired 
 
82 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 above all things to be on friendly terms with 
 England. These assurances were doubtless 
 sincere at the moment when they were made, 
 and under the circumstances of that moment. 
 But altered circumstances might at any time 
 have induced an altered frame of mind. The 
 very same assurances were made again and 
 again to Russia, to Austria, and to Prussia. 
 The pledge that the Empire was peace was 
 addressed, like the Pope’s edict, urbi et orbi. 
 
 Therefore we do not look upon the mood 
 of England in 1852 as one of idle and base- 
 less panic. The same feeling broke into life 
 again in 1859, when the Emperor of the 
 French suddenly announced his determina- 
 tion to go to war with Austria. It was in 
 this latter period indeed that the Volunteer 
 movement became a great national organiza- 
 tion, and that the Laureate did his best to 
 rouse it into activity in the verses of hardly 
 doubtful merit to which we have already re- 
 ferred. But in 1852 the beginning of an 
 army of volunteers was made, and, what is 
 of more importance to the immediate business 
 of our history, the Government determined 
 to bring in a bill for the reorganization of the 
 national militia. 
 
 Our militia was not in any case a body to 
 be particularly proud of at that time. It 
 had fallen into decay, and almost into disor- 
 ganization. Nothing could have been a more 
 proper work for any Government than its 
 restoration to efficiency and respectability. 
 Nothing, too, could have been more timely 
 than a measure to make it efficient in view 
 of the altered condition of European affairs 
 and the increased danger of disturbance at 
 home and abroad. We had on our hands at 
 the time, too, one of our little wars — a Caffre 
 war, which was protracted to a vexatious 
 length, and which was not without serious 
 military difficulty. It began in the December 
 of 1850, and was not completely disposed 
 of before the early party of 1853. We could 
 not, therefore, afford to have our defences in 
 any defective condition, and no labor was 
 more fairly incumbent on a Government than 
 the task of making them adequate to their 
 purpose. But it was an unfortunate charac- 
 teristic of Lord John Russell’s Government 
 that it attempted so much legislation, not be- 
 cause some particular scheme commended it- 
 self to the mature wisdom of the Ministry, 
 but because something had to be done in a 
 hurry to satisfy public opinion ; and the 
 Government could not think of anything bet- 
 ter at the moment than the first scheme that 
 came to hand. Lord John Russell accord- 
 ingly introduced a Militia Bill, which was in 
 the highest degree inadequate and unsatisfac- 
 tory. The principal peculiarity of it was 
 that it proposed to substitute a local militia 
 for the regular force that had been in exist- 
 ence. Lord Palmerston saw great objections 
 to this alteration, and urged them with much 
 briskness and skill on the night when Lord 
 John Russell explained his measure. When 
 Palmerston began his speech, he probably in- 
 tended to be merely critical as regarded points 
 in the measure which were susceptible of 
 amendment ; but as he went on he found more 
 and more that he had the House with him. 
 Every objection he made, every criticism he 
 urged, almost every sentence he spoke drew 
 down increasing cheers. Lord Palmerston 
 saw that the House was not only thoroughly 
 with him on this ground, but thoroughly 
 against the Government on various grounds. 
 A few nights after he followed up his first 
 success by proposing a resolution to substi- 
 tute the word “ regular” for the word “ lo- 
 cal ” in the bill ; thus, in fact, to reconstruct 
 the bill on an entirely different principle from 
 that adopted by its framer. The effort was 
 successful. The Peelites went with Palmer- 
 ston ; the Protectionists followed him as 
 well ; and the result was that 135 votes were 
 given for the amendment, and only 126 
 against it. The Government were defeated 
 by a majority of eleven. Lord John Russell 
 instantly announced that he could no longer 
 
 continue in office, as he did not possess the 
 confidence of the country. 
 
 The announcement took the House by sur- 
 prise. Lord Palmerston had not himself ex- 
 pected any such result from his resolution. 
 There was no reason why the Government 
 should not have amended their bill on the 
 basis of the resolution passed by the House. 
 The country wanted a scheme of efficient de- 
 fence, and the Government were only called 
 upon to make their scheme efficient. But 
 Lord John Russell was well aware that his 
 Administration had been losing its authority 
 little by little. Since the time when it had 
 returned to power, simply because no one 
 could form a Ministry any stronger than it- 
 self, it had been only a Government on 
 sufferance. Ministers who assume office in 
 that stopgap way seldom retain it long in 
 England. The Gladstone Government illus- 
 trated this fact in 1873, when they consented 
 to return to office because Mr. Disraeli was 
 not then in a condition to come in, and were 
 dismissed by an overwhelming majority at 
 the elections in the following spring. Lord 
 Palmerston assigned one special reason for 
 Lord John Russell’s promptness in resigning 
 on the change in the Militia Bill. The great 
 motive for the step was, according to Pal- 
 merston, “ the fear of being defeated on the 
 vote of censure about the Cape affairs, which 
 was to have been moved to-day ; as it is, the 
 late Government have gone out on a question 
 which they have treated as a motion, merely 
 asserting that they had lost the confidence of 
 the House ; whereas, if they had gone out 
 on a defeat upon the motion about the Cape, 
 they would have carried with them the direct 
 censure of the House of Commons.” The 
 letter from Lord Palmerston to his brother, 
 from which these words are quoted, begins 
 with a remarkable sentence: “I have had 
 my tit-for-tat with John Russell, and I turned 
 him out on Friday last. ’ ’ Palmerston did not 
 expect any such result, he declared ; but 
 the revenge was doubtless sweet for all that. 
 This was in February, 1852 ; and it was only 
 in the December of the previous year that 
 Lord Palmerston was compelled to leave the 
 Foreign Office by Loud John Russell. The 
 same influence, oddly enough, was the indi- 
 rect cause of both events. Lord Palmerston 
 lost his place because of his recognition of 
 Louis Napoleon ; Lord John Russell fell from 
 power while endeavoring to introduce a 
 measure suggested by Louis Napoleon’s suc- 
 cessful usurpation. It will be seen in a future 
 chapter how the influence of Louis Napoleon 
 was once again fatal to each statesman in 
 turn. 
 
 The Russell Ministry had done little and 
 initiated less. It had carried on Peel’s sys- 
 tem by throwing open the markets to foreign 
 as well as colonial sugar, and by the repeal 
 of the Navigation Laws enabled merchants 
 to employ foreign ships and seamen in the 
 conveyance of their goods. It had made a 
 mild and ineffectual effort at a Reform Bill, 
 and had feebly favored attempts to admit 
 Jews to Parliament. It sank from power 
 with an unexpected collapse in which the na- 
 tion felt small concern. 
 
 Lord Palmerston did not come to power 
 again at that moment. He might have gone 
 in with Lord Derby if he had been so inclined. 
 But Lord Derby, who, it maybe said, had suc- 
 ceeded to that title on the death of his father 
 in the preceding year, still talked of testing 
 the policy of Free Trade at a general election, 
 and of course Palmerston was not disposed 
 to have anything to do with such a propo- 
 sition. Nor had Palmerston in any case 
 much inclination to serve under Derby, of 
 whose political intelligence he thought poorly, 
 and whom he regarded principally as what 
 he called ‘‘a flashy speaker. ” Lord Derby 
 tried various combinations in vain, and at 
 last had to experiment with a Cabinet of un- 
 diluted Protectionists. He had to take 
 office, not because he wanted it, or because 
 any one in particular wanted him, but simply 
 
 and solely because there was no one else who 
 could undertake the task. He formed a Cab- 
 inet to carry on the business of the country 
 for the moment and until it should be con- 
 venient to have a general election, when he 
 fondly hoped that by some inexplicable pro- 
 cess a Protectionist reaction would be brought 
 about, and he should find himself at the head 
 of a strong administration. 
 
 The Ministry which Lord Derby was able 
 to form was not a strong one. Lord Palmer- 
 ston described it as containing two men of 
 mark, Derby and Disraeli, and a number of 
 ciphers. It had not, except for these two, a 
 single man of any political ability, and had 
 hardly one of any political experience. It 
 had an able lawyer for Lord Chancellor, 
 Lord St. Leonards, but he was nothing of a 
 politician. The rest of the members of the 
 Government were respectable country gen- 
 tlemen. One of them, Mr. Herries, had 
 been Chancellor of the Exchequer in a short- 
 lived Government, that of Lord Goderich, in 
 1827 ; and he had held the office of Secretary 
 of War fora few months some time later. 
 He was forgotten by the existing generation 
 of politicians, and the general public only 
 knew that he was still living when they 
 heard of his accession to Lord Derby’s Gov- 
 ernment. The Earl of Malmesbury, Sir 
 John Pakington, Mr. Walpole, Mr. Henley, 
 and the rest, were men whose antecedents 
 scarcely gave them warrant for any higher 
 claim in public life than the position of chair- 
 man of quarter sessions ; nor did their sub- 
 sequent career in office contribute much to 
 establish a loftier estimate of their capacity. 
 The head of the Government was remarka- 
 ble for his dashing blunders as a politician, 
 quite as much as for his dashing eloquence. 
 His new lieutenant, Mr. Disraeli, had in 
 former days christened him, very happily, 
 “ the Rupert of Debate,” after that fiery and 
 gallant prince whose blunders generally lost 
 the battles which his headlong courage had 
 nearly won. 
 
 Concerning Mr. Disraeli himself it is not 
 too much to say that many of his own party 
 were rather more afraid of his genius than of 
 the dulness of any of his colleagues. It is 
 not a pleasant task in the best of circumstan- 
 ces to be at the head of a tolerated Ministry 
 in the House of Commons : a Ministry which 
 is in a minority and only holds its place be- 
 cause there is no one ready to relieve it of the 
 responsibility of office. Mr. Disraeli him- 
 self, at a much later date, gave the House of 
 Commons an amusing picture of the trials 
 and humiliations which await the leader of 
 such a forlorn hope. He had now to assume 
 that position without any previous experi- 
 ence of office. Rarely indeed is the leader- 
 ship of the House of Commons undertaken 
 by any one who has not previously held 
 office ; and Mr. Disraeli entered upon leader- 
 ship and office at the same moment for the 
 first time. He became Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer and leader of the House of Com- 
 mons. Among the many gifts with which 
 he was accredited by fame, not a single ad- 
 mirer had hitherto dreamed of including a 
 capacity for the mastery of figures. In ad- 
 dition to all the ordinary difficulties of the 
 Ministry of a minority, there was, in this in- 
 stance, the difficulty arising from the obscur- 
 ity and inexperience of nearly all its mem- 
 bers. Facetious persons dubbed the new ad- 
 ministration the “Who? Who? Ministry.” 
 The explanation of this odd nickname was 
 found in a story then in circulation about the 
 Duke of Wellington. The Duke, it was 
 said, was anxious to hear from Lord Derby 
 at the earliest moment all about the composi- 
 tion of his Cabinet. He was overheard ask- 
 ing the new Prime Minister in the House of 
 Lords the names of his intended colleagues. 
 The Duke was rather deaf, and, like most 
 deaf persons, spoke in very loud tones, and 
 of course had to be answered in tones also 
 rather elevated. That which was meant for 
 a whispered conversation became audible to 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 S3 
 
 the whole House. As Lord Derby mention- 
 ed each name, the Duke asked in wonder 
 and eagerness, “ Who ? Who ?” After each 
 new name came the same inquiry. The 
 Duke of Wellington had clearly never heard 
 of most of the new Ministers before. The 
 story went about ; and Lord Derby’s Admin- 
 istration was familiarly known as the 
 “Who? Who? Government.” 
 
 Lord Derby entered office with the avowed 
 intention of testing the Protection question 
 all over again. But he was no sooner in 
 office than he found that the bare suggestion 
 had immensely increased his difficulties. 
 The formidable organization which had 
 worked the Free Trade cause so successfully 
 seemed likelyjo come into political life again 
 witli all its old vigor. The Free Traders be- 
 gan to stand together again the moment Lord 
 Derby gave his unlucky hint. Every week that 
 passed over his head did something to show 
 him the mistake he had made when he ham- 
 pered himself with any such undertaking as 
 the revival of the Protection question. Some 
 of his colleagues had been unhappily and blun- 
 deringly outspoken in their addresses to their 
 constituents seeking for re-election, and had 
 talked as if the restoration of Protection it- 
 self were the grand object of Lord Derby’s 
 taking office.' The new Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer had been far more cautious. He 
 only talked vaguely of “those remedial 
 measures which great productive interests, 
 suffering from unequal taxation, have a right 
 to expect from a just Government.” In 
 truth, Mr. Disraeli was well convinced at 
 this time of the hopelessness of any agitation 
 for the restoration of Protection, and would 
 have been only too glad of any opportunity 
 for a complete and at the same time a safe 
 disavowal of any sympathy with such a pro- 
 ject. The Government found their path 
 bristling with troubles, created for them by 
 their own mistake in giving any hint about 
 the demand for a new trial of the Free Trade 
 question. Any chance they might otherwise 
 have had of making effective head against 
 their very trying difficulties was completely 
 cut away from them. 
 
 The Free Trade League was reorganized. 
 A conference of Liberal members of the 
 House of Commons was held at the residence 
 of Lord John Russell in Chesliam Place, at 
 which it was resolved to extract or extort 
 from the Government a full avowal of their 
 policy with regard to Protection and Free 
 Trade. The feat would have been rather 
 difficult of accomplishment, seeing that the 
 Government had absolutely no policy to offer 
 on the subject, and were only hoping to be 
 able to consult the country as one might 
 consult an oracle. The Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer when he made his financial state- 
 ment accepted the increased prosperity of the 
 few years preceding with an unction which 
 showed that he at least had no particular no- 
 tion of attempting to reverse the policy 
 which had so greatly contributed to its prog- 
 ress. Mr. Disraeli pleased the Peelites and 
 the Liberals much more by his statement 
 than he pleased his chief or many of his fol- 
 lowers. His speech indeed was very clever. 
 A new financial scheme be could not pro- 
 duce, for he had not had time to make any- 
 thing like a complete examination of the 
 finances of the country ; but he played very 
 prettily and skilfully with the facts and fig- 
 ures, and conveyed to the listeners the idea 
 of a man who could do wonderful things in 
 finance if he only had a little time and were 
 in the humor. Every one outside the limits 
 of the extreme and unconverted Protection- 
 ists was pleased with the success of his 
 speech. People were glad that one who had 
 proved himself so clever with many things 
 should have shown himself equal to the un- 
 congenial and unwonted task of dealing with 
 dry facts and figures. The House felt that 
 he was placed in a very trying position, and 
 was well pleased to see him hold his own so 
 successfully in it. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli merely proposed in his finan- 
 cial statement to leave things as he found 
 them ; to continue the income tax for an- 
 other year, as a provisional arrangement 
 pending that complete re-examination of the 
 financial affairs of the country to which he 
 intimated that he found himself quite equal 
 at the proper time. No one could suggest 
 any better course ; and the new Chancellor 
 came off on the whole with flying colors. 
 His very difficulties had been a source of ad- 
 vantage to him. He was not expected 
 to produce a financial scheme at such short 
 notice ; and if he was not equal to a finan- 
 cier’s task, it did not so appear on this 
 first occasion of trial. The Government on 
 the whole did not do badly during this period 
 of their probation. They introduced and 
 carried a Militia Bill, for which they obtain- 
 ed the cordial support of Lord Palmerston ; 
 and they gave a Constitution to New Zea- 
 land ; and then, in the beginning of July, the 
 Parliament was prorogued and the dissolution 
 took place. The elections were signalized 
 by very serious riots in many parts of the 
 country. In Ireland particularly party pas- 
 sions ran high. The landlords and the police 
 were on one side ; the priests and the popu- 
 lar party on the other ; and in several places 
 there was some bloodshed. It was not in 
 Ireland, however, a question about Free 
 Trade or Protection. The great mass of the 
 Irish people knew nothing about Mr. Disra- 
 eli — probably had never heard his name, and 
 did not care who led the House of Commons. 
 The question which agitated the Irish constit- 
 uencies was that of Tenant Right, in the first 
 instance ; and the time had not yet arrived 
 when a great Minister from either party was 
 prepared to listen to their demands on this 
 subject. There was also much bitterness of 
 feeling remaining from the discussions on the 
 Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. But it may be 
 safely said that not one of the questions that 
 stirred up public feeling in England had the 
 slightest popular interest in Ireland, and the 
 question which the Irish people considered 
 essential to their very existence did not enter 
 for one moment into the struggles that were 
 going on all over England. 
 
 The speeches of ministers in England 
 showed the same lively diversity as before 
 on the subject of Protection. Mr. Disraeli 
 not only threw Protection overboard, but 
 boldly declared that no one could have sup- 
 posed the Ministry had the slightest intention 
 of proposing to bring back the laws that were 
 repealed in 1846. In fact the time, he de- 
 clared, had gone by when such. exploded poli- 
 tics could even interest the people of this 
 country. On the other hand, several of Mr. 
 Disraeli’s colleagues evidently spoke in the 
 fulness of their simple faith that Lord Der- 
 by was bent on setting up again the once be- 
 loved and not yet forgotten protective sys- 
 tem. But from the time of the elections 
 nothing more was heard about Protection or 
 about the possibility of getting a new trial 
 for its principles. The elections did little or 
 nothing for the Government. The dreams 
 of a strengthened party at their back were 
 gone. They gained a little, just enough to 
 make it unlikely that any one would move a 
 vote of want of confidence at the very outset 
 of their reappearance before Parliament, but 
 not nearly enough to give them a chance of 
 carrying any measure which could really pro- 
 pitiate the Conservative party throughout the 
 country. They were still to be the Ministry 
 of a minority ; a Ministry on sufferance. 
 They were a Ministry on sufferance when 
 they appealed to the country, but they were 
 able to say then that when their cause had 
 been heard the country would declare for 
 them. They now came back to be a Minis- 
 try on sufferance, who had made the appeal 
 and had seen it rejected. It was plain to 
 every one that their existence as a Ministry 
 was only a question of days. Speculation 
 was already busy as to tlieir successors ; and 
 it was evident that a new Government could 
 
 only be formed by some sort of coalition be- 
 tween the Whigs and the Peelites. 
 
 Among the noteworthy events of the gen- 
 eral elections was the return of Macaulay to 
 the House of Commons. Edinburgh elected 
 him in a manner particularly complimentary 
 to him and honorable to herself. He was 
 elected without his solicitation, without his 
 putting himself forward as a candidate, with- 
 out his making any profession of faith or do- 
 ing any of the things that the most indepen- 
 dent candidate was then expected to do ; and 
 in fact, in spite of his positive declaration 
 that he would do nothing to court election. 
 He had for some years been absent from 
 Parliament. Some difference bad arisen be- 
 tween him and certain of his constituents on 
 the subject of the Maynooth grant. Com- 
 plaints too had been made by Edinburgh 
 constituents of Macaulay’s lack of attention 
 to local interests, and of the intellectual 
 scorn which, as they believed, he exhibited in 
 his intercourse with any of those who had 
 supported him. The result of this was that 
 at the general election of 1847 Macaulay 
 was left third on the poll at Edinburgh. He 
 felt this deeply. He might have easily found 
 some other constituency ; but liis wounded 
 pride hastened a resolution he had for some 
 time been forming to retire to a life of pri- 
 vate literary labor. He therefore remained 
 out of Parliament. In 1852 the movement 
 of Edinburgh towards him was entirely spon- 
 taneous. Edinburgh was anxious to atone 
 for the error of which she had been guilty. 
 Macaulay would go no farther than to say 
 that if Edinburgh spontaneously elected him 
 he should deem it a very high honor ; and 
 ‘ ‘ should not feel myself justified in refusing 
 to accept a public trust offered to me in a 
 manner so honorable and so peculiar.” But 
 he would not do anything whatever to court 
 favor. He did not want to be elected to 
 Parliament, he said ; he was very happy in 
 his retirement. Edinburgh elected him on 
 those terms. He was not long allowed by 
 his health to serve her ; but so long as he re- 
 mained in the House of Commons it was as 
 member for Edinburgh. 
 
 On September 14, 1852, the Duke of Wel- 
 lington died. His end was singularly peace- 
 ful. He fell quietly asleep about a quarter- 
 past three in the afternoon in Walmer Cas- 
 tle, and he did not wake any more. He was 
 a very old man — in his eighty-fourth year — 
 and his death had naturally been looked for 
 as an event certain to come soon. Yet when 
 it did come thus naturally and peacefully, it 
 created a profound public emotion. No 
 other man in our time ever held the position 
 in England which the Duke of Wellington 
 had occupied for more than a whole genera- 
 tion. The place he had won for himself was 
 absolutely unique. His great deeds belonged 
 to a past time. He was hardly anything of 
 a statesman ; he knew little and cared less 
 about what may be called statecraft ; and as 
 an administrator he had made many mis- 
 takes. But the trust which the nation had 
 in him as a counsellor was absolutely unlim- 
 ited. It never entered into the mind of any 
 one to suppose that the Duke of Wellington 
 was actuated in any step lie took, or advice 
 he gave, by any feeling but a desire for the 
 good of the State. His loyalty to the Sover- 
 eign had something antique and touching in 
 it. There was a blending of personal affec- 
 tion with the devotion of a state servant 
 which lent a certain romantic dignity to the 
 demeanor and character of one who other- 
 wise had but little of the poetical or the sen- 
 timental in his nature. In the business of 
 politics he had but one prevailing anxiety, 
 and that was that the Queen’s Government 
 should be satisfactorily carried on. He gave 
 up again and again his own most cherished 
 convictions, most ingrained prejudices, in 
 order that he might not stand in the way of 
 the Queen’s Government and the proper car- 
 rying of it on. This simple fidelity, some- 
 times rather whimsically displayed, stood 
 
84 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 him often in stead of an exalted statesman- 
 ship, and enabled him to extricate the Gov- 
 ernment and the nation from difficulties in 
 which a political insight far more keen than 
 his might have failed to prove a guide. 
 
 It was for this true and tried, this simple 
 and unswerving devotion to the national good 
 that the people of England admired and re- 
 vered him. He had not what would be call- 
 ed a lovable temperament, and yet the na- 
 tion loved him. He was cold and brusque in 
 manner, and seemed in general to have hard- 
 ly a gleam of the emotional in him. This 
 was not because he lacked affections. On 
 the contrary, his affections and his friendships 
 were warm and enduring ; and even in pub- 
 lic he had more than once given way to out- 
 bursts of emotion such as a stranger would 
 never have expected from one of that cold 
 and rigid demeanor. When Sir Robert Peel 
 died, Wellington spoke of him in the House 
 of Lords with the tears which he did not 
 even try to control running down his cheeks. 
 But in his ordinary bearing there was little 
 of the manner that makes a man a popular 
 idol. He was not brilliant or dashing, or 
 emotional or graceful. He was dry, cold, 
 self-contained. Yet the people loved him 
 and trusted in him ; loved him perhaps espe- 
 cially because they so trusted in him. No 
 face and figure were better known at one 
 time to the population of London than those 
 of the Duke of Wellington. Of late his form 
 had grown stooped, and he bent over his 
 horse as he rode in the Park or down White- 
 hall like one who could hardly keep himself 
 in the saddle. Yet he mounted his horse to 
 the last, and indeed could keep in the saddle 
 after he had ceased to be able to sit erect in 
 an arm-chair. He sometimes rode in a curi- 
 ous little cab of his own devising ; but his 
 favorite way of going about London was on 
 the back of his horse. He was called, par 
 excellent, “ the Duke.” The London work- 
 ingman who looked up as he went to or 
 from his work and caught a sight of the 
 bowed figure on the horse, took off his hat 
 and told some passer-by, “ There goes the 
 Duke 1” His victories belonged to the past. 
 They were but traditions even to middle-aged 
 men in “ the Duke’s” later years. But he 
 was regarded still as an embodiment of the 
 national heroism and success ; a modern St. 
 George in a tightly-buttoned frock-coat and 
 white trowsers. 
 
 Wellington belonged so much to the past 
 at the time of his death, that it seems hardly 
 in place here to say anything about his char- 
 acter as a soldier. But it may be remarked 
 that his success was due in great measure to 
 a sort of inspired common sense which rose 
 to something like genius. He had in the 
 highest conceivable degree the art of winning 
 victories. In war, as in statesmanship, he 
 had one characteristic which is said to have 
 been the special gift of Julius Caesar, and for 
 the lack of which Caesar’s greatest modern 
 rival in the art of conquest, the first Napo- 
 leon, lost all or nearly all that he had won. 
 Wellington not only understood what could 
 be done, but also what could not be done. 
 The wild schemes of almost universal rule 
 which set Napoleon astray and led him to his 
 destruction would have appeared to the 
 strong common sense of the Duke of Wel- 
 lington as impossible and absurd as they 
 would have looked to the lofty intelligence of 
 Caesar. It can hardly be questioned that in 
 original genius Napoleon far surpassed the 
 Duke of Wellington. But Wellington al- 
 ways knew exactly what he could do, and 
 Napoleon often confounded his ambitions 
 with his capacities. Wellington provided 
 for everything, looked after everything ; 
 never trusted to his star or to chance or to 
 anything but care and preparation and the 
 proper application of means to ends. Under 
 almost any conceivable conditions, Welling- 
 ton, pitted against Napoleon, was the man to 
 win in the end. The very genius of Napo- 
 leon would sooner or later have left him open | 
 
 to the unsleeping watchfulness, the almost 
 infallible judgment of Wellington. 
 
 He was as fortunate as he was deserving. 
 No man could have drunk more deeply of 
 the cup of fame and fortune than Welling- 
 ton ; and he was never for one moment in- 
 toxicated by it. After all his long wars and 
 his splendid victories he had some thirty- 
 seven years of peace and glory to enjoy. He 
 held the loftiest position in this country that 
 any man not a sovereign could hold, and he 
 ranked far higher in the estimation of his 
 countrymen than most of their sovereigns 
 have done. The rescued emperors and kings 
 of Europe had showered their honors on him. 
 His fame was as completely secured during 
 his lifetime as if death, by removing him 
 from the possibility of making a mistake, 
 had consecrated it. No new war under al- 
 tered conditions tried the flexibility and the 
 endurance of the military genius which had 
 defeated in turn all Napoleon’s great mar- 
 shals as a prelude to the defeat of Napoleon 
 himself. If ever any mortal may be said to 
 have had in life all he could have desired, 
 Wellington was surely that man. He might 
 have found a new contentment in his hon- 
 ors, if he really cared much about them, in 
 the reflection that he had done nothing for 
 himself, but all for the State. He did not 
 love war. He had no inclination whatever 
 for it. When Lord John Russell visited Na- 
 poleon in Elba, Napoleon asked him whether 
 he thought the Duke of Wellington would be 
 able to live thenceforward without the ex- 
 citement of war. It was probably in Napo- 
 leon’s mind that the English soldier would be 
 constantly entangling his country in foreign 
 complications for the sake of gratifying his 
 love for the brave squares of war. Lord 
 John Russell endeavored to impress upon the 
 great fallen Emperor that the Duke of Wel- 
 lington would as a matter of course lapse into 
 the place of a simple citizen, and would look 
 with no manner of regret to the stormy days 
 of battle. Napoleon seems to have listened 
 with a sort of melancholy incredulity, and 
 only observed once or twice that ‘ ‘ it was a 
 splendid game, war.” To Wellington it 
 was no splendid game, or game of any sort. 
 It was a stem duty to be done for his Sover- 
 eign and his country, and to be got through 
 as quickly as possible. The difference be- 
 tween the two men cannot be better illustrat- 
 ed. It is impossible to compare two such 
 men. There is hardly any common basis of 
 comparison. To say which is the greater, 
 one must first make up his mind as to 
 whether his standard of greatness is genius 
 or duty. Napoleon has made a far deeper 
 impression on history. If that be superior 
 greatness, it would be scarcely possible for 
 any national partiality to claim an equal 
 place for Wellington. But Englishmen may 
 be content with the reflection that their hero 
 saved his country, and that Napoleon nearly 
 rained his. We write this without the 
 slightest inclination to sanction what may be 
 called the British Philistine view of the char- 
 acter of Napoleon. Up to a certain period 
 of his career it seems to us deserving of al- 
 most unmingled admiration ; just as his 
 country, in her earlier disputes with the other 
 European Powers, seems to have been almost 
 entirely in the right. But his success and 
 his glory were too strong for Napoleon. He 
 fell for the very want of that simple, stead- 
 fast devotion to duty which inspired Wel- 
 lington always, and which made him seem 
 dignified and great, even in statesmanship for 
 which he was unfitted, and even when in 
 statesmanship he was acting in a manner 
 that would have made another man seem ri- 
 diculous rather than respectable. Wellington 
 more nearly resembled Washington than Na- 
 poleon. lie was a much greater soldier than 
 Washington ; but he was not on the whole 
 so great a man. 
 
 It is fairly to be said for Wellington that 
 the proportions of his personal greatness seem 
 I to grow rather than to dwindle as he and his 
 
 events are removed from us by time. The 
 battle of Waterloo does not indeed stand, as 
 one of its historians has described it, among 
 the decisive battles of the world. It was 
 fought to keep the Bonapartes off the throne 
 of France ; and in twenty-five years after 
 Waterloo, while the victor of Waterloo was 
 yet living, another Bonaparte was preparing 
 to mount that throne. It was the climax of 
 a national policy which, however justifiable 
 and inevitable it may have become in the 
 end, would hardly now be justified as to its 
 origin by one intelligent Englishman out of 
 twenty. The present age is not, therefore, 
 likely to become rhapsodical over Welling- 
 ton, as our forefathers might have been, 
 merely because he defeated the French and 
 crushed Napoleon. Yet it is impossible for 
 the coolest mind to study the career of Wel- 
 lington without feeling a constant glow of 
 admiration for that singular course of simple 
 antique devotion to duty. His was truly the 
 spirit in which a great nation must desire 
 to be served. 
 
 The nation was not ungrateful. It heaped 
 honors on Wellington ; it would have heaped 
 more on him if it knew how. It gave him 
 its almost unqualified admiration.^ On his 
 death it tried to give him such a public fu- 
 neral as hero never had. The pageant was in- 
 deed a splendid and a gorgeous exhibition. 
 It was not perhaps very well suited to the 
 temperament and habits of the cold and sim- 
 ple hero to whose honor it was got up. 
 Nor, perhaps, are gorgeous pageants exactly 
 the sort of performance in which as a nation 
 England particularly excels. But in the 
 vast, silent, respectful crowd that thronged 
 the London streets — a crowd such as no other 
 city in the world could show — there was bet- 
 ter evidence than pageantry or ceremonial 
 could supply of the esteem in which the liv- 
 ing generation held the hero of the last. The 
 name of Wellington had long ceased to rep- 
 resent any hostility of nation to nation. 
 The crowds who filled the streets of London 
 that day had no thought of the kind of senti- 
 ment which used to fill the breasts of their 
 fathers when France and Napoleon were 
 named. They honored Wellington only as 
 one who had always served his country ; as 
 the soldier of England and not as the invader 
 of France, or even as the conqueror of Na- 
 poleon. The homage to his memory was as 
 pure of selfish passion as his own career. 
 
 The new Parliament was called together in 
 November. It brought into public life in 
 England a man who afterwards made some 
 mark in our politics, and whose intellect and 
 debating power seemed at one time to prom- 
 ise him a position inferior to that of hardly 
 any one in the House of Commons. This 
 was Mr. Robert Lowe, who had returned 
 from one of the Australian colonies to enter 
 political life in his native country. Mr. 
 Lowe was a scholar of a highly cultured or- 
 der ; and, despite some serious defects of de- 
 livery, he proved to be a debater of the very 
 highest class, especially gifted with the weap- 
 ons of sarcasm, scorn, and invective. He 
 was a Liberal in the intellectual sense ; he 
 was opposed to all restraints on education 
 and on the progress of a career ; but he had 
 a detestation for democratic doctrines which 
 almost amounted to a mania. He despised 
 with the whole force of a temperament very 
 favorable to intellectual scorn alike the rural 
 Tory and the torvn Radical. His opinions 
 were generally rather negative than positive. 
 He did not seem to have any very posit ive opin- 
 ions of any kind where politics were concern- 
 ed. He was governed by a detestation of ab- 
 stractions and sentimentalities, and “ views” 
 of all sorts. An intellectual Don Juan of the 
 political world, he believed with Moliere’s 
 hero that two and two make four, and that 
 four and four make eight, and he was impa- 
 tient of any theory which would commend 
 itself to the mind on less rigorous evidence. 
 If contempt for the intellectual weaknesses 
 of an opposing party or doctrine could have 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 85 
 
 made a great politician, Mr. Lowe would 
 have won that name. In politics, however, 
 criticism is not enough. One must he able 
 to originate, to mould the will of others, to 
 compromise, to lead while seeming to follow, 
 often to follow while seeming to lead. Of 
 gifts like these Mr. Lowe had no share. He 
 never became more than a great Parliament- 
 ary critic of the acrid and vitriolic style. 
 
 Almost immediately on the assembling of 
 the new Parliament, Mr. Yilliers brought 
 forward a resolution not merely pledging the 
 House of Commons to a Free Trade policy, 
 but pouring out a sort of censure on all who 
 had hitherto failed to recognize its worth. 
 This step was thought necessary, and was in- 
 deed made necessary by the errors of which 
 Lord Derby had been guilty, and the prepos- 
 terous vaporings of some of his less respon- 
 sible followers. If the resolution had been 
 passed, the Government must have resigned. 
 They were willing enough now to agree to 
 any resolution declaring that Free Trade was 
 the established policy of the country ; but 
 they could not accept the triumphant eulogi- 
 um which the resolution proposed to offer to 
 the commercial policy of the years when 
 they were the uncompromising enemies of 
 that very policy. They could submit to the 
 punishment imposed on them ; but they did 
 not like this public kissing of the rod and 
 doing penance. Lord Palmerston, who even 
 up to that time regarded his ultimate accept- 
 ance of office under Lord Derby as a not im- 
 possible event if once the Derby party could 
 shake themselves quite free of Protection, 
 devised an amendment which afforded them 
 the means of a more or less honorable re- 
 treat. This resolution pledged the House to 
 the “ policy of unrestricted competition firm- 
 ly maintained and prudently extended but 
 recorded no panegyric of the' legislation of 
 1846, and consequent condemnation of those 
 who opposed that legislation. The amend- 
 ment was accepted by all but the small band 
 of irreconcilable Protectionists : 468 voted 
 for it ; only 53 against it ; and the moan of 
 Protection was made. All that long chapter 
 of English legislation was closed. Various 
 commercial and other “ interests” did indeed 
 afterwards demur to the application of the 
 principle of unrestricted competition to their 
 peculiar concerns. But they did not plead 
 for Protection. They only contended that 
 the Protection they sought for was not, in 
 fact, Protection at all, but Free Trade under 
 peculiar circumstances. The straightfor- 
 ward doctrine of Protection perished of the 
 debate of November, 1852. 
 
 Still the Government only existed on suf- 
 ferance. Their tenure of office was some- 
 what rudely compared to that of a bailiff put 
 into possession of certain premises, who is 
 liable to be sent away at any moment when 
 the two parties concerned in the litigation 
 choose to come to terms. There was a gen- 
 eral expectation that the moment Mr. Dis- 
 raeli came to set out a genuine financial 
 scheme the fate of the Government would be 
 decided. So the event proved. Mr. Dis- 
 raeli made a financial statement which show- 
 ed remarkable capacity for dealing with fig- 
 ures. It was subjected to a far more serious 
 test than his first budget, for that was nec- 
 essarily a mere stopgap or makeshift. This 
 was a real budget, altering and reconstruct- 
 ing the financial system and the taxation of 
 the country. The skill with which the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer explained his 
 measures and tossed his figures about con- 
 vinced many even of his strongest opponents 
 that he had the capacity to make a good bud- 
 get if he only were allowed to do so by the 
 conditions of his party’s existence. But his 
 Cabinet had come into office under special 
 obligations to the country party and the farm- 
 ers. They could not avoid making some 
 experiment in the way of special legislation 
 for the farmers. They had at the very least 
 to put on an appearance of doing something 
 for them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 
 might be supposed to be in the position of 
 the soldier in Hogarth’s ‘‘March to Finch- 
 ley,” between the rival claimants on his atten- 
 tion. He has promised and vowed to the 
 one ; but he knows that the slightest mark 
 of civility he offers to her will be fiercely re- 
 sented by the other. When Mr. Disraeli un- 
 dertook to favor the country interest and the 
 farmers, he must have known only too well 
 that he was setting all the Free Traders 
 and Peelites against him ; and he knew 
 at the same time that if he neglected the 
 country party he was cutting the ground 
 from beneath his feet. The principle of 
 his budget was the reduction of the malt 
 duties and the increase of the inhabited 
 house duty. Some manipulations of the 
 income tax were to be introduced, chiefly 
 with a view to lighten the impost on farmers’ 
 profits ; and there was to be a modest reduc- 
 tion of the tea duty. The two points that 
 stood out clear and prominent before the 
 House of Commons were the reduction of 
 the malt duty and the increase of the duty 
 on inhabited houses. The reduction of the 
 malt tax, as Mr. Lowe said in his pungent 
 criticism, was the keystone of the budget. 
 That reduction ci’eated a deficit, which the 
 inhabited house duty had to be doubled in 
 order to supply. The scheme was a com- 
 plete failure. The farmers did not care 
 much about the concession which had been 
 made in their favor ; those who had to pay 
 for it in doubled taxation were bitterly indig- 
 nant. Mr. Disraeli had exasperated the one 
 claimant, and not greatly pleased the other. 
 The Government soon saw how things were 
 likely to go. The Chancellor of the Excheq- 
 uer began to see that he had only a desper- 
 ate fight to make. The Whigs, the Free 
 Traders, the Peelites, and such" independent 
 members or unattached members as Mr. 
 Lowe and Mr. Bernal Osborne all fell on 
 him. It became a combat d outrance. It 
 well suited Mr. Disraeli’s peculiar tempera- 
 ment. During the whole of his Parliament- 
 ary career he has never fought so well as 
 when he has been free to indulge to the full 
 the courage of despair. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 The debate was one of the finest of its 
 kind ever heard in Parliament during our 
 time. The excitement on both sides was in- 
 tense. The rivalry was hot and eager. Mr. 
 Disraeli was animated by all the power of 
 desperation, and was evidently in a mood 
 neither to give nor to take quarter. He as- 
 sailed Sir Charles Wood, the late Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, with a vehemence and 
 even a virulence which certainly added much 
 to the piquancy and interest of the discussion 
 so far as listeners were concerned, but 
 which more than once went to very verge of 
 the limits of Parliamentary decorum. It 
 was in the course of this speech that Disraeli, 
 leaning across the table and directing his 
 words full at Sir Charles Wood, declared, “ I 
 care not to be the right honorable gentle- 
 man’s critic, but if he has learned his busi- 
 ness he has yet to learu that petulance is not 
 sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective.” 
 The House had not heard the concluding 
 word of Disraeli’s bitter and impassioned 
 speech, when at two o’clock in the morning 
 Mr. Gladstone leaped to his feet to answer 
 him. Then began that long Parliamentary 
 duel which only knew a truce when at the 
 close of the session of 1876 Mr. Disraeli 
 crossed the threshold of the House of Com- 
 mons for the last time, thenceforward to take 
 his place among the peers as Lord Beacons- 
 field. During all the intervening four-and- 
 twenty years these two men were rivals in 
 power and in Parliamentary debate as much 
 as ever Pitt and Fox had been. Their oppo- 
 sition, like that of Pitt and Fox, was one of 
 temperament and character as well as of 
 genius, position, and political opinion. The 
 rivalry of this first heated and eventful night 
 
 was a splendid display. Those who had 
 thought it impossible that any impression 
 could be made upon the House after the 
 speech of Mr. Disraeli, had to acknowledge 
 that a yet greater impression was produced 
 by the unprepared reply of Mr. Gladstone. 
 The House divided about four o’clock in the 
 morning, and the Government were left in a 
 minority of nineteen. Mr. Disraeli took the 
 defeat with his characteristic composure. 
 The morning was cold and wet. “ It will 
 be an unpleasant day for going to Osborne,” 
 he quietly remarked to a friend as they went 
 down Westminster Hall together and looked 
 out into the dreary streets. That day, at Os- 
 borne, the resignation of the Ministry was 
 formally placed in the hands of the Queen. 
 
 In a few days after, the Coalition Ministry 
 was formed. Lord Aberdeen was Prime Min- 
 ister ; Lord John Russell took the Foreign 
 Office ; Lord Palmerston became Home Sec- 
 retary ; Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer. The public were a good 
 deal surprised that Lord Palmerston had tak- 
 en such a place as that of Home Secretary. 
 His name had been identified with the foreign 
 policy of England, and it was not supposed 
 that he felt the slightest interest, in the ordi- 
 nary business of the Home Department. 
 Palmerston himself explained in a letter to 
 his brother that the Home Office was his 
 own choice. He was not anxious to join the 
 Ministry at all ; and if he had to make one, 
 he preferred that he should hold some office 
 in which he had personally no traditions. 
 “I had long settled in my own mind,” he 
 said, “ that I would not go back to the 
 Foreign Office, and that if I ever took any 
 office it should be the Home. It does not do 
 for a man to pass his whole life in one de- 
 partment, and the Home Office deals with 
 the concerns of the country internally and 
 brings one in contact with one’s fellow-coun- 
 trymen ; besides which it gives one more in- 
 fluence in regard to the militia and the de- 
 fences of the country.” Lord Palmerston in 
 fact announces that he has undertaken the 
 business of the Home Office for the same 
 reason as that given by Fritz, in the “ Grande 
 Duchesse,” for becoming a school-master. 
 “ Can you teach ?” asks the Grande Duchesse. 
 ‘‘No,” is the answer; “ c’esi pour appren- 
 dre “I go to learn.” The reader may 
 well suspect, however, that it was not only 
 with a view of learning the business of the 
 internal administration and becoming ac- 
 quainted with his fellow - countrymen that 
 Palmerston preferred the Home Office. He 
 would not consent to be Foreign Secretary 
 on any terms but his own, and these terms 
 were then out of the question. 
 
 The principal interest felt in the new Gov- 
 ernment was not, however, centred in Lord 
 Palmerston. The new Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer was the man upon whom the eyes 
 of curiosity and interest were chiefly turned. 
 Mr. Gladstone was still a young man in the 
 Parliamentary sense at least. He was but 
 forty-three. His career had been in every 
 way remarkable. He had entered public life 
 at a very early age. He had been, to quote 
 the words of Macaulay, a distinguished de- 
 bater in the House of Commons ever since 
 he was one - and - twenty. Criticising his 
 book, “ The State in its Relations with the 
 Church,” which was published in 1838, 
 Macaulay speaks of Gladstone as ‘‘a young 
 man of unblemished character and of dis- 
 tinguished Parliamentary talents, the rising 
 hope of those stern and unbending Tories 
 who follow reluctantly and mutinously a 
 leader whose experience is indispensable to 
 them, but whose cautious temper and mod- 
 erate opinions they abhor.” The time was 
 not so far away when the stern and unbend- 
 ing Tories would regard Gladstone as the 
 greatest hope of their most bitter enemies. 
 Lord Macaulay goes on to overwhelm the 
 views expressed by Mr. Gladstone as to the 
 relations between State and Church, with a 
 weight of argument and gorgeousness of illus- 
 
86 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 tration that now seem to have been hardly 
 called for. One of the doctrines of the young 
 statesman which Macaulay confutes with es- 
 pecial warmth is the principle which, as he 
 states it, “ would give the Irish a Protestant 
 Church whether they like it or not.” The 
 author of the book which contained this 
 doctrine was the author of the disestablish- 
 ment of the State Church in Ireland. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was by birth a Lancashire 
 man. It is not unworthy of notice that Lan- 
 cashire gave to the Parliaments of recent 
 times their three greatest orators : Mr. Glad- 
 stone, Mr. Bright, and the late Lord Derby. 
 Mr. Gladstone was born in Liverpool, and 
 was the son of Sir John Gladstone, a Scotch- 
 man, who founded a great house in the sea- 
 port of the Mersey. He entered Parliament 
 when very young as a protege of the Newcastle 
 family, and he soon faithfully attached him- 
 self to Sir Robert Peel. His knowledge of 
 finance, his thorough appreciation of the va- 
 rious needs of a nation’s commerce and busi- 
 ness, his middle-class origin, all brought him 
 into natural affinity with his great leader. 
 He became a Free Trader with Peel. He 
 was not in the House of Commons, oddly 
 enough, during the session when the Free 
 Trade battle was fought and won. It has 
 already been explained in this history that as 
 he had changed his opinions with his leader 
 he felt a reluctance to ask the support of the 
 Newcastle family for the borough which by 
 virtue of their influence he had previously 
 represented. But except for that short inter- 
 val his whole career may be pronounced one 
 long Parliamentary success. He was from 
 the very first recognized as a brilliant de- 
 bater, and as one who promised to be an ora- 
 tor ; but it was not until after the death of 
 Sir Robert Peel that he proved himself the 
 master of Parliamentary eloquence we all 
 now know him to be. It was he who pro- 
 nounced what may be called the funeral ora- 
 tion upon Peel in the House of Commons ; 
 but the speech, although undoubtedly in- 
 spired by the truest and the deepest feelings, 
 does not seem by any means equal to some 
 of his more recent efforts. There is an ap- 
 pearance of elaboration about it which goes 
 far to mar its effect. Perhaps the first really 
 great speech made by Gladstone was the re- 
 ply to Disraeli on the memorable December 
 morning which we have just described. 
 That speech put him in the very foremost 
 rank of English orators. Then perhaps he 
 first showed to the full the one great quality 
 in which as a Parliamentary orator he has 
 never had a rival in our time : the readiness 
 which seems to require no preparation, but 
 can marshal all its arguments as if by instinct 
 at a given moment, and the fluency which 
 can pour out the most eloquent language as 
 freely as though it were but the breath of the 
 nostrils. When, shortly after the formation 
 of the Coalition Ministry, Mr. Gladstone de- 
 livered his first budget, it was regarded as a 
 positive curiosity of financial exposition. It 
 was a performance that belonged to the de- 
 partment of the fine arts. The speech occu- 
 pied several hours, and assuredly no listener 
 wished it the shorter by a single sentence. 
 Pitt, we read, had the same art of making a 
 budget speech a fascinating discourse ; but 
 in our time no minister has had this gift ex- 
 cept Mr. Gladstone. Each time that he es- 
 sayed the same task subsequently he accom- 
 plished just the same success. Mr. Glad- 
 stone’s first oratorical qualification was his 
 exquisite voice. Such a voice would make 
 commonplace seem interesting and lend some- 
 thing of fascination to dulness itself. It was 
 singularly pure, clear, resonant, and sweet. 
 The orator never seemed to use the slightest 
 effort or strain in filling any hall and reach- 
 ing the ear of the farthest among the audi- 
 ence. It was not a loud voice or of great 
 volume ; but strong, vibrating, and silvery. 
 The words were always aided by energetic 
 action and by the deep' gleaming eyes of the 
 orator. Somebody once said that Gladstone 
 
 was the only man in the House who could 
 talk in italics. The saying was odd, but was 
 nevertheless appropriate and expressive. 
 Gladstone could by the slightest modulation 
 of his voice give all the emphasis of italics, 
 of small print, or large print, or any other 
 effect he might desire, to his spoken words. 
 It is not to be denied that his wonderful gift 
 of words sometimes led him astray. It was 
 often such a fluency as that of a torrent on 
 which the orator was carried away. Glad- 
 stone had to pay for his fluency by being too 
 fluent. He could seldom resist the tempta- 
 tion to shower too many words on his sub- 
 ject and his hearers. Sometimes he involved 
 his sentence in a parenthesis within parenthe- 
 sis until the ordinary listener began to think 
 extrication an impossibility ; but the orator 
 never failed to unravel all the entanglements 
 and to bring the passage out to a clear and 
 legitimate conclusion. There was never any 
 halt or incoherency, nor did the joints of the 
 sentence fail to fit together in the right way. 
 Harley once described a famous speech as 
 “ a circumgyration of incoherent words.” 
 This description certainly could not be ap- 
 plied even to Mr. Gladstone’s most involved 
 passages ; but if some of those were described 
 as a circumgyration of coherent words, the 
 phrase might be considered germane to the 
 matter. His style was commonly too redun- 
 dant. It seemed as if it belonged to a cer- 
 tain school of exuberant Italian rhetoric. 
 Yet it was hardly to be called florid. Glad- 
 stone indulged in few flowers of rhetoric, and 
 his great gift was not imagination. His fault 
 was simply the habitual use of too many 
 words. This defect was indeed a character- 
 istic of the Peelite school of eloquence. Mr. 
 Gladstone retained some of the defects of the 
 school in which he had been trained, even 
 after he had come to surpass its greatest mas- 
 ter. 
 
 Often, however, this superb, exuberant 
 rush of words added indescribable strength 
 to the eloquence of the speaker. In passages 
 of indignant remonstrance or denunciation, 
 when word followed word, and stroke came 
 down upon stroke, with a wealth of resource 
 that seemed inexhaustible, the very fluency 
 and variety of the speaker overwhelmed his 
 audience. Interruption only gave him a new 
 stimulus, and appeared to supply him with 
 fresh resources of argument and illustration. 
 His retorts leaped to his lips. His eye 
 caught sometimes even the mere gesture that 
 indicated dissent or question ; and perhaps 
 some unlucky opponent who was only think- 
 ing of what might be said in opposition to 
 the great orator found himself suddenly 
 dragged into the conflict and overwhelmed 
 with a torrent of remonstrance, argument, 
 and scornful words. Gladstone had not 
 much humor of the playful kind, but he had 
 a certain force of sarcastic and scornful 
 rhetoric. He was always terribly in earnest. 
 Whether the subject were great or small, he 
 threw his whole soul into it. Once, in ad- 
 dressing a schoolboy gathering, he told his 
 young listeners that if a boy ran he ought al- 
 ways to run as fast as he could ; if he jumped, 
 he ought always to jump as far as he could. 
 He illustrated his maxim in his own career. 
 He had no idea apparently of running or 
 jumping in such measure as happened to 
 please the fancy of the moment. He always 
 exercised his splendid powers to the utter- 
 most strain. 
 
 A distinguished critic once pronounced 
 Mr. Gladstone to be the greatest Parlia- 
 mentary orator of our time, on the ground 
 that he had made by far the greatest number 
 of fine speeches, while admitting that two or 
 three speeches had been made by other men 
 of the day which might rank higher than any 
 of his. This is, however, a principle of crit- 
 icism which posterity never sanctions. The 
 greatest speech, the greatest poem, give the 
 author the highest place, though the effort 
 were but single. Shakespeare would rank 
 beyond Massinger just as he does now had 
 
 he written only “ The Tempest.” We can- 
 not say how many novels, each as good as 
 “ Gil Bias,” would make Le Sage the equal 
 of Cervantes. On this point fame is inexor- 
 able. We are not, therefore, inclined to call 
 Mr. Gladstone the greatest English orator of 
 our time when we remember some of the fin- 
 est speeches of Mr. Bright ; but did we re- 
 gard Parliamentary speaking as a mere in- 
 strument of Parliamentary business and de- 
 bate, then unquestionably Mr. Gladstone is not 
 only the greatest but by far the greatest Eng- 
 lish orator of our time ; for lie had a richer 
 combination of gifts than any other man we 
 can remember, and he could use them often- 
 est with effect. He was like a racer which 
 cannot indeed always go faster than every 
 rival, but can win more races in the year than 
 any other horse. Mr. Gladstone could get 
 up at any moment, and no matter how many 
 times a night, in the House of Commons, and 
 be argumentative or indignant, pour out a 
 stream of impassioned eloquence or a shower 
 of figures, just as the exigency of the debate 
 and the moment required. He was not, of 
 course, always equal ; but he was always 
 eloquent and effective. He seemed as if he 
 could not be anything but eloquent. Per- 
 haps, judged in this way, he never had an 
 equal in the English Parliament. Neither 
 Pitt nor Fox ever made so many speeches 
 combining so many great qualities. Chat- 
 ham was a great actor rather than a great 
 orator. Burke was the greatest political es- 
 sayist who ever addressed the House of Com- 
 mons. Canning did not often rise above the 
 level of burnished rhetorical commonplace. 
 Macaulay, who during his time drew the 
 most crowded houses of any speaker, not 
 even excepting Peel, was not an orator in 
 the true sense. Probably no one, past or 
 present, had in combination so many gifts of 
 voice, manner, fluency and argument, style, 
 reason and passion, as Mr. Gladstone. 
 
 The House of Commons was his ground. 
 There he was himself ; there he was always 
 seen to the best advantage. As a rule he was 
 not so successful on the platform. His turn 
 of mind did not fit him well for the work of 
 addressing great public meetings. He loved 
 to look too carefully at every side of a ques- 
 tion, and did not always go so quickly to the 
 heart of it as would suit great popular audi- 
 ences. The principal defect of his mind was 
 probably a lack of simplicity, a tendency to 
 over - refining and super - subtle argument 
 Not perhaps unnaturally, however, when he 
 did, during some of the later passages of his 
 career, lay himself out for the work of ad- 
 dressing popular audiences, he threw away all 
 discrimination, and gave loose to the full 
 force with which, under the excitement of 
 great pressure, he was wont to rush at a 
 principle. There seemed a certain lack of 
 balance in his mind ; a want of the exact 
 poise of all his faculties. Either he must re- 
 fine too much, or he did not refine at all. 
 Thus he became accused, and w’ith some 
 reason, of over-refining and all but quibbling 
 in some of his Parliamentary arguments ; of 
 looking at all sides of a question so carefully 
 that it was too long in doubt whether he was 
 ever going to form any opinion of his own ; 
 and he was sometimes accused with equal 
 justice of pleading one side of a political 
 cause before great meetings of his country- 
 men with all the passionate blindness of a 
 partisan. The accusations might seem self- 
 contradictory, if we did not remember that 
 they will apply, and with great force and jus- 
 tice, to Burke. Burke cut blocks with a 
 razor, and went on refining to an impatient 
 House of Commons, only eager for its din- 
 ner ; and the same Burke threw himself into 
 antagonism to the French Revolution as if he 
 were the wildest of part isans ; as if the ques- 
 tion had but one side, and only fools or vil- 
 lains could possibly say it had any other. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone grew slowly into Liberal 
 convictions. At the time when he joined the 
 Coalition Ministry he was still- regarded as 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 87 
 
 one who had scarcely left the camp of Tory- 
 ism, and who had only joined that Ministry 
 because it was a coalition. Years after he 
 was applied to by the late Lord Derby to join 
 a Ministry formed by him ; and it was not 
 supposed that there was anything unreason- 
 able in the proposition. The first impulse 
 towards Liberal principles was given to his 
 mind probably by his change with his leader 
 from Protection to Free Trade. When a 
 man like Gladstone saw that his traditional 
 principles and those of his party had broken 
 down in any one direction, it was but natural 
 that he should begin to question their endur- 
 ance in other directions. The whole fabric 
 of belief was built up together. Glad- 
 stone’s was a mind of that order that sees 
 a principle in every thing, and must, to adopt 
 the phrase of a great preacher, make the 
 ploughing as much a part of religious duty 
 as the praying. The interests of religion 
 seemed to him bound up with the creed of 
 Conservatism ; the principles of Protection 
 must probably at one time have seemed a 
 part of the whole creed of which one article 
 was as sacred as another. His intellect and 
 his principles, however, found themselves 
 compelled to follow the guidance of his leader 
 in the matter of Free Trade ; and when in- 
 quiry thus began it was not very likely soon 
 to stop. He must have seen how much the 
 working of such a principle as that of Pro- 
 tection became a class interest in England, 
 and how impossible it would have been for it 
 to continue long in existence under an ex- 
 tended and a popular suffrage. In other 
 countries the fallacy of Protection did not 
 show itself so glaringly in the eyes of the 
 poorer classes, for in other countries it was 
 not the staple food of the population that be- 
 came the principal object of a protective duty. 
 But in England the bread on which the poor- 
 est had to live was made to pay a tax for the 
 benefit of landlords and farmers. As long as 
 one believed this to be a necessary condition 
 of a great unquestionable creed, it was easy 
 for a young statesman to reconcile himself 
 to it. It might bear cruelly on individuals, 
 or even multitudes ; but so would the law of 
 gravitation, as Mill has remarked, bear 
 harshly on the best of men when it dashed 
 him down from a height and broke his bones. 
 It would be idle to question the existence of 
 the law on that account ; or to disbelieve the 
 whole teaching of the physical science which 
 explains its movements. But when Mr. 
 Gladstone came to be convinced that there 
 was no such law as the Protection principle 
 at all ; that it was a mere sham ; that to be- 
 lieve in it was to be guilty of an economic 
 heresy — then it was impo sible for him not to 
 begin questioning the genuineness of the whole 
 system of political thought of which it formed 
 but a part. Perhaps, too, he was impelled 
 towards Liberal principles at home by see- 
 ing what the effects of opposite doctrines had 
 been abroad. He rendered memorable ser- 
 vice to the Liberal cause of Europe by his 
 eloquent protest against the brutal treatment 
 of Baron Poerio and other Liberals of Naples 
 who were imprisoned by the Neapolitan king 
 — a protest which Garibaldi declared to have 
 sounded the first trumpet-call of Italian lib- 
 erty. In rendering service to Liberalism and 
 to Europe he rendered service also to his own 
 intelligence. He helped to set free his own 
 spirit as well as the Neapolitan people. We 
 find him, as his career goes on, dropping the 
 traditions of his youth, always rising higher 
 in Liberalism, and not going back. One of 
 the foremost of his compeers, and his only 
 actual rival in popular eloquence, eulogized 
 him as always struggling towards the light. 
 The common taunts addressed to public men 
 who have changed their opinions were hardly 
 ever applied to him. Even his enemies felt 
 that the one idea always inspired him — a 
 conscientious anxiety to do the right thing. 
 None accused him of being one of the poli- 
 ticians who mistake, as Victor Hugo says, a 
 weathercock for a flag. With many qualities 
 
 which seemed hardly suited to a practical 
 politician ; with a sensitive and eager tem- 
 per, like that of Canning, and a turn for theo- 
 logical argument that as a rule Englishmen 
 do not love in a statesman ; with an impetu- 
 osity that often carried him far astray, and a 
 deficiency of those genial social qualities that 
 go so far to make a public success in Eng- 
 land, Mr. Gladstone maintained through the 
 whole of his career a reputation against 
 which there was hardly a serious cavil. The 
 worst thing that was said of him was that 
 he was too impulsive, and that his intelligence 
 was too restless. He was an essayist, a critic, 
 a Homeric scholar ; dilettante in art, music, 
 and old china ; he was a theological contro- 
 versialist ; he was a political economist, a 
 financier, a practical administrator whose gift 
 of mastering details has hardly ever been 
 equalled ; he was a statesman and an orator. 
 No man could attempt so many things and 
 not occasionally make himself the subject of 
 a sneer. The intense gravity and earnestness 
 of Gladstone’s mind always, however, saved 
 him from the special penalty of such versa- 
 tility ; no satirist described him as not one, 
 but all mankind’s epitome. 
 
 As yet, however, he is only the young 
 statesman who was the other day the hope of 
 the more solemn and solid Conservatives, 
 and in whom they have not even yet entirely 
 ceased to put some faith. The Coalition 
 Ministry was so formed that it was not sup- 
 posed a man necessarily nailed his colors to 
 any mast when he joined it. More than one 
 'of Gladstone’s earliest friends and political 
 associates had a part in it. The Ministry 
 might undoubtedly be called an Administra- 
 tion of All the Talents. Except the late 
 Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, it included al • 
 most every man of real ability who belonged 
 to either of the two great parties of the 
 State. The Manchester School had, of 
 course, no place there ; but they were not 
 likely just yet to be recognized as constitut- 
 ing one of the elements out of which even a 
 Coalition Ministry might be composed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE EASTEKN QUESTION. 
 
 For. forty years England had been at 
 peace. There had indeed been little wars 
 here and there with some of her Asiatic and 
 African neighbors ; and once or twice, as in 
 the instance of the quarrel between Turkey 
 and Egypt, she had been menaced for a mo- 
 ment with a dispute of a more formidable 
 kind and nearer home. But the trouble had 
 passed away, and from Waterloo downward 
 England had known no real war. The new 
 generation were growing up in a kind of 
 happy belief that wars were things of the 
 past for us ; out of fashion ; belonging to a 
 ruder and less rational society, like the wear- 
 ing of armor and the carrying of weapons in 
 the civil streets. It is not surprising if it 
 seemed possible to many that the England of 
 the future might regard the instruments and 
 the ways of war with the same curious won- 
 der as that which Virgil assumes would one 
 day fill the minds of the rustic laborers whose 
 ploughs turned up on some field of ancient 
 battle the rusted swords and battered helmets 
 of forgotten warriors. During all the con- 
 vulsions of the Continent, England had re- 
 mained undisturbed. When bloody revolu- 
 tions were storming through other capitals, 
 London was smiling over the dispersion of 
 the Chartists by a few special constables. 
 When the armies of Austria, of Russia, of 
 France, of Sardinia were scattered over vast 
 and various Continental battle-grounds, our 
 troops were passing in peaceful pageantry of 
 review before the well-pleased eyes of their 
 Sovereign in some stately royal park. A 
 new school as well as a new generation had 
 sprung up. This school, full of faith, but 
 full of practical shrewd logic as well, was 
 teaching with great eloquence and effect that 
 the practice of settling international contro- 
 versy by the sword was costly, barbarous, 
 
 and blundering as well as wicked. The 
 practice of the duel in England had utterly 
 gone out. Battle was for ever out of fashion 
 as a means of settling private controversy in 
 England. Why then should it be unreasona- 
 ble to believe that the like practice among 
 nations might soon become equally obsolete Y 
 Such certainly was the faith of a great 
 many intelligent persons at the time when the 
 Coalition Ministry was formed. The ma- 
 jority tacitly acquiesced in the belief without 
 thinking much about it. They had never in 
 their time seen England engaged in Euro- 
 pean war ; and it was natural to assume that 
 what they had never seen they were never 
 likely to see. Any one who retraces atten- 
 tively the history of English public opinion at 
 that time will easily find evidence enough of a 
 commonly accepted understanding that Eng- 
 land had done with great wars. Even then 
 perhaps a shrewd observer might have been 
 inclined to conjecture that by the very force 
 of reaction a change would soon set in. 
 Man, said Lord Palmerston, is by nature a 
 fighting and quarrelling animal. This was 
 one of those smart saucy generalizations char- 
 acteristic of its author, and which used to 
 provoke many graver and more philosophic 
 persons ; but which nevertheless often got at 
 the heart of a question in a rough and ready 
 sort of way. In the season of which we are 
 now speaking, it was not, however, the com- 
 mon belief that man was by nature a fight- 
 ing and a quarrelling animal, at least in Eng- 
 land. Bad government, the arbitrary power 
 of an aristocracy, the necessity of finding oc- 
 cupation for a standing army, the ambitions 
 of princes, the misguiding lessons of romance 
 and poetry : these and other influences had 
 converted man into an instrument of war. 
 Leave him to his own impulses, his own na- 
 ture, his own ideas of self-interest, and the 
 better teachings of wiser guides, and he is 
 sure to remain in the paths of peace. Such 
 was the common belief of the year or two 
 after the Great Exhibition — the belief fer- 
 vently preached by a few and accepted with- 
 out contradiction by the majority, as most 
 common beliefs are — the belief floating in 
 the air of the time, and becoming part of the 
 atmosphere in which the generation was 
 brought up. Suddenly all this happy quiet 
 faith was disturbed, and the long peace, 
 which the hero of Tennyson’s “ Maud” says 
 he thought no peace, was over and done. 
 The hero of “ Maud” had, it will be observed, 
 the advantage of explaining his convictions 
 after the war had broken out. The name 
 was indeed legion of those who, under the 
 same conditions, discovered like him that 
 they had never relished the long, long peace, 
 or believed in it much as a peace at all. 
 
 The Eastern Question it was that disturbed 
 the dream of peace. The use of such phrases 
 as “ the Eastern Question,” borrowed chiefly 
 from the political vocabulary of France, is 
 not in general to be commended ; but we can 
 in this instance find no more ready and con- 
 venient way of expressing clearly and pre- 
 cisely the meaning of the crisis which had 
 arisen in Europe. It was strictly the East- 
 ern “ question” — the question of what to do 
 with the East of Europe. It was certain 
 that things could not remain as they then 
 were, and nothing else was certain. The Ot- 
 toman Power had been settled during many 
 centuries in the south-east of Europe. It 
 had come in there as a conqueror, and had 
 remained there only as a conqueror occupies 
 the ground his tents are covering. The 
 Turk had many of the strong qualities and 
 even the virtues of a great warlike conquer- 
 or ; but he had no capacity or care for the 
 arts of peace. He never thought of assimi- 
 lating himself to those whom he had con- 
 quered, or them to him. He disdained to 
 learn anything from them ; he did not care 
 whether or no they learned anything from 
 him. It has been well remarked, that of all 
 the races who conquered Greeks, the Turks 
 alone learned nothing from their gifted 
 
88 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 captives. Captive Greece conquered all 
 the world except the Turks. They defied 
 her. She could not teach them letters or 
 arts, commerce or science. The Turks were 
 not, as a rule, oppressive to the races that 
 lived under them. They were not habitual 
 persecutors of the faiths they deemed heret- 
 ical. In this respect they often contrasted fa- 
 vorably with states that ought to have been 
 able to show them a better example. In 
 truth, the Turk for the most part.was dispos- 
 ed to look with disdainful composure on 
 what he considered the religious follies of 
 the heretical races who did not believe in the 
 Prophet. They were objects of his scornful 
 pity rather than of his anger. Every now 
 and then, indeed, some sudden fierce out- 
 burst of fanatical cruelty towards some of 
 the subject sects horrified Europe, and re- 
 minded her that the conqueror who had set- 
 tled himself down in her south-eastern corner 
 was still a barbarian who had no right or 
 place in civilized life. But as a rule the Turk 
 did not care enough about the races he ruled 
 over to feel the impulses of the perverted 
 fanaticism which would strive to scourge 
 men into the faith itself believes needful to 
 salvation. 
 
 At one time there can be little doubt that 
 all the Powers of civilized Europe would 
 gladly have seen the Turk driven out of our 
 Continent. But the Turk was powerful for 
 a long series of generations, and it seemed 
 for a while rather a question whether he 
 would not send the Europeans out of their 
 own grounds. He was for centuries the 
 great terror, the nightmare, of Western Eu- 
 rope. When he began to decay, and when 
 his aggressive strength was practically all 
 gone, it might have been thought that the 
 Western Powers would then have managed 
 somehow to get rid of him. But in the 
 meantime the condition of Europe had great- 
 ly changed. No one not actually subject to 
 the Turk was afraid of him any more ; and 
 other States had arisen strong for aggression. 
 The uncertainties of these States as to the in- 
 tentions of their neighbors and each other 
 proved a better bulwark for the Turks than 
 any warlike strength of their own could any 
 longer have furnished. The growth of the 
 great Russian empire was of itself enough to 
 change the whole conditions of the problem. 
 
 Nothing in our times has been more re- 
 markable than the sudden growth of Russia. 
 The rise of the United States is not so won- 
 derful ; for the men who made the United 
 States were civilized men ; men of our own 
 race who might be expected to make a way 
 for themselves anywhere, and who were, 
 moreover, put by destiny in possession of a 
 vast and splendid continent having all va- 
 riety of climate and a limitless productive- 
 ness, and where they had no neighbors or 
 rivals to molest them. But Russia was peo- 
 pled by a race who even down to our own 
 times remain in many respects little better 
 than semi-barbarous ; and she had enemies 
 and obstacles on all sides. A few genera- 
 tions ago Russia was literally an inland 
 state. She was shut up in the heart of East- 
 ern Europe as if in a prison. The genius, 
 the craft and the audacity of Peter the Great 
 first broke the narrow bounds set to the Rus- 
 sia of his day, and extended her frontier to 
 the sea. He was followed after a reign or 
 two by a woman of genius, daring, unscru- 
 pulousness, and profligacy equal to his own ; 
 the greatest woman probably who ever sat 
 on a throne, Elizabeth of England not even 
 excepted. Catherine the Second so ably fol- 
 lowed the example of Peter the Great, that 
 she extended the Russian frontier in direc- 
 tions which he had not had opportunity to 
 stretch to. By the time her reign was done 
 Russia was one of the Great Powers of Eu- 
 rope, entitled to enter into negotiations on a 
 footing of equality with the proudest States 
 of the Continent. Unlike Turkey, Russia 
 had always shown a yearning after the lat- 
 est developments of science and of civiliza- 
 
 tion. There was something even of affecta- 
 tion, provoking the smiles of an older and 
 more ingrained culture, in the efforts persist- 
 ently made by Russia to put on the gar- 
 ments of Western civilization. Catherine the 
 Great, in especial, had set the example in this 
 •way. She invited Diderot to her court. She 
 adorned her cabinet with a bust of Charles 
 James Fox. While some of the personal 
 habits of herself and of those who surround- 
 ed her at court would have seemed too rude 
 and coarse for Esquimaux, and while she was 
 putting down free opinion at home with a 
 severity worthy only of some mediaeval Asi- 
 atic potentate, she was always talking as 
 though she were a disciple of Rousseau’s 
 ideas and a pupil of Chesterfield in manners. 
 This may have seemed ridiculous enough 
 sometimes ; and even in our own days the 
 contrast between the professions and the prac- 
 tices of Russia is a familiar subject of satire. 
 But in nations at least the homage which imi- 
 tation pays often wins for half-conscious hy- 
 pocrisy as much success as earnest and sin- 
 cere endeavor. A nation that tries to appear 
 more civilized than it really is ends very 
 often by becoming more civilized than its 
 neighbors ever thought it likely to be. 
 
 The wars against Napoleon brought Russia 
 into close alliance with England, Austria, 
 Prussia, and other European States of old 
 and advanced civilization. Russia was, dur- 
 ing one part of that great struggle, the lead- 
 ing spirit of the alliance against Napoleon. 
 Her soldiers were seen in Italy and in France, 
 as well as in the East of Europe. The semi- 
 savage state became in the eyes of Europe a 
 power charged along with others with the 
 protection of the conservative interests of the 
 Continent. She was recognized as a valua- 
 ble friend and a most formidable enemy. 
 Gradually it became evident that she could 
 be aggressive as well as conservative. In the 
 war between Austria and Hungary, Russia 
 intervened and conquered Austria’s rebel- 
 lious Hungarians for her. Russia had al- 
 ready earned the hatred of European Liber- 
 als by her share in the partition of Poland 
 and her manner of dealing with the Poles. 
 After a while it grew to be a fixed conviction 
 in the mind of the Liberalism of Western 
 Europe that Russia was the greatest obstacle 
 then existing in civilization to the spread of 
 popular ideas. The Turk was comparative- 
 ly harmless in that sense. He was well con- 
 tent now, so much had his ancient ambition 
 shrunk and his ancient war spirit gone out, 
 if his strong and restless neighbors would 
 only let him alone. But he was brought at 
 more than one point into especial collision 
 with Russia. Many of the provinces he ruled 
 over in European Turkey were of Sclavonian 
 race, and of the religion of the Greek Church. 
 They were thus affined by a double tie to 
 the Russian people, and therefore the manner 
 in which Turkey dealt with those provinces 
 was a constant source of dispute between 
 Russia and her. The Russians are a pro- 
 foundly religious people. No matter what 
 one may think of their form of faith, no mat- 
 ter how he may sometimes observe that re- 
 ligious profession contrasts with the daily 
 habits of life, yet he cannot but see that the 
 Russian character is steeped in religious 
 faith or fanaticism. To the Russian fanatic 
 there was something intolerable in the 
 thought of a Sclave population professing 
 the religion of the orthodox Church being 
 persecuted by the Turks. No Russian ruler 
 could hope to be popular who ventured to 
 show a disregard for the national sentiment 
 on this subject. The Christian populations 
 of Turkey were to the Russian sovereigns 
 what the Germans of Schleswig-Holstein 
 were to the great German princes of later 
 years, an indirect charge to which they could 
 not, if they would, profess any indifference. 
 A German prince, in order to be popular, 
 had to proclaim himself enthusiastic about 
 the cause of Schleswig-Holstein ; a Russian 
 emperor could not be loved if he did not de- 
 
 | clare his undying resolve to be the protector 
 of the Christian populations of Turkey. 
 Much of this was probably sincere and sin- 
 gle-minded on the part of the Russian people 
 and most of the Russian politicians. But the 
 other States of Europe began to suspect that 
 mingled up with benign ideas of protecting 
 the Christian populations of Turkey might 
 be a desire to extend the frontier of Russia to 
 the southward in a new direction. Europe 
 had seen by what craft and what audacious 
 enterprises Russia had managed to extend her 
 empire to the sea in other quarters ; it began 
 to be commonly believed that her next ob- 
 ject of ambition would be the possession of 
 Constantinople and the Bosphorus. It was 
 reported that a will of Peter the Great had 
 left it as an injunction to his successors to 
 turn all the efforts of their policy towards 
 that object. The particular document which 
 was beiieved to be a will of Peter the Great 
 enjoined on all succeeding Russian sover- 
 eigns never to relax in the extension of their 
 territory northward on the Baltic and south- 
 ward on the Black Sea shores, and to en- 
 croach as far as possible in the direction of 
 Constantinople and the Indies. ‘ ‘ To work 
 out this, raise wars continually — at one time 
 against Turkey, at another against Persia ; 
 make dockyards on the Black Sea ; by de- 
 grees make yourselves masters of that sea as 
 well as of the Baltic ; hasten the decay of 
 Persia, and penetrate to the Persian Gulf ; 
 establish, if possible, the ancient commerce 
 of the East via Syria, and push on to the 
 Indies, which are the entrepot of the world. 
 Once there, you need not fear the gold of 
 England.” We now know that the alleged 
 will was not genuine ; but there could be lit- 
 tle doubt that the policy of Peter and of his 
 great follower, Catherine, would have been 
 in thorough harmony with such a project. 
 It therefore seemed to be the natural business 
 of other European Powers to see that the de- 
 fects of the Ottoman Government, such as 
 they were, should not be made an excuse for 
 helping Russia to secure the objects of her 
 special ambition. One Great Power, above 
 all the rest, had an interest in watching over 
 every movement that threatened in any way 
 to interfere with the highway to India ; 
 still more with her peaceful ana secure pos- 
 session of India itself. That Power, of 
 course, was England. England, Russia, and 
 Turkey were alike in one respect : they 
 were all Asiatic as well as European powers. 
 But Turkey could never come into any man- 
 ner of collision with the interests of England 
 in the East. The days of Turkey’s interfer- 
 ing with any great State were long over. 
 Neither Russia nor England nor any other 
 Power in Europe or Asia feared her any 
 more. On the contrary, there seemed some- 
 thing like a natural antagonism between 
 England and Russia in the East. The Rus- 
 sians were extending their frontier towards 
 that of our Indian empire. They were show- 
 ing in that quarter the same mixture of ciaft 
 and audacity which had stood them in good 
 stead in various parts of Europe. Our offi- 
 cers and diplomatic emissaries reported that 
 they were continually confronted by the evi- 
 dences of Russian intrigue in Central Asia. 
 We have already seen how much influence 
 the real or supposed intrigues of Russia had 
 in directing our policy in Afghanistan. 
 Doubtless there was some exaggeration and 
 some panic in all the tales that were told 
 of Russian intrigue. Sometimes the alarm 
 spread by these tales conjured up a kind of 
 Russian hobgoblin, bewildering the minds of 
 public servants, and making even statesmen 
 occasionally seem like affrighted children. 
 The question that at present concerns us is 
 not whether all the apprehensions of danger 
 from Russia were just and reasonable, but 
 whether as a matter of fact they did exist. 
 They certainly counted for a great deal in de- 
 termining the altitude of the English people 
 towards both Turkey and Russia. It was 
 in great measure out of these alarms that 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 89 
 
 there grew up among certain statesmen and 
 classes in this country the conviction that the 
 maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish 
 empire was part of the national duty of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 It is not too much, therefore, to say that 
 the States of Europe generally desired the 
 maintenance of the Ottoman empire simply 
 because it was believed that while Turkey 
 held her place she was a barrier against vague 
 dangers which it was not worth while en- 
 countering as long as they could possibly be 
 averted. Sharply defined, the condition of 
 things was this : Russia, by reason of her 
 sympathy of religion or race with Turkey’s 
 Christian populations, was brought into 
 chronic antagonism with Turkey ; England, 
 by reason of her Asiatic possessions, was 
 kept in just the same state of antagonism to 
 Russia. The position of England was trying 
 and difficult. She felt herself compelled by 
 the seeming necessity of her national inter- 
 ests to maintain the existence of a Power 
 which on its own merits stood condemned, 
 and for which, as a Power, no English states- 
 man ever cared to say a word. The position 
 of Russia had more plausibility about it. It 
 sounded better when described in an official 
 document or a popular appeal. Russia was 
 the religious state which had made it her mis- 
 sion and her duty to protect the suffering 
 Christians of Turkey. England, let her state 
 her case no matter how carefully or frankly, 
 could only affirm that her motive in opposing 
 Russia was the protection of her own inter- 
 ests. One inconvenient result of this condi- 
 tion of things was that here among English 
 people there was always a wide difference 
 of opinion as to the national policy with re- 
 gard to Russia and Turkey. Many public 
 men of great ability and influence were of 
 opinion that England had no right to uphold 
 the Ottoman Power because of any fancied 
 danger that might come to us from its fall. 
 It was the simple duty of England, they in- 
 sisted, to he just and fear not. In private 
 life, they contended, we should all abhor a 
 man who assisted a ruffian to live in a house 
 which he had only got into as a burglar, 
 merely because there was a chance that the 
 dispossession of the ruffian might enable his 
 patron’s rival in business to become the own- 
 er of the premises. The duty, they insist- 
 ed, of a conscientious man is clear. He must 
 not patronize a ruffian, whatever comes. Let 
 what will happen, that he must not do. So 
 it was, according to their argument, with na- 
 tional policy. We are not concerned in dis- 
 cussing this question just now ; we are mere- 
 ly acknowledging a fact which came to be of 
 material consequence when the crisis arose 
 that threw England into sudden antagonism 
 with Russia. 
 
 That crisis came about during the later 
 years of the reign of the Emperor Nicholas. 
 He saw its opening, but not the close of even 
 its first volume. Nicholas was a man of re- 
 markable character. He had many of the 
 ways of an Asiatic despot. He had a strong 
 ambition, a fierce and fitful temper, a daring 
 but sometimes too a vacillating will. He had 
 many magnanimous and noble qualities, 
 and moods of sweetness and gentleness. He 
 reminded people sometimes of an Alexander 
 the Great ; sometimes of the “ Arabian 
 Nights” version of Haroun Alraschid. A 
 certain excitability ran through the tempera- 
 ment of all his house, which, in some of its 
 members, broke into actual madness, and in 
 others prevailed no farther than to lead to wild 
 outbreaks of temper such as those that often 
 convulsed the frame and distorted the char- 
 acter of a Charles the Bold or a Coeur de 
 Lion. We cannot date the ways and charac- 
 ters of Nicholas’s family from the years o: 
 Peter the Great. We must, for tolerably ob- 
 vious reasons, be content to deduce their ori- 
 gin from the reign of Catherine II. The ex- 
 traordinary and almost unparalleled condi- 
 tions of the early married life of that much- 
 injured, much-injuring woman would easily 
 
 account for any aberrations of intellect and 
 will among her immediate descendants. Her 
 son was a madman ; there was madness or 
 something very like it among the brothers of 
 the Emperor Nicholas. The Emperor at one 
 time was very popular in England. He had 
 visited the Queen, and he had impressed 
 every one by his noble presence, his lofty 
 stature, his singular personal beauty, his 
 blended dignity and familiarity of manner. 
 He talked as if he had no higher ambition 
 than to be in friendly alliance with England. 
 When he wished to convey his impression of 
 the highest degree of personal loyalty and 
 honor, he always spoke of the word of an 
 English gentleman. There can, indeed, be 
 little doubt that the Emperor was sincerely 
 anxious to keep on terms of cordial friend- 
 ship with England ; and, what is more, had 
 no idea until the very last that the way he 
 was walking was one which England could 
 not consent to tread. His brother and pre- 
 decessor had been in close alliance with Eng- 
 land ; his own ideal hero was the Duke of 
 Wellington ; he had made up his mind that 
 when the division of the spoils of Turkey 
 came about, England and he could best con- 
 sult for their own interests and the peace of 
 the world by making the appropriation a mat- 
 ter of joint arrangement. 
 
 We do not often in history find a great des- 
 pot explaining in advance and in frank 
 words a general policy like that which the 
 Emperor Nicholas cherished with regard to 
 Turkey. We are usually left to infer his 
 schemes from his acts. Not uncommonly we 
 have to set his acts and the fair inferences 
 from them against his own positive and re- 
 peated assurances. But in the case of the 
 Emperor Nicholas we are left in no such 
 doubt. He told England exactly what he 
 proposed to do. He told the story twice 
 over ; more than that, he consigned it to 
 writing for our clearer understanding. 
 When he visited England in 1814, for the 
 second time, Nicholas had several conversa- 
 tions with the Duke of Wellington and with 
 Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign Secretary, 
 about Turkey and her prospects, and what 
 would be likely to happen in the case of her 
 dissolution, which he believed to be immi- 
 nent. When he returned to Russia lie had a 
 memorandum drawn up by Count Nessel- 
 rode, his Chancellor, embodying the views 
 which, according to Nicholas’s impressions, 
 were entertained alike by him and by the 
 British statesmen with whom he had been 
 conversing. Mr. Ivinglake says that he sent 
 this document to England with the view of 
 covering his retreat, having met with no 
 encouragement from the English statesmen. 
 Our idea of the matter is different. It may 
 be taken for granted that the English states- 
 men did not give Nicholas any encourage- 
 ment, or at least that they did not intend to 
 do so ; but it seems clear to us that lie believ- 
 ed they had done so. The memorandum 
 drawn up by Count Nesselrode is much more 
 like a formal reminder or record of a general 
 and oral engagement than a withdrawal from 
 a proposal which was evidently not likely to 
 be accepted. The memorandum set forth 
 that Russia and England were alike penetrat- 
 ed by the conviction that it was for their com- 
 mon interest that the Ottoman empire should 
 maintain itself in its existing independence 
 and extent of territory, and that they had an 
 equal interest in averting all the dangers that 
 might place its safety in jeopardy. With 
 this object, the memorandum declared, the 
 essential point was to suffer the Porte to live 
 in repose without needlessly disturbing it 
 by diplomatic bickering. Turkey, however, 
 had a habit of constantly breaking her en- 
 gagements ; and the memorandum insisted 
 strongly that while she kept up this practice 
 it was impossible for her integrity to be se- 
 cure ; and this practice of hers was indulged 
 in because she believed she might do so with 
 impunity, reckoning on the mutual jealousies 
 of the cabinets, and thinking that if she 
 
 failed in her engagements towards one of 
 them, the rest would espouse her cause. 
 “ As soon as the Porte shall perceive that it is 
 not supported by the other cabinets, it will 
 give way, and the differences which have 
 arisen will be arranged in a conciliatory man- 
 ner, without any conflict resulting from 
 them.” The memorandum spoke of the im- 
 perative necessity of Turkey being led to treat 
 her Christian subjects with toleration and 
 mildness. On such conditions it was laid 
 down that England and Russia must alike 
 desire her preservation ; but the document 
 proceeded to say that nevertheless these States 
 could not conceal from themselves the fact 
 that the Ottoman empire contained within it- 
 self many elements of dissolution, and that 
 unforeseen events might at any time hasten its 
 fall. “ In the uncertainty which hovers over 
 the future a single fundamental idea seems 
 to admit of a really practical application ; 
 that is, that the danger which may result 
 from a catastrophe in Turkey will be much 
 diminished if in the event of its occurring 
 Russia and England have come to an under- 
 standing as to the course to be taken by them 
 in common. That understanding will be the 
 more beneficial inasmuch as it will have the 
 full assent of Austria, between whom and 
 Russia there already exists an entire accord.” 
 This document was sent to London and kept 
 in the archives of the Foreign Office. It was 
 only produced and made public when, at a 
 much later day, the Russian press began to 
 insist that the English Government had al- 
 ways been in possession of the views of Rus- 
 sia in regard to Turkey. It seems to us evi- 
 dent that the Emperor of Russia really be- 
 lieved that his views were shared by English 
 statesmen. The mere fact that his memo- 
 randum was received and retained in the Eng- 
 lish Foreign Office might well of itself tend 
 to make Nicholas assume that its principles 
 were recognized by the English Government 
 as the basis of a common action, or at least a 
 common understanding, between England and 
 Russia. Nothing is more easy than to allow 
 a fanatic or a man of one idea to suppose 
 that those to whom he explains his views are 
 convinced by him and in agreement with 
 him. It is only necessary to listen and say 
 nothing. Therefore, it is to be regretted that 
 the English statesmen should have listened to 
 Nicholas without saying something very dis- 
 tinct to show that they were not admitting or 
 accepting any combination of purpose ; or 
 that they should have received his memoran- 
 dum without some distinct disclaimer of their 
 being in any way bound by its terms. 
 Some of the statements in the memorandum 
 were at the least sufficiently remarkable to 
 have called for comment of some kind from 
 the English statesmen who received it. For 
 example the Emperor of Russia professed 
 to have in his hands not alone the policy of 
 Russia, but that of Austria as well. He 
 spoke for Austria, and he stated that he un- 
 derstood himself to be speaking for England 
 too. Accordingly, England, Austria, and 
 Russia were, in his understanding, entering 
 into a secret conspiracy among themselves 
 for the disposal of the territory of a friendly 
 Power in the event of that Power getting into 
 difficulties. This might surely be thought 
 by the English statesmen to bear an ominous 
 and painful resemblance to the kind of pour- 
 parlers that were going on between Russia, 
 Prussia, and Austria before the partition of 
 Poland, and might well have seemed to call 
 for a strong and unmistakable repudiation 
 on the part of England. We could scarcely 
 have been too emphatic or too precise in con- 
 veying to the Emperor of Russia our deter- 
 mination to have nothing to do with any 
 such conspiracy. 
 
 Time went on and the Emperor thought he 
 saw an occasion for still more clearly ex- 
 plaining his plans and for reviving the sup- 
 posed understanding with England. Lord 
 Aberdeen came into office as Prime Minister 
 of this country ; Lord Aberdeen who was 
 
90 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Foreign Secretary when Nicholas was in Eng- 
 land in 1844. On January 9, 1853, before the 
 re-elections which were consequent upon the 
 new ministerial appointments had yet taken 
 place, the Emperor met our minister, Sir G. 
 Hamilton Seymour, at a party given by the 
 Archduchess Helen, at her palace in St. 
 Petersburg, and he drew him aside and began 
 to talk with him in the most outspoken man- 
 ner about the future of Turkey and the ar- 
 rangements it might be necessary for Eng- 
 land and Russia to make regarding it. The 
 conversation was renewed again and again 
 afterwards. Few conversations have had 
 greater fame than these. One phrase which 
 the Emperor employed has passed into the 
 familiar political language of the world. As 
 long as there is memory of an Ottoman em- 
 pire in Europe, so long the Turkey of the 
 days before the Crimean War will be called 
 ‘ ‘ the sick man. ” “We have on our hands, ’ ’ 
 said the Emperor, “ a sick man — a very sick 
 man ; it will be a great misfortune if one of 
 these days he should slip away from us be- 
 fore the necessary arrangements have been 
 made.” The conversations all tended to- 
 wards the one purpose. The Emperor urged 
 that England and Russia ought to make ar- 
 rangements beforehand as to the inheritance 
 of the Ottoman in Europe — before what 
 he regarded as the approaching and inevita- 
 ble day when the sick man must come to 
 die. The Emperor explained that he did 
 not contemplate nor would he allow a 
 permanent occupation of Constantinople by 
 Russia ; nor on the other hand would he 
 consent to see that city held by England 
 or France or any other Great Power. He 
 would not listen to any plans for the re- 
 construction of Greece in the form of a By- 
 zantine empire, nor would he allow Turkey 
 to be split up into little republics — asylums, 
 as he said, for the Kossuths and Mazzinis of 
 Europe. It was not made very clear what 
 the Emperor wished to have done with Con- 
 stantinople, if it was not to be Russian, nor 
 Turkish, nor English, nor French, nor Greek, 
 nor yet a little republic ; but it was evident 
 at all events that Nicholas had made up his 
 mind as to what it was not to be. He thought 
 that Servia and Bulgaria might become inde- 
 pendent States ; that is to say, independent 
 States, such as he considered the Danubian 
 Principalities then to be, “ under my protec 
 tion.” If the reorganization of South-east- 
 ern Europe made it seem necessary to Eng- 
 land that she should take possession of Egypt, 
 the Emperor said he should offer no objec- 
 tion. He said the same thing of Candia if 
 England desired to have that island, he saw 
 no objection. He did not ask for any formal 
 treaty, he said ; indeed, such arrangements 
 as that are not generally consigned to formal 
 treaties ; he only wished for such an under- 
 standing as might be come to among gentle- 
 men, and he was satisfied that if he had ten 
 minutes’ conversation with Lord Aberdeen 
 the thing could be easily settled. If only 
 England and Russia could arrive at an un- 
 derstanding on the subject, he declared that 
 it was a matter of indifference to him what 
 other Powers might think or say. He spoke 
 of the several millions of Christians in Tur- 
 key whose rights he was called upon to 
 watch over, and he remarked — the remark 
 is of significance — that the right of watch- 
 ing over them was secured to him by treaty. 
 
 The Emperor was evidently under the im- 
 pression that the interests of England and of 
 Russia were united in this proposed transac- 
 tion. He had no idea of anything but the 
 most perfect frankness so far as we were 
 concerned. It clearly had not occurred to 
 him to suspect that there could be anything 
 dishonorable, anything England might recoil 
 from, in the suggestion that the two Powers 
 1 ought to enter into a plot to divide the sick 
 man’s goods between them while the breath 
 was yet in the sick man’s body. It did not 
 even occur to him that there could be any- 
 thing dishonorable in entering into such a 
 
 compact without the knowledge of any other 
 of the great European Powers. The Emperor 
 desired to act like a man of honor ; but the 
 idea of Western honor was as yet new to 
 Russia, and it had not quite got possession 
 of the mind of Nicholas. He was like the 
 savage who is ambitious of learning the ways 
 of civilization, and who may be counted on 
 to do whatever he knows to be in accordance 
 with these ways, but who is constantly liable 
 to make a mistake simply from not knowing 
 how to apply them in each new emergency. 
 The very consequences which came from 
 Nicholas’s confidential communications with 
 our minister would of themselves testify to 
 his sincerity, and in a certain sense to his 
 simplicity. But the English Government 
 never after the disclosures of Sir Hamilton 
 Seymour put any faith in Nicholas. They 
 regarded him as nothing better than a plot- 
 ter. They did not probably even make al- 
 lowance enough for the degree of religious 
 or superstitious fervor which accompanied 
 and qualified all his ambition and his craft. 
 Human nature is so oddly blent that we 
 ought not to be surprised df we find a very 
 high degree of fanatical and sincere fervor 
 in company with a crafty selfishness. The 
 English Government and most of the English 
 people ever after looked on Nicholas as a de- 
 termined plotter and plunderer, who was not 
 to be made an associate in any engagement. 
 On the other hand, Nicholas was as much 
 disappointed as an honest highwayman of 
 the days of Captain Macheath might have 
 been who, on making a handsome offer of a 
 share in a new enterprise to a trusted and 
 familiar “ pal,” finds that the latter is taken 
 with a fit of virtuous indignation and is hur- 
 rying off to Bow Street to tell the whole 
 story. 
 
 The English Minister and the English Gov- 
 ernment could only answer the Emperor’s 
 overtures by saying that they did not think 
 it quite usual to enter into arrangements for 
 the spoliation of a friendly Power, and that 
 England had no desire to si cceed to any of 
 the possessions of Turkey. The Emperor 
 doubtless did not believe these assurances. 
 He probably felt convinced that England had 
 some game of her own in hand into which 
 she did not find it convenient to admit him 
 on terms of partnership. He must have felt 
 bitterly annoyed at the thought that he had 
 committed himself so far for nothing. The 
 communications were of course understood 
 to be strictly confidential and Nicholas had 
 no fear that they would be given to the pub- 
 lic at that time. The 3 r werein fact not made 
 publicly known for more than a year after. 
 But Nicholas had the dissatisfaction of know- 
 ing that her Majesty’s ministers were now in 
 possession of his designs. He had the ad- 
 ditional discomfort of believing that while he 
 had shown his hand to them, they had con- 
 trived to keep whatever designs of their own 
 they were preparing a complete secret from 
 him. One unfortunate admission, the sig- 
 nificance of which will be seen hereafter, 
 was made on the part of the English Govern- 
 ment during the correspondence caused by 
 the conversation between the Emperor and 
 Sir Hamilton Seymour. It was Lord John 
 Russell who, inadvertently .no doubt, made 
 this admission. In his letter to Sir Hamilton 
 Seymour on February 9, 1853, he wound up 
 with the words, ‘ ‘ The more the Turkish 
 Government adopts the rules of impartial 
 law and equal administration, the less will 
 the Emperor of Russia find it necessary to 
 apply that exceptional protection which his 
 Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome 
 and inconvenient, though no doubt prescribed 
 by duty and sanctioned by treaty. ’ ’ 
 
 These conversations with Sir Hamilton 
 Seymour formed but an episode in the his- 
 tory of the events that were then going on. 
 It was an episode of great importance, even 
 to the immediate progress of the events, and 
 it had much to do with the turn they took 
 towards war ; but there were great forces 
 
 moving towards antagonism in the South- 
 east of Europe tha£ must in any case have 
 come into collision. Russia, with her ambi- 
 tions, her tendency to enlarge her frontier 
 on all sides, and her natural sympathies of 
 race and religion with the Christian and 
 Sclave populations under Turkish rule, must 
 before long have come into active hostility 
 with the Porte. Even at the present some- 
 what critical time we are not under any 
 necessity to persuade ourselves that Russia 
 was actuated in the movements she made by 
 merely selfish ambition and nothing else ; 
 that all the wrong was on her side of the 
 quarrel and all the right upon ours. It may 
 be conceded without any abrogation of patri- 
 otic English sentiment that in standing up 
 for the populations so closely affined to her in 
 race and religion, Russia was acting very 
 ■much as England would have acted under 
 similar circumstances. If we can imagine a 
 number of English and Christian populations 
 under the sway of some Asiatic despot on 
 the frontiers of our Indian empire, we shall 
 admit that it is likely the sentiments of all 
 Englishmen in India would be extremely 
 sensitive on their behalf, and that it would 
 not be difficult to get us to believe that we 
 were called upon to interfere for their protec- 
 tion. Certainly any one who should try to 
 persuade us that after all these Englishmen 
 were nearly as well off under the Asiatic and 
 despotic rule as many other people, or as they 
 deserved to be, would not have much chance 
 of. a patient hearing from us. 
 
 The Russian Emperor fell back a little 
 after the failure of his efforts with Sir Ham- 
 ilton Seymour, and for a while seemed to 
 agree with the English Government as to the 
 necessity of not embarrassing Turkey by 
 pressing too severely upon her. He was no 
 doubt seriously disappointed when he found 
 that England would not go with him ; and 
 his calculations were put out by the dis- 
 covery. He therefore saw himself com- 
 pelled to act with a certain moderation while 
 feeling his way to some other mode of attack. 
 But the natural forces which were in opera- 
 tion did not depend on the will of any em- 
 pire or government for their tendency. 
 Nicholas would have had to move in any 
 case. There is really no such thing in mod- 
 ern politics as a genuine autocrat. Nicholas 
 of Russia could no more afford to overlook 
 the evidences of popular and national feeling 
 among his people than an English sovereign 
 could. He was a despot by virtue of the 
 national will which he embodied. The na- 
 tional will was in decided antagonism to the 
 tendencies of the Ottoman Power in Europe ; 
 and afterwards to the policy which the Eng- 
 lish Government felt themselves compelled 
 to adopt for the support of that Power against 
 the schemes of the Emperor of Russia. 
 
 There had long been going on a dispute 
 about the Holy Places in Palestine. The 
 claims of the Greek Church and those of the 
 Latin Church were in antagonism there. 
 The Emperor of Russia was the protector of 
 the Greek Church ; the Kings of France had 
 long had the Latin Church under their pro- 
 tection. France had never taken our views 
 as to the necessity of maintaining the Otto- 
 man Power in Europe. On the contrary, as 
 we have seen, the policy of England and that 
 of France were so decidedly opposed at the 
 time when France favored the independence 
 of Egypt, and England would not hear of it, 
 that the two countries very nearly came to 
 war. Nor did France really feel any very 
 profound sympathy with the pretensions 
 which the Latin monks were constantly mak- 
 ing in regard to the Holy Places. There was 
 unquestionably downright religious fanati- 
 cism on the part of Russia to back up the 
 demands of the Greek Church : but we can 
 hardly believe that opinion in France or in 
 the cabinets of French Ministers really con- 
 cerned itself much about the Latin monks 
 except in so far as political purposes might 
 be subserved by paying some attention to 
 
A HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 91 
 
 them. But it happened somewhat unfortu- 
 nately that the French Government began to 
 be unusually active in pushing the Latin 
 claims just then. The whole dispute on 
 which the fortunes of Europe seemed for a 
 while to depend was of a strangely mediaeval 
 character. The Holy Places to which the 
 Latins raised a claim were the great Church 
 in Bethlehem ; the Sanctuary of the Nativity, 
 with the right to place a new star there (that 
 which formerly ornamented it having been 
 lost) ; the Tomb of the Virgin ; the Stone of 
 Anointing ; the Seven Arches of the Virgin 
 in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In 
 the reign of that remarkably pious, truthful, 
 and virtuous monarch, Francis the First of 
 France, a treaty was made with the Sultan 
 by which France was acknowledged the 
 protector of the Holy Places in Palestine, and 
 of the monks of the Latin Church who took 
 on themselves the care of the sacred monu- 
 ments and memorials. But the Greek 
 Church afterwards obtained firmans from the 
 Sultan ; each Sultan gave away privileges 
 very much as it pleased him, and without 
 taking much thought of the manner in which 
 his finnan might affect the treaties of his pre- 
 decessors ; and the Greeks claimed on the 
 strength of these concessions that they had 
 as good a right as the Latins to take care of 
 the Holy Places. Disputes were always aris- 
 ing, and of course these were aggravated by 
 the fact that France was supposed to be con- 
 cerned in the protection of one set of dispu- 
 tants and Russia in that of another. The 
 French and the Russian Governments did in 
 point of fact interfere from time- to time for 
 the purpose of making good their claims. 
 The claims at length came to- be- identified 
 with the States which respectively protected 
 them. An advantage of the smallest kind 
 gained by the Latins was viewed as an insult 
 to Russia ; a concession to the Greeks was a 
 snub to France. The subject of controversy 
 seemed trivial and odd in itself. But It had 
 even in itself a profounder significance than 
 many a question of diplomatic etiquette 
 which has led great States to the verge of war 
 or into war itself. Mr. Kinglake, whose 
 brilliant history of the Invasion of the 
 Crimea is too often disfigured by passages of 
 solemn and pompous monotony, has superflu- 
 ously devoted several eloquent pages to prove 
 that the sacredness of association attaching 
 to some particular spot has its roots in the 
 very soil of human nature. The custody of 
 the Holy Places was in this instance a sym- 
 bol of a religious inheritance to the monastic 
 disputants, and of political power to the di- 
 plomatists. 
 
 It was Fiance which first stirred the con- 
 troversy in the time just before the Crimean 
 War. That fact is beyond dispute. Lord 
 John Russell had hardly come into office 
 when he had to observe in writing to Lord 
 Cowley, our ambassador in Paris, that “ her 
 Majesty's Government cannot avoid perceiv- 
 ing that the ambassador of France at Con- 
 stantinople was the first to disturb the status 
 quo in which the matter rested.” “Not,” 
 Lord John Russell went on to say, “ that the 
 disputes of the Latin and Greek Churches 
 were not very active, but without some po- 
 litical action on the part of France those 
 quarrels would never have troubled the rela- 
 tions of friendly Powers.” Lord John Rus- 
 sell also complained that the French ambas- 
 sador was the first to speak of having re- 
 course to force, and to threaten the interven- 
 tion of a French fleet. “I regret to say,” 
 the despatch continued, “ that this evil ex- 
 ample has been partly followed by Russia.” 
 The French Government were indeed un- 
 usually active at that time. The French 
 ambassador, M. de Lavalette, is said to have 
 threatened that a French fleet should appear 
 off Jaffa, and even hinted at a French occu- 
 pation of Jerusalem, “ when,” as he signifi- 
 cantly put it, “ we should have all the sanc- 
 tuaries.” One French army occupying 
 Rome and another occupying Jerusalem 
 
 would have left the world in no doubt as to 
 the supremacy of France. The cause of all 
 this energy is not far to seek. The Prince 
 President had only just succeeded in procur- 
 ing himself to be installed as Emperor ; and 
 he was very anxious to distract the attention 
 of Frenchman from domestic politics to some 
 showy and startling policy abroad. He was 
 in quest of a policy of adventure. This con- 
 troversy between the Church of the East and 
 the Church of the West tempted him into ac- 
 tivity as one that seemed likely enough to 
 give him an opportunity of displaying the 
 power of France and of the new system with- 
 out any very great danger or responsibility. 
 Technically therefore we are entitled to lay 
 the blame of disturbing the peace of Europe 
 in the first instance on the Emperor of the 
 French. But while we must condemn the rest- 
 less and self-interested spirit which thus set 
 itself to stir up disturbance, we cannot help 
 seeing that the quarrel must have come at 
 some" time even if the 'plebiscite had never 
 been invited, and a new Emperor had never 
 been placed upon the throne of France. The 
 Emperor of Russia had made up his mind 
 that the time had come to divide the property 
 of the sick man, and he was not likely to re- 
 main long without an opportunity of quarrel- 
 ling with any one who stood at the side of the 
 sick man’s bed and seemed to constitute him- 
 self a protector of the sick man’s Interests. 
 
 The key of the whole controversy out of 
 which the Eastern war arose, and out of which 
 indeed all subsequent complications in the 
 East came as well, was said to be found in 
 the clause of theTreatyof Kutchuk-Kainard- 
 ji. During the negotiations for peace that 
 took place in Vienna while the Crimean War 
 was yet going on, the assembled plenipoten- 
 tiaries declared that the whole dispute was 
 owing to a misinterpretation of a clause in 
 this unfortunate treaty. In a time much 
 nearer to our own, the; discussion on the same 
 clause in the same treaty was renewed with 
 all the old earnestness, and with the same 
 difference of interpretation. It may not per- 
 haps give an uninitiated 1 reader any very ex- 
 alted opinion of the utility and beauty of dip- 
 lomatic arrangements, to hear that disputes 
 covering more than a century of time, and 
 causing at least two great wars, arose out of 
 the impossibility of reconciling two different 
 interpretations of the meaning of two or three 
 lines of a treaty. The American civil war 
 was said with much justice to have been 
 fought to obtain a definition of the limits of 
 the rights of the separate States as laid down 
 in the constitution ; the Crimean War was 
 apparently fought to obtain a satisfactory and 
 final definition of the seventh clause of the 
 Treaty of Kainardji ;. and it did not fulfil its 
 purpose. The historic value therefore of 
 this seventh clause may in one sense be con- 
 sidered greater than that of the famous dis- 
 puted words which provoked the censure of 
 the Jansenists and the immortal letters of 
 Pascal. 
 
 The Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji was made 
 in 1774, between the Ottoman Porte and 
 Catherine II. of Russia. On sea and land 
 the arms of the great Empress had been vic- 
 torious, Turkey was beaten to her knees. 
 She had to give up Azof and Taganrog to 
 Russia, and to declare the Crimea indepen- 
 dent of the Ottoman empire ; an event which 
 it is almost needless to say was followed not 
 many years after by the Russians taking the 
 Crimea for themselves and making it a prov- 
 ipce of Catherine’s empire. The Treaty of 
 Kainardji, as it is usually called; was that 
 which made the arrangements for peace. 
 When it exacted from Turkey such heavy 
 penalties in the shape of cession of territory, 
 it was hardly supposed that one seemingly 
 insignificant clause was destined to threaten 
 the very existence of the Turkish empire. 
 The treaty bore date July 10, 1774 ; and it 
 was made, so to speak, in the tent of the vic- 
 tor. The seventh clause declared that the 
 Sublime Pbrte promised “ to protect con- 
 
 stantly the Christian religion and its 
 churches ; and also to allow the minister of 
 the Imperial Court of Russia to make on all 
 occasions representations as well in favor of 
 the new church in Constantinople, of which 
 mention will be made in the fourteenth arti- 
 cle, as in favor of those who officiate therein, 
 promising to take such representations into 
 due consideration as being made by a confi 
 dential functionary of a neighboring and sin 
 cerely friendly Power.” Not much possibil 
 ity of misunderstanding about these words, 
 one might feel inclined to say. We turn then 
 to the fourteenth article alluded to, in order 
 to discover if in its wording lies the perplex- 
 ity of meaning which led to such momentous 
 and calamitous results. We find that by this 
 article it is simply permitted to the Court of 
 Russia to build a public church of the Greek 
 rite in the Galata quarter of Constantinople, 
 in addition to the chapel built in the house of 
 the minister ; and it is declared that the new 
 church “ shall be always under the protection 
 of the ministers of the (Russian) empire, and 
 shielded from all obstruction and all dam- 
 age.” Here, then, we seem to have two 
 clauses of the simplest meaning and by no 
 means of first-class importance. The latter 
 clause allows Russia to build a new church 
 in Constantinople ; the former allows the 
 Russian minister to make representations to 
 the Porte on behalf of the church and of 
 those who officiate in it. What difference of 
 opinion, it may be asked, could possibly 
 arise ? The cliff erence was this : Russia 
 claimed a right of protectorate over all the 
 Christians of the Greek Church in Turkey as 
 the consequence of the seventh clause of the 
 treaty. She insisted that when Turkey gave 
 her a right to interfere on behalf of the wor- 
 shippers in one particular church, the same 
 right extended so far as to cover all the wor- 
 shippers of the same denomination in every 
 part of the Ottoman dominions. The great 
 object of Russia throughout all the negotia- 
 tions that preceded the Crimean War was to 
 obtain from the Porte an admission of the ex- 
 istence of such a protectorate. Such an ac- 
 knowledgment would, in fact, have made the 
 Emperor of Russia the patron and all but the 
 ruler of by far the larger proportion of the 
 populations of European Turkey. The Sul- 
 tan would no longer have been master in 
 his own dominions. The Greek Christians 
 would naturally have regarded the Russian 
 Emperor’s right of intervention on their be- 
 half as constituting a protectorate far more 
 powerful than the nominal rule of the Sultan. 
 They would have known that the ultimate 
 decision of any dispute in which they were 
 concerned rested with the Emperor, and not 
 with the Sultan ; and they would soon have 
 come to look upon the Emperor, and not the 
 Sultan, as their actual sovereign. 
 
 Now it does not seem likely on the face of 
 things that any ruler of a state would have con- 
 sented to hand over to a more powerful foreign 
 monarch such a right over the great majority 
 of his subjects. Still, if Turkey, driven to 
 her last defences, had no alternative but to 
 make such a concession, the Emperors of 
 Russia could not be blamed for insisting that 
 it should be carried out. The terms of the 
 article in the treaty itself certainly do not 
 seem to admit of such a construction. But 
 for the views always advocated by Mr. Glad- 
 stone, we should say it was self-evident that 
 the article never had any such meaning. 
 We cannot, however, dismiss the argument 
 of such a man as Mr. Gladstone as if it were 
 unworthy of consideration, or say that an in- 
 terpretation is obviously erroneous which he 
 has deliberately and often declared to be ac- 
 curate. We may as well mention here at 
 once that Mr. Gladstone rests his argument 
 on the first line of the famous article. The 
 promise of the Sultan, he contends, to pro- 
 tect constantly the Christian religion and its 
 churches, is an engagement distinct in itself, 
 and disconnected from the engagement that 
 follows in the same clause, and which refers 
 
92 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES; 
 
 to the new building and its ministrants. 
 The Sultan engages to protect the Christian 
 churches ; and with whom does he enter into 
 this engagement ? With the Sovereign of 
 Russia. Why does he make this engage- 
 ment? Because he has been defeated by 
 Russia and compelled to accept terms of 
 peace ; and one of the conditions on which 
 lie is admitted to peace is his making this en- 
 gagement. How does he make the engage- 
 ment ? By an article in a treaty agreed to 
 between him and the Sovereign of Russia. 
 But if a state enters into treaty engagement 
 with another that it will do a certain thing, 
 it is clear that the other state must have a 
 special right of remonstrance and of repre- 
 sentation if the thing be not done. Therefore 
 Mr. Gladstone argues that as the Sultan made 
 a special treaty with Russia to protect the 
 Christians, he gave in the very nature of 
 things a special right to Russia to complain 
 if the protection was not given. We are far 
 from denying that there is force in the argu- 
 ment ; and it is at all events worthy of being 
 recorded for its mere historical importance. 
 But Mr. Gladstone’s was certainly not the 
 European interpretation of the clause ; nor 
 does it seem to us the interpretation that his- 
 tory will accept. Lord John Russell, as we 
 have seen, made a somewhat unlucky admis- 
 sion that the claims of Russia to a protectorate 
 were “ prescribed by duty and sanctioned by 
 treaty.” But this admission seems rather to 
 have been the result of inadvertence or heed- 
 lessness, than of any deliberate intention to 
 recognize the particular claim involved. The 
 admission was afterwards made the occasion 
 of many a severe attack upon Lord John Rus- 
 sell by Mr. Disraeli and other leading mem- 
 bers of the Opposition. Assuredly Lord John 
 Russell’s admission, if it is really to be re- 
 garded as such, was not endorsed by the Eng- 
 lish Government. Whenever we find Russia 
 putting the claim into plain words, we And 
 England, through her ministers, refusing to 
 give it their acknowledgment. During the 
 discussions before the Crimean War, Lord 
 Clarendon, our Foreign Secretary, wrote to 
 Lord Stratford de Redcliffe a letter embody- 
 ing the views of the English Government on 
 the claim. No sovereign, Lord Clarendon 
 says, having a due regard for his own dignity 
 and independence, could admit proposals 
 which conferred upon a foreign and more 
 powerful sovereign a right of protection over 
 his own subjects. “ If such a concession 
 were made, the result,” as Lord Clarendon 
 pointed out, “would be that fourteen mil- 
 lions of Greeks would henceforward regard 
 the Emperor as their supreme protector, and 
 their allegiance to the Sultan would be little 
 more than nominal, while his own indepen- 
 dence would dwindle into vassalage. ” Diplo- 
 macy, therefore, was powerless to do good 
 during all the protracted negotiations that set 
 in, for the plain reason that the only object 
 of the Emperor of Russia in entering upon 
 negotiation at all was one which the other 
 European Powers regarded as absolutely in- 
 admissible. 
 
 The dispute about the Holy Places was 
 easily settled. The Porte cared very little 
 about the matter, and was willing enough to 
 come to any fair terms by which the whole 
 controversy could be got rid of. But the 
 demands of Russia went on just as before. 
 Prince Mentschikoif, a maD of the Potemkin 
 school, fierce, rough, and unable or unwilling 
 to control his temper, was sent with demands 
 to Constantinople ; and his very manner of 
 making the demands seemed as if it were 
 taken up for the purpose of ensuring their 
 rejection. If the envoy fairly represented 
 the sovereign, the demands must have been 
 so conveyed with the deliberate intention of 
 immediately and irresistibly driving the 
 Turks to reject every proposition coming 
 from such a negotiator. Mentschikoif 
 brought his proposals with him cut and dry 
 in the form of a convention which he called 
 upon Turkey to accept without more ado. 
 
 In other words he put a pistol at Turkey’s I 
 head and told her to sign at once or else he 
 would pull the trigger. Turkey refused, 
 and Prince Mentschikoif withdrew in real 
 or affected rage, and presently the Emperor 
 Nicholas sent two divisions of his army 
 across the Pruth to take possession of the 
 Danubian principalities. 
 
 Diplomacy, however, did not give in even 
 then. The Emperor announced that he had 
 occupied the principalities not as an act of 
 war, but with the view of obtaining material 
 guarantees for the concession of the demands 
 which Turkey had already declared that she 
 would not concede. The English Govern- 
 ment advised the Porte not to treat the occu- 
 pation as an act of war, although fully ad- 
 mitting that it was strictly a casus belli, and 
 that Turkey would have been amply justified 
 in meeting it by an armed resistance if it 
 were prudent for her to do so. It would of 
 course have been treated as war by any 
 strong Power. We might well have retorted 
 upon Russia the harsh but not wholly unjus- 
 tifiable language she had employed towards 
 us when we seized possession of material 
 guarantees from the Greek Government in 
 the harbor of the Piraeus. In our act, how- 
 ever, there was less of that which constitutes 
 war than in the arbitrary conduct of Russia. 
 Greece did not declare that our demands were 
 such as she could not admit in principle. 
 She did admit most of them in principle, but 
 was only, as it seemed to our Government, 
 or at least to Lord Palmerston, trying to 
 evade an actual settlement. There was noth- 
 ing to go to war about ; and our seizure of 
 the ships, objectionable as it was, might be 
 described as only a way of getting hold of a 
 material guarantee for the discharge of a debt 
 which was not in principle disputed. But in 
 the dispute between Russia and Turkey the 
 claim was rejected altogether ; it was declar- 
 ed intolerable ; its principle was absolutely 
 repudiated, and any overt act on the part of 
 Russia must therefore have had for its object 
 to compel Turkey to submit to a demand 
 which she would yield to force alone. This 
 is of course in the very spirit of war ; and if 
 Turkey had been a stronger Power, she 
 would never have dreamed of meeting it in 
 any other way than by an armed resistance. 
 She was, however, strongly advised b3 r Eng- 
 land and other Powers to adopt a moderate 
 course ; and, in fact, throughout the whole 
 of the negotiations she showed a remarkable 
 self-control and a dignified courtesy which 
 must sometimes have been very vexing to 
 her opponent. Diplomacy went to work 
 again, and a Vienna note was concocted 
 which Russia at once offered to accept. The 
 four great Powers who were carrying on the 
 business of mediation were at first quite 
 charmed with the note, with the readiness of 
 Russia to accept it, and with themselves ; 
 and but for the interposition of Lord Strat- 
 ford de Redcliffe it seems highly probable 
 that it would have been agreed to by all the 
 parties concerned. Lord Stratford, however, 
 saw plainly that the note was a virtual con- 
 cession to Russia of all that she specially de- 
 sired to have, and all that Europe was un- 
 willing to concede to her. The great object 
 of Russia was to obtain an acknowledgment, 
 however vague or covert, of her protectorate 
 over the Christians of the Greek Church in 
 the Sultan’s dominions ; and the Vienna note 
 was so constructed as to affirm, much rather 
 than to deny, the claim which Russia had so 
 long been setting up. Assuredly such a note 
 could at some future time have been brought, 
 out in triumph by Russia as an overwhelm- 
 ing evidence of the European recognition of 
 such a protectorate. 
 
 Let us make this a little more plain. Sup- 
 pose the question at issue were as to the pay- 
 ment of a tribute claimed by one prince 
 from another. The one had been always in- 
 sisting that the other was his vassal, bound 
 to pay him tribute ; the other always repudi- 
 ated the claim in principle. This was 4 the 
 
 subject of dispute. After a while the ques- 
 tion is left to arbitration, and the arbitrators, 
 without actually declaring in so many words 
 that the claim to the tribute is established, 
 yet go so far as to direct the payment of a 
 certain sum of money, and do not introduce 
 a single word to show that in their opinion 
 the original claim was unjust in principle. 
 Would not the claimant of the tribute be 
 fully entitled in after years, if any new doubt 
 of his claim were raised, to appeal to this 
 arbitration as confirming it ? Would he not 
 be entitled to say, ‘ ‘ The dispute was about 
 my right to tribute. Here is a document 
 awarding to me the payment of a certain 
 sum, and not containing a word to show 
 that the arbitrators disputed the principle of 
 my claim. Is it possible to construe that 
 otherwise than as a recognition of my 
 claim ?” We certainly cannot think it would 
 have been otherwise regarded by any impar- 
 tial mind. The very readiness with which 
 Russia consented to accept the Vienna note 
 ought to have taught its framers that Russia 
 found all her account in its vague and am- 
 biguous language. The Prince Consort said 
 it was a trap laid by Russia through Austria ; 
 and it seems hardly possible to regard it now 
 in any other light. 
 
 The Turkish Government, therefore, act- 
 ing under the advice of Lord Stratford de 
 Redcliffe, our ambassador to Constantinople, 
 who had returned to his post after a long ab- 
 sence, declined to accept the Vienna note un- 
 less with considerable modifications. Lord 
 Stratford de Redcliffe showed great acute- 
 ness and force of character throughout all 
 these negotiations. A reader of Mr. King- 
 lake’s history is sometimes apt to become nau- 
 seated by the absurd pompousness with which 
 the historian overlays his descriptions of 
 “ the great Eltchi,” as he is pleased to call 
 him, and is inclined to wish that the great 
 Eltchi could have imparted some of his own 
 sober gravity and severe simplicity of style to 
 his adulator. Mr. Kinglake writes of Lord 
 Stratford de Redcliffe as if he were describ- 
 ing the all- compelling movements of some di- 
 vinity or providence. A devoted imperial 
 historian would have made himself ridicu- 
 lous by writing of the Great Napoleon at the 
 height of his power in language of such in- 
 flated mysticism as this educated English- 
 man has allowed liimsell to employ when de- 
 scribing the manner in which our ambassador 
 to Constantinople did his duty during the 
 days before the Crimean War. But the ex- 
 traordinary errors of taste and good sense 
 into which Mr. Kinglake occasionally de- 
 scends cannot prevent" us from doing justice 
 to the keen judgment and the inflexible will 
 which Lord Stratford displayed during this 
 critical time. He saw the fatal defect of the 
 note which, prepared in Paris, had been 
 brought to its supposed perfection at Vienna, 
 and had there received the adhesion of the 
 English Government along with that of the 
 governments of the other Great Powers en- 
 gaged in the conference. A hint from Lord 
 Stratford made the Ministers of the Porte 
 consider it with suspicious scrutiny, and 
 they too saw its weakness and its conscious 
 or unconscious treachery. They declared 
 that unless certain modifications were intro- 
 duced they would not accept the note. The 
 reader will at first think perhaps that some 
 of these modifications were mere splittings 
 of hairs, and diplomatic, worse even than 
 lawyer-like, quibbles. But in truth the alter- 
 ations demanded were of the greatest impor- 
 tance for Turkey. The Porte had to think, 
 not of the immediate purpose of the note, 
 but of the objects it might be made to serve 
 afterwards. It contained, for instance, 
 words which declared that the Government 
 of his Majesty the Sultan would remain 
 “ faithful to the letter and the spirit of the 
 stipulations of the Treaties of Kainardji and 
 of Adrianople, relative to the protection of 
 the Christian religion.” These words, in a 
 note drawn up for the purpose of satisfying 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 93 
 
 the Emperor of Russia, could not but be un- 
 derstood as recognizing the interpretation of 
 the Treaty of Kainardjt on which Russia has 
 always insisted. The Porte therefore pro- 
 posed to strike out these words and substi- 
 tute the following : “ To the stipulations of 
 the Treaty of Kainardji, confirmed by that 
 of Adrianople, relative to the protection by 
 the Sublime Porte of the Christian religion.” 
 By these words the Turkish ministers quietly 
 affirm that the only protectorate exercised 
 over the Christians of Turkey is that of the 
 Sultan of Turkey himself. The difference is 
 simply that between a claim conceded and a 
 claim repudiated. The Russian Government 
 refused to accept the modifications ; and in 
 arguing against them, the Russian minister, 
 Count Nesselrode, made it clear to the English 
 Government that Lord Stratford de Red- 
 cliff e was right when he held the note to be 
 full of weakness and of error. For the Rus- 
 sian minister argued against the modifications 
 on the very ground that they denied to the 
 claims of Russia just that satisfaction that 
 the statesmanship and the public opinion of 
 Europe had always agreed to refuse. The 
 Prince Consort’s expression was appropri- 
 ate : the Western Powers had nearly been 
 caught in a trap. 
 
 From that time all hopes of peace were 
 over. There were, to be sure, other negotia- 
 tions still. A ghastly semblance of faith in 
 the possibility of a peaceful arrangement was 
 kept up for a while on both sides. Little 
 plans of adjustment were tinkered up and 
 tried, and fell to pieces the moment they 
 were tried. It is not necessary for us to de- 
 scribe them. Not many persons put any 
 faith or even professed any interest in them. 
 They were conducted amid the most ener- 
 getic preparations for war on both sides. 
 Our troops were moving towards Malta ; the 
 streets of London, of Liverpool, of Southamp- 
 ton, and other towns, were ringing with the 
 cheers of enthusiastic crowds gathered togeth- 
 er to watch the marching of troops destined for 
 the East. Turkey had actually declared war 
 against Russia. People now were anxious 
 rather to see how the war would open be- 
 tween Russia and the allies than when it 
 would open : the time when could evidently 
 only be a question of a few days ; the way 
 how was a matter of more peculiar interest. 
 We had known so little of war for nearly 
 forty years, that added to all the other emo- 
 tions which the coming of battle must bring 
 was the mere feeling of curiosity as to the 
 sensation produced by a state of war. It 
 was an abstraction to the living generation — 
 a thing to read of and discuss and make 
 poetry and romance out of ; but they could 
 not yet realize what itself was like. 
 
 CHAPTER XXYI. 
 
 WHERE WAS LORD PALMERSTON? 
 
 Meantime where was Lord Palmerston? 
 He of all men, one would think, must have 
 been pleased with the turn things were tak- 
 ing. He had had from the beginning little 
 faith in any issue of the negotiations but war. 
 Probably he did not really wish for any other 
 result. We are well inclined to agree with 
 Mr. Kinglake that of all the members of the 
 Cabinet he alone clearly saw liis way, and 
 was satisfied with the prospect. But accord- 
 ing to the supposed nature of his office he 
 had now nothing to do with the war or with 
 foreign affairs except as every member of the 
 Cabinet shfres the responsibilities of the 
 whole body. He had apparently about as 
 much to do with the war as the Postmaster- 
 General, or the Chancellor for the Duchy of 
 Lancaster, might have. He had accepted the 
 office of Home Secretary ; he had declared 
 that he did not choose to be Foreign Secre- 
 tary any more. He affirmed that he wanted 
 to learn something about home affairs, and 
 to get to understand his countrymen ; and so 
 forth. He was really very busy all this time 
 in his new duties. Lord Palmerston was a 
 remarkably efficient and successful Home 
 
 Secretary. His unceasing activity loved to 
 show itself in whatever department he might 
 be called upon to occupy. He brought to the 
 somewhat prosaic duties of his new office 
 not only all the virile energy but also all the 
 enterprise which he had formerly shown in 
 managing revolutions and dictating to foreign 
 courts. The ticket-of-leave system dates 
 from the time of his administration. Our 
 transportation system had broken down, for 
 in fact the colonies would stand it no longer, 
 and it fell to Lord Palmerston to find some- 
 thing to put in its place ; and the plan of 
 granting tickets-of-leave to convicts who had 
 shown that they were capable of regeneration 
 was the outcome of the necessity and of his 
 administration. The measures to abate the 
 smoke nuisance by compelling factories un- 
 der penalties to consume their own smoke, is 
 also the offspring of Palmerston’s activity in 
 the Home Office. The Factory Acts were 
 extended by him. He went energetically to 
 work in the shutting up of graveyards in the 
 metropolis ; and in a letter to his brother he 
 declared that he should like to “ put down 
 beershops, and let shopkeepers sell beer like 
 oil, and vinegar, and treacle, to be carried 
 home and drunk with wives and children.” 
 
 This little project is worthy of notice be- 
 cause it illustrates more fairly perhaps than 
 some far greater plan might do at once the 
 strength and the weakness of Palmerston’s 
 intelligence. He could not see why every- 
 thing should not be done in a plain straight- 
 forward way, and why the arrangements that 
 were good for the sale of one thing might 
 not be good also for the sale of another. He 
 did not stop to inquire whether as a matter of 
 fact beer is a commodity at all like oil, and 
 vinegar, and treacle ; whether the same con- 
 sequences follow the drinking of beer and the 
 consumption of treacle. His critics said that 
 he was apt to manage his foreign affairs on 
 the same rough-and-ready principle. If a 
 system suited England, why should it not 
 suit all other places as well ? If treacle may 
 be sold safely without any manner of au- 
 thoritative regulation, why not beer ? The 
 answer to the latter question is plain — be- 
 cause treacle is not beer. So, people said, 
 with Palmerston’s constitutional projects for 
 every place. Why should not that which 
 suits England suit also Spain ? Because, to 
 begin with, a good many people urged, Spain 
 is not England. 
 
 There was one department of his duties in 
 which Palmerston was acquiring a new and 
 a somewhat odd reputation. That was in 
 his way of answering deputations and letters. 
 “ The mere routine business of the Home 
 Office,” Palmerston writes to his brother, 
 “ as far as that consists in daily correspond- 
 ence, is far lighter than that of the Foreign 
 Office. But during a session of Parliament 
 the whole time of the Secretary of State, up 
 to the time when he must go to the House of 
 Commons, is taken up by deputations of all 
 kinds, and interviews with members of Par- 
 liament, militia colonels, etc.” Lord Palm- 
 erston was always civil and cordial ; he was 
 full of a peculiar kind of fresh common 
 sense, and always ready to apply it to any 
 subject whatever. He could at any time say 
 some racy thing which set the public won- 
 dering and laughing. He gave something 
 like a shock to the Presbytery of Edinburgh 
 when they wrote to him through the moder- 
 ator to ask whether a national fast ought not 
 to be appointed in consequence of the appear- 
 ance of cholera. Lord Palmerston gravely 
 admonished the Presbytery that the Maker 
 of the universe had appointed certain laws of 
 nature for the planet on which we live, and 
 that the weal or woe of mankind depends on 
 the observance of those laws — one of them 
 connecting health “ with the absence of those 
 noxious exhalations which proceed from 
 overcrowded human beings, or from decom- 
 posing substances, whether animal or vegeta- 
 ble.” He therefore recommended that the 
 purification of towns and cities should be 
 
 more strenuously carried on, and remarked 
 that the causes and sources of contagion, if 
 allowed to remain, “ will infallibly bi'eed 
 pestilence and be fruitful in death, in spite 
 of all the prayers and fastings of a united but 
 inactive nation.” When Lord Stanley of Al- 
 derley applied to Lord Palmerston for a spe- 
 cial permission for a deceased dignitary of a 
 church to be buried under the roof of the sa- 
 cred building, the Home Secretary declined to 
 accede to the request in a letter that might 
 have come from, or might have delighted, 
 Sydney Smith. “ What special connection 
 is there between church dignities and the 
 privilege of being decomposed under the feet 
 of survivors ? Do you seriously mean to im- 
 ply that a soul is more likely to go to heaven 
 because the body which it inhabited lies de- 
 composing under the pavement of a church 
 instead of being placed in a church- 
 yard ? . . . England is, I believe, the 
 
 only country in which in these days people 
 accumulate putrefying dead bodies amid the 
 dwellings of the living ; and as to burying 
 bodies uuder thronged churches, you might 
 as well put them under libraries, drawing- 
 rooms, and dining-rooms.” 
 
 Lord Palmerston did not see what a very 
 large field of religious and philosophical con- 
 troversy he opened up by some of his argu- 
 ments, both as to the fasting and as to the 
 burial in churchyards. He only saw, for the 
 moment, what appeared to him the healthy 
 common-sense aspect of the position he 
 had taken up, and did not think or care about 
 what other positions he might be surrender- 
 ing by the very act. He had not a poetic or 
 philosophic mind. In clearing his intelli- 
 gence from all that he would have called prej- 
 udice or superstition, he had cleared out 
 also much of the deeper sympathetic faculty 
 which enables one man to understand the 
 feelings and get at the springs of conduct in 
 the breasts of other men. No one can doubt 
 that his jaunty way of treating grave and dis- 
 puted subjects offended many pure and sim- 
 ple minds. Yet it was a mistake to suppose 
 that mere levity dictated his way of dealing 
 with the prejudices of others. He had often 
 given the question his deepest attention, and 
 come to a conclusion with as much thought 
 a3 his temperament would have allowed to 
 any subject. The difference between him 
 and graver men was that when he had come 
 to a conclusion seriously, he loved to express 
 his views humorously. He resembled in this 
 respect some of the greatest and the most 
 earnest men of his time. Count Cavour de- 
 lighted in jocose and humorous answers ; so 
 did President Lincoln ; so at one period of 
 his public career did Prince Bismarck. But 
 there can be no doubt that Palmerston often 
 made enemies by his seeming levity when 
 another man could easily have made friends 
 by saying just the same thing in grave words. 
 The majority of the House of Commons liked 
 him because he amused them and made them 
 laugh ; and they thought no more of the 
 matter. 
 
 But the war is now fairly launched ; and 
 Palmerston is to all appearance what would 
 be vulgarly called “out of the swim.” 
 Every eye was turned to him. He was like 
 Pitt standing up on one of the back benches 
 to support the administration of Addington. 
 For years he had been identified with the 
 Foreign Office, and with that sort of foreign 
 policy which would seem best suited to the 
 atmosphere of war ; and now war is on foot, 
 and Palmerston is in the Home Office pleas- 
 antly “ chaffing” militia colonels and making 
 sensitive theologians angry by the flippancy 
 of his replies. Perhaps there was something 
 flattering to Palmerston's feeling of self-love 
 in the curious wonder with which people 
 turned their eyes upon him during all that 
 interval. Every one seemed to ask how the 
 country was to get on without him to man- 
 age its foreign affairs, and when he would be 
 good enough to come down from his quiet 
 seat in the Home Office and assume what 
 
94 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 seemed his natural duties. A famous tenor 
 singer of our day once had some quarrel with 
 his manager. The singer withdrew from the 
 company ; some one else had to be put in his 
 place. On the first night when the new man 
 made his appearance before the public, the 
 great singer was seen in a box calmly watch- 
 ing the performance like any other of the au- 
 dience. The new man turned out a failure. 
 The eyes of the house began to fix themselves 
 upon the one who could sing, but who was 
 sitting as unconcernedly in his box as if he 
 never meant to sing any more. The audi- 
 ence at first were incredulous. It was in a 
 great provincial city where the singer had al- 
 ways been a prime favorite. They could 
 not believe that they were in good faith to 
 be expected to put up with bad singing while 
 he was there. At last their patience gave 
 way. They insisted on the one singer leav- 
 ing his place on the stage, and the other com- 
 ing down from his box and his easy attitude 
 of unconcern, and resuming what they re- 
 garded as his proper part. They would 
 have their way ; they carried their point ; 
 and the man who could sing was compelled 
 at last to return to the scene of his old tri- 
 umphs and sing for them again. The atti- 
 tude of Lord Palmerston and the manner in 
 which the public eyes were turned upon him 
 during the early days of the war could hard- 
 ly be illustrated more effectively than by this 
 story. As yet the only wonder was why he 
 did not take somehow the directorship of 
 affairs ; the time was to come when the gen- 
 eral voice would insist upon his doing so. 
 
 One day a startling report ran through all 
 circles. It was given out that Palmerston 
 had actually resigned. So far was he from 
 any intention of taking on himself the direc- 
 tion of affairs — even of war or of foreign 
 affairs — that he appeared to have gone out of 
 the Ministry altogether. The report was 
 confirmed : Palmerston actually had resigned. 
 It was at once asserted that his resignation 
 was caused by difference of opinion between 
 him and his colleagues on the Eastern policy 
 of the Government. But on the other hand 
 it was as st outly affirmed that the difference of 
 opinion had only to do with the new Reform 
 Bill which Lord Jchn Russell was preparing 
 to introduce. Now it is certain that Lord 
 Palmerston did differ in opinion with Lord 
 John Russell on the subject of his Reform 
 Bill. It is certain that this was the avowed 
 cause, and the only avowed cause, of Pal- 
 merston’s resignation. But it is equally cer- 
 tain that the real cause of the resignation was 
 the conviction in Palmerston’s mind that his 
 colleagues were not up to the demands of the 
 crisis in regard to the Eastern war. Lord 
 Palmerston’s letters to his brother on the 
 subject are amusing. They resemble some 
 of the epistles which used to pass between 
 suspected lovers in old days, and in which 
 the words were so arranged that the sentences 
 conveyed an obvious meaning good enough 
 for the eye of jealous authority, hut had a 
 very different tale to tell to the one being for 
 whom the truth was intended. Lord Palmer- 
 ston gives his brother along and circumstan- 
 tial account of the differences about the Re- 
 form Bill, and about the impossibility of a 
 Home Secretary either supporting by speech 
 a Bill he did not like, or sitting silent during 
 the whole discussion on it in the House of 
 Commons. He shows that he could not pos- 
 sibly do otherwise under such trying circum- 
 stances than resign. The whole letter, until 
 we come to the very last paragraph, is about 
 the Reform Bill and nothing else. One 
 might suppose that nothing else whatever 
 was entering into the writer’s thoughts. But 
 at the end Palmerston just remembers to add 
 that the Times was telling “ an untruth” 
 when it said there had been no difference in 
 the Cabinet about Eastern affairs, for in fact 
 there had been some little lack of agreement 
 on the subject, but it would have looked 
 rather silly, Palmerston thinks, if he were to 
 have gone out of office merely because he 
 
 could not have his own way about Turkish 
 affairs. Exactly ; and in a few days after 
 Palmerston was induced to withdraw his res- 
 ignation and to remain in the Government ; 
 and then he wrote to his brother again ex- 
 plaining how and all about it. He explains 
 that several members of the Cabinet told him 
 they considered the details of the Reform 
 Bill quite open to discussion and so forth. 
 “ Their earnest representations, and the 
 knowledge that the Cabinet had on Thursday 
 taken a decision on Turkish affairs in entire 
 accordance with opinions which I had long 
 unsuccessfully pressed upon them, decided 
 me to withdraw my resignation, which I did 
 yesterday.” “ Of course,” Lord Palmerston 
 quietly adds, “ what I say to you about the 
 Cabinet decision on Turkish affairs is entirely 
 for yourself and not to be mentioned to any- 
 body. But it is very important, and will 
 give the allied squadrons the command of the 
 Black Sea.” All this was very prudent, of 
 course, and very prettily arranged. But we 
 doubt whether a single man in England who 
 cared anything about the whole question 
 was imposed upon for one moment. Nobody 
 believed that at such a time Lord Palmerston 
 would have gone out of office because he did 
 not quite like the details of a Reform Bill, or 
 that the Cabinet would have obstinately clung 
 to such a scheme just then in spite of his op- 
 position. Indeed the first impression of 
 every one was that Palmerston had gone out 
 only in order to come back again much 
 stronger than before ; that he resigned when 
 he could not have his way in Eastern affairs, 
 and that he would resume office empowered 
 to have his way in everything. The explana- 
 tions about the Reform Bill found as impa- 
 tient listeners among the public at large as the 
 desperate attempts of the young heroine in 
 “ She Stoops to Conquer” to satisfy honest 
 Tony Lumpkin with her hasty and ill-con- 
 cocted devices about Shakebag and Green and 
 the rest of them, whose story she pretends 
 to read for him from the letter which is not 
 intended to reach the suspicious ears of his 
 mother. When Lord Palmerston resumed 
 his place in the Ministry, the public at large 
 felt certain that the war spirit was now at 
 last to have its way, and that the dallyings of 
 the peace-lovers were over. 
 
 Nor was England long left to guess at the 
 reason why Lord Palmerston had so suddenly 
 resigned his office, and so suddenly returned 
 to it. A great disaster had fallen upon Tur- 
 key. Her fleet had been destroyed by the 
 Russians at Sinope, in the Black Sea. Sinope 
 is, or was, a considerable seaport town and 
 naval station belonging to Turkey, and stand- 
 ing on a rocky promontory on the southern 
 shore of the Black Sea. On November 30, 
 1853, the Turkish squadron was lying there 
 at anchor. The squadron consisted of seven 
 frigates, a sloop, and a steamer. It had no 
 ship of the line. The Russian fleet, consist- 
 ing of six ships of the line and some steam- 
 ers, had been cruising about the Black Sea 
 for several days previously, issuing from Se- 
 bastopol, and making an occasional swoop 
 now and then as if to bear down upon the 
 Turkish squadron. The Turkish commander 
 was quite aware of the danger, and pressed 
 for reinforcements ; but nothing was done, 
 either by the Turkish Government or by the 
 ambassadors of the allies at Constantinople. 
 On November 30, however, the Sebastopol 
 fleet did actually bear down upon the Turk- 
 ish vessels lying at Sinope. The Turks, see- 
 ing that an attack was coming at last, not 
 only accepted but even anticipated it ; for 
 they were the first to fire. The fight was 
 hopeless for them. They fought with all the 
 desperate energy of fearless and unconquer- 
 able men ; unconquerable, at least, in the 
 sense that they would not yield. But the 
 odds were too much against them to give 
 them any chance. Either they would not 
 haul down their flag, which is very likely, 
 or if they did strike their colors the Russian 
 admiral did not see the signal. The fight 
 
 went on until the whole Turkish squadron, 
 save for the steamer, was destroyed. It was 
 asserted on official authority that over four 
 thousand Turks were killed ; that the sur- 
 vivors hardly numbered four hundred ; and 
 that of these every man was wounded. 
 Sinope itself was much shattered and bat- 
 tered by the Russian fleet. The affair was 
 at once the destruction of the Turkish ships 
 and an attack upon Turkish territory. 
 
 This was ‘‘the massacre of Sinope.” 
 When the news came to England there arose 
 one cry of grief and anger and shame. It 
 was regarded as a deliberate act of treachery, 
 consummated amid conditions of the most 
 hideous barbarity. A clamor arose against 
 the Emperor of Russia as if he were a mon- 
 ster outside the pale of civilized law, like 
 some of the furious and treacherous despots 
 of mediaeval Asiatic history. Mr. Kinglake 
 has shown — and indeed the sequence of 
 events must in time have shown every one — 
 that there was no foundation for these ac- 
 cusations. The attack was not treacherous, 
 but openly made ; not sudden, but clearly 
 announced by previous acts, and long ex- 
 pected, as we have seen, by the Turkish com- 
 mander himself ; and it was not in breach 
 even of the courtesies of war. Russia and 
 Turkey were not only formally but actually 
 at war. The Turks were the first to begin 
 the actual military operations. More than 
 five weeks before the affair at Sinope they 
 had opened the business by firing from a fort- 
 ress on a Russian flotilla. A few days after 
 this act they crossed the Danube at Widdin 
 and occupied Kalafat ; and for several days 
 they had fought under Omar Pasha with bril- 
 liant success against the Russians at Oltenit- 
 za. All England had been enthusiastic about 
 the bravery which the Turks had shown at 
 Oltenitza and the success which had attended 
 their first encounter with the enemy. It was 
 hardly to be expected that the Emperor of 
 Russia would only fight where he was at a 
 disadvantage, and refrain from attack where 
 his power was overwhelming. Still there 
 was an impression among English and French 
 statesmen that while negotiations for peace 
 were actually going on between the Western 
 Powers and Russia, and while the fleets of 
 England and France were remaining peace- 
 fully at anchor in the Bosphorus, whither 
 they had been summoned by this time, the 
 Russian Emperor would abstain from com- 
 plicating matters by making use of his Sebas- 
 topol fleet. Nothing could have been more 
 unwise than to act upon an impression of this 
 kind as if it were a regular agreement. But 
 the English public did not understand at that 
 moment the actual condition of things, and 
 may well have supposed that if our Govern- 
 ment seemed secure and content, there must 
 have been some definite arrangement to create 
 so happy a condition of mind. It may look 
 strange to readers now, surveying this chap- 
 ter of past history with cool, unimpassioned 
 mind, that anybody could have believed in 
 the existence of any arrangement by virtue of 
 which Turkey could, be at war with Russia and 
 not at war with her at the same time ; which 
 would have allowed Turkey to strike her en- 
 emy when and how she pleased, and would 
 have restricted the enemy to such time, place 
 and method of retort as might suit the con- 
 venience of the neutral Powers. But at the 
 time, when the true state of affairs was little 
 known in England, the account of the “ mas- 
 sacre of Sinope” was received as if it had 
 been the tale of some unparalleled act of 
 treachery and savagery ; and the eagerness 
 of the country for w r ar against Russia became 
 inflamed to actual passion. 
 
 It was at that moment that Palmerston re- 
 signed his office. The Cabinet were still not 
 prepared to go as far as he would have gone. 
 They had believed that the Sebastopol fleet 
 would do nothing as long as the Western 
 Powers kept talking about peace ; they now 
 believed perhaps that the Emperor of Russia 
 would say he was very sorry for what had 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 95 
 
 been done, and promise not to do so any 
 more. Lord Palmerston, supported by the 
 urgent pressure of the Emperor of the 
 French, succeeded, however, in at last over- 
 coming their determination. It was agreed 
 that some decisive announcement should be 
 made to the Emperor of Russia on the part 
 of England and France ; and Lord Palmer- 
 ston resumed his place, master of the situa- 
 tion. This was the decision of which he had 
 spoken in his letter to his brother ; the de- 
 cision which he said he had long unsuccess- 
 fully pressed upon his colleagues, and which 
 would give the allied squadrons the com- 
 mand of the Black Sea. It was, in fact, an 
 intimation to Russia that France and Eng- 
 land were resolved to prevent any repetition 
 of the Sinope affair ; that their squadrons 
 would enter the Black Sea with orders to re- 
 quest, and if necessary to constrain, every 
 Russian ship met in the Euxine to return to 
 Sebastopol ; and to repel by force any act of 
 aggression afterwards attempted against the 
 Ottoman territory or flag. This was not, it 
 should be observed, simply an intimation to 
 the Emperor of Russia that the Great Powers 
 would impose and enforce the neutrality of 
 the Black Sea. It was an announcement 
 that if the flag of Russia dared to show itself 
 on that sea, which washed Russia’s southern 
 shores, the war - ships of two far foreign 
 states, taking possession of those waters, 
 would pull it down, or compel those who 
 bore it to fly ignominiously into port. This 
 was in fact war. 
 
 Of course Lord Palmerston knew this. Be- 
 cause it meant war he accepted it and re- 
 turned to his place, well pleased with the 
 way in which things were going. From his 
 point of view he was perfectly right. He 
 had been consistent all through. He believed 
 from the first that the pretensions of Russia 
 would have to be put down by force of arms, 
 and could not be put down in any other way ; 
 he believed that the danger to England from 
 the aggrandizement of Russia was a capital 
 danger calling for any extent of national sac- 
 rifice to avert it. He believed that a war 
 with Russia was inevitable, and he preferred 
 taking it sooner to taking it later. He be- 
 lieved that an alliance with the Emperor of 
 the French was desirable, and a war with 
 Russia would be the best means of making 
 this effective. Lord Palmerston, therefore, 
 was determined not to remain in the Cabinet 
 unless some strenuous measures were taken, 
 and now, as on a memorable former occasion, 
 he understood better than any one else the 
 prevailing temper of the English people. 
 
 When the resolution of the Western Cab- 
 inets was communicated to the Emperor of 
 Russia he withdrew his representatives from 
 London and Paris. On February 21, 1854, 
 the diplomatic relations between Russia and 
 the two allied Powers were brought to a stop. 
 Six weeks before this the English and French 
 fleets had entered the Black Sea. The inter- 
 val was filled up with renewed efforts to 
 bring about a peaceful arrangement, which 
 were conducted with as much gravity as if 
 any one believed in the possibility of their 
 success. The Emperor of the French, who 
 always loved letter-writing and delighted in 
 what Cobden once happily called the “ mon- 
 umental style,” wrote to the Russian Em- 
 peror appealing to him, professedly in the 
 interests of peace, to allow an armistice to be 
 signed, to let the belligerent forces on both 
 sides retire from the places to which motives 
 of war had led them, and then to negotiate a 
 convention with the Sultan which might be 
 submitted to a conference of the four Powers. 
 If Russia would not do this then Louis Napo- 
 leon, undertaking to speak in the name of 
 the Queen of Great Britain as well as of him- 
 self, intimated that France and England 
 would be compelled to leave to the chances 
 of war what might now be decided by reason 
 and justice. The Emperor Nicholas replied 
 that he had claimed nothing but what was 
 confirmed by treaties ; that his conditions 
 
 were perfectly well known ; that he was still 
 willing to treat on these conditions ; but if 
 Russia were driven to arms, then he quietly 
 observed that he had no doubt she could hold 
 her own as well in 1854 as she had done in 
 1812. That year, 1812, it is hardly necessary 
 to say, was the year of the burning of Mos- 
 cow and the disastrous retreat of the French. 
 We can easily understand what faith in the 
 possibility of a peaceful arrangement the 
 Russian Emperor must have had when he 
 made the allusion and the French Emperor 
 must have had when it met his eye. Of 
 course if Louis Napoleon had had the faint- 
 est belief in any good result to come of his 
 letter he would never have closed it with the 
 threat which provoked the Russian sovereign 
 into his insufferable rejoinder. The corre- 
 spondence might remind one of that which is 
 said to have passed between two Irish chief- 
 tains. ‘‘Pay me my tribute,” wrote the 
 one, “ or else !” “ I owe you no tribute,” 
 
 replied the other, “ and if . . .” 
 
 England’s ultimatum to Russia was des- 
 patched on February 27, 1854. It was convey- 
 ed in a letter from Lord Clarendon to Count 
 Nesselrode. It declared that the British Gov- 
 ernment had exhausted all the efforts of nego- 
 tiation, and was compelled to announce that 
 “ if Russia should decline to restrict within 
 purely diplomatic limits the discussion in 
 which she has for some time past been en- 
 gaged with the Sublime Porte, and does not, 
 by return of the messenger who is the bearer 
 of my present letter, announce her intention 
 of causing the Russian troops under Prince 
 Gortschakoff to commence their march with 
 a view to recross the Prutb, so that the prov- 
 inces of Moldavia and Wallachia shall be 
 completely evacuated on April 30 next, the 
 British Government must consider the refusal 
 or the silence of the Cabinet of St. Peters- 
 burg as equivalent to a declaration of war, 
 and will take its measures accordingly.” It 
 is not perhaps very profitable work for the 
 historian to criticise the mere terms of a doc- 
 ument announcing a course of action which 
 long before its issue had become inevitable. 
 But it is worth while remarking perhaps that 
 it would have been better and more dignified 
 to confine the letter to the simple demand for 
 the evacuation of the Danubian provinces. 
 To ask Russia to promise that her contro- 
 versy with the Porte should be thencefor- 
 ward restricted within purely diplomatic lim- 
 its was to make a demand with which no 
 Great Power would, or indeed could, under- 
 take to comply. A member of the Peace So- 
 ciety itself might well hesitate to give a prom- 
 ise that a dispute in which he was engaged 
 should be for ever confined within purely 
 diplomatic limits. In any case it was certain 
 that Russia would not now make any con- 
 cessions tending towards peace. The mes- 
 senger who was the bearer of the letter was 
 ordered not to wait more than six days for an 
 answer. On the fifth day the messenger 
 was informed by word of mouth from Count 
 Nesselrode that the Emperor did not think it 
 becoming in him to give any reply to the let- 
 ter. The die was cast. Rather, truly, the 
 fact was recorded that the die had been cast. 
 A few days after a crowd assembled in front 
 of the Royal Exchange to watch the per- 
 formance of a ceremonial that had been little 
 known to the living generation. The Ser- 
 geant-at-Arms, accompanied by some of the 
 officials of the City, read from the steps of 
 the Royal Exchange her Majesty’s declaration 
 of war against Russia. 
 
 The causes of the declaration of war were 
 set forth in an official statement published in 
 the London Gazette. This document is an in- 
 teresting and a valuable State paper. It re- 
 cites with clearness and deliberation the suc- 
 cessive steps by which the allied Powers had 
 been led to the necessity of an armed inter- 
 vention in the controversy between Turkey 
 and Russia. It described, in the first place, 
 the complaint of the Emperor of Russia 
 against the Sultan with reference to the 
 
 claims of the Greek and Latin Churches, and 
 the arrangement promoted satisfactorily by 
 her Majesty’s ambassador at Constantinople 
 for rendering justice to the claim, ‘‘an ar- 
 trangemen to which no exception was taken 
 by the Russian Government.” Then came 
 the sudden unmasking of the other and quite 
 different claims of Prince Mentscliikoff, “ the 
 nature of which in the first instance he en- 
 deavored, as far as possible, to conceal from 
 her Majesty’s ambassador.” These claims, 
 “ thus studiously concealed,” affected not 
 merely, or at all, the privileges of the Greek 
 Church at Jerusalem, “ but the position of 
 many millions of Turkish subjects in their re- 
 lations to their sovereign the Sultan.” The 
 declaration recalled the various attempts that 
 were made by the Queen’s Government in 
 conjunction with the Governments of France, 
 Austria, and Prussia, to meet any just de- 
 mands of the Russian Emperor without affect- 
 ing the dignity and independence of the Sul- 
 tan, and showed that if the object of Russia 
 had been solely to secure their proper privi- 
 leges and immunities for the Christian popu- 
 lations of the Ottoman Empire, the offers 
 that were made could not have failed to meet 
 that object. Her Majesty’s Government, 
 therefore, held it as manifest that what Rus- 
 sia was really seeking was not the happiness 
 of the Christian communities of Turkey, but 
 the right to interfere in the ordinary relations 
 between Turkish subjects and their sover- 
 eign. The Sultan refused to consent to this, 
 and declared war in self-defence. Yet the 
 Government of her Majesty did not renounce 
 all hope of restoring peace between the con- 
 tending parties until advice and remonstrance 
 proving wholly in vain, and Russia continu- 
 ing to extend her military preparations, her 
 Majesty felt called upon, “ by regard for an 
 ally the integrity and independence of whose 
 Empire have been recognized us essential to 
 the peace of Europe ; by the sympathies of 
 her people with right against wrong ; by a 
 desire to avert from her dominions most inju- 
 rious consequences, and to save Europe from 
 the preponderance of a Power which has vio- 
 lated the faith of treaties and defies the 
 opinion of the civilized world, to take up 
 arms in conjunction with the Emperor of the 
 French for the defence of the Sultan.” 
 
 Some passages of this declaration have in- 
 vited criticism from English historians. It 
 opens, for example, with a statement of the 
 fact that the efforts for an arrangement were 
 made by her Majesty in conjunction with 
 France, Austria, and Prussia. It speaks of 
 this concert of the four Powers down almost 
 to the very close ; and then it suddenly 
 breaks off and announces that in conse- 
 quence of all that has happened her Majesty 
 has felt compelled to take up arms ‘ ‘ in con- 
 junction with the Emperor of the French.” 
 What strange diplomatic mismanagement, it 
 was asked, has led to this singular non 
 sequitur t Why, after having carried on the 
 negotiations through all their various stages 
 with three other Great Powers, all of them sup- 
 posed to be equally interested in a settlement 
 of the question, is England at the last moment 
 compelled to take up arms with only one of 
 those Powers as an ally ? 
 
 The principal reason for the separation of 
 the two Western Powers of Europe from the 
 other great States was found in the condition 
 of Prussia. Prussia was then greatly under 
 the influence of the Russian court. The 
 Prussian sovereign was related to the Emperor 
 of Russia, and his kingdom was almost over- 
 shadowed by Russian influence. Prussia had 
 come to occupy a lower position in Europe 
 than she had ever before held during her ex- 
 istence as a kingdom. It seemed almost 
 marvellous how by any process the country of 
 the Great Frederick could have sunk to such 
 a condition of insignificance. She had been 
 compelled to stoop to Austria after the events 
 of 1848. The King of Prussia, tampering 
 with the offers of the strong national party 
 who desired to make him Emperor of Ger- 
 
96 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 many, now moving forward and now drawing 
 back, ‘ ‘ letting I dare not wait upon I would , ’ ’ 
 was suddenly pulled up by Austria. The 
 famous arrangement, called afterwards ‘ ‘ the 
 humiliation of Olmiitz,” and so completely 
 revenged at Sadowa, compelled him to drop 
 all his triflings with nationalism and repudi- 
 ate his former instigators. The King of 
 Prussia was a highly-cultured, amiable, liter- 
 ary man. He loved letters and arts in a sort 
 dilettante way ; he had good impulses and a 
 weak nature ; he was a dreamer ; a sort of 
 philosopher manque. He was unable to 
 make up his miud to any momentous decision 
 until the time for rendering it effective had 
 gone by. A man naturally truthful, he was 
 often led by very weakness into acts that 
 seemed irreconcilable with his previous 
 promises and engagements. He could say 
 witty and sarcastic things, and when political 
 affairs went wrong with him he could con- 
 sole himself with one or two sharp sayings 
 only heard of by those immediately around 
 him ; and then the world might go its way 
 for him. He was, like Rob Roy, “ ower 
 good for banning and ower bad for blessing. ” 
 Like our own Charles II., he never said a 
 foolish thing and never did a wise one. He 
 ought to have been an aesthetic essayist, or a 
 lecturer on art and moral philosophy to young 
 ladies ; and an unkind destiny had made him 
 the king of a state specially embarrassed in a 
 most troublous time. So unkindly was pop- 
 ular rumor as well as fate to him, that he got 
 the credit in foreign countries of being a stu- 
 pid sensualist when he was really a man of 
 respectable habits and refined nature ; and in 
 England at least the nickname “ King Clic- 
 quot ” was long the brand by which the pop- 
 ular and most mistaken impression of his 
 character was signified. 
 
 The King of Prussia was the elder brother 
 of the present German Emperor. Had the 
 latter been then on the throne he would prob- 
 ably have taken some timely and energetic 
 decision with regard to the national duty of 
 Prussia during the impending crisis. Right 
 or wrong, he would doubtless have contrived 
 to see his way and make up his mind at an 
 early stage of the European movement. It 
 is by no means to be assumed that he would 
 have taken the course most satisfactory to Eng- 
 land and France ; but it is likely that his ac- 
 tion might have prevented the war, either by 
 rendering the allied Powers far too strong to 
 be resisted by Russia, or by adding to Russia 
 an influence which would have rendered the 
 game of war too formidable to suit the calcu- 
 lations of the Emperor of the French. The 
 actual King of Prussia, however, went so far 
 with the allies as to lead them for a while to 
 believe that he was going all the way ; but at 
 the last moment he broke off, declared that 
 the interests of Prussia did not require or al- 
 low him to engage in a war, and left France 
 and England to walk their own road. Aus- 
 tria could not venture upon such a war with- 
 out the co-operation of Prussia ; and indeed 
 the course which the campaign took seemed 
 likely to give both Austria and Prussia a 
 good excuse for assuming that their interests 
 were not closely engaged in the struggle. 
 Austria would most certainly have gone to 
 war if the Emperor of Russia had kept up 
 the occupation of the Danubian Principali- 
 ties ; and for that purpose her territorial sit- 
 uation made her irresistible. But when the 
 seat of war was transferred to the Black Sea, 
 and when after a while the Czar withdrew his 
 troops from the Principalities, and Austria 
 occupied them by virtue of a convention with 
 the Sultan, her direct interest in the struggle 
 was reduced almost to nothiug. Austria and 
 Prussia were in fact solicited by both sides 
 of the dispute, and at one time it was even 
 thought possible that Prussia might give her 
 aid to Russia. This, however, she refrained 
 from doing ; Austria and Prussia made an 
 arrangement between themselves for mutual 
 defence in case the progress of the war should 
 directly imperil the interests of either ; and 
 
 England and France undertook in alliance 
 the task of chastising the presumption and re- 
 straining the ambitious designs of Russia. Mr. 
 Kinglake finds much fault with the policy of 
 the English Government, on which he lays all 
 the blame of the severance of interests between 
 the two Western States and the other two 
 Great Powers. But we confess that we do 
 not see how any course within the reach of 
 England could have secured just then the 
 thorough alliance of Prussia ; and without 
 such an alliance it would have been vain to 
 expect that Austria would throw herself un- 
 reservedly into the policy of the Western Pow- 
 ers. It must be remembered that the contro- 
 versy between Russia and the West really in- 
 volved several distinct questions, in some of 
 which Prussia had absolutely no direct inter- 
 est and Austria very little. Let us set out 
 some of these questions separately. There 
 was the Russian occupation of the Principal- 
 ities. In this Austria frankly acknowledged 
 her capital interest. Its direct bearing was 
 on her more than any other Power. It con- 
 cerned Prussia as it did England and France, 
 inasmuch as it was an evidence of an aggres- 
 sive purpose which might very seriously 
 threaten the general stability of the institu- 
 tions of Europe ; but Prussia had no closer 
 interest in it. Austria was the State most 
 affected by it, and Austria was the State 
 which could with most effect operate against 
 it, and was always willing and resolute if 
 needs were to do so. Then there was the 
 question of Russia’s claim to exercise a pro- 
 tectorate over the Christian populations of 
 Turkey. This concerned England and 
 France in one sense as part of the general 
 pretensions of Russia, and concerned each of 
 them separately in another sense. To France 
 it told of a rivalry with the right she claimed 
 to look after the interests of the Latin 
 Church ; to England it spoke of a purpose to 
 obtain a hold over populations nominally sub- 
 ject to the Sultan which might in time make 
 Russia virtual master of the approaches to 
 our Eastern possessions. Austria too had a 
 direct interest in repelling these pretensions 
 of Russia, for some of the populations they 
 referred to were on her very frontier. But 
 Prussia can hardly be said to have had any 
 direct national interest in that question at all. 
 Then there came, distinct from all these, the 
 question of the Straits of the Dardanelles and 
 the Bosphorus. 
 
 This question of the Straits, which has so 
 much to do with the whole European aspect 
 of the war, is not to be understood except by 
 those who bear the conformation of the map 
 of Europe constantly in their minds. The 
 only outlet of Russia on the southern side is 
 the Black Sea. The Black Sea is, save for 
 one little outlet at its south-western extrem- 
 ity, a huge land-locked lake. That little out- 
 let is the narrow channel called the Bospho- 
 rus. Russia and Turkey between them sur- 
 round the whole of the Black Sea with their 
 territory. Russia has the north and some of 
 the eastern shore ; Turkey has all the south- 
 ern, the Asia Minor shore, and nearly all the 
 western shore. Close the Straits of the Bos- 
 phorus and Russia would be literally locked 
 into the Black Sea. The Bosphorus is a nar- 
 row channel, as has been said ; it is some 
 seventeen miles in length, and in some places 
 it is hardly more than half a mile in breadth. 
 But it is very deep all through, so that ships 
 of war can float close up to its very shores 
 on either side. This channel in its course 
 passes between the city of Constantinople and 
 its Asiatic suburb of Scutari. The Bospho- 
 rus then opens into the little Sea of Mar- 
 mora ; and out of the Sea of Marmora the 
 way westward is through the channel of the 
 Dardanelles. The Dardanelles form the only 
 passage into the Archipelago, and thence into 
 the Mediterranean. The channel of the Dar- 
 danelles is, like the Bosphorus, very narrow 
 and very deep, but it pursues its course for 
 some forty miles. Any one who holds a map 
 in his hand will see at once how Turkey and 
 
 Russia alike are affected by the existence of 
 the Straits on either extremity of the Sea of 
 Marmora. Close up these Straits against 
 vessels of war, and the capital of the Sultan 
 is absolutely unassailable from the sea. 
 Close them, on the other hand, and the Rus- 
 sian fleet in the Black Sea is absolutely cut 
 off from the Mediterranean and the Western 
 world. But then it has to be remembered 
 that the same act of closing would secure the 
 Russian ports and shores on the Black Sea 
 from the approach of any of the great navies 
 of the West. The Dardanelles and the Bos- 
 phorus being alike such narrow channels, 
 and being edged alike by Turkish territory, 
 were not regarded as high seas. The Sul- 
 tans always claimed the right to exclude 
 foreign ships of war from both the Straits. 
 The Treaty of 1841 secured this right to Tur- 
 key by the agreement of the five Great Pow- 
 ers of Europe. The treaty acknowledged 
 that the Porte had the right to shut the 
 Straits against the armed navies of any 
 foreign Power ; and the Sultan for his part 
 engaged not to allow any such navy to enter 
 either of the Straits in time of peace. The 
 closing of the Straits had been the subject of 
 a perfect succession of treaties. The Treaty 
 of 1809 between Great Britain and Turkey 
 confirmed by engagement ‘ ‘ the ancient rule 
 of the Ottoman Empire” forbidding vessels 
 of war at all times to enter the “ Canal of 
 Constantinople.” The Treaty of Unkiar- 
 Skelessi between Russia and Turkey, arising 
 out of Russia’s co-operation with the Porte 
 to put down the rebellious movement of Mo- 
 hammed Ali, the Egyptian vassal of the lat- 
 ter, contained a secret clause binding the 
 Porte to close “ the Dardanelles” against all 
 war vessels whatever, thus shutting Russia’s 
 enemies out of the Black Sea, but leaving 
 Russia free to pass the Bosphorus, so far at 
 least as that treaty engagement was concern- 
 ed. Later, when the Great Powers of Europe 
 combined to put down the attempts of Egypt, 
 the Treaty of July 13, 1841, made in Lon- 
 don, engaged that in time of peace no foreign 
 ships of war should be admitted into the 
 Straits of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. 
 This treaty was but a renewal of a conven- 
 tion made the year before, while France was 
 still sulking away from the European concert 
 and did nothing more than record her return 
 to it. 
 
 As matters stood then, the Sultan was not 
 only permitted but was bound to close the 
 Straits in times of peace, and no navy might 
 enter them without his consent even in 
 times of war. But in times of war he might 
 of course give the permission and invite the 
 presence and co-operation of the armed ves- 
 sels of a foreign Power in the Sea of Mar- 
 mora. By this treaty the Black Sea fleet of 
 Russia became literally a Black Sea fleet, and 
 could no more reach the Mediterranean and 
 Western Europe than a boat on the Lake of 
 Lucerne could do. Naturally Russia chafed 
 at this ; but at the same time she was not 
 willing to see the restriction withdrawn in 
 favor of an arrangement that would leave the 
 Straits, and consequently the Black Sea, open 
 to the navies of France and England. Her 
 supremacy in Eastern Europe would count 
 for little, her power of coercing Turkey 
 would be sadly diminished, if the war-flag 
 of England, for example, were to float side 
 by side with her own in front of Constanti- 
 nople or in the Euxine. Therefore it was 
 natural that the ambition of Russia should 
 tend towards the ultimate possession of Con- 
 stantinople and the Straits for herself ; but as 
 this was an ambition the fulfilment of which 
 seemed far off and beset with vast dangers, 
 her object, meanwhile, was to gain as much 
 influence and ascendency as possible over the 
 Ottoman Government ; to make it practically 
 the vassal of Russia, and in any case to pre- 
 vent any other Great Power from obtaining 
 the influence and ascendency which she 
 coveted for herself. Now the tendency of 
 this ambition and of all the intermediate 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 97 
 
 claims and disputes with regard to the open- 
 ing or closing of the Straits was of impor- 
 tance to Europe generally as a part of Russian 
 aggrandizement ; but of the Great Powers 
 they concerned England most ; France as a 
 Mediterranean and a naval power ; Austria 
 only in a third and remoter degree ; and 
 Prussia at the time of King Frederick Wil- 
 liam least of all. It is not surprising there- 
 fore that the two Western Powers were not 
 able to carry their accord with Prussia to the 
 extent of an alliance in war against Russia ; 
 and it was hardly possible then for Austria 
 to go on if Prussia insisted on drawing back. 
 Thus it came that at a certain point of the ne- 
 gotiations Prussia fell off absolutely, or near- 
 ly so ; Austria undertook but a conditional co- 
 operation, of which, as it happened, the con- 
 ditions did not arise ; and the Queen of Eng- 
 land announced that she had taken up arms 
 against Russia “ in conjunction with the Em. 
 peror of the French.” 
 
 To the great majority of the English people 
 this war was popular. It was popular part- 
 ly because of the natural and inevitable reac- 
 tion against the doctrines of peace and mere 
 trading prosperity which had been preached 
 somewhat too pertinaciously for some time 
 before. But it was popular too because of 
 its novelty. It was like a return to the youth 
 of the world when England found herself 
 once more preparing for the field. It was 
 like the pouring of new blood into old veins. 
 The public had grown impatient of the com- 
 mon saying of foreign capitals, that England 
 had joined the Peace Society and would 
 never be seen in battle any more. Mr. King- 
 lake is right when he says that the doctrines 
 of the Peace Society had never taken any 
 hold of the higher classes in this country at 
 all. They had never, we may venture to 
 add, taken any real hold of the humbler 
 classes ; of the workingmen, for example. 
 The well educated, thoughtful middle class, 
 who knew how much of worldly happiness 
 depends on a regular income, moderate taxa- 
 tion, and a comfortable home, supplied most 
 of the advocates of “ peace,” as it was scorn- 
 fully said, ‘‘at any price.” Let us say, in 
 justice to a very noble and very futile doc- 
 trine, that there were no persons in England 
 who advocated peace “ at any price,” in the 
 ignominious sense which hostile critics 
 pressed upon the words. There was a small, 
 a serious, and a very respectable body of per- 
 sons who, out of the purest motives of con- 
 science, held that all war was criminal and 
 offensive to the Deity. They were for peace 
 at any price, exactly as they were for truth 
 at any price, or conscience at any price. 
 They were opposed to war as they were to 
 falsehood or to impiety. It seemed as natural 
 to them that a man should die unresisting 
 rather than resist and kill, as it does to most 
 persons who profess any sentiment of religion 
 or even of honor, that a man should die 
 rather than abjure the faith he believes in, or 
 tell a lie. It is assumed as a matter of course 
 that any Englishman worthy of the name 
 would have died by any torture tyranny could 
 put on him rather than perform the old cere- 
 mony of trampling on the crucifix which cer- 
 tain heathen states were said to have some- 
 times insisted on as the price of a captive’s 
 freedom. To the believers in the peace doc- 
 trine the act of war was a trampling on the 
 crucifix, which brought with it evil conse- 
 quences unspeakably worse than the mere 
 performance of a profane ceremonial. To 
 declare that they would rather suffer any 
 earthly penalty of defeat or national servi- 
 tude than take part in a war, was only con- 
 sistent with the great creed of their lives. It 
 ought not to have been held as any reproach 
 to them. Even those who, like this writer, 
 have no personal sympathy with such a be- 
 lief, and who hold that a war in a just cause 
 is an honor to a nation, may still recognize 
 the purity and nobleness of the principle 
 which inspired the votaries of peace and do 
 honor to it. But these men were in any case 
 
 | not many at the time when the Crimean War 
 broke out. They had very little influence on 
 the course of the national policy. They 
 were assailed with a flippant and a somewhat 
 ignoble ridicule. The worst reproach that 
 could be given to men like Mr. Cobden and Mr. 
 Bright was to accuse them of being members 
 of the Peace Society. It does not appear that 
 either man was a member of the actual organ- 
 ization. Mr. Bright’s religious creed made 
 him necessarily a votary of peace ; Mr. Cob- 
 den had attended meetings called with the 
 futile purpose of establishing peace among 
 nations by the operation of good feeling and 
 of common sense. But for a considerable 
 time the temper of the English people was 
 such as to render any talk about peace not 
 only unprofitable but perilous to the very 
 cause of peace itself. Some of the leading 
 members of the Peace Society did actually 
 get up a deputation to the Emperor Nicholas 
 to appeal to his better feelings ; and of course 
 they were charmed by the manners of the 
 Emperor, who made it his business to be in a 
 very gracious humor, and spoke them fair, 
 and introduced them in the most unceremo- 
 nious way to his wife. Such a visit counted 
 for nothing in Russia, and at home it only 
 tended to make people angry and impatient, 
 and to put the cause of peace in greater jeop- 
 ardy than ever. Viewed as a practical influ- 
 ence the peace doctrine as completely broke 
 down as a general resolution against the mak- 
 ing of money might have done during the 
 time of the mania for speculation in railway 
 shares. But it did not merely break down 
 of itself. It carried some great influences 
 down with it for the time — influences that 
 were not a part of itself. The eloquence that 
 had coerced the intellect and reasoning power 
 of Peel into a complete surrender to the doc- 
 trines of Free Trade, the eloquence that had 
 aroused the populations of all the cities of 
 England and had conquered the House of 
 Commons, was destined now to call aloud to 
 solitude. Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright ad- 
 dressed their constituents and their country- 
 men in vain. The fact that they were be- 
 lieved to be opposed on principle to all wars 
 put them out of court in public estimation, 
 as Mr. Kinglake justly observes, when they 
 went about to argue against this particular 
 war. 
 
 In the Cabinet itself there were men who 
 disliked the idea of a war quite as much as 
 they did. Lord Aberdeen detested war, and 
 thought it so absurd a way of settling na- 
 tional disputes, that almost until the first 
 cannon-shot had been fired he could not bring 
 himself to believe in the possibility of the 
 intelligent English people being drawn into 
 it. Mr. Gladstone had a conscientious and a 
 sensitive objection to war in general as a bru- 
 tal and an unchristian occupation, although 
 his feelings would not have carried him so 
 far away as to prevent his recognition of the 
 fact that war might often be a just, a neces- 
 sary and a glorious undertaking on the part 
 of a civilized nation. The difficulties of the 
 hour were considerably enhanced by the 
 differences of opinion that prevailed in the 
 Cabinet. 
 
 There were other differences there as well 
 as those that belonged to the mere abstract 
 question of the glory or the guilt of war. It 
 soon became clear that two parties of the 
 Cabinet looked on the war and its objects 
 with different eyes and interests. Lord 
 Palmerston wanted simply to put down Rus- 
 sia and uphold Turkey. Others were spe- 
 cially concerned for the Christian popula- 
 tions of Turkey and their better government 
 Lord Palmerston not merely thought that the 
 interests of England called for some check to 
 the aggressiveness of Russia ; he liked the 
 Turk for himself ; he had faith in the future 
 of Turkey : he went so far even as to pro- 
 claim his belief in the endurance of her mil- 
 itary power. Give Turkey single-handed a 
 fair chance, he argued, and she would beat 
 Russia. He did not believe either in the disaf- 
 
 fection of the Christian populations or in the 
 stories of their oppression. He regarded all 
 these stories as part of the plans and inven- 
 tions of Russia. He had no half-beliefs in 
 the matter at all. The Christian populations 
 and their grievances he regarded in plain lan- 
 guage as mere humbugs ; he looked upon the 
 Turk as a very fine fellow whom all chivalric 
 minds ought to respect. He believed all that 
 was said upon the one side and nothing upon 
 the other ; he had made up his mind to this 
 long ago, and no arguments or facts could 
 now shake his convictions. A belief of this 
 kind may have been very unphilosophic. It 
 was undoubtedly in many respects the birth 
 of mere prejudice independent of fact or 
 reasoning. But the temper born of such a 
 belief is exactly that which should have the 
 making of a war entrusted to it. Lord Pal- 
 merston saw his way straight before him. 
 The brave Turk had to be supported ; the 
 wicked Russian had to be put down. On one 
 side there were Lord Aberdeen, who did not 
 believe anyone seriously meant to be so bar- 
 barous as to go to war, and Mr. Gladstone, 
 who shrank from war in general and was 
 not yet quite certain whether England had 
 any right to undertake this war ; the two be- 
 ing furthermore concerned far more for the 
 welfare of Turkey’s Christian subjects than 
 for the stability of Turkey or the humiliation 
 of Russia. On the other side was Lord Pal- 
 merston, gay, resolute, clear as to his own 
 purpose, convinced to the heart’s core of 
 everything which just then it was for the ad- 
 vantage of bis cause to believe. It was im- 
 possible to doubt on which side were to be 
 found the materials for the successful con- 
 duct of the enterprise which was now so pop- 
 ular with the country. The most conscien- 
 tious men might differ about the prudence or 
 the moral propriety of the war ; but to those 
 who once accepted its necessity and wished 
 our side to win, there could be no possible 
 doubt, even for members of the Peace Soci- 
 ety, as to the importance of having Lord Pal- 
 merston either at the head of affairs or in 
 charge of the war itself. The moment the 
 war actually broke out it became evident to 
 everyone that Palmerston’s interval of com- 
 parative inaction and obscurity was well nigh 
 over. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE INVASION OP THE CRIMEA. 
 
 England then and France entered the war 
 as allies. Lord Raglan, formerly Lord Fitz- 
 roy Somerset, an old pupil of the Great Duke 
 in the Peninsular War, and who had lost his 
 right arm serving under Wellington at Wat- 
 erloo, was appointed to command the English 
 forces. Marshal St. Arnaud, a bold, brilliant 
 soldier of fortune, was entrusted by the Em- 
 peror of the French with the leadership of 
 the soldiers of France. The allied forces 
 went out to the East and assembled at Varna, 
 on the Black Sea shore, from which they 
 were to make their descent on the Crimea. 
 The war, meantime, had gone badly for the 
 Emperor of Russia in his attempt to crush 
 the Turks. The Turks had found in Omar 
 Pasha a commander of remarkable ability 
 and energy ; and they had in one or two in- 
 stances received the unexpected aid and 
 counsel of clever and successful Englishmen. 
 A singularly brilliant episode in the opening 
 part of the war was the defence of the earth- 
 works of Silistria, on the Bulgarian bank of 
 the Danube, by a body of Turkish troops un- 
 der the directions of two young Englishmen, 
 Captain Butler, of the Ceylon Rifles, and 
 Lieutenant Nasmyth, of the East India Com- 
 pany’s Service. These young soldiers had 
 voluntarily undertaken the danger and re- 
 sponsibility of the defence. Butler was kill- 
 ed, but the Russians were completely foiled 
 and had to raise the siege. At Giurgevo and 
 other places the Russians were likewise re- 
 pulsed ; and the invasion of the Danubian 
 provinces was already, to all intents, a fail- 
 ure. 
 
§8 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake and other writers have argu- 
 ed that but for the ambition of the Emperor 
 of the French and the excited temper of the 
 English people the war might well have end- 
 ed then and there. The Emperor of Russia 
 had found, it is contended, that he could not 
 maintain an invasion of European Turkey ; 
 his fleet was confined to its ports in the 
 Black Sea, and there was nothing for him 
 but to make peace. But we confess we do 
 not see with what propriety or wisdom the 
 allies having entered on the enterprise at all 
 could have abandoned it at such a moment 
 and allowed the Czar to escape thus merely 
 scotched. However brilliant and gratifying 
 the successes obtained against the Russians, 
 they were but a series of what might be call- 
 ed outpost actions. They could not be sup- 
 posed to have tested the resources of Russia 
 or weakened her strength. They had hum- 
 bled and vexed her just enough to make her 
 doubly resentful and no more. It seems im- 
 possible to suppose that such trivial disasters 
 could have affected in the slightest degree the 
 historic march of Russian ambition, suppos- 
 ing such a movement to exist. If we allow 
 the purpose with which England entered the 
 war to be just and reasonable, then we think 
 the instinct of the English people was sound 
 and true which would have refused to allow 
 Russia to get off with one or two trifling 
 Checks, and to nurse her wrath and keep her 
 Vengeance waiting for a better chance some 
 Other time. The allies went on. They sail- 
 ed from Yarna for the Crimea nearly three 
 months after the raising of the siege of Silis- 
 tria. 
 
 There is much discussion as to the original 
 author of the project for the invasion of the 
 Crimea. The Emperor Napoleon has had it 
 ascribed to him ; so has Lord Palmerston ; 
 so has the Duke of Newcastle ; so, according 
 to Mr. Kinglake, has the Times newspaper. 
 It does not much concern us to know in 
 whom the idea originated, but it is of some 
 importance to know that it was essentially a 
 Civilian’s and not a soldier’s idea. It took 
 possession almost simultaneously, so far as 
 we can observe, of the minds of several 
 statesmen, and it had a sudden fascination 
 for the public. The Emperor Nicholas had 
 raised and sheltered his Black Sea fleet at 
 Sebastopol. That fleet had sallied forth from 
 Sebastopol to commit what was called the 
 massacre of Sinope. Sebastopol was the 
 
 S eat arsenal of Russia. It was the point 
 om which Turkey was threatened ; from 
 which, it was universally believed, the em- 
 bodied ambition of Russia was one day to 
 make its most formidable effort of aggres- 
 sion. Within the fence of its vast sea-forts 
 the fleet of the Black Sea lay screened. 
 Prom the moment when the vessels of Eng- 
 land and France entered the Euxine the Rus- 
 sian fleet had withdrawn behind the curtain 
 of these defences, and was seen upon the 
 open waves no more. If, therefore, Sebas- 
 topol could be taken or destroyed it would 
 seem as if the whole material fabric, put to- 
 gether at such cost and labor for the execu- 
 tion of the schemes of Russia, would be shat- 
 tered at a blow. There seemed a dramatic 
 justice in the idea. It could not fail to com- 
 mend itself to the popular mind. 
 
 Mr. Kinglake has given the world an amus- 
 ing picture of the manner in which the de- 
 spatch of the Duke of Newcastle, ordering 
 the invasiou of the Crimea — for it really 
 amounted to an order — was read to his col- 
 leagues in the Cabinet. It was a despatch of 
 the utmost importance, for the terms in 
 which it pressed the project on Lord Raglan 
 really rendered it almost impossible for the 
 commander-in-chief to use his own discre- 
 tion. It ought to have been considered sen- 
 tence by sentence, word by word. It was 
 read, Mr. Kinglake affirms, to a number of 
 Cabinet Ministers, most of whom had fallen 
 fast asleep. The day was warm, he says ; 
 the despatch was long ; the reading was 
 somewhat monotonous. Most of those who 
 
 tried to listen found the soporific influence ir- 
 resistible. As Sam Weller would have said, 
 poppies were nothing to it. The statesmen 
 fell asleep ; and there was no alteration made 
 in the despatch. All this is very amusing ; 
 and it is, we believe, true enough that at the 
 particular meeting to which Mr. Kinglake re- 
 fers there was a good deal of nodding of 
 sleepy heads and closing of tired eyelids. 
 But it is not fair to say that these slumbers 
 had anything to do with the subsequent 
 events of the war. The reading of the de- 
 spatch was purely a piece of formality ; for 
 the project it was to recommend had been 
 discussed very fully before, and the minds of 
 most members of the Cabinet were finally 
 made up. The 28th of June, 1854, was the 
 day of the slumbering Cabinet. But Lord 
 Palmerston had during the whole of the pre- 
 vious fortnight at least been urging on the 
 Cabinet, and on individual members of it 
 separately, the Duke of Newcastle in espe- 
 cial, the project of an invasion of the Crimea 
 and an attempt on Sebastopol. With all the 
 energy and strenuousness of his nature he 
 had been urging this by arguments in the 
 Cabinet, by written memoranda for the con- 
 sideration of each member of the Cabinet 
 separately, and by long earnest letters ad- 
 dressed to particular members of the Cabinet. 
 Many of these documents, of the existence 
 of which Mr. Kinglake was doubtless not 
 aware when he set down his vivacious and 
 satirical account of the sleeping Cabinet, 
 have since been published. The plan had 
 also been greatly favored and much urged by 
 the Emperor of the French before the day of 
 the sleep of the statesmen ; indeed, as has 
 been said already, he receives from many per- 
 sons the credit of having originated it. The 
 plan, therefore, good or bad, was thoroughly 
 known to the Cabinet, and had been argued 
 for and against over and over again before 
 the Duke of Newcastle read aloud to drowsy 
 ears the despatch recommending it to the 
 commander-in-chief of the British forces in 
 the field. The perusal of the despatch was a 
 mere form. It would indeed have been bet- 
 ter if the most wearied statesman had con- 
 trived to pay a full attention to it, but the 
 want of such respect in no wise affected the 
 policy of the country. It is a pity to have 
 to spoil so amusing a story as Mr. King- 
 lake’s ; but the commonplace truth has to be 
 told that the invasion of the Crimea was not 
 due to the crotchet of one minister and the 
 drowsiness of all the rest. 
 
 The invasion of the Crimea, however, was 
 not a soldier’s project. It was not welcom- 
 ed by the English or the French commander. 
 It was undertaken by Lord Raglan out of def- 
 erence to the recommendations of the Gov- 
 ernment ; and by Marshal St. Arnaud out of 
 deference to the Emperor of the French, and 
 because Lord Raglan too did not see his way 
 to decline the responsibility of it. The allied 
 forces were therefore conveyed to the south- 
 western shore of the Crimea, and effected a 
 landing in Kalamita Bay, a short distance 
 north of the point at which the river Alma 
 tuns into the sea. Sebastopol itself lies about 
 thirty miles to the south ; and then more 
 southward still, divided by the bulk of a jut- 
 ting promontory from Sebastopol, is the har- 
 bor of Balaklava. The disembarkation be- 
 gan on the morning of September 14, 1854. 
 It was completed on the fifth day ; and there 
 were then some 27,000 English, 30,000 
 French, and 7000 Turks landed on the 
 shores of Catherine the Great’s Crimea. The 
 landing was effected without any opposition 
 from the Russians. On September 19 the 
 allies marched out of their encampments and 
 moved southward in the direction of Sebasto- 
 pol. They had a skirmish or two with a re- 
 connoitring force of Russian cavalry and 
 Cossacks ; but they had no business of genu- 
 ine war until they reached the nearer bank of 
 the Alma. The Russians in great strength 
 had taken up a splendid position on the 
 heights that fringed the other side of the 
 
 river. The allied forces reached the Alma 
 about noon on September 20. They found 
 that they had to cross the river in the face of 
 the Russian batteries armed with heavy guns 
 on the highest point of the hills or bluffs, of 
 scattered artillery, and of dense masses of in- 
 fantry which covered the hills. The Rus- 
 sians were under the command of Prince 
 Mentschikoff. It is certain that Prince 
 Mentschikoff believed his position unassaila- 
 ble, and was convinced that his enemies were 
 delivered into his hands when he saw the al- 
 lies approach and attempt to effect the cross- 
 ing of the river. He had allowed them, of 
 deliberate purpose, to approach thus far. He 
 might have attacked them on their landing, 
 or on their two days’ march towards the 
 river. But he did not choose to do anything 
 of the kind. He had carefully sought out a 
 strong and what he considered an impregna- 
 ble position. He had found it, as he believ- 
 ed, on the south bank of the Alma ; and there 
 he was simply biding his time. His idea 
 was that he could hold his ground for some 
 days against the allies with ease ; that he 
 would keep them there, play with them, un- 
 til the great reinforcements he was expecting 
 could come to him ; and then he would sud- 
 denly take the offensive and crush the en- 
 emy. He proposed to make of the Alma and 
 its banks the grave of the invaders. But 
 with characteristic arrogance and lack of care 
 he had neglected some of the very precau- 
 tions which were essentially necessary to se- 
 cure any position, however strong. He had not 
 taken the pains to make himself certain that 
 every easy access to his position was closed 
 against the attack of the enemy. The attack 
 was made with desperate courage on the part 
 of the allies, but without any great skill of 
 leadership or tenacity of discipline. It was 
 rather a pell-mell sort of fight, in which the 
 headlong courage and the indomitable obsti- 
 nacy of the English and French troops carried 
 all before them at last. A study of the battle 
 is of little profit to the ordinary reader. It 
 was an heroic scramble. There was little co- 
 herence of action between the allied forces. 
 But there was happily an almost total absence 
 of generalship on the part of the Russians. 
 The soldiers of the Czar fought stoutly and 
 stubbornly as they have always done ; but 
 they could not stand up against the blended 
 vehemence and obstinacy of the English and 
 French. The river was crossed, the opposite 
 heights were mounted, Prince Mentscliikoff’s 
 great redoubt was carried, the Russians were 
 driven from the field, the allies occupied 
 their ground ; the victory was to the West- 
 ern Powers. Indeed it would not be unfair 
 to say that the victory was to the English ; 
 owing to whatever cause, the French did not 
 take that share in the heat of the battle 
 which their strength and their military genius 
 might have led men to expect. St. Arnaud, 
 their commander-in-chief, was in wretch- 
 ed health, on the point of death in fact ; 
 he was in no condition to guide the battle ; a 
 brilliant enterprise of General Bosquet was 
 ill-supported and had nearly proved a fail- 
 ure ; and Prince Napoleon’s division got 
 hopelessly jammed up and confused. Per- 
 haps it would be fairer to say that in the con- 
 fusion and scramble of the whole affair we 
 were more lucky than the French. If a 
 number of men are rushing headlong and in 
 the dark towards some distant point, one 
 may run against an unthought-of obstacle 
 and fall down and so lose his chance, while 
 his comrade happens to meet with no such 
 stumbling-block and goes right on. Perhaps 
 this illustration may not unfairly distribute 
 the parts taken in the battle. It would be 
 superfluous to say that the French fought 
 splendidly where they had any real chance of 
 fighting. But the luck of the day was not 
 with them. On all sides the battle was 
 fought without generalship. On all sides the 
 bravery of the officers and men was worthy 
 of any general. Our men were the luckiest. 
 They saw the heights ; they saw the enemy 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 99 
 
 there ; they made for him ; they got at him ; 
 they would not go back ; and so he had to 
 
 f ive way. That was the history of the day. 
 
 he big scramble was all over in a few 
 hours. The first field was fought, and we 
 had won. 
 
 The Russians ought to have been pursued. 
 They themselves fully expected a pursuit. 
 They retreated in something like utter confu- 
 sion, eager to put the Katcha river, which 
 runs south of the Alma and with a somewhat 
 similar course, between them and the imag- 
 inary pursuers. Had they been followed to 
 the Katcha they might have been all made 
 prisoners or destroyed. But there was no 
 pursuit. Lord Raglan was eager to follow 
 up the victory ; but the French had as yet 
 hardly any cavalry, and Marshal St. Arnaud 
 would not agree to any further enterprise 
 that day. Lord Raglan believed that he 
 ought not to persist ; and nothing was done. 
 The Russians were unable at first to believe 
 in their good fortune. It seemed to them 
 for a long time impossible that any command- 
 ers in the world could have failed, under 
 conditions so tempting, to follow a flying 
 and disordered enemy. 
 
 Except for the bravery of those who 
 fought, the battle was not much to boast of. 
 The allies together considerably outnumber- 
 ed the Russians, although, from the causes 
 we have mentioned, the Englishmen were 
 left throughout the greater part of the day to 
 eucounter an enemy numerically superior, 
 posted on difficult and commanding heights. 
 But it was the first great battle which for 
 nearly forty years our soldiers had fought 
 with a civilized enemy. The military author- 
 ities and the country were well disposed to 
 make the most of it. At this distance of 
 time it is almost touching to read some of the 
 heroic contemporaneous descriptions of the 
 great scramble of the Alma. It might almost 
 seem as if, in the imaginings of the enthusi- 
 astic historians, Englishmen had never 
 mounted heights and defeated superior num- 
 bers before. The sublime triumphs against 
 every adverse condition which had been won 
 by the genius of a Marlborough or a Wel- 
 lington could not have been celebrated in 
 language of more exalted dithyrambic pomp. 
 The gallant medley on the banks of the Alma 
 and the fruitless interval of inaction that fol- 
 lowed it were told of as if men were speak- 
 ing of some battle of the gods. 
 
 Very soon, however, a different note came 
 to be sounded. The campaign had been 
 opened under conditions differing from those 
 of most campaigns that went before it. 
 Science had added many new discoveries to 
 the art of war. Literature had added one re- 
 markable contribution of her own to the con- 
 ditions amid which campaigns were to be 
 carried on. She had added the “ special cor- 
 respondent. ’ ’ The old-fashioned historiogra- 
 pher of wars travelled to phase sovereigns 
 and minister to the self-conceit of conquer- 
 ors. The modern special correspondent had 
 a very different purpose. He watched the 
 movements of armies and criticised the policy 
 of generals in the interest of some journal, 
 which for its part was concerned only for 
 the information of the public. No favor 
 that courts or monarchs could bestow was 
 worthy a moment’s consideration in the mind 
 even of the most selfish proprietor of a news 
 paper when compared with the reward which 
 the public could give to him and to his pa- 
 per for quick and accurate news and trust- 
 worthy comment. The business of the spe- 
 cial correspondent has grown so much since 
 the Crimean War that we are now inclined 
 to look back upon the war correspondents 
 of those days almost as men then did upon 
 the old-fashioned historiographer. The war 
 correspondent now scrawls his despatches as 
 he sits in his saddle under the fire of the en- 
 emy ; he scrawls them with a pencil, noting 
 and describing each incident of the fight, so 
 far as he can see it, as coolly as if he were de- 
 scribing a review of volunteers in Hyde 
 
 Park ; and he contrives to send off his narra- 
 tive by telegraph before the victor in the 
 fight has begun to pursue, or has settled 
 down to hold the ground he won ; and the 
 war correspondent’s story is expected to be 
 as brilliant and picturesque in style as it 
 ought to be exact and faithful in its state- 
 ments. In the days of the Crimea things had 
 not advanced quite so far as that ; the war 
 was well on before the submarine telegraph 
 between Varna and the Crimea allowed of 
 daily reports ; but the feats of the war cor- 
 respondent then filled men’s minds with 
 wonder. When the expedition was leaving 
 England it was accompanied by a special cor- 
 respondent from each of the great daily pa- 
 pers of London. The Times sent out a repre- 
 sentative whose name almost immediately be- 
 came celebrated — Mr. William Howard Rus- 
 sell, the preux chevalier of war correspondents 
 in that day, as Mr. Archibald Forbes of the 
 Daily News is in this. Mr. Russell rendered 
 some service to the English army and to hi3 
 country, however, which no brilliancy of lit- 
 erary style would alone have enabled him to 
 do. It was to his great credit as a man of 
 judgment and observation that, being a 
 civilian who had never before seen one 
 puff of war-smoke, he was able to distin- 
 guish between the confusion inseparable 
 from all actual levying of war and the con- 
 fusion that comes of distinctly bad ad- 
 ministration. To the unaccustomed eye of 
 an ordinary civilian the whole progress of a 
 campaign, the development of a battle, the 
 arrangements of the commissariat, appear, 
 at any moment of actual pressure, to be noth- 
 ing but a mass of confusion. He is accus- 
 tomed in civil life to find everything in its 
 proper place, and every emergency well pro- 
 vided for. When he is suddenly plunged in- 
 to the midst of a campaign he is apt to think 
 that everything must be going wrong ; or 
 else he assumes contentedly that the whole is 
 in the hands of persons who know better than 
 he, and that it would be absurd on his part to 
 attempt to criticise the arrangements of the 
 men whose business it is to understand them. 
 Mr. Russell soon saw that there was confu- 
 sion ; and he had the soundness of judgment 
 to know that the confusion was that of a 
 breaking-down system. Therefore, while 
 the fervor of delight in the courage and suc- 
 cess of our army was still fresh in the minds 
 of the public at home, while every music-hall 
 was ringing with the cheap rewards of valor 
 in the shape of popular glorifications of our 
 commanders and our soldiers, the readers of the 
 Times began to learn that things were faring 
 badly indeed with the conquering army of 
 the Alma. The ranks were thinned by the 
 ravages of cholera. The men were pursued 
 by cholera to the very battle field, Lord Rag- 
 lan himself said. No system can charm 
 away all the effects of climate ; but it ap- 
 peared only too soon that the arrangements 
 made to encounter the indirect and inevitable 
 dangers of a campaign were miserably in- 
 efficient. The hospitals were in a wretchedly 
 disorganized condition. Stores of medicines 
 and strengthening food were decaying in 
 places where no one wanted them or could 
 well get at them, while men were dying in 
 hundreds among our tents in the Crimea for 
 lack of them. The system of clothing, of 
 transport, of feeding, of nursing — everythin" 
 had broken down. Ample provisions had 
 been got together and paid for; and when they 
 came to be needed no one knew where to get 
 at them. The special correspondent of the 
 Times and other correspondents continued to 
 din these things into the ears of the public at 
 home. Exultation began to give way to a 
 feeling of dismay. The patriotic anger 
 against the Russians was changed for a mood 
 of deep indignation against our own authori- 
 ties and our own war administration. It 
 soon became apparent to every one that the 
 whole campaign had been planned on the 
 assumption that it was to be like the career 
 of the hero whom Byron laments, “ brief, 
 
 brave, and glorious.” Our military authori- 
 ties here at home — we do not speak of the 
 commanders in the field — had made up their 
 minds that Sebastopol was to fall like an- 
 other Jericho, at the sound of the war-trum- 
 pets’ blast. 
 
 Our commanders in the field were, on the 
 contrary, rather disposed to overrate than to 
 underrate the strength of the Russians. It 
 was, therefore, somewhat like the condition 
 of things described in Macaulay’s ballad: 
 those behind cried forward, those in front 
 called back. It is very likely that if a sud- 
 den dash had been made at Sebastopol by 
 land and sea, it might have been taken al- 
 most at the very opening of the war. But 
 the delay gave the Russians full warning ; 
 and they did not neglect it. On the third 
 day after the battle of the Alma the Russians 
 sank seven vessels of their Black Sea fleet at 
 the entrance of the harbor of Sebastopol. 
 This was done full in the sight of the allied 
 fleets, who at first, misunderstanding the 
 movements going on among the enemy, 
 thought the Russian squadron were about to 
 come out from their shelter and try conclu- 
 sions with the Western ships. But the real 
 purpose of the Russians became soon appar- 
 ent. Under the eye of the allies the seven 
 vessels slowly settled down and sank in the 
 water until at last only the tops of their 
 masts were to be seen ; and the entrance of 
 the harbor was barred as by sunken rocks 
 against any approach of an enemy’s ship. 
 There was an end to every dream of a sud- 
 den capture of Sebastopol. 
 
 The allied armies moved again from their 
 positions on the Alma ; but they did not di- 
 rect their march to the north side of Sebasto- 
 pol. They made for Balaklava, which lies 
 south of the city, on the other side of a prom- 
 ontory, and which has a port that might 
 enable them to secure a constant means of 
 communication between the armies and the 
 fleets. To reach Balaklava the allied forces 
 had to undertake a long and fatiguing flank 
 march, passing Sebastopol on their right. 
 They accomplished the march in safety and 
 occupied the heights above Balaklava, while 
 the fleets appeared at the same time in the 
 harbor. Sebastopol was but a few miles off, 
 and preparations were at once made for am 
 attack on it by land and sea. On October 17 
 the attack began. It was practically a fail- 
 ure. Nothing better indeed could well have 
 been expected. The fleet could not get near 
 enough to the sea-forts of Sebastopol to make 
 their broadsides of auy real effect, because of 
 the shallow water and the sunken ships ; and 
 although the attack from the land was vigor- 
 ous and was fiercely kept up, yet it could not 
 carry its object. It became clear that Sebas- 
 topol was not to be taken by any coup de 
 main ; and the allies had not men enough to 
 invest it. They were, therefore, to some ex- 
 tent themselves in the condition of a besieged 
 force, for the Russians had a large army out- 
 side Sebastopol ready to make every sacrifice 
 for the purpose of preventing the English 
 and French from getting even a chance of 
 undisturbed operations against it. 
 
 The Russians attacked the allies fiercely ou 
 October 25, in the hope of obtaining posses- 
 sion of Balaklava. The attempt was bold 
 and brilliant ; but it was splendidly repulsed. 
 Never did a day of battle do more cred- 
 it to English courage, or less perhaps to Eng- 
 lish generalship. The cavalry particularly 
 distinguished themselves. It was in great 
 measure on our side a cavalry action. It 
 will be memorable in all English history as 
 the battle in which occurred the famous 
 charge of the Light Brigade. Owing to 
 some fatal misconception of the meaning of 
 an order from the commander-in-chief, the 
 Light Brigade, 607 men in all, charged what 
 has been rightly described as V the Russian 
 army in position.” The brigade was com- 
 posed of 118 men of the 4th Light Dragoons ; 
 104 of the 8th Hussars ; 110 of the 11th Hus- 
 sars ; 130 of the 13th Light Dragoons ; and 
 
100 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 145 of the 17th Lancers. Of the 607 men 
 198 came back. Long, painful, and hopeless 
 were the disputes about this fatal order. The 
 controversy can never be wholly settled. 
 The officer who bore the order was one of 
 the first who fell in the outset. All Europe, 
 all the world, rang with wonder and admira- 
 tion of the futile and splendid charge. The 
 Poet Laureate sang of it in spirited verse. 
 Perhaps its best epitaph was contained in the 
 celebrated comment ascribed to the French 
 General Bosquet, and which has since be- 
 come proverbial, and been quoted until men 
 are well nigh tired of it — “ It was magnifi- 
 cent, but it was not war.” 
 
 Next day the enemy made another vigor- 
 ous attack, on a much larger scale, moving 
 out of Sebastopol itself, and were again re- 
 pulsed. The allies were able to prevent the 
 troops who made the sortie from co-operating 
 with the Russian army outside who had at- 
 tacked at Balaklava. The latter were endeav- 
 oring to entrench themselves at the little 
 village of Inkerman, lying on the north of 
 Sebastopol ; but the stout resistance they met 
 with from the allies frustrated their plans. 
 On November 5 the Russians made another 
 grand attack on the allies, chiefly on the 
 British, and were once more splendidly re- 
 pulsed. The plateau of Inkerman was the 
 principal scene of the struggle. It was oc- 
 cupied by the Guards and a few British regi- 
 ments, on whom fell, until General Bosquet 
 with his French was able to come to their 
 assistance, the task of resisting a Russian 
 army. This was the severest and the fiercest 
 engagement of the campaign. The loss to the 
 English was 2612, of whom 145 were officers. 
 The French lost about 1700. The Russians 
 were believed to have lost 12,000 men ; but 
 at no time could any clear account be obtain- 
 ed of the Russian losses. It was believed 
 that they brought a force of 50,000 men to 
 the attack. Inkerman was described at the 
 time as the soldiers’ battle. Strategy, it was 
 said everywhere, there was none. The at- 
 tack was made under cover of a dark and 
 drizzling mist. The battle was fought for a 
 while almost absolutely in the dark. There 
 w T as hardly any attempt to direct the allies by 
 any principles of scientific warfare. The 
 soldiers fought stubbornly a series of hand- 
 to-hand fights, and we are entitled to say that 
 the better men won in the end. We fully 
 admit that it was a soldiers’ battle. All the 
 comment we have to make upon the epithet 
 is, that we do not exactly know which of 
 the engagements fought in the Crimea was 
 anything but a soldiers’ battle. Of course 
 with the soldiers we take the officers. A bat- 
 tle in the Crimea with which generalship had 
 anything particular to do has certainly not 
 come under the notice of this writer. Mr. 
 Kinglake tells that at Alma Marshal St. Ar- 
 naud, the French commander-in-chief, ad- 
 dressing General Canrobert and Prince Na- 
 poleon, said : “ With such men as you I have 
 no orders to give ; I have but to point to the 
 enemy.” This seems to have been the gen- 
 eral principle on which the commanders con- 
 ducted the campaign. There were the en- 
 emy’s forces — let the men go at them any 
 way they could. Nor under the circumstan- 
 ces could anything much better have been 
 done. When orders were given it appeared 
 more than once as if things would have gone 
 better without them. The soldier won his 
 battle always. No general could prevent 
 him from doing that. 
 
 Meanwhile what were people saying in 
 England ? They were indignantly declaring 
 that the whole campaign was a muddle. It 
 was evident now that Sebastopol was not go- 
 ing to fall all at once ; it was evident too 
 that the preparations had been made on the 
 assumption that it must fall at once. To 
 make the disappointment more bitter at 
 home the public had been deceived for a few 
 days by a false report of the taking of Sebas- 
 topol ; and the disappointment naturally in- 
 creased the impatience and dissatisfaction of 
 
 Englishmen. The fleet that had been sent 
 out to the Baltic came back without having 
 accomplished anything in particular ; and al- 
 though there really was nothing in particular 
 that it could have accomplished under the 
 circumstances, yet many people were as an- 
 gry as if it had culpably allowed the enemy 
 to escape it on the open seas. The sailing of 
 the Baltic fleet had indeed been preceded by 
 ceremonials especially calculated to make any 
 enterprise ridiculous which failed to achieve 
 some startling success. It was put under the 
 command of Sir Charles Napier, a brave old 
 salt of the fast-fading school of Smollett's 
 Commodore Trunnion, rough, dashing, bull- 
 headed, likely enough to succeed where sheer 
 force and courage could win victories, but 
 wanting in all the intellectual qualities of a 
 commander, and endowed with a violent 
 tongue and an almost unmatched indiscre- 
 tion. Sir Charles Napier was a member of a 
 family famed for its warriors ; but he had 
 not anything like the capacity of his cousin, 
 the other Sir Charles Napier, the conqueror 
 of Scinde, or the intellect of Sir William Na- 
 pier, the historian of the Peninsular War. 
 He had won some signal and surprising suc- 
 cesses in the Portuguese civil war and in 
 Syria ; all under conditions wholly different 
 and with an enemy wholly different from 
 those he would have to encounter in the Bal- 
 tic. But the voice of admiring friends was 
 tumultuously raised to predict splendid 
 things for him before his fleet had left its 
 port, and he himself quite forgot in his 
 rough self-confidence the difference between 
 boasting when one is taking off his armor 
 and boasting when one is only putting it on. 
 His friends entertained him at a farewell din- 
 ner at the Reform Club. Lord Palmerston 
 was present, and Sir James Graham, the First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, and a great deal of ex- 
 uberant nonsense was talked. Lord Palmer- 
 ston, carried away by his natural bonhomie 
 and his high animal spirits, showered the 
 most extravagant praises upon the gallant 
 admiral, intermixed with jokes which set the 
 company laughing consumedly, but which 
 read by the outer public next day seemed un- 
 becoming preludes to an expedition that was 
 to be part of a great war and of terrible na- 
 tional sacrifices. The one only thing that 
 could have excused the whole performance 
 would have been some overwhelming success 
 on the part of him who was its hero. But it 
 is not probable that a Dundonald or even a 
 Nelson could have done much in the Baltic 
 just then ; and Napier was not a Dundonald 
 or a Nelson. The Baltic fleet came home 
 safely after a while, its commander having 
 brought with him nothing but a grievance 
 which lasted him all the remainder of his 
 life. The public were amazed, scornful, 
 wrathful ; they began to think that they 
 were destined to see nothing but failure as 
 the fruit of the campaign. In truth they 
 were extravagantly impatient. Perhaps they 
 were not to be blamed. Their leaders, who 
 ought to have known better, had been filling 
 them with the idea that they had nothing to 
 do but to sweep the enemy from sea and 
 land. 
 
 The temper of a people thus stimulated 
 and thus disappointed is almost always indis- 
 criminating and unreasonable in its cen- 
 sure. The first idea is to find a victim. The 
 victim on whom the anger of a large portion 
 of the public turned in this instance was the 
 Prince Consort. The most absurd ideas, the 
 most cruel and baseless calumnies, were in 
 circulation about him. He was accused of 
 having out of some inscrutable motive made 
 use of all his secret influence to prevent the 
 success of the campaign. He was charged 
 with being in a conspiracy with Prussia, 
 with Russia, with no one knew exactly 
 whom, to weaken the strength of England, 
 and secure a triumph for her enemies. 
 Stories were actually told at one time of his 
 having been arrested for high treason. He 
 had in one of his speeches about this time 
 
 said that constitutional government was un- 
 der a heavy trial, and could only pass tri- 
 umphantly through it if the country would 
 grant its confidence to her Majesty’s Govern- 
 ment. In this observation, as the whole con- 
 text of the speech showed, the Prince was 
 only explaining that the Queen’s Govern- 
 ment were placed at a disadvantage in the 
 carrying on of a war, as compared with a 
 Government like that of the Emperor of the 
 French, who could act of his own arbitrary 
 will, without check, delay, or control on the 
 part of any Parliamentary body. But the 
 speech was instantly fastened on as illustrat- 
 ing the Prince’s settled and unconquerable 
 dislike of all constitutional and popular prin- 
 ciples of government. Those who opposed 
 the Prince had not indeed been waiting for 
 his speech at the Trinity House dinner to de- 
 nounce and condemn him ; but the sentence 
 in that speech to which reference has been 
 made opened upon him a new torrent of hos- 
 tile criticism. The charges which sprang of 
 this heated and unjust temper on the part 
 of the public did not indeed long prevail 
 against the Prince Consort. When once the 
 subject came to be taken up in Parliament 
 it was shown almost in a moment that there 
 was not the slightest ground or excuse for any 
 of the absurd surmises and cruel suspicions 
 which had been creating so much agitation. 
 The agitation collapsed in a moment. But 
 while it lasted it was both vehement and in- 
 tense, and gave much pain to the Prince, 
 and far more pain still to the Queen his 
 wife. 
 
 We have seen more lately and on a larger 
 scale something like the phenomenon of that 
 time. During the war between France and 
 Germany the people of Paris went nearly 
 wild with the idea that they had been betray- 
 ed, and were clamorous for victims to pun- 
 ish anywhere or anyhow. To many calm 
 Englishmen this seemed monstrously unrea- 
 sonable and unworthy ; and the French peo- 
 ple received from English writers many 
 grave rebukes and wise exhortations. But 
 the temper of the English public at one pe- 
 riod of the Crimean War was becoming very 
 like that which set Paris wild during the dis- 
 astrous struggle with Germany. The pas- 
 sions of peoples are, it is to be feared, very 
 much alike in their impulses and even in 
 their manifestations ; and if England during 
 the Crimean War never came to the wild 
 condition into which Paris fell during the 
 later struggle, it is perhaps rather because on 
 the whole things went well with England 
 than in consequence of any very great supe- 
 riority of Englishmen in judgment and self- 
 restraint over the excitable people of France. 
 Certainly those who remember what we may 
 call the dark days of the Crimean campaign, 
 when disappointment following on extrava- 
 gant confidence had incited popular passion 
 to call for some victim, will find themselves 
 slow to set a limit to the lengths that passion 
 might have reached if the Russians had actu- 
 ally been successful even in one or two bat- 
 tles. 
 
 The winter was gloomy at home as well as 
 abroad. The news constantly arriving from 
 the Crimea told only of devastation caused 
 by foes far more formidable than the Rus- 
 sians — sickness, bad weather, bad manage- 
 ment. The Black Sea was swept and 
 scourged by terrible storms. The destruction 
 of transport-ships laden with winter stores 
 for our men was of incalculable injury to 
 the army. Clothing, blanketing, provisions, 
 hospital necessaries of all kinds, were de- 
 stroyed in vast quantities. The loss of life 
 among the crews of the vessels was im- 
 mense. A storm was nearly as disastrous in 
 this way as a battle. On shore the suffer- 
 ings of the army were unspeakable. The 
 tents were torn from their pegs and blown 
 away. The officers and men were exposed to 
 the bitter cold and the fierce stormy blasts. 
 Our soldiers had for the most part little ex- 
 perience or even idea of such cold as they 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 101 
 
 had to encounter this gloomy winter The 
 intensity of the cold was so great that no one 
 might dare to touch any metal substance in 
 the open air with his bare hand under penalty 
 of leaving the skin behind him. The hospi- 
 tals for the sick and wounded at Scutari were 
 in a wretchedly disorganized condition. 
 They were for the most part in an absolutely 
 chaotic condition as regards arrangement and 
 supply. In some instances medical stores 
 were left to decay at Varna, or were found 
 lying useless in the holds of vessels in Balak- 
 lava Bay, which were needed for the wound- 
 ed at Scutari. The medical officers were able 
 and zealous men ; the stores were provided 
 and paid for so far as our Government was 
 concerned ; but the stores were not brought 
 to the medical men. These had their hands 
 all but idle, their eyes and souls tortured by 
 the sight of sufferings which they were una- 
 ble to relieve for want of the commonest ap- 
 pliances of the hospital. The most extraor- 
 dinary instances of blunder and confusion 
 were constantly coming to light. Great con- 
 signments of boots arrived, and were found 
 to be all for the left foot. Mules for the con- 
 veyance of stores were contracted for and 
 delivered, but delivered so that they came in- 
 to the hands of the Russians and not of us. 
 Shameful frauds were perpetrated in the in- 
 stance of some of the contracts for preserved 
 meat. “One’s man’s preserved meat,” ex- 
 claimed Punch with bitter humor, “is an- 
 other man’s poison.” The evils of the hos- 
 pital disorganization were happily made a 
 means of bringing about a new system of at- 
 tending to the sick and wounded in war 
 which has already created something like a 
 revolution in the manner of treating the vic- 
 tims of battle. Mr. Sidney Herbert, horri- 
 fied at the way in which things were managed 
 in Scutari and the Crimea, applied to a dis- 
 tinguished woman who had long taken a deep 
 interest in hospital reform to superintend per- 
 sonally the nursing of the soldiers. Miss 
 Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a 
 ^wealthy English country gentleman. She 
 had chosen not to pass her life in fashionable 
 or aesthetic inactivity ; and had from a very 
 early period turned her attention to sanatory 
 questions. She had studied nursing as a 
 science and a system ; had made herself ac- 
 quainted with the working of various Conti- 
 nental institutions ; and about the time when 
 the war broke out she was actually engaged 
 in reorganizing the Sick Governesses’ Insti- 
 tution in Harley Street, London. To her 
 Mr. Sidney Herbert turned. He offered her, 
 if she would accept the task he proposed, 
 plenary authority over all the nurses, and an 
 unlimited power of drawing on the Govern- 
 ment for whatever she might think necessary 
 to the success of her undertaking. Miss 
 Nightingale accepted the task, and went out 
 to Scutari accompanied by some women of 
 rank like her own, and a trained staff of 
 nurses. They speedily reduced chaos into 
 order ; and from the time of their landing in 
 Scutari there was at least one department of 
 the business of war which was never again a 
 subject of complaint. The spirit of the chiv- 
 alric days had been restored under better 
 auspices for its abiding influence. Ladies of 
 rank once more devoted themselves to the 
 service of the wounded ; and the end was 
 come of the Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prig type of 
 nurse. Sidney Herbert, in his letter to Miss 
 Nightingale, had said that her example, if 
 she accepted the task he proposed, would 
 “multiply the good to all time.” These 
 words proved to have no exaggeration in 
 them. We have never seen a war since in 
 which women of education and of genuine 
 devotion have not given themselves up to the 
 task of caring for the wounded. The Geneva 
 Convention and the bearing of the Red Cross 
 are among the results of Florence Nightin- 
 gale’s work in the Crimea. 
 
 But the siege of Sebastopol was meanwhile 
 dragging heavily along ; and sometimes it was 
 not quite certain which ought to be called 
 
 the besieged, the Russians in the city or the 
 allies encamped in sight of it. During some 
 months the allied armies did little or noth- 
 ing. The commissariat system and the land 
 transport system had broken down. The 
 armies were miserably weakened by sick- 
 ness. Cholera was ever and anon raging 
 anew among our men. Horses and mules 
 were dying of cold and starvation. The 
 roads were only deep irregular ruts filled with 
 mud ; the camp was a marsh ; the tents 
 stood often in pools of water ; the men had 
 sometimes no beds but straw dripping with 
 wet ; and hardly any bed coverings. Our 
 unfortunate Turkish allies were in a far more 
 wretched plight than even we ourselves. 
 The authorities who ought to have looked 
 after them were impervious to the criticisms 
 of special correspondents and unassailable by 
 Parliamentary votes of censure. A condem- 
 nation of the latter kind was hanging over our 
 Government. Lord John Russell became 
 impressed with the conviction that the Duke 
 of Newcastle was not strong enough for the 
 post of War Minister ; and he wrote to Lord 
 Aberdeen urging that the War Department 
 should be given to Lord Palmerston. Lord 
 Aberdeen replied that although another per- 
 son might have been a better choice when 
 the appointments were made in the first in- 
 stance, yet in the absence of any proved de- 
 fect or alleged incapacity there was no suffi- 
 cient ground for making a kind of speculat- 
 ive change. Parliament was called together 
 before Christmas ; and after the Christmas 
 recess Mr. Roebuck gave notice that he 
 would move for a select committee to inquire 
 into the condition of the army before Sebas- 
 topol, and into the conduct of those depart- 
 ments of the Government whose duty it had 
 been to minister to the wants of the army. 
 Lord John Russell did not believe for him- 
 self that the motion could be conscientiously 
 resisted ; but as it necessarily involved a 
 censure upon some of his colleagues, he did 
 not think he ought to remain longer in the 
 Ministry, and he therefore resigned his office. 
 The sudden resignation of the leader of the 
 House of Commons was a death-blow to any 
 plans of resistance by which the Government 
 might otherwise have thought of encounter- 
 ing Mr. Roebuck’s motion. Lord Palmer- 
 ston, although Lord John Russell’s course 
 was a marked tribute to his own capacity, 
 had remonstrated warmly with Russell by 
 letter as to his determination to resign. 
 “ You will have the appearance,” he said, 
 “ of having remained in office aiding in car- 
 rying on a system of which you disapprove 
 until driven out by Roebuck’s announced 
 notice ; and the Government will have the 
 appearance of self-condemnation by flying 
 from a discussion which they dare not face ; 
 while as regards the country the action of 
 the executive will be paralyzed for a time in 
 a critical moment of a great war, with an im- 
 pending negotiation, and we shall exhibit to 
 the world a melancholy spectacle of disor- 
 ganization among our political men at home 
 similar to that which has prevailed among 
 our military men abroad.” The remon- 
 strance, however, came too late, even if it 
 could have had any effect at any time. Mr. 
 Roebuck’s motion came on, and was resisted 
 with vigor by Lord Palmerston and Mr. Glad- 
 stone. Lord Palmerston insisted that the 
 responsibility ought to fall not on the Duke 
 of Newcastle but on the whole Cabinet ; and 
 with a generosity which his keenest oppo- 
 nents might have admitted to be characteristic 
 of him, he accepted the task of defending an 
 Administration whose chief blame was in the 
 eyes of most persons that they had not given 
 the control of the war into his hands. Mr. 
 Gladstone declared that the inquiry sought 
 for by the resolution could lead to nothing 
 but “confusion and disturbance, increased 
 disasters, shame at home and weakness 
 abroad ; it would convey no consolation to 
 those whom you seek to aid, but it would 
 carry malignant joy to the hearts of the en- 
 
 | emies of England.” The House of Com- 
 j mons was not to be moved by any such argu- 
 ment or appeal. The one pervading idea 
 was that England had been endangered 
 and shamed by the break-down of her army 
 organization. When the division took place 
 305 members voted for Mr. Roebuck’s mo- 
 tion and only 148 against. The majority 
 against ministers was therefore 157. Every 
 one knows what a scene usually takes place 
 when a Ministry is defeated in the House of 
 Commons. Cheering again and again re- 
 newed, counter-cheers of defiance, wild ex- 
 ultation, vehement indignation, a whole 
 whirlpool of various emotions seething in 
 that little hall in St. Stephen’s. But this 
 time there was no such outburst. The 
 House could hardly realize the fact that the 
 Ministry of all the talents had been thus 
 completely and ignominiously defeated. A 
 dead silence followed the announcement of 
 the numbers. Then there was a half-breath- 
 less murmur of amazement and incredulity. 
 The Speaker repeated the numbers, and 
 doubt was over. It was still uncertain how 
 the House would express its feelings. Sud- 
 denly some one laughed. The sound gave a 
 direction and a relief to perplexed, pent-up 
 emotion. Shouts of laughter followed. Not 
 merely the pledged opponents of the Govern- 
 ment laughed. Many of those who had voted 
 with ministers found themselves laughing 
 too. It seemed so absurd, so incongruous, 
 this way of disposing of the great Coalition 
 Government. Many must have thought of 
 the night of fierce debate, little more than 
 two years before, when Mr. Disraeli, then on 
 the verge of his fall from power and realizing 
 fully the strength of the combination against 
 him, consoled his party and himself for the 
 imminent fatality awaiting them by the de- 
 fiant words, “ I know that I have to face a 
 Coalition ; the combination may be success- 
 ful. A combination has before this been suc- 
 cessful ; but coalitions, though they may be 
 successful, have always found that their 
 triumphs have been brief. This I know, 
 that England does not love coalitions. ’ ’ Only 
 two years had passed and the great Coalition 
 had fallen, overwhelmed with reproach 
 and popular indignation, and amid sudden 
 shouts of laughter. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE CLOSE OF THE WAR. 
 
 On February 15, 1855, Lord Palmerston 
 wrote to his brother : “A month ago, if any 
 man had asked me to say what was one of 
 the most improbable events, I should have 
 said my being Prime Minister. Aberdeen 
 was there, Derby was head of one great 
 party, John Russell of the other, and yet in 
 about ten days’ time they all gave way like 
 straws before the wind ; and so here am I, 
 writing to you from Downing Street, as First 
 Lord of the Treasury.” 
 
 No doubt Lord Palmerston was sincere in 
 the expression of surprise which we have 
 quoted ; but there were not many other men 
 in the country who felt in the least astonished 
 at the turn of events by which he had become 
 Prime Minister. Indeed, it had long become 
 apparent to almost every one that his assum- 
 ing that place was only a question of time. 
 The country was in that mood that it would 
 absolutely have somebody at the head of 
 affairs who knew his own mind and saw his 
 way clearly before him. When the Coalition 
 Ministry broke down, Lord Derby was in- 
 vited by the Queen to form a Government. 
 He tried and failed. He did all in his power 
 to accomplish the task with which the Queen 
 had entrusted him. He invited Lord Pal- 
 merston to join him, and it was intimated 
 that if Palmerston consented Mr. Disraeli 
 would waive all claim to the leadership of 
 the House of Commons, in order that Pal- 
 merston should have that place. Lord Derby 
 also offered, through Lord Palmerston, places 
 in his Administration to Mr. Gladstone and 
 Mr. Sidney Herbert. Palmerston did not 
 
102 
 
 A HISTORY OP OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 see his way to join a Derby Administration, 
 and without him Lord Derby could not go 
 on. The Queen then sent for Lord John 
 Russell ; but Russell’s late and precipitate 
 retreat from his office had discredited him 
 with most of his former colleagues ; and he 
 found that he could not get a Government 
 together. Lord Palmerston was then, to use 
 his own phrase, 1’ inevitable. There was not 
 much change in the 'personnel of the Ministry. 
 Lord Aberdeen was gone, and Lord Palmer- 
 ston took his place ; and Lord Panmure, who 
 had formerly as Fox Maule administered the 
 affairs of the army, succeeded the Duke of 
 Newcastle. Lord Panmure, however, com- 
 bined in his own person the functions, up to 
 that time absurdly separated, of Secretary-at- 
 War and Secretary-for-W ar. The Secretary - 
 at-War under the old system was not one of 
 the principal Secretaries of State. He was 
 merely the officer by whom the regular com- 
 munication was kept up between the War 
 Office and the Ministry, and has been described 
 as the civil officer of the army. The Secretary - 
 for-War was commonly entrusted with the 
 colonial department as well. The two War 
 Offices were now made into one. It was 
 hoped that by this change great benefit would 
 come to our whole army system. Lord Pal- 
 merston acted energetically too in sending out 
 a sanitary commission to the Crimea, and a 
 commission to superintend the commissariat, 
 a department that, almost more than any 
 other, had broken down. Nothing could be 
 more strenuous than the terms in which Lord 
 Palmerston recommended the sanitary com- 
 mission to Lord Raglan. He requested that 
 Lord Raglan would give the commissioners 
 every assistance in his power. ‘ ‘ They will, of 
 course, be opposed and thwarted by the med- 
 ical officers, by the men who have charge of 
 the port arrangements, and by those who 
 have the cleaning of the camp. Their mission 
 will be ridiculed, and their recommendations 
 and directions set aside, unless enforced by 
 the peremptory exercise of your authority. 
 Rut that authority I must request you to ex- 
 ert in the most peremptory manner for the 
 immediate and exact carrying into execution 
 whatever changes of arrangement they may 
 recommend ; for these are matters on which 
 depend the health and lives of many hun- 
 dreds of men, I may indeed say of thou- 
 sands.” Lord Palmerston was strongly 
 pressed by some of the more strenuous Re- 
 formers of the House. Mr. Layard, who 
 had acquired some celebrity before in a very 
 different field, as a discoverer, that is to say, 
 in the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, was 
 energetic and incessant in his attacks on the 
 administration of the war, and was not dis- 
 posed even now to give the new Government 
 a moment’s rest. Mr. Layard was a man of 
 a certain rough ability, immense self-suffi- 
 ciency, and indomitable egotism. He was 
 not in any sense an eloquent speaker ; he 
 was singularly wanting in all the graces of 
 style and manner But he was fluent, he was 
 vociferous, he never seemed to have a mo- 
 ment’s doubt on any conceivable question, 
 he never admitted that there could by any 
 possibility be two sides to any matter of dis- 
 cussion. He did really know a great deal 
 about the East at a time when the habit of 
 travelling in the East was comparatively 
 rare. He stamped down all doubt or dif- 
 ference of view with the overbearing dogma- 
 tism of Sir Walter Scott’s Touchwood, or of 
 the proverbial man who has been there and 
 ought to know ; and he was in many respects 
 admirably fitted to be the spokesman of all 
 those, and they were not a few, who saw 
 that things had been going wrong without 
 exactly seeing why, and were eager that 
 something should be done, although they did 
 not clearly know what. Lord Palmerston 
 strove to induce the House not to press for 
 the appointment of the committee recom- 
 mended in Mr. Roebuck's motion. The 
 Government, he said, would make the need- 
 ful inquiries themselves. He reminded the 
 
 House of Richard II. ’s offer to lead the men 
 of the fallen Tyler’s insurrection himself ; 
 and in the same spirit he offered on the part 
 of the Government to take the lead in every 
 necessary investigation. Mr. Roebuck, how- 
 ever, would not give way, and Lord Palmer- 
 ston yielded to a demand which had un- 
 doubtedly the support of a vast force of pub- 
 lic opinion. The constant argument of Mr. 
 Layard had some sense in it : the Govern- 
 ment now in office was very much like the 
 Government in which the House had declared 
 so lately that it had no confidence. It could 
 hardly, therefore, be expected that the House 
 should accept its existence as guarantee 
 enough that everything should be done which 
 its predecessor had failed to do. Lord Pal- 
 merston gave way, but his unavoidable con- 
 cession brought on a new ministerial crisis. 
 Sir James Graham, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. 
 Sidney Herbert declined to hold office any 
 longer. They had opposed the motion for 
 an inquiry most gravely and strenuously, 
 and they would not lend any countenance to 
 it by remaining in office. Sir Charles Wood 
 succeeded Sir James Graham as First Lord 
 of the Admiralty ; Lord John Russell took 
 the place of Secretary of the Colonies, va- 
 cated by Sidney Herbert ; and Sir George 
 Cornewall Lewis followed Mr. Glad., tone as 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 Meanwhile new negotiations for peace, set 
 on foot under the influence of Austria, had 
 been begun at Vienna, and Lord John Rus- 
 sell had been sent there to represent the inter- 
 ests of England. The Conference opened 
 at Vienna uniter circumstances that might 
 have seemed especially favorable to peace. 
 We had got a new ally, a State not indeed 
 commanding any great military strength, but 
 full of energy and ambition, and representing 
 more than any other perhaps the tendencies 
 of liberalism and the operation of the com- 
 paratively new principle of the rights of na- 
 tionalities. This was the little kingdom of 
 Sardinia, whose government was then under 
 the control of one of the master-spirits of 
 modern politics ; a man who belonged to the 
 class of the Richelieus and the Orange Wil- 
 liams, the illustrious Count Cavour. Sar- 
 dinia, it may be frankly said, did not come 
 into the alliance because of any particular 
 sympathies that she had with one side or the 
 other of the quarrel between Russia and the 
 Western Powers. She went into the war in 
 order that she might have a locus standi in the 
 councils of Europe from which to set forth 
 her grievances against Austria. In the mar- 
 vellous history of the uprise of the kingdom 
 of Italy there is a good deal over which, to 
 use the words of Carlyle, moralities not a 
 few must shriek aloud. It would not be easy 
 to defend on high moral principles the policy 
 which struck into a war without any partic- 
 ular care for either side of the controversy, 
 but only to serve an ulterior and personal, 
 that is to say, national purpose. But regard- 
 ing the policy merely by the light of its re- 
 sults, it must be owned that it was singularly 
 successful and entirely justified the expecta- 
 tions of Cavour. The Crimean War laid the 
 foundations of the kingdom of Italy. 
 
 That was one fact calculated to inspire 
 hopes of a peace. The greater the number 
 and strength of the allies, the greater obvi- 
 ously the pressure upon Russia and the prob- 
 ability of her listening to reason. But there 
 was another event of a very different nature, 
 the effect of which seemed at first likely to 
 be all in favor of peace. This was the death 
 of the man whom the united public opinion 
 of Europe regarded as the author of the war. 
 On March 2, 1855, the Emperor Nicholas of 
 Russia died of pulmonary apoplexy, after an 
 attack of influenza. In other days it would 
 have been said he had died of a broken heart. 
 Perhaps the description would have been 
 more strictly true than the terms of the med- 
 ical report. It was doubtless the effect of 
 utter disappointment, of the wreck and ruin 
 of hopes to which a life’s ambition had been 
 
 directed and a life’s energy dedicated, which 
 left that frame of adamant open to the sud- 
 den dart of sickness. One of the most re- 
 markable illustrations of an artist’s genius 
 devoted to a political subject was the cartoon 
 which appeared in Punch, and which was 
 called “ General Fevrier turned Traitor.” 
 The Emperor Nicholas had boasted that Rus- 
 sia had two generals on whom she could al- 
 ways rely. General Janvier and General 
 Fevrier ; and now the English artist repre- 
 sented General February, a skeleton in Rus- 
 sian uniform, turning traitor and laying his 
 bony ice-cold hand on the heart of the Sover- 
 eign and betraying him to the tomb. But 
 indeed it was not General February alone who 
 doomed Nicholas to death. The Czar died 
 of broken hopes ; of the recklessness that 
 comes from defeat and despair. He took no 
 precautions against cold and exposure ; he 
 treated with a magnanimous disdain the re- 
 monstrances of his physicians and his friends. 
 As of Max Piccolomini in Schiller’s noble 
 play, so of him : men whispered that he 
 wished to die. The Alma was to him what 
 Austerlitz was to Pitt. From the moment 
 when the news of that defeat was announced 
 to him he no longer seemed to have hope of 
 the campaign. He took the story of the de- 
 feat very much as Lord North took the sur- 
 render of Cornwallis — as if a bullet had 
 struck him. Thenceforth he was like one 
 whom the old Scotch phrase would describe 
 as fey ; one who moved, spoke, and lived un- 
 der the shadow of coming death until the 
 death came. 
 
 The news of the sudden death of the Em- 
 peror created a profound sensation in Eng- 
 land. Mr. Bright, at Manchester, shortly 
 after rebuked what he considered an ignoble 
 levity in the manner of commenting on the 
 event among some of the English journals, 
 but it is right to say that on the whole noth- 
 ing could have been more decorous and dig- 
 nified than the manner in which the English 
 public generally received the news that the 
 country’s great enemy was no more. At 
 first there was, as we have said, a common 
 impression that Nicholas’s son and succes- 
 sor, Alexander II., would be more anxious 
 to make peace than his father had been. But 
 this hope was soon gone. The new Czar 
 could not venture to show himself to his 
 people in a less patriotic light than his prede- 
 cessor. The prospects of the allies were at 
 the time remarkably gloomy. There must 
 have seemed to the new Russian Emperor 
 considerable ground for the hope that dis- 
 ease, and cold, and bad management would 
 do more harm to the army of England at 
 least than any Russian general could do. 
 The Conference at Vienna proved a failure, 
 and even in some respects a fiasco. Lord 
 John Russell, sent to Vienna as our represent- 
 ative, was instructed that the object he must 
 hold in view was the admission of Turkey 
 into the great family of European States. 
 For this end there were four principal points 
 to be considered : the condition of the Danu- 
 bian Principalities, the free navigation of the 
 Danube, the limitation of Russian supremacy 
 in the Black Sea, and the independence of 
 the Porte. It was on the attempt to limit 
 Russian supremacy in the Black Sea that the 
 negotiations became a failure. Russia would 
 not consent to any proposal which could 
 really have the desired effect. She would 
 agree to an arrangement between Turkey and 
 herself, but this was exactly what the W esl- 
 ern Powers were determined not to allow. 
 She declined to have the strength of her navy 
 restricted ; and proposed as a counter-resolu- 
 tion that the Straits should be opened to the 
 war flags of all nations, so that if Russia 
 were strong as a naval Power in the Black 
 Sea, other Powers might be just as strong if 
 they thought fit. Lord Palmerston, in a let- 
 ter to Lord John Russell, dryly characterized 
 this proposition, involving as it would the 
 maintenance by England and France of per- 
 manent fleets in the Black Sea to counter- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 103 
 
 balance the fleet of Russia, as a “ mauvaise 
 plaisanterie." Lord Palmerston indeed be- 
 lieved no more in the sincerity of Austria 
 throughout all these transactions than he did 
 in that of Russia. The Conference proved 
 a total failure, and in its failure it involved a 
 
 f ood deal of the reputation of Lord John 
 lussell. Like the French representative, 
 M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Lord John Russell had 
 been taken by the proposals of Austria and 
 had supported them in the first instance ; 
 but when the Government at home would 
 not have them he was still induced to remain 
 a member of the Cabinet and even to con- 
 demn in the House of Commons the recom- 
 mendations he had supported at Vienna. He 
 was charged by Mr. Disraeli with having en- 
 couraged the Russian pretensions by declar- 
 ing at a critical point of the negotiations that 
 he was disposed to favor whatever arrange- 
 ment would best preserve the honor of Rus- 
 sia. “ What has the representative of Eng- 
 land,” Mr. Disraeli indignantly asked, “to 
 do with the honor of Russia?” Lord John 
 had indeed a fair reply. He could say with 
 justice and good sense that no settlement 
 was likely to be lasting which simply forced 
 conditions upon a great Power like Russia 
 without taking any account of what is con- 
 sidered among nations to be her honor. But 
 he was not able to give any satisfactory ex- 
 lanation of his having approved the con- 
 itions in Vienna which he afterwards con- 
 demned in Westminster. He explained in 
 Parliament that he did in the first instance 
 regard the Austrian propositions as contain- 
 ing the possible basis of a satisfactory and 
 lasting peace ; but that as the Government 
 would not hear of them he had rejected them 
 against his own judgment ; and that he had 
 afterwards been converted to the opinion of 
 his colleagues and believed them inadmissible 
 in principle. This was a sort of explanation 
 more likely to alarm than to reassure the 
 public. What manner of danger, it was 
 asked on all sides, may we not be placed in 
 when our representatives do not know their 
 own minds as to proper terms of peace ; 
 when they have no opinion of their own up- 
 on the subject, but are loud in approval of 
 certain conditions one day which they are 
 equally loud in condemning the next ? There 
 was a general impression throughout Eng- 
 land that some of our statesmen in office had 
 never been sincerely in favor of the war from 
 the first ; that even still they were cold, 
 doubtful, and half-hearted about it, and that 
 the honor of the country was not safe in 
 such hands. The popular instinct, whether 
 it was right as to facts or not, was perfectly 
 sound as to inferences. We may honor, in 
 many instances we must honor, the consci- 
 entious scruples of a public man who dis- 
 trusts the objects and has no faith in the re- 
 sults of some war in which his people are en- 
 gaged. But such a man has no business in 
 the Government which has the conduct of 
 the war. The men who are to carry on a 
 war must have no doubt of its rightfulness 
 of purpose, and must not be eager to con- 
 clude it on any terms. In the very interests 
 of peace itself they must be resolute to carry 
 on the war until it has reached the end they 
 sought for. 
 
 Lord John Russell’s remaining in office 
 after these disclosures was practically im- 
 possible. Sir E. B. Lytton gave notice of a 
 direct vote of censure on “ the Minister 
 charged with the negotiations at Vienna.” 
 But Russell anticipated the certain effect of a 
 vote in the House of Commons by resigning 
 his office. This step at least extricated his 
 colleagues from any share in the censure, 
 although the recriminations that passed on 
 the occasion in Parliament were many and 
 bitter. The vote of censure was however 
 withdrawn. Sir William Molesworth, one 
 of the most distinguished of the school who 
 were since called Philosophical Radicals, suc- 
 ceeded him as Colonial Secretary ; and the 
 Ministry carried one or two triumphant votes 
 
 against Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Roebuck, and other 
 opponents, or at least unfriendly critics. 
 Meanwhile the Emperor of the French and 
 his wife had paid a visit to London and had 
 been received with considerable enthusiasm. 
 The Queen seems to have been very favorably 
 impressed by the Emperor. She sincerely 
 admired him, and believed in his desire to 
 maintain peace as far as possible, and to do 
 his best for the promotion of liberal principles 
 and sound economic doctrines throughout Eu- 
 rope. The beauty and grace of the Empress 
 likewise greatly won over Queen Victoria. 
 The Prince Consort seems to have been less 
 impressed. He was indeed a believer in the 
 sincerity and good disposition of the Empe- 
 ror, but he found him strangely ignorant on 
 most subjects, even the modern political his- 
 tory of England and France. During the 
 visit of the Royal family of England to 
 France, and now while the Emperor and 
 Empress were in London, the same impres- 
 sion appears to have been left on the mind of 
 the Prince Consort. He also seems to have 
 noticed a certain barrack-room flavor about 
 the Emperor’s entourage which was not agree- 
 able to his own ideas of dignity and refine- 
 ment. The Prince Consort appears to have 
 judged the Emperor almost exactly as we 
 know now that Prince Bismarck did then, 
 and as impartial opinion has judged him 
 everywhere in Europe since that time. 
 
 The operations in the Crimea were renewed 
 with some vigor. The English army lost 
 much by the death of its brave and manly 
 commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan. He was 
 succeeded by General Simpson, who had re- 
 cently been sent out to the Crimea as chief 
 of the staff, and whose administration dur- 
 ing the short time that he held the command 
 was at least well qualified to keep Lord Rag- 
 lan’s memory green and to prevent the re- 
 gret for his death from losing any of its keen- 
 ness. The French army had lost its first 
 commander long before — the versatile, reck- 
 less, brilliant soldier of fortune, St. Arnaud, 
 whose broken health had from the opening 
 of the campaign prevented him from display- 
 ing any of the qualities which his earlier 
 career gave men reason to look for under his 
 command. After St. Arnaud’s death the 
 command was transferred for a while to Gen- 
 eral Canrobert, who, finding himself hardly 
 equal to the task, resigned it in favor of Gen- 
 eral Pelissier. The Sardinian contingent had 
 arrived and had given admirable proof of its 
 courage and discipline. On August 16, 1855, 
 the Russians, under General Liprandi, made 
 a desperate effort to raise the siege of Sebas- 
 topol by an attack on the allied forces. The 
 attack was skilfully planned during the 
 night, and was made in great strength. The 
 French divisions had to bear the principal 
 weight of the attack ; but the Sardinian 
 contingent also had a prominent place in the 
 resistance, and bore themselves with splendid 
 bravery and success. The attempt of the 
 Russians was completely foiled ; and all 
 Northern Italy was thrown into wild delight 
 by the news that the flag of Piedmont had 
 been carried to victory over the troops of one 
 great European Power, and side by side with 
 those of two others. The unanimous voice of 
 the country now approved and acclaimed the 
 policy of Cavour, which had been sanctioned 
 only by a very narrow majority, had been 
 denounced from all sides as reckless and 
 senseless, and had been carried out in the 
 face of the most tremendous difficulties. It 
 was the first great illustration of Cavour’s 
 habitual policy of blended audacity and cool 
 far-seeing judgment. It is a curious fact 
 that the suggestion to send Sardinian troops 
 to the Crimea did not originate in Cavour’s 
 own busy brain. The first thought of it 
 came up in the mind of a woman, Cavour’s 
 niece. The great statesman was struck with 
 the idea from the moment when she sug- 
 gested it. He thought over it deeply, re- 
 solved to adopt it, and carried it to triumph- 
 ant success. 
 
 The repulse of the Tchernaya was a heavy, 
 indeed a fatal stroke for the Russians. The 
 siege had been progressing for some time 
 with considerable activity. The French had 
 drawn their lines nearer and nearer to the be- 
 sieged city. The Russians, however, had 
 also been throwing up fresh works, which 
 brought them nearer to the lines of the al- 
 lies, and sometimes made the latter seem as 
 if they were the besieged rather than the be- 
 siegers. The Malakoff tower and the Mame- 
 lon battery in front of it became the scenes 
 and the objects of constant struggle. The 
 Russians made desperate night sorties again 
 and again, and were always repulsed. On 
 June 7 the English assaulted the quarries in 
 front of the Redan, and the French attacked 
 the Mamelon. The attack on both sides was 
 successful ; but it was followed on the 18th 
 of the same month by a desperate and wholly 
 unsuccessful attack on the Redan and Mala- 
 koff batteries. There was some misappre- 
 hension on the side of the French command- 
 er, which led to a lack of precision and uni- 
 ty in the carrying out of the enterprise, and 
 it became, therefore, a failure on the part of 
 both the allies. A pompous and exulting ad- 
 dress was issued by Prince Gortschakoff, in 
 which he informed the Russian army that the 
 enemy had been beaten, driven back with 
 enormous loss ; and announced that the hour 
 was approaching “ when the pride of the en- 
 emy will be lowered, their armies swept from 
 our soil like chaff blowrn away by the 
 wind.” 
 
 On September 5 the allies made an attack 
 almost simultaneously upon the Malakoff and 
 the Redan. It was agreed that as soon as the 
 French had got possession of the Malakoff 
 the English should attack the Redan, the 
 hoisting of the French flag on the former 
 fort to be the signal for our men to move. 
 The French were brilliantly successful in 
 their part of the attack, and in a quarter of 
 an hour from the beginning of the attempt 
 the flag of the Empire was floating on the 
 parapets. The English then at once advanc- 
 ed upon the Redan ; but it was a very differ- 
 ent task from that which the French had had 
 to undertake. The French were near the 
 Malakoff ; the English were very far away 
 from the Redan. The distance our soldiers 
 had to traverse left them almost helplessly 
 exposed to the Russian Are. They stormed 
 the parapets of the Redan despite all the dif- 
 ficulties of their attack ; but they were not 
 able to hold the place. The attacking party 
 were far too small in numbers ; reinforce- 
 ments did not come in time ; the English 
 held their own for an hour against odds that 
 might have seemed overwhelming ; but it 
 was simply impossible for them to establish 
 themselves in the Redan, and the remnant of 
 them that could withdraw had to retreat to 
 the trenches. It was only the old story of the 
 war. Superb courage and skill of officers 
 and men ; outrageously bad generalship. 
 The attack might have been renewed that 
 day, but the English commander-in-chief, 
 General Simpson, declared with naivete that 
 the trenches were too crowded for him to do 
 anything. Thus the attack failed because 
 there were too few men, and could not be re- 
 newed because there w r ere too many. The 
 cautious commander resolved to make an- 
 other attempt the next morning. But before 
 the morrow came there was nothing to at- 
 tack. The Russians withdrew during the 
 night from the south side of Sebastopol. A 
 brTdge of boats had been constructed across 
 the bay to connect the north and the south 
 sides of the city, and across this bridge 
 Prince Gortschakoff quietly withdrew his 
 troops. The bombardment kept up by the 
 allies had been so terrible and so close for 
 several days, and their long-range guns were 
 so entirely superior to anything possessed by 
 or indeed known to the Russians, that the 
 defences of the south side were being irrepar- 
 ably destroyed. The Russian general felt 
 that it would be impossible for him to hold 
 
104 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 the city much longer, and that to remain 
 there was only useless waste of life. But, as 
 he said in his own despatch, “it is not Se- 
 bastopol which we have left to them, but the 
 burning ruins of the town, which we our- 
 selves set fire to, having maintained the 
 honor of the defence in such a manner that 
 our great-grandchildren may recall with pride 
 the remembrance of it and send it on to all 
 posterity.” It was some time before the al- 
 lies could venture to enter the abandoned 
 city. The arsenals and powder-magazines 
 were exploding, the flames were bursting out 
 of every public building and every private 
 house. The Russians had made of Sebasto- 
 pol another Moscow. 
 
 With the close of that long siege, which 
 had lasted nearly a year, the war may be said 
 to have ended. The brilliant episode of Kars, 
 its splendid defence and its final surrender, 
 was brought to its conclusion, indeed, after 
 the fall of Sebastopol ; but, although it nat- 
 urally attracted peculiar attention in this 
 country, it could have no effect on the actual 
 fortunes of such a war. Kars was defended 
 by Colonel Fenwick Williams, an English 
 officer, who had been sent, all too late, to re- 
 organize the Turkish forces in Armenia after 
 they had suffered a terrible defeat at the 
 hands of the Russians. Never probably had 
 a man a more difficult task than that which 
 fell to the lot of Williams. He had to con- 
 tend against official stupidity, corruption, de- 
 lay ; he could get nothing done without hav- 
 ing first to remove whole mountains of ob- 
 struction, and to quicken into life and move- 
 ment an apathy which seemed like that of a 
 paralyzed system. He concentrated liis 
 efforts at last upon the defence of Kars, and 
 he held the place against overwhelming Rus- 
 sian forces, and against an enemy far more 
 appalling, starvation itself. With his little 
 garrison he repelled a tremendous attack 
 of the Russian army under General Mou- 
 ravieff, in a battle that lasted nearly seven 
 hours, and as the result of which the Rus- 
 sians left on the field more than five thou- 
 sand dead. He had to surrender at last to 
 famine ; but the very articles of surrender to 
 which the conqueror consented became the 
 trophy of Williams and his men. The gar- 
 rison were allowed to leave the place with all 
 the honors of war ; and, “ as a testimony to 
 the valorous resistance made by the garrison 
 of Kars, the officers of all ranks are to keep 
 their swords.” Williams and his English 
 companions, Colonel Lake, Major Teesdale, 
 Major Thompson, and Dr. Sandwich, had 
 done as much for the honor of their country 
 at the close of the war as Butler and Nas- 
 myth had done at its opening. The curtain 
 of that great drama rose and fell upon a 
 splendid scene of English heroism. 
 
 The war was virtually over. Austria had 
 been exerting herself throughout its progress 
 in the interests of peace, and after the fall of 
 Sebastopol she made a new effort with greater 
 success. Two of the belligerents were indeed 
 now anxious to be out of the struggle almost 
 on any terms. These were France and Rus- 
 sia. The new Emperor of Russia was not a 
 man personally inclined for war ; nor had he 
 his father’s overbearing and indomitable tem- 
 per. He could not but see that his father 
 had greatly overrated the military strength 
 and resources of his country. He had ac- 
 cepted the war only as a heritage of necessary 
 evil, with little hope of any good to come of 
 it to Russia ; and he welcomed any chance of 
 ending it on fair terms. France, or at least 
 her Emperor, was all but determined to get 
 back again into peace. If England had held 
 out, it is highly probable that she would have 
 had to do so alone. For this indeed Lord 
 Palmerston was fully prepared as a last re- 
 source, sooner than submit to terms which 
 he considered unsatisfactory. He said so and 
 he meant it. “I can fancy,” Lord Palmer- 
 ston wrote to Lord Clarendon in his bright 
 good-humored way, ‘ ‘ how I should be hoot- 
 ed in the House of Commons if I were to get 
 
 up and say that we had agreed to an imper- 
 fect and unsatisfactory arrangement. . . . 
 
 I had better beforehand take the Chiltern 
 Hundreds.” Lord Palmerston however had 
 no occasion to take the Chiltern Hundreds ; 
 the Congress of Paris opened on February 
 26, 1856, and on March 30 the treaty of peace 
 was signed by the plenipotentiaries of the 
 Great Powers. Prussia had been admitted 
 to the Congress, which therefore represented 
 England France, Austria, Prussia, Turkey, 
 and Sardinia. 
 
 The treaty began by declaring that Kars 
 was to be restored to the Sultan, and that Se- 
 bastopol and all other places taken by the al- 
 lies were to be given back to Russia. The 
 Sublime Porte was admitted to participate in 
 all the advantages of the public law and sys- 
 tem of Europe. The other Powers engaged 
 to respect the independence and territorial in- 
 tegrity of Turkey. They guaranteed in com- 
 mon the strict observance of that engage- 
 ment, and announced that they would in con- 
 sequence consider any act tending to a viola- 
 tion of it as a question of general interest. 
 The Sultan issued a firman for ameliorating 
 the condition of his Christian subjects, and 
 communicated to the other Powers the pur- 
 poses of the firman “ emanating spontane- 
 ously from his sovereign will.” No right of 
 interference, it was distinctly specified, was 
 given to the other Powers by this concession 
 on the Sultan’s part. The article of the 
 treaty which referred to the Black Sea is of 
 especial importance. “ The Black Sea is 
 neutralized ; its waters and its ports, thrown 
 open to the mercantile marine of every na- 
 tion, are formally and in perpetuity interdic- 
 ted to the flag of war either of the Powers 
 possessing its coasts or of any other Power, 
 with the exceptions mentioned in articles 
 fourteen and nineteen.” The exceptions 
 only reserved the right of each of the Powers 
 to have the same number of small armed ves- 
 sels in the Black Sea to act as a sort of mara- 
 time police and to protect the coasts. The 
 Sultan and the Emperor engaged to establish 
 and maintain no military or maritime arsenals 
 in that sea. The navigation of the Danube 
 was thrown open. In exchange for the 
 towns restored to him, and in order more 
 fully to secure the navigation of the Danube, 
 the Emperor consented to a certain rectifica- 
 tion of his frontier in Bessarabia, the territory 
 ceded by Russia to be annexed to Moldavia un- 
 der the suzerainty of the Porte. Moldavia and 
 Wallachia, continuing under the suzerainty 
 of the Sultan, were to enjoy all the privileges 
 and immunities they already possessed under 
 the guarantee of the contracting Powers, but 
 with no separate right of intervention in 
 their affairs. The existing position of Servia 
 was assured. A convention respecting the 
 Dardanelles and the Bosphorus was made by 
 all the Powers. By this convention the Sul- 
 tan maintained the ancient rule prohibiting 
 ships of war of foreign Powers from entering 
 the Straits so long as the Porte is at peace. 
 During time of peace the Sultan engaged to 
 admit no foreign ships of war into the Bos- 
 phorus or the Dardanelles. The Sultan re- 
 served to himself the right as in former 
 times of delivering firmans of passage for 
 light vessels under the flag of war employed 
 in the service of foreign Powers, that is to 
 say, of their diplomatic missions. A sepa- 
 rate convention as to the Black Sea between 
 Russia and Turkey agreed that the contract- 
 ing parties should have in that sea six light 
 steam vessels of not more than 800 tons, and 
 four steam or sailing vessels of not more than 
 200 tons each. 
 
 Thus the controversies about the Christian 
 provinces, the Straits, and the Black Sea 
 were believed to be settled. The great cen- 
 tral business of the Congress, however, was 
 to assure the independence and the territorial 
 integrity of Turkey, now admitted to a place 
 in the family of European States. As it did 
 not seem clear to those most particularly con- 
 cerned in bringing about this result that the 
 
 arrangements adopted in full congress had 
 been sufficient to guarantee Turkey from the 
 enemy they most feared, there was a tripar- 
 tite treaty afterwards agreed to between Eng- 
 land, France, and Austria. This document 
 bears date in Paris, April, 15, 1850 ; by it the 
 contracting parties guaranteed jointly and 
 severally the independence and integrity of 
 the Ottoman empire, and declared that any 
 infraction of the general treaty of March 30 
 would be considered by them as casus belli. 
 It is probable that not one of the three con- 
 tracting parties was quite sincere in the mak- 
 ing of this treaty. It appears to have been 
 done, at the instigation of Austria, much less 
 for the sake of Turkey than in order that she 
 might have some understanding of a special 
 kind with some of the Great Powers, and 
 thus avoid the semblance of isolation which 
 she now especially dreaded, having Russia to 
 fear on the one side, and seeing Italy already 
 raising its head on the other. England did 
 not particularly care about the tripartite trea- 
 ty, which was pressed upon her, and which 
 she accepted trusting that she might never 
 have to act upon it ; and France accepted it 
 without any liking for it, probably without 
 the least intention of ever acting on it. 
 
 The Congress was also the means of bring- 
 ing about a treaty between England and 
 France and Sweden. By this engagement 
 Sweden undertook not to cede to Russia any 
 part of her present territories or any rights of 
 fishery ; and the two other Powers agreed to 
 maintain Sweden by force against aggres- 
 sion. 
 
 The Congress of Paris was remarkable too 
 for the fact that the plenipotentiaries before 
 separating came to an agreement on the sub- 
 ject of the right of search, and the rules gen- 
 erally of maritime war. They agreed to the 
 four following declarations : ‘ ‘ First, pri- 
 vateering is and remains abolished. Second 
 the neutral flag covers enemies’ goods, with 
 the exception of contraband of war. Third 
 neutral goods, with the exception of contra- 
 band of war, are not liable to capture under 
 an enemy’s flag. Fourth, blockades in or- 
 der to be binding must be effective ; that is 
 to say, maintained by a force sufficient really 
 to prevent access to the enemy’s coast.” At 
 the opening of the war Great Britain had al- 
 ready virtually given up the claims she once 
 made against neutrals, and which were in- 
 deed untenable in the face of modern civili- 
 zation. She gladly agreed therefore to ratify, 
 so far as her declaration went, the doctrines 
 which would abolish for ever the principle 
 upon which those and kindred claims once 
 rested. It was agreed, however, that the 
 rules adopted at the Congress of Paris should 
 only be binding on those States that had ac- 
 ceded or should accede to them. The Gov- 
 ernment of the United States had previously 
 invited the great European Powers by a cir- 
 cular to assent to the broad doctrine that free 
 ships make free goods. At the instance of 
 England it was answered that the adoption of 
 that doctrine must be conditional on Amer- 
 ica’s renouncing the right of privateering. 
 To this the United States raised some diffi- 
 culty, and the declarations of the Congress 
 were therefore made without America’s as- 
 senting to them. 
 
 With many other questions, too, the Con- 
 gress of Paris occupied itself. At the insti- 
 gation of Count Cavour the condition of Italy 
 was brought under its notice ; and there can 
 be no doubt that out of the Congress and the 
 part that Sardinia assumed as representative 
 of Italian nationality came the great succes- 
 sion of events which ended in the establish- 
 ment of a King of Italy in the palace of the 
 Quirinal. The adjustment of the condition 
 of the Danubian Principalities, too, engaged 
 much attention and discussion, and a highly 
 ingenious arrangement was devised for the 
 purpose of keeping those provinces from ac- 
 tual union, so that they might be coherent 
 enough to act as a rampart against Russia, 
 without being so coherent as to cause Austria 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 105 
 
 any alarm for her own somewhat disjointed, 
 not to say distracted, political system. All 
 these artificial and complex arrangements pre- 
 sently fell to pieces, and the Principalities 
 became in course of no very long time an in- 
 dependent State under a hereditary prince. 
 But for the hour it was hoped that the inde- 
 pendence of Turkey and the restriction of 
 Russia, the security of the Christian prov- 
 inces, the neutrality of the Black Sea, and the 
 closing of the Straits against war vessels, had 
 been bought by the war. 
 
 England lost some twenty-four thousand 
 men in the war ; of whom hardly a sixth fell 
 in battle or died of wounds. Cholera and 
 other diseases gave grim account of the rest. 
 Forty-one millions of money were added by 
 the campaign to the National Debt. Not 
 much, it will be seen, was there in the way 
 of mere military glory to show for the cost. 
 Our fleets had hardly any chance of making 
 their power felt. The ships of the allies 
 took Bomarsund in the Baltic, and Kinburn 
 in the Black Sea, and bombarded several 
 places ; but the war was not one that gave a 
 chance to a Nelson, even if a Nelson had 
 been at hand. Among the accidental and 
 unpleasant consequences of the campaign it 
 is worth mentioning the quarrel in which 
 England became involved with the United 
 States because of our Foreign Enlistment 
 Act. At the close of December, 1854, Par- 
 liament hurriedly passed an Act authorizing 
 the formation of a Foreign Legion for service 
 in the war, and some Swiss and Germans 
 were recruited who never proved of the slight- 
 est service. Prussia and America both com- 
 plained that the zeal of our recruiting func- 
 tionaries outran the limits of discretion and 
 of law. One of our consuls was actually put 
 on trial at Cologne ; and America made a 
 serious complaint of the enlistment of her 
 citizens. England apologized ; but the 
 United States were out of temper, and insist- 
 ed on sending our minister, Mr. Crampton, 
 away from Washington, and some little time 
 passed before the friendly relations of the 
 two States were completely restored. 
 
 So the Crimean War ended. It was one of 
 the unlucky accidents of the hour that the 
 curtain fell in the Crimea upon what may be 
 considered a check to the arms of England. 
 There were not a few in this country who 
 would gladly have seen the peace negotia- 
 tions fail, in order that England might there- 
 by have an opportunity of reasserting her mil- 
 itary supremacy in the eyes of Europe. 
 Never during the campaign, nor for a long 
 time before it, had England been in so excel- 
 lent a condition for war as she was when the 
 warlike operations suddenly came to an end. 
 The campaign had indeed only been a train- 
 ing time for us after the unnerving relaxa- 
 tion of a long peace. We had learned some 
 severe lessons from it ; and not unnaturally 
 there were impatient spirits who chafed at 
 the idea of England’s having no opportunity 
 of putting these lessons to account. It was 
 but a mere chance that prevented us from 
 accomplishing the capture of the Redan, de- 
 spite the very serious disadvantages with 
 which we were hampered in our enterprise, 
 as compared with our allies and their simul- 
 taneous operation. With just a little better 
 generalship the Redan would have been 
 taken ; as it was, even with the generalship 
 that we had, the next attempt would not have 
 been likely to fail. But the Russians aban- 
 doned Sebastopol, and our principal ally was 
 even more anxious for peace than the en- 
 emy ; and we had no choice but to accept 
 the situation. The war had never been pop- 
 ular in France. It had never had even that 
 amount of popularity which the French peo- 
 ple accorded to their Empeior’s later enter- 
 prise, the campaign against Austria. Louis 
 Napoleon had had all he wanted. He had 
 been received into the society of European 
 sovereigns, and he had made what the French 
 public were taught to consider a brilliant 
 campaign. It is surprising to any one who 
 
 looks calmly back now on the history of the 
 Crimean War to find what an extravagant 
 amount of credit the French army obtained 
 by its share in the operations. Even in this 
 country it was at the time an almost univer- 
 sal opinion that the French succeeded in 
 everything they tried ; that their system was 
 perfect ; that their tactics were beyond im- 
 provement ; that they were a contrast to us 
 in every respect. Much of this absurd de- 
 lusion was no doubt the result of a condition 
 of things among us which no reasonable Eng- 
 lishman would exchange for all the imagin- 
 ary triumphs that a court historiographer 
 ever celebrated. It was due to the fact that 
 our system was open to the criticism of every 
 pen that chose to assail it. Not a spot in our 
 military organization escaped detection and 
 exposure. Every detail was keenly criticis- 
 ed ; every weakness was laid open to public 
 observation. We invited all the world to see 
 where we were failing, and what were the 
 causes of our failure. Our journals did the 
 work for the military system of England that 
 Matthew Arnold says Goethe did for the po- 
 litical and social systems of Europe — struck 
 its finger upon the weak places, “ and said 
 thou ailest here and here. ’ ’ While the offi- 
 cial and officious journals of the French em- 
 pire were sounding pteans to the honor of the 
 Emperor and his successes, to his generals, 
 his officers, his commissariat, his transport 
 service, his soldiers, his camp, pioneers, and 
 all, our leading papers of all shades of poli- 
 tics were only occupied in pointing out de- 
 fects, and blaming those who did not instant- 
 ly remedy them. Unpatriotic conduct, it 
 may be said. Ay, truly, if the conduct of 
 the doctor be unfriendly when he tells that 
 we have the symptoms of failing health, and 
 warns us to take some measures for rest and 
 renovation. Some of the criticisms of the 
 English press were undoubtedly inaccurate 
 and rash. But their general effect was brac- 
 ing, healthful, successful. Their immediate 
 result was that which has already been indi- 
 cated, to leave the English army at the close 
 of the campaign far better able to undertake 
 prolonged and serious operations of war than 
 it had been at any time during the cam- 
 paign’s continuance. For the effect of the 
 French system on the French army we should 
 have to come down a little later in history 
 and study the workings of Imperialism as 
 they displayed themselves in the confidence, 
 the surprises, and the collapse of 1870. 
 
 Still there was a feeling of disappointment 
 in this country at the close of the war. This 
 was partly due to dissatisfaction with the 
 manner in which we had carried on the cam 
 paign, and partly to distrust of its political 
 results. Our soldiers had done splendidly ; 
 but our generals and our system had done 
 poorly indeed. Only one first-class reputa- 
 tion of a military order had come out of the 
 war, and that was by the common consent of 
 the world awarded to a Russian — to General 
 Todleben, the defender of Sebastopol. No 
 new name was made on our side or on that 
 of the French ; and some promising or tra- 
 ditional reputations were shattered. The po- 
 litical results of the war were to many minds 
 equally unsatisfying. We had gone into the 
 enterprise for two things — to restrain the ag- 
 gressive and aggrandizing spirit of Russia, 
 and to secure the integrity and independence 
 of Turkey as a Power capable of upholding 
 herself with credit among the States of Eu- 
 rope. Events which happened more than 
 twenty years later will have to be studied be- 
 fore any one can form a satisfactory opinion 
 as to the degree of success which attended 
 each of these objects. For the present it is 
 enough to say that there was not among 
 thoughtful minds at the time a very strong- 
 conviction of success either way. Lord 
 Aberdeen had been modest in his estimate of 
 what the war would do. He had never had 
 any heart in it, and he was not disposed to 
 exaggerate its beneficent possibilities. He 
 estimated that it might perhaps secure peace 
 
 in the East of Europe for some twenty-five 
 years. His modest expectation was prophetic. 
 Indeed, it a little overshot the mark. Twenty- 
 two years after the close of the Crimean 
 campaign Russia and Turkey were at -war 
 again. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE REIGN. FIRST 
 SURVEY. 
 
 The close of the Crimean War is a great 
 landmark in the reign of Queen Victoria. 
 This, therefore, is a convenient opportunity 
 to cast a glance back upon the literary 
 achievements of a period so markedly divided 
 in political interest from any that went be- 
 fore it. The reign of Queen Victoria is the 
 first in which the constitutional and Parlia- 
 mentary system of government came fairly 
 and completely into recognition. It is also 
 the reign which had the good fortune to wit- 
 ness the great modern development in all that 
 relates to practical invention, and more es- 
 pecially in the application of science to the 
 work of making communication rapid be- 
 tween men. On land and ocean, in air and 
 under the sea, the history of rapid travel and 
 rapid interchange of message coincides with 
 that of the present reign. Such a reign 
 ought to have a distinctive literature. So in 
 truth it has. Of course it is somewhat bold 
 to predict long and distinct renown for con- 
 temporaries or contemporary schools. But 
 it may perhaps be assumed without any undue 
 amount of speculative venturesomeness that 
 the age of Queen Victoria will stand out in 
 history as the period of a literature as dis- 
 tinct from others as the age of Elizabeth or 
 Anne, although not perhaps equal in great- 
 ness to the latter, and far indeed below the 
 former. At the opening of Queen Victoria’s 
 reign a great race of literary men had come 
 to a close. It is curious to note how sharply 
 and completely the literature of Victoria sep- 
 arates itself from that of the era whose heroes 
 were Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth. Be- 
 fore Queen Victoria came to the throne, 
 Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats were 
 dead. Wordsworth lived, indeed, for many 
 years after ; so did Southey and Moore ; and 
 Savage Landor died much later still. But 
 Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and Landor 
 had completed their literary work before Vic- 
 toria came to the throne. Not one of them 
 added a cubit or an inch to his intellectual 
 stature from that time ; some of them even 
 did work which distinctly proved that their 
 day was done. A new and fresh breath was 
 soon after breathed into literature. Noth- 
 ing, perhaps, is more remarkable about the 
 better literature of the age of Queen Victoria 
 than its complete severance from the leader- 
 ship of that which had gone before it, and 
 its evidence of a fresh and genuine inspira- 
 tion. It is a somewhat curious fact, too, 
 very convenient for the purposes of this his- 
 tory, that the literature of Queen Victoria’s 
 time thus far divides itself clearly enough in- 
 to two parts. The poets, novelists, and his- 
 torians who were making their fame with 
 the beginning of the reign had done all their 
 best work and made their mark before these 
 later years, and were followed by a new and 
 different school, drawing inspiration from 
 wholly different sources, and challenging 
 comparison as antagonists rather than dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 We speak now only of literature. In sci- 
 ence the most remarkable developments were 
 reserved for the later years of the reign. 
 We use the words “ remarkable develop, 
 ments” in the historical rather than in the 
 scientific sense. It would be hardly possible 
 to overrate the benefits conferred upon sci- 
 ence and the w r orld by some of the scientific 
 men who made the best part of their fame in 
 the earlier years of the reign. Some great 
 names at once start to the memory. We 
 think of Brewster, the experimental philoso- 
 pher, who combined in so extraordinary a 
 degree the strictest severity of scientific argu- 
 
106 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ment and form with a freedom of fancy and 
 imagination which lent picturesqueness to all 
 his illustrations and invested his later writ- 
 ings especially with an indefinable charm. 
 We think of Michael Faraday, the chemist 
 and electrician, who knew so well how to 
 reconcile the boldest researches into the 
 heights and deeps of science with the sincer- 
 est spirit of faith and devotion ; the memory 
 of whose delightful improvisations on the 
 science he loved to expound must remain 
 for ever with all who had the privilege of 
 hearing the unrivalled lecturer deliver his an- 
 nual discourses at the Royal Institution. It 
 is not likely that the name of Sir John Her- 
 schel, a gifted member of a gifted family, 
 would be forgotten by any one taking even 
 he hastiest glance at the science of our time 
 —a family of whom it may truly be said, as 
 he German prose-poet says of his dreaming 
 hero, that their eyes were among the stars 
 ind their souls in the blue ether. Richard 
 Owen’s is, in another field of knowledge, a 
 great renown. Owen has been called the 
 Juvier of England and the Newton of natural 
 listory, and there cannot be any doubt that 
 nis researches and discoveries as an anatomist 
 and palaeontologist have marked a distinct 
 ara in the development of the study to which 
 he devoted himself. Hugh Miller, the author 
 of “ The Old Red Sandstone” and “ The 
 Testimony of the Rocks,” the devotee and 
 unfortunately the martyr of scientific in- 
 quiry, brought a fresh and brilliant literary 
 ability, almost as untutored and spontaneous 
 as that of his immortal countryman, Robert 
 Burns, to bear on the exposition of the 
 studies to which he literally sacrificed his 
 life. If, therefore, we say that the later pe- 
 riod of Queen Victoria’s reign is more re- 
 markable in science than the former, it is not 
 because we would assert that the men of this 
 later day contributed in richer measure to the 
 development of human knowledge, and es- 
 pecially of practical science, than those of the 
 earlier time. But it was in the later period 
 that the scientific controversies sprang up and 
 the school arose which will be, in the histo- 
 rian’s sense, most closely associated with the 
 epoch. The value of the labors of men like 
 Owen and Faraday and Brewster is often to 
 he appreciated thoroughly by scientific stu- 
 dents alone. What they have done is to be 
 recorded in the history of science rather than 
 in the general and popular history of a day. 
 But the school of scientific thought which 
 Darwin founded, and in which Huxley and 
 Tyndall taught, is the subject of a contro- 
 versy which may be set down as memorable 
 in the history of the world. All science and 
 all common life accepted with gratitude and 
 without contest the contributions made to our 
 knowledge by Faraday and Brewster ; but 
 the theories of Darwin divided the scientific 
 world, the religious world, and indeed all 
 society, into two hostile camps, and so be- 
 came an event in history which the historian 
 can no more pass over than, in telling of the 
 growth of the United States, he could omit 
 any mention of the great Civil War. Even 
 in dealing with the growth of science it is on 
 the story of battles that the attention of the 
 outer world must to the end of time be turned 
 with the keenest interest. This is, one might 
 almost think, a scientific law in itself, with 
 which it would be waste of time to quarrel. 
 
 The earlier part of the reign was richer in 
 literary genius than the later has thus far 
 been. Of course the dividing line which we 
 draw is loosely drawn, and may sometimes 
 appear to be capricious. Some of those who 
 won their fame in the earlier part continued 
 active workers, in certain instances steadily 
 adding to their celebrity, through the suc- 
 ceeding years. The figure of Thomas Carlyle 
 is familiar still to all who live in the neighbor- 
 hood of Chelsea. It was late in the reign of 
 Victoria that Stuart Mill came out for the 
 first time on a public platform in London 
 after a life divided between official work and 
 the most various reading and study ; a life di- 
 
 vided too between the seclusion of Black- 
 heath and the more poetic seclusion of Avig- 
 non, among the nightingales whose song was 
 afterwards so sweet to his dying ears. He 
 came, strange and shy, into a world which 
 knew him only in his books, and to which 
 the gentle and grave demeanor of the shrink- 
 ing and worn recluse seemed out of keeping 
 with the fearless brain and heart which his 
 career as a thinker proved him to have. The 
 reign had run for forty years when Harriet 
 Martineau was taken from that beautiful and 
 romantic home in the bosom of the Lake 
 country to which her celebrity had drawn so 
 many famous visitors for so long a time. 
 The renown of Dickens began with the reign, 
 and his death was sadly premature when he 
 died in his quaint and charming home at Gad’s 
 Hill, in the country of Falstaff and Prince 
 Hal, some thirty-three years after. Mrs. 
 Browning passed away very prematurely ; 
 but it might well he contended that the fame, 
 or at least the popularity, of Robert Brown- 
 ing belongs to this later part of the reign, 
 even though his greatest work belongs to the 
 earlier. The author of the most brilliant and 
 vivid book of travel known in our modern 
 English, ‘ ‘ Eothen, ’ ’ made a sudden renown 
 in the earlier part of the reign, and achieved 
 a new and a different sort of repute as the 
 historian of the Crimean War during the 
 later part. Still, if we take the close of the 
 Crimean War as an event dividing the reign 
 thus far into two parts, we shall find that 
 there does seem a tolerably clear division be- 
 tween the literature of the two periods. We 
 have therefore put in this first part of our 
 history the men and women who had dis- 
 tinctly made their mark in these former years, 
 and who would have been famous if from 
 that time out they had done nothing more. 
 It is with this division borne in mind that 
 we describe the reign as more remarkable in 
 the literature of the earlier and in the science 
 of these later years. It is not rash to say 
 that, although poets, historians, and novelists 
 of celebrity came afterwards and may come 
 yet, the literature of our time gave its meas- 
 ure, as the French phrase is, in that earlier 
 period. 
 
 Alike in its earlier passages and in its later 
 the reign is rich in historical labors. The 
 names of Grote, Macaulay, and Carlyle occur 
 at once to the mind when we survey the former 
 period. Mr. Grote ’s history of Greece is in- 
 deed a monumental piece of work. It has all 
 that patience and exhaustive care which 
 principally mark the German historians, and 
 it has an earnestness which is not to be found 
 generally in the representatives of what Car- 
 lyle has called the Dryasdust school. Grote 
 threw himself completely into the life and 
 the politics of Athens. It was said of him 
 with some truth that he entered so thor- 
 oughly into all the political life of Greece as 
 to become now and then the partisan of this 
 or that public man. His own practical ac- 
 quaintance with politics was undoubtedly of 
 great service to him. We have all grown 
 somewhat tired of hearing the words of Gib- 
 bon quoted in which he tells us that “ the 
 discipline and evolutions of a modern battal- 
 ion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx 
 and the legion ; and the captain of the 
 Hampshire Grenadiers (the reader may smile) 
 has not been useless to the historian of the 
 Roman Empire.” Assuredly the practical 
 knowledge of politics which Grote acquired 
 during the nine or ten years of his Parlia- 
 mentary career was of much service to the 
 historian of Greece. It has been said indeed 
 of him that he never could quite keep from re- 
 garding the struggles of parties in Athens as 
 exactly illustrating the principles disputed be- 
 tween the Liberals and the Tories in Eng- 
 land. It does not seem to us, however, that 
 his political career affected his historical stud- 
 ies in any way but by throwing greater 
 vitality and nervousness into his descriptions 
 of Athenian controversies. The difference be- 
 tween a man who has mingled anywhere in 
 
 the active life of politics, and one who only 
 knows that life from books and the talk of 
 others, is specially likely to show itself in 
 such a study as Grote’s history. His politi- 
 cal training enabled Grote to see in the states- 
 men and soldiers of the Greek peoples men 
 and not trees walking. It taught him how to 
 make the dry hones live. Mr. Grote began 
 life as what would have been called in later 
 years a Philosophical Radical. He was a 
 close friend of Stuart Mill, although he did 
 not always agree with Mill in his opinions. 
 During his Parliamentary career he devoted 
 himself for the most part to the advocacy of 
 the system of vote by ballot. He brought 
 forward a motion on the subject every ses- 
 sion, as Mr. Charles Villiers did at one time 
 for the repeal of the Com Laws. He only 
 gave up the House of Commons in order that 
 he might be free to complete his great his- 
 tory. He did not retain all his radical 
 opinions to the end of his life so thoroughly 
 as Mill did, but owned with a certain regret 
 that in many ways his views had undergone 
 modification, ana that he grew less and less 
 ardent for political change, less hopeful, we 
 may suppose, of the amount of good to be 
 done for human happiness and virtue by the 
 spread and movement of what are now called 
 advanced opinions. It must be owned that 
 it takes a very vigorous and elastic mind to 
 enable a man to resist the growth of that 
 natural and physical tendency towards con- 
 servatism or reaction which comes with ad- 
 vancing years. It is as well for society on 
 the whole that this should be so, and that the 
 elders as a rule should form themselves into 
 a guard to challenge very pertinaciously all 
 the eager claims and demands for change 
 made by hopeful and restless youth. No 
 one would more readily have admitted the 
 advantage that may come from this common 
 law of life than Grote’s friend, Mill ; al- 
 though Mill remained to the close of his 
 career as full of hope in the movement of lib- 
 eral opinions as he had been in his boyhood ; 
 still, to quote from some noble words of 
 Schiller, ‘ ‘ reverencing as a man the dreams 
 of his youth.” In his later years Grote 
 withdrew from all connection with active 
 political controversy, and was indeed curi- 
 ously ignorant of the very bearings of some 
 of the greatest questions around the settle- 
 ment of which the passions and interests of 
 another hemisphere were brought into fierce 
 and vast dispute. 
 
 We have already had occasion more than, 
 once to speak of Macaulay, the great Parlia- 
 mentary debater and statesman. It is the 
 less necessary to say much of him as an his- 
 torian ; for Macaulay will be remembered 
 rather as a man who could do many things 
 brilliantly than as the author of a history. 
 Yet Macaulay’s “ History of England,” what- 
 ever its defects, is surely entitled to rank as 
 a great work. We do not know whether 
 grave scholars will regard it as to the honor 
 of the book or the reverse, that it was by far 
 the most popular historical essay ever pro- 
 duced by an Englishman. The successive 
 volumes of Macaulay’s “ History of Eng- 
 land,” were run after as the Waverley Nov- 
 els might have been at the zenith of their 
 author's fame. Living England talked for 
 the time of nothing but Macaulay’s ‘ ‘ Eng- 
 land. ” Certainly history had never before 
 in our country been treated in a style so weU. 
 calculated to render it at once popular, fasci- 
 nating, and fashionable. Every chapter glit- 
 tered with vivid and highly colored descrip- 
 tion. On almost every page was found some 
 sentence of glowing eloquence or gleaming 
 antithesis, which at once lent itself to citation 
 and repetition. Not one word of it could 
 have failed to convey its meaning. The 
 whole stood out in an atmosphere clear, 
 bright, and incapable of misty illusion as 
 that of a Swiss lake in summer. No shade 
 or faint haze of a doubt appeared anywhere. 
 The admirer of Macaulay had all the com- 
 fort in liis studies that a votary of the Roman 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ini 
 
 107 
 
 Catholic Church may have. He had an in- 
 fallible guide. He had no need to vex him- 
 self with doubt, speculation, or even con- 
 jecture. This absolute certainty about every- 
 thing was, beyond question, one great source 
 of Macaulay’s popularity. That resolute con- 
 viction which readers of a more intellectual 
 class are especially inclined to distrust has 
 the same charm for the ordinary reader that 
 it has for children, who never care to hear 
 any story if they suppose the narrator does 
 not know all about it in such a way as to ren- 
 der question or contradiction impossible. 
 But although this was one of the causes of 
 Macaulay’s popularity, it was not the most 
 substantial cause. The brilliancy of his style, 
 the variety and aptness of his illustrations, 
 and the animated manner in which he con- 
 trived to set his ideas of men, places, and 
 events before the reader — these were among 
 the sources of success to which his admirers 
 must look with the greatest satisfaction. It 
 is of late somewhat the fashion to disparage 
 Macaulay. He was a popular idol so long 
 that in the natural course of things it has 
 come to him to have his title to worship, or 
 even to faith, very generally questioned. To 
 be unreasonably admired by one generation is 
 to incur the certainty of being unreasonably 
 disparaged by the next. The tendency of 
 late is to assume that because Macaulay was 
 brilliant he must necessarily be superficial. 
 But Macaulay was not superficial. He was 
 dogmatic ; he was full of prejudice ; he was 
 in all respects a better advocate than judge ; 
 be was wanting in the calm impartial balanc- 
 ing faculty which an historian of the highest 
 class ought to have ; but he was not super- 
 ficial. No man could make out a better and 
 stronger case for any side of a controversy 
 which he was led to espouse. He was not 
 good at drawing or explaining complex char- 
 acters. He loved indeed to picture contra- 
 dictory and paradoxical characters. Noth- 
 ing delighted him more than to throw off an 
 animated description of some great person, 
 who having been shown in the first instance 
 to possess one set of qualities in extreme 
 prominence, was then shown to have a set of 
 exactly antagonistic qualities in quite equal 
 prominence. This was not describing a 
 complex character. It was merely embody- 
 ing a paradox. It was to “ solder close,” as 
 Timon of Athens says, “impossibilities and 
 make them kiss.” There was something too 
 much of trick about this, although it was 
 often done with so much power as to bewilder 
 the better judgment of the calmest reader. 
 But where Macaulay happened to be right in 
 his view of a man or an event, he made his 
 convictions clear with an impressiveness and 
 a brilliancy such as no modern writer has sur- 
 passed. The world owes him something for 
 having protested by precept and example 
 against the absurd notion that the “ dignity 
 of history” required of historians to be 
 grave, pompous, and dull. He was not a 
 Gibbon, but he wrote with all Gibbon’s de- 
 light in the picturesqueness of a subject, and 
 Gibbon’s resolve to fascinate as well as to in- 
 struct his readers. Macaulay’s history tries 
 too much to be an historical portrait gallery. 
 The dangers of such a style do not need to 
 be pointed out. They are amply illustrated 
 in Macaulay’s sparkling pages. But it is 
 something to know that their splendid quali- 
 ties are far more conspicuous still than their 
 defects. Perhaps very recent readers of his- 
 tory too may feel disposed to be grateful to 
 Macaulay for having written without any pro- 
 found philosophical theory to expound. He 
 told history like a story. He warmed up as 
 he went along, and grew enamored, as a ro- 
 mancist does, of this character and angry 
 with that other. No doubt he frequently 
 thus did harm to the trustworthiness of his 
 narrative where it had to deal with disputed 
 questions, although he probably enhanced 
 the charms of his animated style. But he 
 did not set out with a mission to expound 
 Some theory as to a race or a tendency, and 
 
 therefore pledged beforehand to bend all 
 facts of the physical, the political, and the 
 moral world to the duty of bearing witness 
 for him and proclaiming the truth of his mes- 
 sage to mankind. 
 
 Macaulay was not exactly what the Ger- 
 mans would call a many-sided man. He 
 never was anything but the one Macaulay in 
 all he did or attempted. But he did a great 
 many things well. Nothing that he ever at- 
 tempted was done badly. He was as suc- 
 cessful in the composition of a pretty valen- 
 tine for a little girl as he was in his history, 
 his essays, his “Lays of Ancient Rome,” 
 and his Parliamentary speeches. In every 
 thing he attempted he went very near to that 
 success which true genius achieves. In 
 everything he just fell short of that achieve- 
 ment. But he so nearly attained it that the 
 reader who takes up one of Macaulay’s 
 books or speeches for the first time is almost 
 sure to believe, under the influence of the in- 
 stant impression, that the genuine inspiration 
 is there. Macaulay is understood to have for 
 a long time thought of writing a romance. 
 If he had done so, we may feel sure that 
 many intelligent readers would have believed 
 on the first perusal of it that it was almost on 
 a level with Scott, and only as the first im- 
 pression gradually faded, and they came to 
 read it over again, have found out that Ma- 
 caulay was not a Scott in fiction any more 
 than he was a Burke in eloquence or a Gib- 
 bon in history. He filled for a long time a 
 larger space in the public mind than any 
 other literary man in England, and his style 
 greatly affected literary men. But his influ- 
 ence did not pierce deeply down into public 
 feeling and thought as that of one or two 
 other men of the same period undoubtedly 
 did, and does still. He did not impress the 
 very soul of English feeling as Mr. Carlyle, 
 for example, has done. 
 
 No influence suffused the age from first to 
 last more strongly than that of Thomas Car- 
 lyle. England’s very way of thinking was 
 at one time profoundly affected by Carlyle. 
 He introduced the English people to the great 
 German authors, very much as Lessing had 
 introduced the Germans to Shakespeare and 
 the old English ballads. Carlyle wrote in a 
 style which was so little like that ordinarily 
 accepted as English, that the best thing to be 
 said for it was that it was not exactly Ger- 
 man. At one time it appeared to be so com- 
 pletely moulded on that of Jean Paul Rich- 
 ter, that not a few persons doubted whether 
 the new comer really had any ideas of his 
 own. But Carlyle soon proved that he could 
 think for himself ; and he very often proved 
 it by thinking wrong. There was in him a 
 strong, deep vein of the poetic. Long after 
 he had evidently settled down to be a writer 
 of prose and nothing else, it still seemed to 
 many that his true sphere was poetry. The 
 grim seriousness which he had taken from 
 his Scottish birth and belongings was made 
 hardly less grim by the irony which continu- 
 ally gleamed or scowled through it. Truth 
 and force were the deities of Carlyle’s espe- 
 cial worship. “ The eternal verities” sat on 
 the top of his Olympus. To act out the truth 
 in life, and make others act it out, would re- 
 quire some force more strong, ubiquitous and 
 penetrating than we can well obtain from the 
 slow deliberations of an ordinary Parlia- 
 ment, with its debates and divisions and 
 everlasting formulas. Therefore, to enforce his 
 eternal verities, Carlyle always preached up 
 and yearned for the strong man, the poem in 
 action, whom the world in our day had not 
 found, and perhaps could not appreciate. If 
 this man were found, it would be his duty 
 and his privilege to drill us all as in some 
 vast camp, and compel us to do the right 
 thing to his dictation. It cannot be doubted 
 that this preaching of the divine right of 
 force had a serious and sometimes a very det- 
 rimental effect upon the public opinion of 
 England. It degenerated often into affecta- 
 tion, alike with the teacher and the disciples. 
 
 But the influence of Carlyle in preaching 
 earnestness and truth, in art and letters and 
 everything else, had a healthy and very re- 
 markable effect entirely outside the regions 
 of the moralist, who in this country at least 
 has always taught the same lesson. It is not 
 probable that individual men were made 
 much more truthful in England by Carlyle’s 
 glorification of the eternal verities than they 
 would have been without it. But his influ- 
 ence on letters and art was peculiar, and was 
 not evanescent. Carlyle is distinctly the 
 founder of a school of history and a school 
 of art. In the meanwhile we may regard 
 him simply as a great author, and treat his 
 books as literary studies and not as gospels. 
 Thus regarded, we shall find that he writes 
 in a style which every sober critic would feel 
 bound to condemn, but which nevertheless 
 the soberest critic is forced continually, de- 
 spite of himself and liis rules, to admire. 
 For out of the strange jargon which he seems 
 to have deliberately adopted, Carlyle has un- 
 doubtedly constructed a wonderfully expres- 
 sive medium in which to speak his words of 
 remonstrance and admonition. It is a man- 
 nerism, but a mannerism into which a great 
 deal of the individuality of the man seems to 
 have entered. It is not wholly affectation or 
 superficiality. Carlyle’s own soul seems to 
 speak out in it more freely and strenuously 
 than it would in the ordinary English of so- 
 ciety and literature. No tongue, says Rich- 
 ter, is eloquent save in its own language ; 
 and this strange language which he has made 
 for himself does really appear to be the na- 
 tive tongue of Carlyle’s powerful and melan- 
 choly eloquence. Carlyle is endowed with a 
 marvellous power of depicting stormy scenes 
 and rugged daring natures. At times strange 
 wild piercing notes of the pathetic are heard 
 through his strenuous and fierce bursts of 
 eloquence like the wail of a clarion thrilling 
 between the blasts of a storm. His history 
 of the French Revolution is history read by 
 lightning. Of this remarkable book John 
 Stuart Mill supplied the principal material ; 
 for Mill at one time thought of writing a his- 
 tory of the Revolution himself, but, giving 
 up the idea, placed the materials he had col- 
 lected at the service of Carlyle. Carlyle used 
 the materials in his own way. He is indebt- 
 ed to no one for his method of making up 
 his history. With all its defects the book is 
 one of the very finest our age has produced. 
 Its characters stand out like portraits by 
 Rembrandt. Its crowds live and move. 
 The picture of Mirabeau is worthy of the 
 hand of the great German poet who gave us 
 Wallenstein. But Carlyle’s style has intro- 
 duced into this country a thoroughly false 
 method of writing history. It is a method 
 which lias little regard for the “dry light” 
 which Bacon approved. It works under the 
 varying glare of colored lights. Its purpose 
 is to express scorn of one set of ideas and 
 men, and admiration of another. Given the 
 man we admire, then all his doings and ways 
 must be admirable ; and the historian pro- 
 ceeds to work this principle out. Carlyle’s 
 Mirabeau is as truly a creature of romance as 
 the Monte Christo of Dumas. This way of 
 going to work became even more apparent, 
 as the mannerisms became more incessant, in 
 Carlyle’s later writings — in the “ Frederick 
 the Great,” for example. The reader dares 
 not trust such history. It is of little value as 
 an instructor in the lessons of the times and 
 events it deals with. It only tells us what 
 Carlyle thought of the times and the events 
 and the men who were the chief actors in 
 them. Nor does Carlyle bequeath many 
 new ideas to the world which he stirred by 
 his stormy eloquence. That falsehood can- 
 not prevail over truth in the end, nor simu- 
 lacra do the work of realities, is not after all 
 a lesson which earth can be said to have 
 waited for up to the nineteenth century and 
 the coming of Carlyle ; and yet it would be 
 hard to point to any other philosophical out- 
 come of Mr. Carlyle’s teaching. His value 
 
108 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 is in liis eloquence, liis power, his passion, 
 and pathos ; his stirring and lifelike pictures 
 of human character, whether faithful to the 
 historical originals or not ; and the vein of 
 poetry which runs through all his best writ- 
 ings, and sometimes makes even the least 
 sympathetic reader believe that he has to do 
 with a genuine poet. 
 
 In strongest contrast to the influence of 
 Carlyle may be set the influence of Mill. 
 Except where the professed teachers of re- 
 ligious creeds are concerned, there can be 
 found no other man in the reign of Victoria 
 who had anything like the influence over 
 English thought that Mill aud Carlyle pos- 
 sessed. Mill was a devoted believer in the 
 possibilities of human nature and of liberty. 
 If Rousseau was the apostle of affliction, Mill 
 was surely the apostle of freedom. He be- 
 lieved that human society might be brought 
 to something not far removed from perfec- 
 tion by the influence of education and of 
 freedom acting on the best impulses and dis- 
 ciplining the emotions of men and women. 
 Mill was a strange blending of political econ- 
 omist and sentimentalist. It was not alto- 
 gether in humorous exaggeration that some- 
 body said he was Adam Smith and Petrarch 
 in one. The curious seclusion in which he 
 was brought up by his father, the wonderful 
 discipline of study to which in his very in- 
 fancy he was subjected, would have made 
 something strange and striking out of a com- 
 monplace nature ; and Mill was in any case 
 a man of genius. There was an antique sim- 
 plicity and purity about his life which re- 
 moved him altogether from the ways of or- 
 dinary society. But the defect of his teach- 
 ing as an ethical guide was that he made too 
 little allowance for the influence of ordinary 
 society. He always seemed to act on the 
 principle that with true education and noble 
 example the most commonplace men could 
 be persuaded to act like heroes, and to act 
 like heroes always. The great service which 
 he rendered to the world in his Political 
 Economy and his System of Logic is of 
 course independent of his controverted theo- 
 ries and teachings. These works would, if 
 they were all he had written, place him in the 
 very front rank of English thinkers and in- 
 structors. But these only represent half of 
 his influence on the public opinion of his 
 time. His faith in the principle of human 
 liberty led him to originate the movement for 
 what is called the emancipation of women. 
 Opinions will doubtless long differ as to the 
 advantages of the movement, but there can 
 be no possible difference of judgment as to 
 the power and fascination of Mill’s advocacy 
 and the influence he exercised. He did not 
 succeed in his admirable essay “ On Liberty” 
 in establishing the rule or principle by which 
 men may decide between the right of free 
 expression of opinion and the right of au- 
 thority to ordain silence. Probably no pre- 
 cise boundary line can ever be drawn ; and 
 in this, as in so much else, lawmakers aud 
 peoples must be content with a compromise. 
 But Mill’s is at least a noble plea for the full- 
 est possible liberty of utterance ; and he has 
 probably carried the argument as far as it 
 ever can be carried. There never was a 
 more lucid and candid reasoner. The most 
 difficult and abstruse questions became clear 
 by the light of his luminous exposition. 
 Something too of human interest and sympa- 
 thy became infused into the most seemingly 
 arid discussions of political economy by the 
 virtue of his emotional and half poetic na- 
 ture. It was well said of him that he recon- 
 ciled political economy with human feeling. 
 His style was clear as light. Mill, said one 
 of his critics, lives in light. Sometimes his 
 language rose to a noble and dignified elo- 
 quence ; here and there are passages of a 
 grave, keen irony. Into the questions of re- 
 ligious belief which arise in connection with 
 his works it is no part of our business to en- 
 ter ; but it may be remarked that his latest 
 writings seem to show that his views were 
 
 undergoing much modification in his closing 
 years. His opponents would have allowed 
 as readily as his supporters that no man could 
 have been more sincerely inspired with a de- 
 sire to arrive at the truth ; and that none 
 could be more resolute to follow the course 
 which his conscience told him to be right. 
 He carried this resolute principle into his 
 warmest controversies, and it was often re- 
 marked that he usually began by stating the 
 case of the adversary better than the adver- 
 sary couly have done it for himself. Apply- 
 ing to his own character the same truthful 
 method of inquiry which he applied to oth- 
 ers, Mill has given a very accurate descrip- 
 tion of one at least of the qualities by which 
 he was able to accomplish so much. He 
 tells us in his Autobiography that he had 
 from an early period considered that the 
 most useful part he could take in the domain 
 of thought was that of an interpreter of orig- 
 inal thinkers, and mediator between them 
 and the public. “ I had always a humble 
 opinion of my own powers as an original 
 thinker, except in abstract science (logic, 
 metaphysics, and the theoretic principles of 
 political economy and politics), but thought 
 myself much superior to most of my contem- 
 poraries in willingness and ability to learn 
 from everybody ; as I found hardly any one 
 who made such a point of examining what 
 was said in defence of all opinions, however 
 new or however old, in the conviction that 
 even if they were errors there might be a sub- 
 stratum of truth underneath them, and that 
 in any case the discovery of what it was that 
 made them plausible would be a benefit to 
 truth. ” This was not assuredly Mill's great- 
 est merit, but it was perhaps his most pecu- 
 liar quality. He was an original thinker, de- 
 spite his own sincere disclaimer ; but he 
 founded no new system. He could be 
 trusted to examine and expound any system 
 with the most perfect fairness and candor ; 
 and even where it was least in harmony with 
 his own ideas to do the fullest justice to 
 every one of its claims. 
 
 Harriet Martineau’s career as a woman of 
 letters and a teacher began indeed before the 
 reign of Queen Victoria, but it was carried 
 on almost without interruption during nearly 
 forty years of the reign. She was political 
 economist, novelist, historian, biographer, 
 and journalist ; and in no path did she fail 
 to make her mark. Few women could have 
 turned to the occupations of a political writer 
 under greater physical disadvantages ; and 
 no man in this line of life, however well fur- 
 nished by nature with physical and intellect- 
 ual qualifications for success, could have 
 done better work. She wrote some exquisite 
 little stories, and one or two novels of more 
 ambitious character. It is praise enough to 
 give them when we say that, although fiction 
 certainly was not work for which she was 
 most especially qualified, yet what she did 
 seems to be destined to live and hold a place 
 in our literature. She was, so far as we 
 know, the only English woman who ever 
 achieved distinct and great success as a writ- 
 er of leading articles for a daily newspaper. 
 Her strong prejudices and dislikes prevent 
 her from being always regarded as a trust- 
 worthy historian. Her History of the 
 Thirty Years’ Peace”— -for it may be regard- 
 ed as wholly hers, although Charles Knight 
 began it — is a work full of vigorous thought 
 and clear description, with here and there 
 passages of genuine eloquence. But it is 
 marred in its effect as a trustworthy narrative 
 by the manner in which the authoress yields 
 here and there to inveterate and wholesale 
 dislikes ; and sometimes, though not so 
 often or so markedly, to an overwrought 
 hero-worship. Miss Martineau had to a 
 great extent an essentially masculine mind. 
 She was often reproached with being unfem- 
 inine ; and assuredly she would have been 
 surprised to hear that there was anything 
 womanish in her way of criticising public 
 events and men. Yet in reading her “ His- 
 
 tory” one is sometimes amused to find that 
 that partisanship which is commonly set 
 down as a specially feminine quality affects 
 her estimate of a statesman. Hers is not by 
 any means the Carlylean way of starting with 
 a theory and finding all virtue and glory in 
 the man who seems to embody it, and all 
 baseness and stupidity in his opponents. 
 But when she takes a dislike to a particular 
 Individual, she seems to assume that where 
 he was wrong he must have been wrong of 
 set malign purpose, and that where he 
 chanced to be in the right it was in mistake, 
 and in despite of his own greater inclination 
 to be in the wrong. It is fortunate that these 
 dislikes are not many, and also that they soon 
 show themselves, and therefore cease to be 
 seriously misleading. In all other respects 
 the book well deserves careful study. The 
 life of the woman is a study still more deep- 
 ly interesting. Others of her sex there were 
 of greater genius, even in her own time ; but 
 no English woman ever followed with such 
 perseverance and success a career of literary 
 and political labor. 
 
 “ The blue-peter has long been flying at 
 my foremast, and, now that I am in my 
 ninety-second year, I must soon expect the 
 signal for sailing.” In this quaint and 
 cheery way Mary Somerville, many years 
 after the period at which we have now ar- 
 rived in this work, described her condition 
 and her quiet waiting for death. No one 
 surely could have better earned the right to 
 die by the labors of a long life devoted to the 
 education and the improvement of her kind. 
 Mary Somerville has probably no rival 
 among women as a scientific scholar. Her 
 summary of Laplace’s “ Mecanique Celeste,” 
 her treatise on the “ Connection of the Phys- 
 ical Sciences,” and her ‘‘Physical Geogra- 
 phy,” would suffice to place any student, 
 man or woman, in the foremost rank of 
 scientific expounders. The “ Physical Geog- 
 raphy” is the only one of Mrs. Somerville’s 
 remarkable works which was published in 
 the reign of Queen Victoria ; but the publica- 
 tion of the other two preceded the opening 
 of the reign by so short a time, and her ca- 
 reer and her fame so entirely belong to the 
 Victorian period, that, even if the “ Physical 
 Geography” had never been published, she 
 must be included in this history. “ I was in- 
 tensely ambitious,” Mrs. Somerville says of 
 herself in her earlier days, ‘ ‘ to excel in some- 
 thing, for I felt in my own breast that wom- 
 en were capable of taking a higher place in 
 creation than that assigned to them in my 
 early days, which was very low. ” It is not 
 exaggeration to say that Mrs. Somerville dis- 
 tinctly raised the world’s estimate of wom- 
 an’s capacity for the severest and the lofti- 
 est scientific pursuits. She possessed the 
 most extraordinary power of concentration, 
 amounting to an entire absorption in the sub- 
 ject which she happened to be studying, to 
 the exclusion of all disturbing sights and 
 sounds. She had in a supreme degree that 
 which Carlyle calls the first quality of ge- 
 nius, an immense capacity for taking trouble. 
 She had also, happily for herself, an im- 
 mense capacity for finding enjoyment in al- 
 most everything : in new places, people, and 
 thoughts ; in the old familiar scenes and 
 friends and associations. Hers was a noble, 
 calm, fully-rounded life. She worked as 
 steadfastly and as eagerly in her scientific 
 studies as Harriet Martineau did with her 
 economics and her politics ; but she had a 
 more cheery, less sensitive, less eager and 
 impatient nature than Harriet Martineau. 
 She was able to pursue her most intricate 
 calculations after she had passed her nine- 
 tieth year ; aud one of her chief regrets in 
 dying was that she should not “ live to see 
 the distance of the earth from the sun deter- 
 mined by the transit of Venus, and the source 
 of the most renowned of rivers, the discovery 
 of which will immortalize the name of Dr. 
 Livingstone.” 
 
 The paths of the two poets who first sprang 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 109 
 
 into fame in the present reign are strangely 
 remote from each other. Mr. Tennyson and 
 Mr. Browning are as unlike in style and 
 choice of subject, and indeed in the whole 
 spirit of their poetry, as Wordsworth and 
 Byron. Mr. Tennyson deals with incident 
 and picturesque form, and graceful legend, 
 and with so much of doubt and thought and 
 yearning melancholy as would belong to a 
 refined and cultured intellect under no greater 
 stress or strain than the ordinary chances of 
 life among educated Englishmen might be 
 expected to impose. He has revived with 
 great success the old Arthurian legends, and 
 made them a part of the living literature of 
 England. But the knights and ladies whom 
 he paints are refined, graceful, noble, with- 
 out roughness, without wild or at all events 
 complex and distracting passions. It may 
 perhaps be said that Tennyson has taken for 
 his province all the beauty, all the nobleness, 
 all the feeling that lie near to or on the sur- 
 face of life and of nature. His object might 
 seem to he that which Lessing declared the 
 true object of all art, “ to delight but it is 
 to delight in a somewhat narrower sense than 
 was the meaning of Lessing. Beauty, mel- 
 ancholy, and repose are the elements of Ten- 
 nyson’s poetry. There is no storm, no con- 
 flict, no complication. Mr. Browning, on 
 the other hand, delights in perplexed prob- 
 lems of character and life ; in studying the 
 effects of strange contrasting forces of pas- 
 sion coming into play under peculiar and dis- 
 tracting conditions. All that lies beneath the 
 surface ; all that is out of the common track 
 of emotion ; all that is possible, that is poet- 
 ically conceivable, but that the outer air and 
 the daily walks of life never see, this is what 
 specially attracts Mr. Browning. In Tenny- 
 son a knight of King Arthur’s mythical court 
 has the emotions of a polished English gen- 
 tleman of our day, and nothing more. Mr. 
 Browning would prefer, in treating of a pol- 
 ished English gentleman of our day, to ex- 
 hibit him under some conditions which should 
 draw out in him all the strange elementary 
 passions and complications of emotion that 
 lie far down in deeps below the surface of 
 the best ordered civilization. The tendency of 
 the one poet is naturally to fall now and then 
 into the sweetly insipid ; of the other to 
 wander away into the tangled regions of the 
 grotesque. It is perhaps only natural that 
 under such conditions the one poet should be 
 profoundly concerned for beauty of form, 
 and the latter almost absolutely indifferent to 
 it. No poet has more finished beauty of 
 style and exquisite charm of melody than 
 Tennyson. N one certainly can be more often 
 wanting in grace of form and delight of soft 
 sound than Mr. Browning. There are many 
 passages and even many poems of Browning 
 which show that the poet could be melodious 
 if he would ; but he seems sometimes as if 
 he took a positive delight in perplexing the 
 reader’s ear with harsh untuneful sounds. 
 Mr. Browning commonly allows the study of 
 the purely psychological to absorb too much 
 of his moods and of his genius. It has a fas- 
 cination for him which he is seemingly un- 
 able to resist. He makes of his poems too 
 often mere searchings into strange deeps of 
 human character and human error. He sel- 
 dom abandons himself altogether to the in- 
 spiration of the poet ; he hardly ever deserves 
 the definition of the minstrel given in Goethe’s 
 ballad who “ sings but as the song-bird 
 sings.” Moreover, Mr. Browning has an 
 almost morbid taste for the grotesque ; he 
 is not unfrequently a sort of poetic Callot. 
 It has to be added that Mr. Browning is sel- 
 dom easy to understand, and that there are 
 times when he is only to be understood at 
 the expense of as much thought and study as 
 one might give to a controverted passage in 
 an ancient author. This is a defect of art, 
 and a very serious defect. The more devoted 
 of Mr. Browning’s admirers will tell us no 
 doubt that the poet is not bound to supply us 
 with brains as well as poetry, and that if we 
 
 cannot understand what he says it is the fault 
 simply of our stupidity. But an ordinary 
 man who finds that he can understand Shake- 
 speare and Milton, Drydenand Wordsworth, 
 Byron and Keats without any trouble, may 
 surely be excused if he does not set down his 
 difficulty about some of Browning’s poems 
 wholly to the account of his own dulness. It 
 may well be doubted whether there is any 
 idea so subtle that if the poet can actually 
 realize it in his own mind clearly for himself 
 the English language will not be found capa- 
 ble of expressing it with sufficient clearness. 
 The language has been made to do this for 
 the most refined reasonings of philosophical 
 schools, for transcendentalists and utilita- 
 rians, for psychologists and metaphysicians. 
 No intelligent person feels any difficulty in 
 understanding what Mill or Herbert Spencer 
 or Huxley means ; and it can hardly be said 
 that the ideas Mr. Browning desires to con- 
 vey to his readers are more difficult of expo- 
 sition than some of those which the authors 
 we name have contrived to set out with a 
 white light of clearness all round them. The 
 plain truth is that Mr. Browning is a great poet 
 in spite of some of the worst defects that ever 
 stood between a poet and popularity. He is 
 a great poet by virtue of his commanding 
 genius, his fearless imagination, his pene- 
 trating pathos. He strikes an iron harp- 
 string. In certain of his moods his poetry is 
 like that of the terrible lyre in the weird old 
 Scottish ballad, the lyre that was made of the 
 murdered maiden’s breast-bone, and which 
 told its fearful story in tones ' ‘ that would 
 melt a heart of stone.” In strength and 
 depth of passion and pathos, in wild humor, 
 in emotion of every kind, Mr. Browning is 
 much superior to Mr. Tennyson. The Poet 
 Laureate is the completer man. Mr. Tenny- 
 son is beyond doubt the most complete of the 
 poets of Queen Victoria’s time. No one else 
 has the same combination of melody, beauty 
 of description, culture and intellectual power. 
 He has sweetness and strength in exquisite 
 combination. If a just balance of poetic 
 powers were to be the crown of a poet, then 
 undoubtedly Mr. Tennyson must be pro- 
 claimed the greatest English poet of our time. 
 The reader’s estimate of Browning and Ten- 
 nyson will probably be decided by his predilec- 
 tion for the higher effort or for the more per- 
 fect art. Browning’s is surely the higher aim 
 in poetic art ; but of the art which he essays 
 Tennyson is by far the completer master. 
 Tennyson has undoubtedly thrown away 
 much of his sweetness and his exquisite grace 
 of form on mere triflings and pretty conceits ; 
 and perhaps as a retribution those poems of 
 his which are most familiar in the popular 
 mouth are just those which least do justice 
 to his genuine strength and intellect. The 
 cheap sentiment of “ Lady Clara Vere de 
 Vere,” the yet cheaper pathos of “ The May 
 Queen,” are in the minds of thousands the 
 choicest representation of the genius of the 
 poet who wrote ‘‘In Memoriam” and the 
 “ Morte d’ Arthur.” Mr. Browning, on the 
 other hand, has chosen to court the approval 
 of his time on terms of such disadvantage as 
 an orator might who insisted in addressing 
 an assemblage in some tongue which they but 
 imperfectly understood. It is the fault of 
 Mr. Browning himself if he has for his only 
 audience and admirers men and women of 
 culture, and misses altogether that broad 
 public audience to which most poets have 
 chosen to sing, and which all true poets, one 
 would think, must desire to reach with their 
 song. It is on the other hand assuredly Mr. 
 Tennyson’s fault if he has by his too frequent 
 condescension to the drawing-room, and even 
 the young ladies’ school, made men and 
 women of culture forget for the moment his 
 best things, and credit him with no higher 
 gift than that of singing “ virginibus pueris- 
 que. ” One quality ought to be mentioned as 
 common to these two poets who have so little 
 else in common. They are both absolutely 
 faithful to nature and truth in their pictures 
 
 of the earth and its scenes and seasons. Al- 
 most all the great poets of the past age, even 
 including Wordsworth himself, were now 
 and then content to generalize nature ; to 
 take some things for granted ; to use their 
 memory, or the eyes of others, rather than 
 their own eyes, when they had to describe 
 changes on leaf, or sky, or water. It is the 
 characteristic of Tennyson and Browning 
 that they deal with nature in a spirit of the 
 most faithful loyalty. Not the branch of a 
 tree, nor the cry of a bird, nor the shifting 
 colors on sea or sky will be found described 
 on their pages otherwise than as the eye sees 
 for itself at the season of which the poet 
 tells. In reading Tennyson’s description of 
 woodland and forest scenes one might almost 
 fancy that he can catch the exact peculiari- 
 ties of sound in the rustling and moaning of 
 each separate tree. In some of Mr. Brown- 
 ing’s pictures of Italian scenery every detail 
 is so perfect that many a one journeying 
 along an Italian road and watching the little 
 mouse-colored cattle as they drink at the 
 stream, may for the moment almost feel un- 
 certain whether he is looking on a page of liv- 
 ing reality or recalling to memory a page from 
 the author of “The Ring and the Book.” 
 The poets seem to have returned to the fresh 
 simplicity of a far distant age of poetry, 
 when a man described exactly what he saw, 
 and was put to describing it because he saw 
 it. In most of the intermediate times a poet 
 describes because some other poet has de- 
 scribed before, and has said that in nature 
 there are such and such beautiful things 
 which every true poet must see, and is bound 
 to acknowledge accordingly in his verse. 
 
 These two are the greatest of our poets in 
 the earlier part of the reign ; indeed in the 
 reign early or late so far. But there are 
 other poets also of whom we must take ac- 
 count. Mrs. Browning has often been 
 described as the greatest poetess of whom we 
 know anything since Sappho. This descrip- 
 tion, however, seems to carry with it a much 
 higher degree of praise than it really bears. 
 It has to be remembered that there is no great 
 poetess of whom we know anything from 
 the time of Sappho to that of Mrs. Browning. 
 In England we have hardly had any woman 
 but Mrs. Browning alone who really deserves 
 to rank with poets. She takes a place alto- 
 gether different from that of any Mrs. He- 
 mans or such singer of sweet, mild, and in- 
 nocent note. Mrs. Browning would rank 
 highly among poets without any allowance 
 being claimed for her sex. But estimated 
 in this way, which assuredly she would have 
 chosen for herself, she can hardly be admit- 
 ted to stand with the foremost even of our 
 modern day. She is one of the most sympa- 
 thetic of poets. She speaks to the hearts of 
 numbers of readers who think Tennyson all 
 too sweet, smooth, and trivial, and Robert 
 Browning harsh and rugged. She speaks 
 especially to the emotional in woman. In 
 all moods when men and women are distract- 
 ed by the bewildering conditions of life, 
 when they feel themselves alternately dazzled 
 by its possibilities and baffled by its limita- 
 tions, the poems of Elizabeth Browning 
 ought to find sympathetic ears. But the po- 
 ems are not the highest which merely appeal 
 to our own moods and echo our own plaints ; 
 and there was not much of creative genius in 
 Mrs. Browning. Her poems are often but a 
 prolonged sob ; a burst of almost hysterical 
 remonstrance or entreaty. It must be owned, 
 however, that the egotism of emotion has 
 seldom found such exquisite form of out- 
 pouring as in her so-called “ Sonnets from 
 the Portuguese and that what the phrase- 
 ology of a school would call the emotion of 
 “ altruism” has rarely been given forth in 
 tones of such piercing pathos as in “ The Cry 
 of the Children.” 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold’s reputation was 
 made before this earlier period had closed. 
 He is a maker of such exquisite and thought- 
 ful verse that it is hard sometimes to question 
 
110 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 his title to be considered a genuine poet. On 
 the other hand, it is likely that the very grace 
 and culture and thoughtfulness of his style 
 inspire in many the first doubt of his claim to 
 the name of poet. Where the art is evident 
 and elaborate, we are all too apt to assume 
 that it is all art and not genius. Mr. Arnold 
 is a sort of miniature Goethe ; we do not 
 know that his most ardent admirers could 
 demand a higher praise for him, while it is 
 probable that the description will suggest ex- 
 actly the intellectual peculiarities which lead 
 so many to deny him a place with the really 
 inspired singers of his day. Of the three men 
 whom we have named we should be inclined 
 to say that Mr. Arnold made the very most 
 of his powers, and Mr. Browning the very 
 least. Mr. Arnold is a critic as well as a 
 poet : there are many who relish him more 
 in the critic than in the poet. In literary 
 criticism his judgment is refined, and his 
 aims are always high if his range be not very 
 wide ; in politics and theology he is some- 
 what apt to be at once fastidious and fantas- 
 tic. 
 
 The “ Song of the Shirt ” would give 
 Thomas Hood a technical right, if he had 
 none other, to be classed as a poet of the 
 reign of Queen Victoria. The “ Song of the 
 Shirt ” was published in Punch when the 
 reign was well on ; and after it appeared 
 “The Bridge of Sighs;” and no two of 
 Hood’s poems have done more to make him 
 famous. He was a genuine though not a 
 great poet, in whom humor was most prop- 
 erly to be defined as Thackeray has defined 
 it — the blending of love and wit. The 
 “Song of the Shirt” and the “Bridge of 
 Sighs” made themselves a kind of monu- 
 mental place in English sympathies. The 
 “ Plea of the Midsummer Fairies” was writ- 
 ten several years before. It alone would 
 have made for its author a reputation. The 
 ballad of “ Fair Inez” is almost perfect in its 
 Way. The name of Sir Henry Taylor must 
 be included with the poets of this reign, 
 although his best work was done before the 
 reign began. In his work, clear strong intel- 
 ligence prevails more than the emotional and 
 the sensuous. He makes himself a poet by 
 virtue of intellect and artistic judgment ; for 
 there really do seem some examples of a poet 
 being made and not born. We can hardly 
 bring Procter among the Victorian poets. 
 Macaulay’s ringing verses are rather the 
 splendid and successful tours de force of a 
 'clever man, than the genuine lyrics of a poet. 
 Arthur Clough was a man of rare promise, 
 whose lamp was extinguished all too soon. 
 Philip James Bailey startled the world by 
 his “Festus,” and for a time made people 
 believe that a great new poet was coming ; 
 but the impression did not last, and Bailey 
 proved to be little more than the comet of a 
 season. A spasmodic school which sprang 
 up after the success of “ Festus,” and which 
 was led by a brilliant young Scotchman, 
 Alexander Smith, passed away in a spasm as 
 it came, and is now almost forgotten. “ Ori- 
 on,” an epic poem by Richard H. Horne, 
 made a very distinct mark upon the time 
 Horne proved himself to be a sort of Landor 
 manque — or perhaps a connecting link be- 
 tween the style of Landor and that of Brown- 
 ing. The earlier part of the reign was rich 
 in singers ; but the names and careers of 
 most of them would serve rather to show 
 that the poetic spirit was abroad, and that it 
 sought expression in all manner of forms, 
 than that there were many poets to dispute 
 the place with Tennyson and Browning. It 
 is not necessary here to record a list of mere 
 names. The air was filled with the voices of 
 minor singers. It was pleasant to listen to 
 their piping, and the general effect may well 
 be commended ; but it is not necessary that 
 the names of all the performers in an orches- 
 tra should be recorded for the supposed grat- 
 ification of a posterity which assuredly would 
 never stop to read the list. 
 
 Thirty-six years have passed away since 
 
 Mr. Ruskin leaped into the literary arena, 
 with a spring as bold and startling as that of 
 Kean on the Kemble-haunted stage. The 
 little volume, so modest in its appearance and 
 self-sufficient in its tone, which the author 
 defiantly flung down like a gage of battle be- 
 fore the world, was entitled, “Modern Paint- 
 ers : their superiority in the art of Landscape 
 Painting to all the Ancient Masters ; by a 
 Graduate of Oxford.” It was a challenge 
 to established beliefs and prejudices ; and 
 the challenge was delivered in the tone of 
 one who felt confident that he could make 
 good his words against any and all oppo- 
 nents. If there was one thing that more 
 than another seemed to have been fixed and 
 rooted in the English mind, it was that 
 Claude and one or two others of the old mas- 
 ters possessed the secret of landscape paint- 
 ing. When, therefore, a bold young dog 
 matist involved in one common denunciation 
 “ Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, 
 Ruysdael, Paul Potter, Canaletto, and the 
 various Van - somethings and Koek-some- 
 tliings, more especially and malignantly those 
 who have libelled the sea,” it was no wonder 
 that affronted authority raised its indignant 
 voice and thundered at him. Affronted 
 authority, however, gained little by its thun- 
 der. The young Oxford Graduate possessed, 
 along with genius and profound conviction, 
 an imperturbable and magnificent self-conceit 
 against which the surges of angry criticism 
 dashed themselves in vain. Mr. Ruskin 
 sprang into literary life simply as a vindicator 
 of the fame and genius of Turner. But as 
 he went on with his task he found, or at least 
 he convinced himself, that the vindication of 
 the great landscape painter was essentially a 
 vindication of all true art. Still further pro- 
 ceeding with his self-imposed task, he per- 
 suaded himself that the cause of true art was 
 identical with the cause of truth, and that 
 truth, from Ruskin’s point of view, enclosed 
 in the same rules and principles all the 
 morals, all the science, industry, and daily 
 business of life. Therefore from an art-critic 
 he became a moralist, a political economist, 
 a philosopher, a statesman, a preacher — any- 
 thing, everything that human intelligence 
 can impel a man to be. All that he has writ- 
 ten since his first appeal to the public has 
 been inspired by this conviction : that an ap- 
 preciation of the truth in art reveals to him 
 who has it the truth in everything. This 
 belief has been the source of Mr. Ruskin’s 
 greatest successes, and of his most complete 
 and ludicrous failures. It has made him the 
 admiration of the world one week and the 
 object of its placid pity or broad laughter the 
 next. A being who could be Joan of Arc to- 
 day and Voltaire’s Pucelle to-morrow, would 
 hardly exhibit a stronger psychical paradox 
 than the eccentric genius of Mr. Ruskin 
 sometimes illustrates. But in order to do 
 him justice, and not to regard him as a mere 
 erratic utterer of eloquent contradictions, 
 poured out on the impulse of each moment’s 
 new freak of fancy, we must always bear in 
 mind the fundamental faith of the man. 
 Extravagant as this or that doctrine may be, 
 outrageous as to-day’s contradiction of yes- 
 terday’s assertion may sound, yet the whole 
 career is consistent with its essential princi- 
 ples and beliefs. It may be fairly questioned 
 whether Mr. Ruskin has any great qualities 
 but his eloquence and his true, honest love of 
 nature. As a man to stand up before a so- 
 ciety of which one part was fashionably 
 languid and the other part only too busy and 
 greedy, and preach to it of Nature’s immortal 
 beauty, and of the true way to do her rever- 
 ence, Ruskin has and had a position of gen- 
 uine dignity. This ought to be enough for 
 the work and for the praise of any man. But 
 the restlessness of Ruskin’s temperament, 
 combined with the extraordinary self-suffi- 
 ciency which contributed so much to his suc- 
 cess where he was master of a subject, sent 
 him perpetually intruding into fields where 
 he was unfit to labor, and enterprises which 
 
 he had no capacity to conduct. Seldom has 
 a man contradicted himself so often, so reck- 
 lessly, and so complacently as Mr. Ruskin. 
 It is venturesome to call him a great critic 
 even in art, for he seldom expresses any 
 opinion one day without flatly contradicting 
 it the next. He is a great writer, as Rousseau 
 was — fresh, eloquent, audacious, writing out 
 of the fulness of the present mood, and heed- 
 less how far the impulse of to-day may con- 
 travene that of yesterday. But as Rousseau 
 was always faithful to his idea of truth, so 
 Ruskin is always faithful to Nature. When 
 all his errors, and paradoxes, and contradic- 
 tions shall have been utterly forgotten, this 
 will remain to his praise. No man since 
 Wordsworth’s brightest days did half so 
 much to teach his countrymen, and those 
 who speak his language, how to appreciate 
 and honor that silent Nature “which never 
 did betray the heart that loved her.” 
 
 In fiction as well as in poetry there are two 
 great names to be compared or contrasted 
 when we turn to the literature of the earlier 
 part of the reign. In the very year of Queen 
 Victoria’s accession appeared the “ Pickwick 
 Papers,” the work of the author who the 
 year before had published the “ Sketches by 
 Boz.” The public soon recognized the fact 
 that a new and wonderfully original force 
 had come into literature. The success of 
 Charles Dickens is absolutely unequalled in 
 the history of English fiction. At the season 
 of his highest popularity Sir Walter Scott 
 was not so popular an author. But that hap- 
 pened to Dickens which did not happen to 
 Scott. When Dickens was at his zenith, 
 and when it might have been thought that 
 any manner of rivalry with him was impos- 
 sible, a literary man who was no longer 
 young, who had been working with but 
 moderate success for many years in light lit- 
 erature, suddenly took to writing novels, and 
 almost in a moment stepped up to a level 
 with the author of “Pickwick.” During 
 the remainder of their careers the two men 
 stood as nearly as possible on the same level. 
 Dickens always remained by far the more 
 popular of the two ; but on the other hand 
 it may be safely said that the opinion of the 
 literary world in general was inclined to 
 favor Thackeray. From the time of the 
 publication of “ Vanity Fair” the two were 
 always put side by side for comparison or 
 contrast. They have been sometimes likened 
 to Fielding and Smollett, but no comparison 
 could be more misleading or less happy. 
 Smollett stands on a level distinctly and con- 
 siderably below that of Fielding ; but Dick- 
 ens cannot be said to stand thus beneath 
 Thackeray. If the comparison were to hold 
 at all, Thackeray must be compared to Field- 
 ing, for Fielding is not in the least like Dick- 
 ens ; but then it must be allowed that Smol- 
 lett wants many of the higher qualities of the 
 author of ‘ ‘ David Coppertield. ’ ’ It is natural 
 that men should compare Dickens and 
 Thackeray ; but the two will be found to be 
 curiously unlike when once a certain super- 
 ficial resemblance ceases to impress the mind. 
 Their ways of treating a subject were not 
 only dissimilar but were absolutely in con- 
 trast. They started, to begin with, under 
 the influence of a totally different philosophy 
 of life, if that is to be called a philosophy 
 which was probably only the result of pecu- 
 liarity of temperament in each case. Pick- 
 ens set out on the literary theory that in life 
 everything is better than it looks ; Thackeray 
 with the impression that it is worse. In the 
 one case there was somewhat too much of a 
 mechanical interpretation of everything for 
 the best in the best possible world ; in the 
 other the savor of cynicism was at times a 
 little annoying. As each writer went on the 
 peculiarity became more and more of a man- 
 nerism But the writings of Dickens were 
 far more deeply influenced by his peculiar- 
 ities of feeling or philosophy than those of 
 Thackeray. A large share of the admiration 
 which is popularly given to Dickens is un- 
 
A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 doubtedly a tribute to what people consider 
 his cheerful view of life. In that too he is 
 especially English. In this country the artistic 
 theory of France and other Continental na- 
 tions, borrowed from the aesthetic principles 
 of Greece, which accords the palm to the ar- 
 tistic treatment rather than to the subject, or 
 the purpose, or the way of looking at things, 
 has found hardly any broad and general ac- 
 ceptation. The popularity of Dickens was 
 therefore in great measure due to the fact 
 that he set forth life in cheerful lights and 
 colors. He had of course gifts of far higher 
 artistic value ; he could describe anything 
 that he saw with a fidelity which Balzac could 
 not have surpassed ; and like Balzac he had 
 a way of inspiring inanimate objects with a 
 mystery and motive of their own which gave 
 them often a weird and fascinating individu- 
 ality. But it must be owned that if Dick- 
 ens’s peculiar “philosophy” were effaced 
 from his works the fame of the author would 
 remain a very different thing from what it is 
 at the present moment. On the other hand 
 it would be possible to cut out of Thackeray 
 all his little cynical, melancholy sentences and 
 reduce his novels to bare descriptions of life 
 and character, without affecting in any sensi- 
 ble degree his influence on the reader or his 
 position in literature. Thackeray had a 
 marvellously keen appreciation of human 
 motive and character within certain limits. 
 If Dickens could draw an old quaint house 
 or an odd family interior as faithfully and yet 
 as picturesquely as Balzac, so on the other 
 hand not Balzac himself could analyze and 
 illustrate the weaknesses and foibles of cer- 
 tain types of character with greater subtlety 
 of judgment and force of exposition than 
 Thackeray. Dickens had little or no knowl- 
 edge of human character, and evidently cared 
 very little about the study. His stories are 
 fairy tales made credible by the masterly real- 
 ism with which he described all the surround- 
 ings and accessories, the costumes and the 
 ways of his men and women. While we are 
 reading of a man whose odd peculiarities 
 strike us with a sense of reality as if we had 
 observed them for ourselves many a time, 
 while we see him surrounded by streets and 
 houses which seem to us rather more real and 
 a hundred times more interesting than those 
 through which we pass every day, we are not 
 likely to observe very quickly, or to take much 
 heed of the fact when we do observe it, that 
 the man acts on various important occasions 
 of his life as only people in fairy stories ever 
 do act. Thackeray, on the other hand, cared 
 little for descriptions of externals. He left 
 his readers to construct for themselves the 
 greater part of the surroundings of his per- 
 sonages from his description of the characters 
 of the personages themselves. He made us 
 acquainted with the man or woman in his 
 chapters as if we had known him or her all 
 our life ; and knowing Pendennis or Becky 
 Sharp we had no ditllculty in constructing 
 the surroundings of either for ourselves. 
 Thus it will be seen that these two eminent 
 authors had not only different ideas about 
 life, but absolutely contrasting principles of 
 art. One worked from the externals inward ; 
 the other realized the unseen, and left the ex- 
 ternals to grow of themselves. Three great 
 peculiarities, however, they shared. Each 
 lived and wrote of and for London. Dickens 
 created for art the London of the middle and 
 poorer classes ; Thackeray did the same for 
 the London of the upper class and for those 
 who strive to imitate their ways. Neither 
 ever even attempted to describe a man kept 
 constantly above and beyond the atmosphere 
 of mere egotism by some sustaining greatness 
 or even intensity of purpose. In Dickens, 
 as in Thackeray, the emotions described are 
 those o? conventional life merely. This is 
 not to be' said in disparagement of either ar- 
 tist. It is rather a tribute to an artist’s 
 knowledge of his own capacity and sphere 
 of work that he only attempts to draw what 
 he thoroughly understands. But it is proper 
 
 to remark of Dickens and of Thackeray, as 
 of Balzac, that the life they described was 
 after all but the life of a coterie or a quarter, 
 and that there existed side by side with their 
 field of work a whole world of emotion, as- 
 piration, struggle, defeat, and triumph, of 
 which their brightest pages do not give a 
 single suggestion. This is the more curious 
 to observe because of the third peculiarity 
 which Dickens and Thackeray had in com- 
 mon — a love for the purely ideal and roman- 
 tic in fiction. There are many critics who 
 hold that Dickens in “ Barnaby Rudge” and 
 the “ Tale of Two Cities,” Thackeray in 
 “ Esmond,” exhibited powers which vindi- 
 cated for their possessors a very rare infusion 
 of that higher poetic spirit which might have 
 made of both something greater than the 
 painters of the manners of a day and a class. 
 But to paint the manners of a day and a class 
 as Dickens and Thackeray have done is to 
 deserve fame and the gratitude of posterity. 
 The age of Victoria may claim in this respect 
 an equality at least with that of the reign 
 which produced Fielding and Smollett ; for 
 if there are some who would demand for 
 Fielding a higher place on the whole than can 
 be given either to Dickens or to Thackeray, 
 there are not many on the other hand who 
 would not say that either Dickens or Thack- 
 eray is distinctly superior to Smollett. The 
 age must claim a high place in art which 
 could in one department alone produce two 
 such competitors. Their effect upon their 
 time was something marvellous. People 
 talked Dickens or thought Thackeray. 
 
 Passion, it will be seen, counted for little 
 in the works of Dickens and Thackeray. 
 Dickens, indeed, could draw a conventionally 
 or dramatically wicked man with much power 
 and impressiveness ; and Thackeray could 
 suggest certain forms of vice with wonderful 
 delicacy and yet vividness. But the passions 
 which are common to all human natures in 
 their elementary moods made but litle play in 
 the novels of either writer. Both were in 
 this respect, for all their originality and gen- 
 ius in other ways, highly and even exclusive- 
 ly conventional. There was apparently a 
 sort of understanding in the mind of each — 
 indeed Thackeray has admitted as much in 
 his preface to “ Pendennis” — that men and 
 women were not to be drawn as men and 
 women are known to be, but with certain 
 reserves to suit conventional etiquette. It is 
 somewhat curious that the one only novel 
 writer who during the period we are now 
 considering came into any real rivalry with 
 them, was one who depended on passion al- 
 together for her material and her success. 
 The novels of a young woman, Charlotte 
 Bronte, compelled all English society into a 
 recognition not alone of their own sterling 
 power and genius, but also of the fact that 
 profound and passionate emotion was still 
 the stuff out of which great fiction could be 
 constructed. “ Exultations, agonies, and 
 love, and man’s unconquerable mind,” were 
 taken by Charlotte Bronte as the matter out 
 of which her art was to produce its triumphs. 
 The novels which made her fame, “ Jane 
 Eyre” and “ Villette,” are positively aflame 
 with passion and pain. They have little va- 
 riety. They make hardly any pretence to ac- 
 curate drawing of ordinary men and women 
 in ordinary life, or at all events under ordi- 
 nary conditions. The authoress had little of 
 the gift of the mere story-teller ; and her 
 own peculiar powers were exerted sometimes 
 with indifferent success. The familiar on 
 whom she depended for her inspiration 
 would not always come at call. She had lit- 
 tle genuine relish for beauty, except the 
 beauty of a weird melancholy and of decay. 
 But when she touched the chord of element- 
 ary human emotion with her best skill, then 
 it was impossible for her audience not to feel 
 that they were under the spell of a power 
 rare indeed in our well-ordered days. The 
 absolute sincerity of the author’s expression 
 of feeling lent it great part of its strength and 
 
 charm. Nothing was ever said by her be- 
 cause it seemed to society the right sort of 
 thing to say. She told a friend that she felt 
 sure “ Jane Eyre” would have an effect on 
 readers in general because it had so great an 
 effect on herself. It would be possible to 
 argue that the great strength of the books lay 
 in their sincerity alone ; that Charlotte 
 Bronte was not so much a woman of extra- 
 ordinary genius as a woman who looked her 
 own feelings fairly in the face, and painted 
 them as she saw them. But the capacity to 
 do this would surely be something which we 
 could not better describe than by the word 
 genius. Charlotte Bronte was far from being 
 an artist of fulfilled power. She is rather to 
 be regarded as one who gave evidence of ex- 
 traordinary gifts which might with time and 
 care, and under happier artistic auspices, 
 have been turned to such account as would 
 have made for her a fame with the very chiefs 
 of her tribe. She died at an age hardly more 
 mature than that at which Thackeray won 
 his first distinct literary success ; much ear- 
 lier than the age at which some of our great- 
 est novelists brought forth their first com- 
 pleted novels. But she left a very deep im- 
 pression on her time, and the time that has 
 come and is coming after her. No other 
 hand in the age of Queen Victoria has dealt 
 with human emotion so powerfully and so 
 truthfully. Hers are not cheerful novels. A 
 cold gray mournful atmosphere hangs over 
 them. One might imagine that the shadow 
 of an early death is forecast on them. They 
 love to linger among the glooms of nature, to 
 haunt her darkling wintry twilights, to study 
 her stormy sunsets, to link man’s destiny and 
 his hopes, fears, and passions somehow with 
 the glare and gloom of storm and darkness, 
 and to read the symbols of his fate as the 
 foredoomed and passion-wasted Antony did 
 in the cloud-masses that are “ black vesper’s 
 pageants.” The supernatural had a constant 
 vague charm for Charlotte Bronte, as the 
 painful had. Man was to her a being torn 
 between passionate love and the more ignoble 
 impulses and ambitions and common-day oc- 
 cupations of life. Woman was a being of 
 equal passion, still more sternly and cruelly 
 doomed to repression and renunciation. It 
 was a strange fact that in the midst of the 
 splendid material successes and the quietly 
 triumphant intellectual progress of this most 
 prosperous and well-ordered age, when even 
 in its poetry and its romance passion was sys- 
 tematically toned down and put in thrall to 
 good taste and propriety, this young writer 
 should have suddenly come out with her 
 books all thrilling with emotion, and all pro- 
 testing in the strongest practical manner 
 against the theory that the loves and hates of 
 men and women had been tamed by the pro- 
 cess of civilization. Perhaps the very novelty 
 of the apparition was in great measure a part 
 of its success. Charlotte Bronte did not, in- 
 deed, influence the general public, or even 
 the literary public, to anything like the same 
 extent that Thackeray and Dickens did. She 
 appeared and passed away almost in a mo- 
 ment. As Miss Martineau said of her, she 
 stole like a shadow into literature, and then 
 became a shadow again. But she struck 
 very deeply into the heart of the time. If 
 her writings were only, as has been said of 
 them, a cry of pain, yet they were such a 
 cry as once heard lingers and echoes iu the 
 mind forever after. Godwin declared that 
 he would write in “ Caleb Williams” a book 
 which would leave no man who read it the 
 same that he was before. Something not un- 
 like this might be said of “ Jane Eyre.” No 
 one who read it was exactly the same that he 
 had been before he opened its weird and won- 
 derful pages. 
 
 No man could well have made more of his 
 gifts than Lord Lytton. Before the coming 
 up of Dickens and Thackeray he stood above 
 afi living English novelists. Perhaps this is 
 rather to the reproach of the English fiction 
 of the day than to the renown of Lord Lyt- 
 
112 
 
 A HISTORY OF OUR OWN TIMES. 
 
 ton. But even after Dickens and Thack- 
 eray and Charlotte Brontii and later and not 
 less powerful and original writers had ap- 
 peared in the same field, he still held a place 
 of great mark in literature. That he was 
 not a man of genius is, perhaps, conclusively 
 proved by the fact that he was able so read- 
 ily to change liis style to suit the tastes of 
 each day. He began by writing of fops and 
 roues of a time now almost forgotten ; then 
 be made heroes of highwaymen and murder- 
 ers ; afterwards he tried the philosophic and 
 mildly didactic style ; then he turned to mys- 
 ticism and spiritualism ; later still he wrote 
 of the French Second Empire. Whatever he 
 tried to do he did well. Besides his novels 
 he wrote plays and poems ; and his plays are 
 among the very few modern productions 
 which manage to keep the stage. He played, 
 
 too, and with much success, at being a states- 
 man and an orator. Not Demosthenes him- 
 self had such difficulties of articulation to 
 contend against in the beginning ; and De- 
 mosthenes conquered his difficulties, while 
 some of those in the way of Lord Lytton 
 proved unconquerable. Yet Lord Lytton 
 did somehow contrive to become a great 
 speaker, and to seem occasionally like a great 
 orator in the House of Commons. He was 
 at the very least a superb phrase-maker ; and 
 he could turn to account every scrap of 
 knowledge in literature, art, or science which 
 he happened to possess. His success in the 
 House of Commons was exactly like his suc- 
 cess in romance and the drama. He threw 
 himself into competition with men of far 
 higher original gifts, and he made so good a 
 show of contesting with them that in the 
 minds of many the victory was not clearly 
 with his antagonists. There was always, 
 for example, a considerable class, even 
 among educated persons, who maintained 
 that Lytton was in his way quite the peer of 
 Thackeray and Dickens. His plays, or some 
 of them, obtained a popularity only second 
 to those of Shakespeare ; and although nobody 
 cared to read them, yet people were always 
 found to go and look at them. When Lyt- 
 ton went into the House of Commons for the 
 second time he found audiences which were 
 occasionally tempted to regard him as the rival 
 of Gladstone and Bright. Not a few persons 
 saw in all this only a sort of superb charla- 
 ianerie ; and indeed it is certain that no man 
 ever made and kept a genuine success in so 
 many different fields as those in which Lord 
 Lytton tried and seemed to succeed. But he 
 had splendid qualities ; he had everything 
 short of genius. He had indomitable pa- 
 tience, inexhaustible power of self-culture, 
 and a capacity for assimilating the floating 
 ideas of the hour which supplied the place of 
 originality. He borrowed from the poet the 
 knack of poetical expression, and from the 
 dramatist the trick of construction ; from 
 the Byronic time its professed scorn for the 
 false gods of the world ; and from the more 
 modern period of popular science and sham 
 mysticism its extremes of materialism and 
 magic ; and of these and various other bor- 
 rowings he made up an article which no one 
 else could have constructed out of the same 
 materials. He was not a great author ; but 
 he was a great literary man. Mr. Disraeli’s 
 novels belong in some measure to the school 
 of “ Pelham” and “ Godolphin.” But it 
 should be said that Mr. Disraeli’s “ Vivian 
 Grey” was published before “ Pelham” 
 made its appearance. In all that belongs to 
 political life Mr. Disraeli’s novels are far su- 
 perior to those of Lord Lytton. We have 
 nothing in our literature to compare with 
 
 some of the best of Mr. Disraeli’s novels for 
 light political satire, and for easy accurate 
 characterization of political cliques and per- 
 sonages. But all else in Disraeli’s novels is 
 sham. The sentiment, the poetry, the 
 philosophy — all these are sham. They 
 have not half the appearance of reality 
 about them that Lytton has contrived to 
 give to his efforts of the same kind. In 
 one at least of Disraeli’s latest novels the 
 political sketches and satirizing became 
 sham also. 
 
 “ Alton Locke” was published nearly 
 thirty years ago. Then Charles Kingsley be- 
 came to most boys in Great Britain who 
 read books at all a sort of living embodi- 
 ment of chivalry, liberty, and a revolt against 
 the established order of class-oppression in so 
 many spheres of our society. For a long 
 time he continued to be the chosen hero of 
 young men with the youthful spirit of revolt 
 in them, with dreams of Republics and ideas 
 about the equality of man. Later on he com- 
 manded other admiration for other qualities, 
 for the championship of slave systems, of op- 
 pression, and the iron reign of mere force. 
 But though Charles Kingsley always held a 
 high place somewhere in popular estimation, 
 he is not to be rated very highly as an au- 
 thor. He described glowing scenery admira- 
 bly, and he rang the changes vigorously on 
 his two or three ideas — the muscular English- 
 man, the glory of the Elizabethan discover- 
 ies, and so on. He was a scholar, and he 
 wrote verses which sometimes one is on the 
 point of mistaking for poetry, so much of the 
 poet’s feeling have they in them. He did a 
 great many things very cleverly. Perhaps if 
 he had done less he might have done better. 
 Human capacity is limited. It is not given to 
 mortal to be a great preacher, a great philos- 
 opher, a great scholar, a great poet, a great 
 historian, a great novelist, and an indefatiga- 
 ble country parson. Charles Kingsley never 
 seems to have made up his mind for which 
 of these callings to go in especially, and being 
 with all his versatility not at all many- 
 sided, but strictly one-sided and almost one- 
 idead, the result was, that while touching 
 success at many points he absolutely master- 
 ed it at none. Since his novel “ Westward 
 Ho,” he never added anything substantial to 
 his reputation. All this acknowledged, how- 
 ever, it must still be owned that failing in 
 this, that, and the other attempt, and never 
 achieving any real and enduring success, 
 Charles Kingsley was an influence and a man 
 of mark in the Victorian age. 
 
 Perhaps a word ought to be said of the 
 rattling romances of Irish electioneering, 
 love-making, and fighting which set people 
 reading “Charles O’Malley” and “Jack 
 Hinton,” even when “ Pickwick” was still a 
 novelty. Charles Lever had wonderful an- 
 imal spirits and a broad, bright humor. He 
 was quite genuine in his way. He after- 
 wards changed his style completely, and with 
 much success ; and will be found in the later 
 part of the period holding just the same rela- 
 tive place as in the earlier, just behind the 
 foremost men, but in manner so different 
 that he might be a new writer who had never 
 read a line of the roystering adventures of 
 Light Dragoons which were popular when 
 Charles Lever first gave them to the world. 
 There was nothing great about Lever, but 
 the literature of the Victorian period would 
 not be quite all that we know it without him. 
 There were many other popular novelists du- 
 ring the period we have passed over, some in 
 their day more popular than either Thackeray 
 or Charlotte Bronte. Many of us can re- 
 
 membet . 
 
 "30112 062231177 
 
 — luo mucn ashamed of 
 the fact, that there were early days when 
 Mr. James and his cavaliers and his chivalric 
 adventures gave nearly as much delight as 
 W alter Scott could have given to the youth 
 of a preceding generation. But Walter Scott 
 is with us still, young and old, and poor 
 James is gone. His once famous solitary 
 horseman has ridden away into actual soli- 
 tude, and the shades of night have gathered 
 over his heroic form. 
 
 The founding of Punch drew together a 
 host of clever young writers, some of whom 
 made a really deep mark on the literature of 
 their time, and the combined influence of 
 whom in this artistic and literary undertak- 
 ing was on the whole decidedly healthy. 
 Thackeray was by far the greatest of the reg- 
 ular contributors to Punch in its earlier days. 
 But “ The Song of the Shirt” appeared in its 
 pages, and some of the brightest of Douglas 
 Jerrold’s writings made their appearance 
 there. launch was a thoroughly English 
 production. It had little or nothing in com- 
 mon with the comic periodicals of Paris. It 
 ignored absolutely and of set purpose the 
 whole class of subjects which make up three 
 fourths of the stock in trade of a French 
 satirist. The escapades of husbands and the 
 infidelities of wives form the theme of by far 
 the greater number of the humorous sketches 
 with pen or pencil in Parisian comicalities. 
 Punch kept altogether aloof from such un- 
 savory subjects. It had an advantage, of 
 course, which was habitually denied to the 
 French papers — it had unlimited freedom of 
 political satire and caricature. Politics and 
 the more trivial troubles and trials of social 
 life gave subjects to Punch. The inequali- 
 ties of class, and the struggles of ambitious 
 and vain persons to get into circles higher 
 than their own, or at least to imitate their 
 manners — these supplied for Punch the place 
 of the class of topics on which French pa- 
 pers relied when they had to deal with the 
 domestic life of the nation. Punchi started 
 by being somewhat fiercely radical, but grad- 
 ually toned away into a sort of intelligent 
 and respectable Conservatism. Its artistic 
 sketches were from first to last admirable. 
 Some men of true genius wrought for it with 
 the pencil as others did with the pen. Doyle, 
 Leech, and Tenniel were men of whom any 
 school of art might well be proud. A re- 
 markable sobriety of style was apparent in 
 all their humors. Of later years caricature 
 has had absolutely no place in the illustra- 
 tions to Punch. The satire is quiet, delicate, 
 and no doubt superficial. It is a satire of 
 manners, dress, and social ways altogether. 
 There is justice in the criticism that of late 
 more especially the pages of Punch give no 
 idea whatever of the emotions of the English 
 people. There is no suggestion of grievance, 
 of bitterness, of passion or pain. It is all 
 made up of the pleasures and annoyances of 
 the kind of life which is enclosed in a garden 
 party. But it must be said that Punch has 
 thus always succeeded in maintaining a good, 
 open, convenient, neutral ground, where 
 young men and fnaidens, girls and boys, eld- 
 erly politicians and staid matrons. , last— 
 trade, science, all sects and creeds, mSy safe- 
 ly and pleasantly mingle. It is not so, to be 
 sure, that great satire is wrought. A Swift 
 or a Juvenal is not thus to be brought out. 
 But a votary of the present would have his 
 answer simple and conclusive : We live in 
 the age of Punch ; we do not live in the age 
 of Juvenal or Swift. 
 
 END OP VOLUME II. 
 
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